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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13062 ***
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+NO. CCCXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1843. VOL. LIII.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY
+    POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.--NO. V.
+    REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.
+    THE YOUNG GREY HEAD
+    IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+        OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL
+    CALEB STUKELY. PART XI.
+    THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART II.
+    EYRE'S CABUL
+    THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN
+    DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.
+
+
+If any doubt could exist as to the nature of the loss which the
+premature death of Dr Arnold has inflicted on the literature of his
+country, the perusal of the volume before us must be sufficient to show
+how great, how serious, nay, all circumstances taken together, we had
+almost said how irreparable, it ought to be considered. Recently placed
+in a situation which gave his extraordinary faculties as a teacher still
+wider scope than they before possessed, at an age when the vivacity and
+energy of a commanding intellect were matured, not chilled, by constant
+observation and long experience--gifted with industry to collect, with
+sagacity to appreciate, with skill to arrange the materials of
+history--master of a vivid and attractive style for their communication
+and display--eminent, above all, for a degree of candour and sincerity
+which gave additional value to all his other endowments--what but
+leisure did Dr Arnold require to qualify him for a place among our most
+illustrious authors? Under his auspices, we might not unreasonably have
+hoped for works that would have rivalled those of the great continental
+writers in depth and variety of research; in which the light of original
+and contemporaneous documents would be steadily flung on the still
+unexplored portions of our history; and that Oxford would have balanced
+the fame of Schlösser and Thierry and Sismondi, by the labours of a
+writer peculiarly, and, as this volume proves, most affectionately her
+own.
+
+The first Lecture in the present volume is full of striking and original
+remarks, delivered with a delightful simplicity; which, since genius has
+become rare among us, has almost disappeared from the conversation and
+writings of Englishmen. Open the pages of Herodotus, or Xenophon, or
+Cæsar, and how plain, how unpretending are the preambles to their
+immortal works--in what exquisite proportion does the edifice arise,
+without apparent effort, without ostentatious struggle, without, if the
+allusion may be allowed, the sound of the axe or hammer, till "the pile
+stands fixed her stately height" before us--the just admiration of
+succeeding ages! But our modern _filosofastri_ insist upon stunning us
+with the noise of their machinery, and blinding us with the dust of
+their operations. They will not allow the smallest portion of their
+vulgar labours to escape our notice. They drag us through the chaos of
+sand and lime, and stone and bricks, which they have accumulated, hoping
+that the magnitude of the preparation may atone for the meanness of the
+performance. Very different from this is the style of Dr Arnold. We will
+endeavour to exhibit a just idea of his views, so far as they regard the
+true character of history, the manner in which it should be studied,
+and the events by which his theory is illustrated. To study history as
+it should be studied, much more to write history as it should be
+written, is a task which may dignify the most splendid abilities, and
+occupy the most extended life.
+
+Lucian in one of his admirable treatises, ridicules those who imagine
+that any one who chooses may sit down and write history as easily as he
+would walk or sleep, or perform any other function of nature,
+
+    "Thought, to the man that never thinks, may seem
+    As natural as when asleep to dream."
+
+From the remarks of this greatest of all satirists, it is manifest that,
+in his days, history had been employed, as it has in ours, for the
+purposes of slander and adulation. He selects particularly a writer who
+compared, in his account of the Persian wars, the Roman emperor to
+Achilles, his enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian had lived in the present
+day, he would have discovered that the race of such writers was not
+extinguished. He might have found ample proofs that the detestable habit
+still prevails of interweaving the names of our contemporaries among the
+accounts of former centuries, and thus corrupting the history of past
+times into a means of abuse and flattery for the present. This is to
+degrade history into the worst style of a Treasury pamphlet, or a daily
+newspaper. It is a fault almost peculiar to this country.
+
+We are told in one of these works, for instance, that the "tones of Sir
+W. Follett's voice are silvery"--a proposition that we do not at all
+intend to dispute; nor would it be easy to pronounce any panegyric on
+that really great man in which we should not zealously concur; but can
+it be necessary to mention this in a history of the eighteenth century?
+Or can any thing be more trivial or offensive, or totally without the
+shadow of justification, than this forced allusion to the "ignorant
+present time," in the midst of what ought to be an unbiassed narrative
+of events that affected former generations? We do not know whether the
+author of this ingenious allusion borrowed the idea from the
+advertisements in which our humbler artists recommend their productions
+to vulgar notice; or whether it is the spontaneous growth of his own
+happy intellect: but plagiarized or original, and however adapted it may
+be to the tone and keeping of his work, its insertion is totally
+irreconcilable with the qualities that a man should possess who means to
+instruct posterity. When gold is extracted from lead, or silver from
+tin, such a writer may become an historian. "Forget," says Lucian, "the
+present, look to future ages for your reward; let it be said of you that
+you are high-spirited, full of independence, that there is nothing about
+you servile or fulsome."
+
+Modern history is now exclusively to be considered. Modern history,
+separated from the history of Greece and Rome, and the annals of
+barbarous emigration, by the event which above all others has
+influenced, and continues still to influence, after so many centuries,
+the fate of Europe--the fall of the Western Empire--the boundary line
+which separates modern from ancient history, is not ideal and
+capricious, but definite and certain. It can neither be advanced nor
+carried back. Modern history displays a national life still in
+existence. It commences with that period in which the great elements of
+separate national existence now in being--race, language, institutions,
+and religion--can be traced in simultaneous operation. To the influences
+which pervaded the ancient world, another, at first scarcely
+perceptible, for a time almost predominant, and even now powerful and
+comprehensive, was annexed. In the fourth century of the Christian era,
+the Roman world comprised Christianity, Grecian intellect, Roman
+jurisprudence--all the ingredients, in short, of modern history, except
+the Teutonic element. It is the infusion of this element which has
+changed the quality of the compound, and leavened the whole mass with
+its peculiarities. To this we owe the middle ages, the law of
+inheritance, the spirit of chivalry, and the feudal system, than which
+no cause more powerful ever contributed to the miseries of mankind. It
+filled Europe not with men but slaves; and the tyranny under which the
+people groaned was the more intolerable, as it was wrought into an
+artificial method, confirmed by law, established by inveterate custom,
+and even supported by religion. In vain did the nations cast their eyes
+to Rome, from whom they had a right to claim assistance, or at least
+sympathy and consolation. The appeal was useless. The living waters were
+tainted in their source. Instead of health they spread abroad
+infection--instead of giving nourishment to the poor, they were the
+narcotics which drenched in slumber the consciences of the rich.
+Wretched forms, ridiculous legends, the insipid rhetoric of the Fathers,
+were the substitutes for all generous learning. The nobles enslaved the
+body; the hierarchy put its fetters on the soul. The growth of the
+public mind was checked and stunted and the misery of Europe was
+complete. The sufferer was taught to expect his reward in another world;
+their oppressor, if his bequests were liberal, was sure of obtaining
+consolation in this, and the kingdom of God was openly offered to the
+highest bidder. But to the causes which gave rise to this state of
+things, we must trace our origin as a nation.
+
+With the Britons whom Cæsar conquered, though they occupied the surface
+of our soil, we have, nationally speaking, no concern; but when the
+white horse of Hengist, after many a long and desperate struggle,
+floated in triumph or in peace from the Tamar to the Tweed, our
+existence as a nation, the period to which we may refer the origin of
+English habits, language, and institutions, undoubtedly begins. So, when
+the Franks established themselves west of the Rhine, the French nation
+may be said to have come into being. True, the Saxons yielded to the
+discipline and valour of a foreign race; true, the barbarous hordes of
+the Elbe and the Saal were not the ancestors, as any one who travels in
+the south of France can hardly fail to see, of the majority of the
+present nation of the French: but the Normans and Saxons sprang from the
+same stock, and the changes worked by Clovis and his warriors were so
+vast and durable, (though, in comparison with their conquered vassals,
+they were numerically few,) that with the invasion of Hengist in the one
+case, and the battle of Poictiers in the other, the modern history of
+both countries may not improperly be said to have begun. To the student
+of that history, however, one consideration must occur, which imparts to
+the objects of his studies an interest emphatically its own. It is this:
+he has strong reason to believe that all the elements of society are
+before him. It may indeed be true that Providence has reserved some yet
+unknown tribe, wandering on the banks of the Amour or of the Amazons, as
+the instrument of accomplishing some mighty purpose--humanly speaking,
+however, such an event is most improbable. To adopt such an hypothesis,
+would be in direct opposition to all the analogies by which, in the
+absence of clearer or more precise motives, human infirmity must be
+guided. The map of the world is spread out before us; there are no
+regions which we speak of in the terms of doubt and ignorance that the
+wisest Romans applied to the countries beyond the Vistula and the Rhine,
+when in Lord Bacon's words "the world was altogether home-bred." When
+Cicero jested with Trebatius on the little importance of a Roman jurist
+among hordes of Celtic barbarians, he little thought that from that
+despised country would arise a nation, before the blaze of whose
+conquests the splendour of Roman Empire would grow pale; a nation which
+would carry the art of government and the enjoyment of freedom to a
+perfection, the idea of which, had it been presented to the illustrious
+orator, stored as his mind was with all the lore of Grecian sages, and
+with whatever knowledge the history of his own country could supply,
+would have been consigned by him, with the glorious visions of his own
+Academy, to the shady spaces of an ideal world. Had he, while bewailing
+the loss of that freedom which he would not survive, disfigured as it
+was by popular tumult and patrician insolence--had he been told that a
+figure far more faultless was one day to arise amid the unknown forests
+and marshes of Britain, and to be protected by the rude hands of her
+barbarous inhabitants till it reached the full maturity of immortal
+loveliness--the eloquence of Cicero himself would have been silenced,
+and, whatever might have been the exultation of the philosopher, the
+pride of the Roman would have died within him. But we can anticipate no
+similar revolution. The nations by which the world is inhabited are
+known to us; the regions which they occupy are limited; there are no
+fresh combinations to count upon, no reserves upon which we can
+depend;--there is every reason to suppose that, in the great conflict
+with physical and moral evil, which it is the destiny of man to wage,
+the last battalion is in the field.
+
+The course to be adopted by the student of modern history is pointed out
+in the following pages; and the remarks of Dr Arnold on this subject are
+distinguished by a degree of good sense and discrimination which it is
+difficult to overrate. Vast indeed is the difference between ancient and
+modern annals, as far as relates to the demand upon the student's time
+and attention. Instead of sailing upon a narrow channel, the shores of
+which are hardly ever beyond his view, he launches out upon an ocean of
+immeasurable extent, through which the greatest skill and most assiduous
+labour are hardly sufficient to conduct him--
+
+    "Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo,
+    Nec meminisse viæ, mediâ Palinurus in undâ."
+
+Instead of a few great writers, the student is beset on all sides by
+writers of different sort and degree, from the light memorialist to the
+great historian; instead of two countries, two hemispheres are
+candidates for his attention; and history assumes a variety of garbs,
+many of which were strangers to her during the earlier period of her
+existence. To the careful study of many periods of history, not
+extending over any very wide portion of time, the labour of a tolerably
+long life would be inadequate. The unpublished Despatches of Cardinal
+Granvelle at Besançon, amount to sixty volumes. The archives of Venice
+(a mine, by the way, scarcely opened) fill a large apartment. For
+printed works it may be enough to mention the Benedictine editions and
+Munatoris Annals, historians of the dark and middle ages, relating to
+two countries only, and two periods. All history, therefore, however
+insatiable may be the intellectual _boulimia_ that devours him, can
+never be a proper object of curiosity to any man. It is natural enough
+that the first effect produced by this discovery on the mind of the
+youthful student should be surprise and mortification; nor is it before
+the conviction that his researches, to be valuable, must be limited,
+forces itself upon him, that he concentrates to some particular period,
+and perhaps to some exclusive object, the powers of his undivided
+attention. When he has thus put an end to his desultory enquiries, and
+selected the portion of history which it is his purpose to explore, his
+first object should be to avail himself of the information which other
+travellers in the same regions have been enabled to collect. Their
+mistakes will teach him caution; their wanderings will serve to keep him
+in the right path. Weak and feeble as he may be, compared with the first
+adventurers who have visited the mighty maze before him, yet he has not
+their difficulties to encounter, nor their perils to apprehend. The clue
+is in his hands which may lead him through the labyrinth in which it has
+been the lot of so many master-spirits to wander--
+
+    "And find no end, in boundless mazes lost."
+
+But it is time to hear Dr Arnold:--
+
+     "To proceed, therefore, with our supposed student's course of
+     reading. Keeping the general history which he has been reading
+     as his text, and getting from it the skeleton, in a manner, of
+     the future figure, he must now break forth excursively to the
+     right and left, collecting richness and fulness of knowledge
+     from the most various sources. For example, we will suppose
+     that where his popular historian has mentioned that an alliance
+     was concluded between two powers, or a treaty of peace agreed
+     upon, he first of all resolves to consult the actual documents
+     themselves, as they are to be found in some one of the great
+     collections of European treaties, or, if they are connected
+     with English history, in Rymer's _Foedera_. By comparing the
+     actual treaty with his historian's report of its provisions, we
+     get, in the first place, a critical process of some value,
+     inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once tested: but
+     there are other purposes answered besides. An historian's
+     report of a treaty is almost always an abridgement of it; minor
+     articles will probably be omitted, and the rest condensed, and
+     stripped of all their formal language. But our object now being
+     to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is possible, the very
+     life of the period which we are studying, minute particulars
+     help us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration of titles,
+     and the specification of towns and districts in their legal
+     style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their
+     very particularity. Every common history records the substance
+     of the treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the succession to
+     the crown of France was given to Henry V. But the treaty in
+     itself, or the English version of it which Henry sent over to
+     England to be proclaimed there, gives a far more lively
+     impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, and
+     the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles VI., in the
+     ostentatious care taken to provide for the recognition of his
+     formal title during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded
+     to Henry, and provision is made for the perpetual union
+     hereafter of the two kingdoms under his sole government.
+
+     "I have named treaties as the first class of official
+     instruments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs
+     unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents,
+     certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently
+     referred to by popular historians, consists of statutes,
+     ordinances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names
+     the laws of each particular period happen to be designated.
+     _That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred to
+     by writers on English history_, has always seemed to me a
+     matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so busy in
+     every country as it has been with us; yet every where, and in
+     every period, it has done something. Evils, real or supposed,
+     have always existed, which the supreme power in the nation has
+     endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. And under the
+     name of laws I would include the acts of councils, which form
+     an important part of the history of European nations during
+     many centuries; provincial councils, as you are aware, having
+     been held very frequently, and their enactments relating to
+     local and particular evils, so that they illustrate history in
+     a very lively manner. Now, in these and all the other laws of
+     any given period, we find in the first place, from their
+     particularity, a great additional help towards becoming
+     familiar with the times in which they were passed; we learn the
+     names of various officers, courts, and processes; and these,
+     when understood, (and I suppose always the habit of reading
+     nothing without taking pains to understand it,) help us, from
+     their very number, to realize the state of things then
+     existing; a lively notion of any object depending on our
+     clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we people it, so
+     to speak, with distinct images, the more it comes to resemble
+     the crowded world around us. But in addition to this benefit,
+     which I am disposed to rate in itself very highly, every thing
+     of the nature of law has a peculiar interest and value,
+     _because it is the expression of the deliberate mind of the
+     supreme government of society_; and as history, as commonly
+     written, records so much of the passionate and unreflecting
+     part of human nature, we are bound in fairness to acquaint
+     ourselves with its calmer and better part also."
+
+The inner life of a nation will be determined by its end, that end being
+the security of its highest happiness, or, as it is "conceived and
+expressed more piously, a setting forth of God's glory by doing his
+appointed work." The history of a nation's internal life is the history
+of its institutions and its laws. Here, then, it is that we shall find
+the noblest lessons of history; here it is that we must look for the
+causes, direct and indirect, which have modified the characters, and
+decided the fate of nations. To this imperishable possession it is that
+the philosopher appeals for the corroboration of his theory, as it is to
+it also that the statesman ought to look for the regulation of his
+practice. Religion, property, science, commerce, literature, whatever
+can civilize and instruct rude mankind, whatever can embellish life in
+its more advanced condition, even till it exhibit the wonders of which
+it is now the theatre, may be referred to this subject, and are
+comprised under this denomination. The importance of history has been
+the theme of many a pen, but we question whether it has ever been more
+beautifully described than in the following passage:--
+
+     "Enough has been said, I think, to show that history contains
+     no mean treasures; that, as being the biography of a nation, it
+     partakes of the richness and variety of those elements which
+     make up a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the
+     final cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and
+     man's perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of
+     history. Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in
+     human nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature, or
+     sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering, whether blessed
+     or unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
+     reverses, in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied
+     powers, its courage and its patience, its genius and its
+     wisdom, its justice and its love, that also is the measure of
+     the interest and variety of history. The treasures indeed are
+     ample, but we may more reasonably fear whether we may have
+     strength and skill to win them."
+
+In passing we may observe, after Dr Arnold, that the most important
+bearing of a particular institution upon the character of a nation is
+not always limited to the effect which is most obvious; few who have
+watched the proceedings in our courts of justice can doubt that, in
+civil cases, the interference of a jury is often an obstacle, and
+sometimes an insurmountable obstacle, to the attainment of justice. Dr
+Arnold's remarks on this subject are entitled to great attention:--
+
+     "The effect," he says, "of any particular arrangement of the
+     judicial power, is seen directly in the greater or less purity
+     with which justice is administered; but there is a further
+     effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to
+     a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means
+     of moral and intellectual culture--the opportunity, namely, of
+     exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to accustom a
+     number of persons to the intellectual exercise of attending to,
+     and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to the moral exercise
+     of being placed in a high and responsible situation, invested
+     with one of God's own attributes, that of judgment, and having
+     to determine with authority between truth and falsehood, right
+     and wrong, is to furnish them with very high means of moral and
+     intellectual culture--in other words, it is providing them with
+     one of the highest kinds of education. And thus a judicial
+     constitution may secure a pure administration of justice, and
+     yet fail as an engine of national cultivation, where it is
+     vested in the hands of a small body of professional men, like
+     the old French parliament. While, on the other hand, it may
+     communicate the judicial office very widely, as by our system
+     of juries, and thus may educate, if I may so speak, a very
+     large portion of the nation, but yet may not succeed in
+     obtaining the greatest certainty of just legal decisions. I do
+     not mean that our jury system does not succeed, but it is
+     conceivable that it should not. So, in the same way, different
+     arrangements of the executive and legislative powers should be
+     always regarded in this twofold aspect--as effecting their
+     direct objects, good government and good legislation; and as
+     educating the nation more or less extensively, by affording to
+     a greater or less number of persons practical lessons in
+     governing and legislating."
+
+History is an account of the common purpose pursued by some one of the
+great families of the human race. It is the biography of a nation; as
+the history of a particular sect, or a particular body of men, describes
+the particular end which the sect or body was instituted to pursue, so
+history, in its more comprehensive sense, describes the paramount object
+which the first and sovereign society--the society to which all others
+are necessarily subordinate--endeavours to attain. According to Dr
+Arnold, a nation's life is twofold, external and internal. Its external
+life consists principally in wars. "Here history has been sufficiently
+busy. The wars of the human race have been recorded when every thing
+else has perished."
+
+Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold justly observes, is calculated to
+contract and enfeeble the understanding. It is a pedantic love of
+detail, with an indifference to the result, for which alone it can be
+considered valuable. It is the mistake, into which men are perpetually
+falling, of the means for the end. There are people to whom the
+tragedies of Sophocles are less precious than the Scholiast on
+Lycophron, and who prize the speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because
+they may fling light on the dress of an Athenian citizen. The same
+tendency discovers itself in other pursuits. Oxen are fattened into
+plethoras to encourage agriculture, and men of station dress like
+grooms, and bet like blacklegs, to keep up the breed of horses. It is
+true that such evils will happen when agriculture is encouraged, and a
+valuable breed of horses cherished; but they are the consequences, not
+the cause of such a state of things. So the disciples of the old
+philosophers drank hemlock to acquire pallid countenances--but they are
+as far from obtaining the wisdom of their masters by this adventitious
+resemblance, as the antiquarian is from the historian. To write well
+about the past, we must have a vigorous and lively perception of the
+present. This, says Dr Arnold, is the merit of Mitford. It is certainly
+the only one he possesses; a person more totally unqualified for writing
+history at all--to say nothing of the history of Greece--it is difficult
+for us, aided as our imagination may be by the works of our modern
+writers, to conceive. But Raleigh, whom he quotes afterwards, is indeed
+a striking instance of that combination of actual experience with
+speculative knowledge which all should aim at, but which it seldom
+happens that one man in a generation is fortunate enough to obtain.
+
+From the sixteenth century, the writers of history begin to assume a
+different character from that of their predecessors. During the middle
+ages, the elements of society were fewer and less diversified. Before
+that time the people were nothing. Popes, emperors, kings, nobles,
+bishops, knights, are the only materials about which the writer of
+history cared to know or enquire. Perhaps some exception to this rule
+might be found in the historians of the free towns of Italy; but they
+are few and insignificant. After that period, not only did the classes
+of society increase, but every class was modified by more varieties of
+individual life. Even within the last century, the science of political
+economy has given a new colouring to the thoughts and actions of large
+communities, as the different opinions held by its votaries have
+multiplied them into distinct and various classes. Modern historians,
+therefore, may be divided into two classes; the one describing a state
+of society in which the elements are few; the other the times in which
+they were more numerous. As a specimen of the first order, he selects
+Bede. Bede was born in 674, fifty years after the flight of Mahomet from
+Mecca. He died in 755, two or three years after the victory of Charles
+Martel over the Saracens. His ecclesiastical history, in five books,
+describes the period from Augustine's arrival in Kent, 597.
+
+Dr Arnold's dissertation on Bede involves him in the discussion of a
+question on which much skill and ability have been exercised. We allude
+to the question of miracles. "The question," says he, "in Bede takes
+this form--What credit is to be attached to the frequent stories of
+miracles or wonders which occur in his narrative?" He seizes at once
+upon the difficulty, without compromise or evasion. He makes a
+distinction between a wonder and a miracle: "to say that all recorded
+wonders are false, from those recorded by Herodotus to the latest
+reports of animal magnetism, would be a boldness of assertion wholly
+unjustifiable." At the same time he thinks the character of Bede, added
+to the religious difficulty, may incline us to limit miracles to the
+earliest times of Christianity, and refuse our belief to all which are
+reported by the historians of subsequent centuries. He then proceeds to
+consider the questions which suggest themselves when we read Matthew
+Paris, or still more, any of the French, German, or Italian historians
+of the same period:--
+
+     "The thirteenth century contains in it, at its beginning, the
+     most splendid period of the Papacy, the time of Innocent the
+     Third; its end coincides with that great struggle between
+     Boniface the Eighth and Philip the Fair, which marks the first
+     stage of its decline. It contains the reign of Frederick the
+     Second, and his long contest with the popes in Italy; the
+     foundation of the orders of friars, Dominican and Franciscan;
+     the last period of the crusades, and the age of the greatest
+     glory of the schoolmen. Thus, full of matters of interest as it
+     is, it will yet be found that all its interest is more or less
+     connected with two great questions concerning the church;
+     namely, the power of the priesthood in matters of government
+     and in matters of faith; the merits of the contest between the
+     Papacy and the kings of Europe; the nature and character of
+     that influence over men's minds which affected the whole
+     philosophy of the period, the whole intellectual condition of
+     the Christian world."--P. 138.
+
+The pretensions and corruptions of the Church are undoubtedly the chief
+object to which, at this period, the attention of the reader must be
+attracted. "Is the church system of Innocent III. in faith or government
+the system of the New Testament?" Is the difference between them
+inconsiderable, such as may be accounted for by the natural progress of
+society, or does the rent extend to the foundation? "The first century,"
+says Dr Arnold, "is to determine our judgment of the second and of all
+subsequent centuries. It will not do to assume that the judgment must be
+interpreted by the very practices and opinions, the merits of which it
+has to try." As a specimen of the chroniclers, he selects Philip de
+Comines, almost the last great writer of his class. In him is
+exemplified one of the peculiar distinctions of attaching to modern
+history the importance of attending to genealogies.
+
+     "For instance, Comines records the marriage of Mary, duchess
+     of Burgundy, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold,
+     with Maximilian, archduke of Austria. This marriage, conveying
+     all the dominions of Burgundy to Maximilian and his heirs,
+     established a great independent sovereign on the frontiers of
+     France, giving to him on the north, not only the present
+     kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, but large portions of what is
+     now French territory, the old provinces of Artois and French
+     Flanders, French Hainault and French Luxemburg; while on the
+     east it gave him Franche Comté, thus yielding him a footing
+     within the Jura, on the very banks of the Saône. Thence ensued
+     in after ages, when the Spanish branch of the house of Austria
+     had inherited this part of its dominions--the long contests
+     which deluged the Netherlands with blood, the campaigns of King
+     William and Luxembourg, the nine years of efforts, no less
+     skilful than valiant, in which Marlborough broke his way
+     through the fortresses of the iron frontier. Again, when Spain
+     became in a manner French by the accession of the House of
+     Bourbon, the Netherlands reverted once more to Austria itself;
+     and from thence the powers of Europe advanced, almost in our
+     own days, to assail France as a republic; and on this ground,
+     on the plains of Fleurus, was won the first of those great
+     victories which, for nearly twenty years, carried the French
+     standards triumphantly over Europe. Thus the marriage recorded
+     by Comines has been working busily down to our very own times:
+     it is only since the settlement of 1814, and that more recent
+     one of 1830, that the Netherlands have ceased to be effected by
+     the union of Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian of
+     Austria"--P. 148.
+
+Again, in order to understand the contest which Philip de Comines
+records between a Frenchman and a Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
+must go back to the dark and bloody page in the annals of the thirteenth
+century, which relates the extinction of the last heir of the great
+Swabian race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of Anjou, the fit and
+unrelenting instrument of Papal hatred--the dreadful expiation of that
+great crime by the Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of the House of
+Anjou in Sicily, the crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna, the new
+contest occasioned by her adoption--all these events must be known to
+him who would understand the expedition of Charles VIII. The following
+passage is an admirable description of the reasons which lend to the
+pages of Philip de Comines a deep and melancholy interest:--
+
+     "The Memoirs of Philip de Comines terminate about twenty years
+     before the Reformation, six years after the first voyage of
+     Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately
+     preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage
+     of an old state of things, now on the point of passing away.
+     Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurricane, the
+     almost oppressive stillness which announces the eruption, or,
+     to use Campbell's beautiful image--
+
+     'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'--
+
+     are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is
+     not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,
+     nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their
+     dissolution is fast approaching--the interest has yet another
+     source; our knowledge, namely, that in that tranquil period lay
+     the germs of the great changes following, taking their shape
+     for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while all
+     wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by
+     experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we wish in
+     vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
+     condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing
+     hour. And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we
+     are curious to know whether his previous words or behaviour
+     indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine the
+     records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to observe
+     whether, in any point, there may be discerned an anticipation
+     of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
+     insensibility. In this respect, Comines' Memoirs are striking
+     from their perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
+     ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other notions
+     than such as they had tended to foster; he describes their
+     events, their characters, their relations, as if they were to
+     continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the simplest
+     form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the
+     instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common
+     mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between
+     Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king, that
+     to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But, resembling
+     Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in
+     another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly
+     of all men, without respect of persons, Philip de Comines
+     praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of
+     princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life,
+     but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and
+     has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de
+     Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with whom the
+     crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere
+     with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and
+     respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he
+     himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on
+     his mind no impression."
+
+We now enter upon a period which may be called the modern part of modern
+history, the more complicated period, in contradistinction to the more
+simple state of things which, up to this moment, has occupied the
+student's attention. It is impossible to read, without deep regret, the
+passage in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention--"if life and health
+be spared him, to enter into minute details; selecting some one country
+as the principal subject of his enquiries, and illustrating the lessons
+of history for the most part from its particular experience."
+
+He proceeds, however, to the performance of the task immediately before
+him. After stating that the great object, the [Greek: teleiotaton
+telos], of history is that which most nearly touches the inner life of
+civilized man, he pauses for a while at the threshold before he enters
+into the sanctuary, and undoubtedly some external knowledge is requisite
+before we penetrate into its recesses: we want some dwelling-place, as
+it were, for the mind, some local habitation in which our ideas may be
+arranged, some topics that may be firmly grasped by the memory, and on
+which the understanding may confidently rest; and thus it is that
+geography, even with a view to other purposes, must engross, in the
+first instance, a considerable share of our attention. The sense in
+which Dr Arnold understands a knowledge of geography, is explained in
+the following luminous and instructive commentary:--
+
+     "I said that geography held out one hand to geology and
+     physiology, while she held out the other to history. In fact,
+     geology and physiology themselves are closely connected with
+     history. For instance, what lies at the bottom of that question
+     which is now being discussed every where, the question of the
+     corn-laws, but the geological fact that England is more richly
+     supplied with coal-mines than any other country in the world?
+     what has given a peculiar interest to our relations with China,
+     but the physiological fact, that the tea-plant, which is become
+     so necessary to our daily life, has been cultivated with equal
+     success in no other climate or country? what is it which
+     threatens the permanence of the union between the northern and
+     southern states of the American confederacy, but the
+     physiological fact, that the soil and climate of the southern
+     states render them essentially agricultural, while those of the
+     northern states, combined with their geographical advantages as
+     to sea-ports, dispose them no less naturally to be
+     manufacturing and commercial? The whole character of a nation
+     may be influenced by its geology and physical geography. But
+     for the sake of its mere beauty and liveliness, if there were
+     no other consideration, it would be worth our while to acquire
+     this richer view of geography. Conceive only the difference
+     between a ground-plan and a picture. The mere plan geography of
+     Italy gives us its shape, as I have observed, and the position
+     of its towns; to these it may add a semicircle of mountains
+     round the northern boundary to represent the Alps, and another
+     long line stretching down the middle of the country to
+     represent the Apennines. But let us carry on this a little
+     further, and give life and meaning and harmony to what is at
+     present at once lifeless and confused. Observe, in the first
+     place, how the Apennine line, beginning from the southern
+     extremity of the Alps, runs across Italy to the very edge of
+     the Adriatic, and thus separates naturally the Italy proper of
+     the Romans, from Cisalpine Gaul. Observe again, how the Alps,
+     after running north and south, where they divide Italy from
+     France, turn then away to the eastward, running almost parallel
+     to the Apennines, till they too touch the head of the Adriatic,
+     on the confines of Istria. Thus between these two lines of
+     mountains there is enclosed one great basin or plain; enclosed
+     on three sides by mountains, open only on the east to the sea.
+     Observe how widely it spreads itself out, and then see how well
+     it is watered. One great river flows through it in its whole
+     extent, and this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
+     descending towards it on either side, from the Alps on the one
+     side, and from the Apennines on the other. Who can wonder that
+     this large and rich and well-watered plain should be filled
+     with flourishing cities, or that it should have been contended
+     for so often by successive invaders? Then descending into Italy
+     proper, we find the complexity of its geography quite in
+     accordance with its manifold political division. It is not one
+     simple central ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of
+     level country on either side between it and the sea, nor yet
+     is it a chain rising immediately from the sea on one side, like
+     the Andes in South America, and leaving room, therefore, on the
+     other side for wide plains of table-land, and rivers with a
+     sufficient length of course to become at last great and
+     navigable. It is a back-bone thickly set with spines of unequal
+     length, some of them running out at regular distances parallel
+     to each other, but others twisted so strangely that they often
+     run for a long way parallel to the back-bone, or main ridge,
+     and interlace with one another in a maze almost inextricable.
+     And, as if to complete the disorder, in those spots where the
+     spines of the Apennines, being twisted round, run parallel to
+     the sea and to their own central chain, and thus leave an
+     interval of plain between their bases and the Mediterranean,
+     volcanic agency has broken up the space thus left with other
+     and distinct groups of hills of its own creation, as in the
+     case of Vesuvius, and of the Alban hills near Rome. Speaking
+     generally then, Italy is made up of an infinite multitude of
+     valleys pent in between high and steep hills, each forming a
+     country to itself, and cut off by natural barriers from the
+     others. Its several parts are isolated by nature, and no art of
+     man can thoroughly unite them. Even the various provinces of
+     the same kingdom are strangers to each other; the Abruzzi are
+     like an unknown world to the inhabitants of Naples, insomuch,
+     that when two Neapolitan naturalists, not ten years since, made
+     an excursion to visit the Majella, one of the highest of the
+     central Apennines, they found there many medicinal plants
+     growing in the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were
+     regularly in the habit of importing from other countries, as no
+     one suspected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence
+     arises the romantic character of Italian scenery: the constant
+     combination of a mountain outline and all the wild features of
+     a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern
+     climate in the valleys. Hence too the rudeness, the pastoral
+     simplicity, and the occasional robber habits, to be found in
+     the population; so that to this day you may travel in many
+     places for miles together in the plains and valleys without
+     passing through a single town or village; for the towns still
+     cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on
+     some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking
+     down abruptly below them, the very 'congesta manu præruptis
+     oppida saxis' of Virgil's description, which he even then
+     called 'antique walls,' because they had been the strongholds
+     of the primæval inhabitants of the country, and which are still
+     inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, nothing of the
+     stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated
+     into these lonely valleys, and tempted the people to quit their
+     mountain fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling in the
+     plain.
+
+     "I have been led on further than I intended, but I wished to
+     give an example of what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
+     of geography, which brings the whole character of a country
+     before our eyes, and enables us to understand its influence
+     upon the social and political condition of its inhabitants. And
+     this knowledge, as I said before, is very important to enable
+     us to follow clearly the external revolutions of different
+     nations, which we want to comprehend before we penetrate to
+     what has been passing within."
+
+This introductory discussion is followed by a rapid sketch of the
+different struggles for power and independence in Europe during the
+three last centuries. The general tendency of this period has been to
+consolidate severed nations into great kingdoms; but this tendency has
+been checked when the growth of any single power has become excessive,
+by the combined efforts of other European nations. Spain, France,
+England, and Austria, all in their turns have excited the jealousy of
+their neighbours, and have been attacked by their confederate strength.
+But in 1793 the peace of Europe was assailed by an enemy still more
+dangerous and energetic--still more destructive--we doubt whether in the
+English language a more vivid description is to be found of the evil,
+its progress, and its termination, than Dr Arnold has given in the
+following passage:--
+
+     "Ten years afterwards there broke out by far the most alarming
+     danger of universal dominion, which had ever threatened Europe.
+     The most military people in Europe became engaged in a war for
+     their very existence. Invasion on the frontiers, civil war and
+     all imaginable horrors raging within, the ordinary relations of
+     life went to wreck, and every Frenchman became a soldier. It
+     was a multitude numerous as the hosts of Persia, but animated
+     by the courage and skill and energy of the old Romans. One
+     thing alone was wanting, that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
+     wanted, to enable them to conquer the world--a general and a
+     ruler like himself. There was wanted a master hand to restore
+     and maintain peace at home, and to concentrate and direct the
+     immense military resources of France against her foreign
+     enemies. And such an one appeared in Napoleon. Pacifying La
+     Vendée, receiving back the emigrants, restoring the church,
+     remodelling the law, personally absolute, yet carefully
+     preserving and maintaining all the great points which the
+     nation had won at the Revolution, Napoleon united in himself,
+     not only the power, but the whole will of France; and that
+     power and will were guided by a genius for war such as Europe
+     had never seen since Cæsar. The effect was absolutely magical.
+     In November 1799, he was made First Consul; he found France
+     humbled by defeats, his Italian conquests lost, his allies
+     invaded, his own frontier threatened. He took the field in May
+     1800, and in June the whole fortune of the war was changed, and
+     Austria driven out of Lombardy by the victory of Marengo. Still
+     the flood of the tide rose higher and higher, and every
+     successive wave of its advance swept away a kingdom. Earthly
+     state has never reached a prouder pinnacle than when Napoleon,
+     in June 1812, gathered his army at Dresden--that mighty host,
+     unequalled in all time, of 450,000, not men merely, but
+     effective soldiers, and there received the homage of subject
+     kings. And now, what was the principal adversary of this
+     tremendous power? by whom was it checked, and resisted, and put
+     down? By none, and by nothing, but the direct and manifest
+     interposition of God. I know of no language so well fitted to
+     describe that victorious advance to Moscow, and the utter
+     humiliation of the retreat, as the language of the prophet with
+     respect to the advance and subsequent destruction of the host
+     of Sennacherib. 'When they arose early in the morning, behold
+     they were all dead corpses,' applies almost literally to that
+     memorable night of frost, in which twenty thousand horses
+     perished, and the strength of the French army was utterly
+     broken. Human instruments, no doubt, were employed in the
+     remainder of the work; nor would I deny to Germany and to
+     Prussia the glories of the year 1813, nor to England the honour
+     of her victories in Spain, or of the crowning victory of
+     Waterloo. But at the distance of thirty years, those who lived
+     in the time of danger and remember its magnitude, and now
+     calmly review what there was in human strength to avert it,
+     must acknowledge, I think, beyond all controversy, that the
+     deliverance of Europe from the dominion of Napoleon was
+     effected neither by Russia, nor by Germany, nor by England, but
+     by the hand of God alone."
+
+The question, whether some races of men possess an inherent superiority
+over others, is mooted by Dr Arnold, in his dissertation on military
+science. Without laying down any universal rule, it may be stated that
+such a superiority can be predicated of no European nation. Frederick
+the Great defeated the French at Rosbach, as easily as Napoleon overcame
+the Prussians at Jena. If Marlborough was uniformly successful, William
+III. was always beaten by Luxembourg, and the Duke of Cumberland by
+D'Etrées and Saxe. It seems, therefore, a fair inference, that no
+civilized European nation possesses over its neighbours that degree of
+superiority which greater genius in the general, or greater discipline
+in the troops of its antagonists, will not be sufficient to counteract.
+The defeat of the Vendéans in France, by the soldiers of the garrison of
+Mentz; and the admirable conduct of our own Sepoys under British
+generals, are, no doubt, strong instances to show the prodigious
+importance of systematic discipline. Still, we cannot quite coincide
+with Dr Arnold's opinion on this subject. We are quite ready to
+admit--who, indeed, for a moment would deny?--in military as well as in
+all other subjects, the value of professional attainments and long
+experience. We cannot, however, consider them superior to those great
+qualities of our nature which discipline may regulate and embellish, but
+which it can never destroy or supersede. As every man is bound to form
+his own opinion on religious matters, though he may not be a priest,
+every man is obliged to defend his country when invaded, though he may
+not be a soldier. Nor can the miseries which such a state of things
+involves, furnish any argument against its necessity. All war must be
+attended with misfortunes, which freeze the blood and make the soul sick
+in their contemplation; but these very misfortunes deter those who wield
+the reins of empire from appealing wantonly to its determination. The
+resistance of Saragossa was not the less glorious, it does not the less
+fire the heart of every reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
+because it was not conducted according to the strict forms of military
+tactics, because citizens and even women participated in its fame. The
+inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish nation for its oppressor--which
+wore down the French armies, which no severities, no violence, no
+defeat, could subdue--will be, as long as time shall last, a terrible
+lesson to ambitious conquerors. They will learn that there is in the
+fury of an insulted nation a danger which the most exquisite military
+combinations cannot remove, which the most perfectly served artillery
+cannot sweep away, before which all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
+lines of fortification in the world are useless--and compared with which
+the science of the commander is pedantry, and strategy but a word. They
+will discover that something more than mechanical power, however
+great--something more than the skill of the practised officer, or the
+instinct of well-trained soldiers, are requisite for success--where
+every plain is a Marathon, and every valley a Thermopylæ.
+
+Would to God that the same reproach urged against the Spanish
+nation--that they defended their native soil irregularly--that they
+fought like freemen rather than like soldiers--that they transgressed
+the rules of war by defending one side of a street while the artillery
+of the enemy, with its thousand mouths, was pouring death upon them from
+the other--that they struggled too long, that they surrendered too late,
+that they died too readily, could have been applied to Poland--one
+fearful instance of success would have been wanting to encourage the
+designs of despotism!
+
+Some of the rights of war are next considered--that of sacking a town
+taken by assault, and of blockading a town defended, not by the
+inhabitants, but by a military garrison--are next examined;--in both
+these cases the penalty falls upon the innocent. The Homeric description
+of a town taken by assault, is still applicable to modern warfare:--
+
+     [Greek: andras men kteinoysi, polin de te pyr amathynei
+             tekna de t' alloi agoysi, bathyzônoys te gynaikas.]
+
+The unhappy fate of Genoa is thus beautifully related--
+
+     "Some of you, I doubt not, remember Genoa; you have seen that
+     queenly city with its streets of palaces, rising tier above
+     tier from the water, girdling with the long lines of its bright
+     white houses the vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of which
+     is marked by a huge natural mole of rock, crowned by its
+     magnificent lighthouse tower. You remember how its white houses
+     rose out of a mass of fig and olive and orange trees, the glory
+     of its old patrician luxury. You may have observed the
+     mountains, behind the town, spotted at intervals by small
+     circular low towers; one of which is distinctly conspicuous
+     where the ridge of the hills rises to its summit, and hides
+     from view all the country behind it. Those towers are the forts
+     of the famous lines, which, curiously resembling in shape the
+     later Syracusan walls enclosing Epipalæ, converge inland from
+     the eastern and western extremities of the city, looking
+     down--the western line on the valley of the Polcevera, the
+     eastern, on that of the Bisagno--till they meet, as I have
+     said, on the summit of the mountains, where the hills cease to
+     rise from the sea, and become more or less of a table land,
+     running off towards the interior, at the distance, as well as I
+     remember, of between two and three miles from the outside of
+     the city. Thus a very large open space is enclosed within the
+     lines, and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming a vast
+     intrenched camp, holding not so much a garrison as an army. In
+     the autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven the French out of
+     Lombardy and Piedmont; their last victory of Fossano or Genola
+     had won the fortress of Coni or Cunco, close under the Alps,
+     and at the very extremity of the plain of the Po; the French
+     clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa--the
+     narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea, which
+     extends from the frontiers of France almost to the mouth of the
+     Arno. Hither the remains of the French force were collected,
+     commanded by General Massena; and the point of chief importance
+     to his defence was the city of Genoa. Napoleon had just
+     returned from Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could
+     not be expected to take the field till the following spring,
+     and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from
+     without--every thing was to depend on his own pertinacity. The
+     strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a
+     position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the
+     population of a great city, held out to the enemy a hope of
+     reducing it by famine; and as Genoa derives most of its
+     supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British naval
+     commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance of
+     his naval force to the Austrians; and, by the vigilance of his
+     cruizers, the whole coasting trade right and left along the
+     Riviera, was effectually cut off. It is not at once that the
+     inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the daily sight of
+     well-stored shops and an abundant market, begin to realize the
+     idea of scarcity; or that the wealthy classes of society, who
+     have never known any other state than one of abundance and
+     luxury, begin seriously to conceive of famine. But the shops
+     were emptied; and the storehouses began to be drawn upon; and
+     no fresh supply, or hope of supply, appeared.
+
+     "Winter passed away and spring returned, so early and so
+     beautiful on that garden-like coast, sheltered as it is from
+     the north winds by its belts of mountains, and open to the full
+     rays of the southern sun. Spring returned and clothed the
+     hill-sides within the lines with its fresh verdure. But that
+     verdure was no longer the mere delight of the careless eye of
+     luxury, refreshing the citizens by its liveliness and softness,
+     when they rode or walked up thither from the city to enjoy the
+     surpassing beauty of the prospect. The green hill-sides were
+     now visited for a very different object; ladies of the highest
+     rank might be seen cutting up every plant which it was possible
+     to turn to food, and bearing home the common weeds of our
+     road-sides as a most precious treasure. The French general
+     pitied the distresses of the people; but the lives and strength
+     of his garrison seemed to him more important than the lives of
+     the Genoese, and such provisions as remained were reserved, in
+     the first place, for the French army. Scarcity became utter
+     want, and want became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of
+     that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of
+     its humblest poor, death was busy; not the momentary death of
+     battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but the
+     lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants died
+     before their parents' eyes, husbands and wives lay down to
+     expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825, told me,
+     that his father and two of his brothers had been starved to
+     death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the month of
+     June, when Napoleon had already descended from the Alps into
+     the plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable, and
+     Massena surrendered. But before he did so, twenty thousand
+     innocent persons, old and young, women and children, had died
+     by the most horrible of deaths which humanity can endure. Other
+     horrors which occurred besides during this blockade, I pass
+     over; the agonizing death of twenty thousand innocent and
+     helpless persons requires nothing to be added to it.
+
+     "Now, is it right that such a tragedy as this should take
+     place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify
+     the authors of it? Conceive having been an officer in Lord
+     Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed in stopping
+     the food which was being brought for the relief of such misery.
+     For the thing was done deliberately; the helplessness of the
+     Genoese was known; their distress was known; it was known that
+     they could not force Massena to surrender; it was known that
+     they were dying daily by hundreds, yet week after week, and
+     month after month, did the British ships of war keep their iron
+     watch along all the coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any
+     article of provision could escape their vigilance. One cannot
+     but be thankful that Nelson was spared from commanding at this
+     horrible blockade of Genoa.
+
+     "Now, on which side the law of nations should throw the guilt
+     of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence,
+     or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that
+     the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless
+     persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the
+     parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest
+     course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be
+     allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who
+     should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same
+     light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to
+     be in the habit of butchering women and children. For it is not
+     true that war only looks to the speediest and most effectual
+     way of attaining its object; so that, as the letting the
+     inhabitants go out would enable the garrison to maintain the
+     town longer, the laws of war authorize the keeping them in and
+     starving them. Poisoning wells might be a still quicker method
+     of reducing a place; but do the laws of war therefore sanction
+     it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to be placing the
+     guilt of the individuals concerned in the two cases which I am
+     going to compare, on an equal footing; it would be most unjust
+     to do so--for in the one case they acted, as they supposed,
+     according to a law which made what they did their duty. But,
+     take the cases themselves, and examine them in all their
+     circumstances; the degree of suffering inflicted--the innocence
+     and helplessness of the sufferers--the interests at stake--and
+     the possibility of otherwise securing them; and if any man can
+     defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the
+     inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the
+     lawfulness of the massacres of September."
+
+We rejoice to find that the great authority of Colonel W. Napier--an
+authority of which posterity will know the value--is arrayed on the side
+of those who think that war, the best school, as after all it must often
+be, of some of our noblest virtues, need not be always the cause of
+such atrocities.
+
+This enquiry shows us how the centre of external movement in Europe has
+varied; but it is not merely to the territorial struggle that our
+attention should be confined--mighty principles, Christian truth, civil
+freedom, were often partially at issue on one side, or on the other, in
+the different contests which the gold and steel of Europe were set in
+motion to determine; hence the necessity of considering not only the
+moral power, but the economical and military strength of the respective
+countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an
+encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is
+beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were
+brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned,
+not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was
+accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated
+to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land,
+besides the support of its owner and the actual demands of the State, is
+encumbered with the support of two or three persons who represent the
+creditors of the nation; and every man who would have laboured twelve
+hours, had no national debt existed, is now obliged to toil sixteen for
+the same remuneration: such a state of things may be necessary, but it
+certainly requires investigation.
+
+Other parts of the law of nations, the maritime law especially, require
+improvement. Superficial men are apt to overlook the transcendent
+importance of error on these subjects by which desolation may be spread
+from one quarter of the globe to the other. As no man can bear long the
+unanimous disapprobation of his fellows, no nation can long set at
+defiance the voice of a civilized world. But we return to history in
+military operations. A good map is essential to this study. For
+instance, to understand the wars of Frederick the Great, it is not
+enough to know that he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen, and
+Cunersdorf--that he was victorious at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf, and
+Prague--that he was opposed by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff--we must
+also comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions with regard to
+those of the allies--the importance of Saxony as covering Prussia on the
+side of Austria--the importance of Silesia as running into the Austrian
+frontier, and flanking a large part of Bohemia, should also be
+considered--this will alone enable us to account for Frederick's attack
+on Saxony, and his pertinacity in keeping possession of Silesia; nor
+should it be forgotten, that the military positions of one generation
+are not always those of the next, and that the military history of one
+period will be almost unintelligible, if judged according to the roads
+and fortresses of another. For instance, St Dizier in Champagne, which
+arrested Charles the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly
+untenable--Turin, so celebrated for the sieges it has sustained, is an
+open town, while Alexandria is the great Piedmontese fortress. The
+addition of Paris to the list of French strongholds, is, if really
+intended, a greater change than any that has been enumerated. This
+discussion leads to an allusion to mountain warfare, which has been
+termed the poetry of the military art, and of which the struggle in
+Switzerland in 1799, when the eastern part of that country was turned
+into a vast citadel, defended by the French against Suwaroff, is a most
+remarkable instance, as well as the most recent. The history by General
+Mathieu Dumas of the campaign in 1799 and 1800, is referred to as
+containing a good account and explanation of this branch of military
+science.
+
+The internal history of Europe during the three hundred and forty years
+which have elapsed since the middle ages, is the subject now proposed
+for our consideration. To the question--What was the external object of
+Europe during any part of this period? the answer is obvious, that it
+was engaged in resisting the aggression of Spain, or France, or Austria.
+But if we carry our view to the moral world, do we find any principle
+equally obvious, and a solution as satisfactory? By no means. We may,
+indeed, say, with apparent precision, that during the earliest part of
+this epoch, Europe was divided between the champions and antagonists of
+religion, as, during its latter portion, it was between the enemies and
+supporters of political reformation. But a deeper analysis will show us
+that these names were but the badges of ideas, always complex, sometimes
+contradictory--the war-cry of contending parties, by whom the reality
+was now forgotten, or to whom, compared with other purposes, it was
+altogether subordinate.
+
+Take, for instance, the exercise of political power. Is a state free in
+proportion to the number of its subjects who are admitted to rank among
+its citizens, or to the degree in which its recognised citizens are
+invested with political authority? In the latter point of view, the
+government of Athens was the freest the world has ever seen. In the
+former it was a most exclusive and jealous oligarchy. "For a city to be
+well governed," says Aristotle in his Politics, "those who share in its
+government must be free from the care of providing for their own
+support. This," he adds, "is an admitted truth."
+
+Again, the attentive reader can hardly fail to see that, in the struggle
+between Pompey and Cæsar, Cæsar represented the popular as Pompey did
+the aristocratical party, and that Pompey's triumph would have been
+attended, as Cicero clearly saw, by the domination of an aristocracy in
+the shape most oppressive and intolerable. The government of Rome, after
+several desperate struggles, had degenerated into the most corrupt
+oligarchy, in which all the eloquence of Cicero was unable to kindle the
+faintest gleam of public virtue. Owing to the success of Cæsar, the
+civilized world exchanged the dominion of several tyrants for that of
+one, and the opposition to his design was the resistance of the few to
+the many.
+
+Or we may take another view of the subject. By freedom do we mean the
+absence of all restraint in private life, the non-interference by the
+state in the details of ordinary intercourse? According to such a view,
+the old government of Venice and the present government of Austria,
+where debauchery is more than tolerated, would be freer than the Puritan
+commonwealths in North America, where dramatic representations were
+prohibited as impious, and death was the legal punishment of
+fornication.
+
+These are specimens of the difficulties by which we are beset, when we
+endeavour to obtain an exact and faithful image from the troubled medium
+through which human affairs are reflected to us. Dr Arnold dwells on
+this point with his usual felicity of language and illustration.
+
+     "This inattention to altered circumstances, which would make us
+     be Guelfs in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, because
+     the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or twelfth, is a
+     fault of most universal application in all political questions,
+     and is often most seriously mischievous. It is deeply seated in
+     human nature, being, in fact, no other than an exemplification
+     of the force of habit. It is like the case of a settler,
+     landing in a country overrun with wood and undrained, and
+     visited therefore by excessive falls of rain. The evil of wet,
+     and damp, and closeness, is besetting him on every side; he
+     clears away the woods, and he drains his land, and he, by doing
+     so, mends both his climate and his own condition. Encouraged by
+     his success, he perseveres in his system; clearing a country is
+     with him synonymous with making it fertile and habitable; and
+     he levels, or rather sets fire to, his forests without mercy.
+     Meanwhile, the tide is turned without his observing it; he has
+     already cleared enough, and every additional clearance is a
+     mischief; damp and wet are no longer the evil most to be
+     dreaded, but excessive drought. The rains do not fall in
+     sufficient quantity; the springs become low, the rivers become
+     less and less fitted for navigation. Yet habit blinds him for a
+     long while to the real state of the case; and he continues to
+     encourage a coming mischief in his dread of one that is become
+     obsolete. We have been long making progress on our present
+     tack; yet if we do not go about now, we shall run ashore.
+     Consider the popular feeling at this moment against capital
+     punishment; what is it but continuing to burn the woods, when
+     the country actually wants shade and moisture? Year after year,
+     men talked of the severity of the penal code, and struggled
+     against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and stronger,
+     and at last effected all, and more than all, which it had at
+     first vainly demanded; yet still, from mere habit, it pursues
+     its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, but
+     to the injury of innocence and the encouragement of crime, and
+     encouraging that worse evil--a sympathy with wickedness justly
+     punished rather than with the law, whether of God or man,
+     unjustly violated. So men have continued to cry out against the
+     power of the Crown after the Crown had been shackled hand and
+     foot; and to express the greatest dread of popular violence
+     long after that violence was exhausted, and the anti-popular
+     party was not only rallied, but had turned the tide of battle,
+     and was victoriously pressing upon its enemy."
+
+The view which Dr Arnold gives of the parties in England during the
+sixteenth century--that great epoch of English genius--is remarkable for
+its candour and moderation. He considers the distinctions which then
+prevailed in England as political rather than religious, "inasmuch as
+they disputed about points of church government, without any reference
+to a supposed priesthood; and because even those who maintained that one
+or another form was to be preferred, because it was of divine
+appointment, were influenced in their interpretation of the doubtful
+language of the Scriptures by their own strong persuasion of what that
+language could not but mean to say."
+
+And he then concludes by the unanswerable remark, that in England,
+according to the theory of the constitution during the sixteenth
+century, church and state were one. The proofs of this proposition are
+innumerable--not merely the act by which the supremacy was conferred on
+Henry VIII.--not merely the powers, almost unlimited, in matters
+ecclesiastical, delegated to the king's vicegerent, that vicegerent
+being a layman--not merely the communion established by the sole
+authority of Edward VI.--without the least participation in it by any
+bishop or clergyman; but the still more conclusive argument furnished by
+the fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline, or ritual of our
+church, was established except by the power of Parliament, and the power
+of Parliament alone--nay, more, that they were established in direct
+defiance of the implacable opposition of the bishops, by whom, being
+then Roman Catholics, the English Church, on the accession of Elizabeth,
+was represented--to which the omission of the names of the Lords
+Spiritual in the Act of Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the
+"Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in
+Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and
+unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr
+Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions
+concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a
+few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious
+men, to propagate, and which would lead, by a direct and logical
+process, to the complete overthrow of Protestant faith and worship.
+Such, then, being the state of things "recognized on all hands, church
+government was no light matter, but one which essentially involved in it
+the government of the state; and the disputing the Queen's supremacy,
+was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important portions of
+her sovereignty, and committing half of the government of the nation to
+other hands."
+
+At the accession of Henry VIII., the most profound tranquillity
+prevailed over England. The last embers of those factions by which,
+during his father's reign, the peace of the nation had been disturbed
+rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of
+that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in
+England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the
+wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation.
+The parties of York and Lancaster were no more--the Episcopal and
+Puritan factions were not yet in being--every day diminished the
+influence of the nobles--the strength of the Commons was in its
+infancy--the Crown alone remained, strong in its own prerogative,
+stronger still in the want of all competitors. Crime after crime was
+committed by the savage tyrant who inherited it; he was
+ostentatious--the treasures of the nation were lavished at his feet; he
+was vindictive--the blood of the wise, the noble, and the beautiful, was
+shed, like water, to gratify his resentment; he was rapacious--the
+accumulations of ancient piety were surrendered to glut his avarice; he
+was arbitrary--and his proclamations were made equivalent to acts of
+Parliament; he was fickle--and the religion of the nation was changed to
+gratify his lust. To all this the English people submitted, as to some
+divine infliction, in silence and consternation--the purses, lives,
+liberties, and consciences of his people were, for a time, at his
+disposal. During the times of his son and his eldest daughter, the
+general aspect of affairs was the same. But, though the hurricane of
+royal caprice and bigotry swept over the land, seemingly without
+resistance, the sublime truths which were the daily subject of
+controversy, and the solid studies with which the age was conversant,
+penetrated into every corner of the land, and were incorporated with the
+very being of the nation. Then, as the mist of doubt and persecution
+which had covered Mary's throne cleared away, the intellect of England,
+in all its health, and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed in the men
+and women of the Elizabethan age:--
+
+     "To say," observes Dr Arnold, "that the Puritans were wanting
+     in humility because they did not acquiesce in the state of
+     things which they found around them, is a mere extravagance,
+     arising out of a total misapprehension of the nature of
+     humility, and of the merits of the feeling of veneration. All
+     earnestness and depth of character is incompatible with such a
+     notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with some great
+     truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey it, cannot listen to
+     every one who may be indifferent to it, or opposed to it. There
+     is a voice to which he already owes obedience, which he serves
+     with the humblest devotion, which he worships with the most
+     intense veneration. It is not that such feelings are dead in
+     him, but that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are
+     claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question
+     of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship
+     may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his
+     opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown
+     that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may be justly
+     taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the
+     very notion of an earnest character; for its earnestness
+     consists in its devotion to some one object, as opposed to a
+     proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be meant that
+     reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects of
+     veneration we have the better is our character, this is to
+     confound the essential difference between veneration and love.
+     The excellence of love is its universality; we are told that
+     even the highest object of all cannot be loved if inferior
+     objects are hated."
+
+Opinions, in the meanwhile, not very favourable to established authority
+in the state, and marked by a rooted antipathy to ecclesiastical
+pretensions, were rapidly gaining proselytes in the nation, and even at
+the court. But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth, and, still more,
+the great veneration and esteem for that magnanimous princess, which
+were for many years the ruling principle--we might almost say, the
+darling passion--of Englishmen, enabled her to keep at bay the dangerous
+animosities which her miserable successor had neither dexterity to
+conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In his time the cravings, moral and
+intellectual, of the English nation discovered themselves in forms not
+to be mistaken--some more, some less formidable to established
+government; but all announcing that the time was come when concession to
+them was inevitable. No matter whether it was the Puritan who complained
+of the rags of popery, or the judge who questioned the prerogative of
+the sovereign, or the patriot who bewailed the profligate expenditure of
+James's polluted court, or the pamphleteer whom one of our dramatists
+has described so admirably, or the hoarse murmur of the crowd execrating
+the pusillanimous murder of Raleigh--whosesoever the voice might be,
+whatever shape it might assume, petition, controversy, remonstrance,
+address, impeachment, libel, menace, insurrection, the language it spoke
+was uniform and unequivocal; it demanded for the people a share in the
+administration of their government, civil and ecclesiastical--it
+expressed their determination to make the House of Commons a reality.
+
+The observations that follow are fraught with the most profound wisdom,
+and afford an admirable exemplification of the manner in which history
+should be read by those who wish to find in it something more than a
+mere register of facts and anecdotes:--
+
+     "Under these circumstances there were now working together in
+     the same party many principles which, as we have seen, are
+     sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance the popular
+     principle, that the influence of many should not be overborne
+     by that of one, was working side by side with the principle of
+     movement, or the desire of carrying on the work of the
+     Reformation to the furthest possible point, and not only the
+     desire of completing the Reformation, but that of shaking off
+     the manifold evils of the existing state of things, both
+     political and moral. Yet it is remarkable that the spirit of
+     intellectual movement stood as it were hesitating which party
+     it ought to join: and as the contest went on, it seemed rather
+     to incline to that party which was most opposed to the
+     political movement. This is a point in the state of English
+     party in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing,
+     and we must endeavour to comprehend it.
+
+     "We might think, _a priori_, that the spirit of political, and
+     that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go
+     on together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But the
+     Spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two in
+     this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of
+     mankind have little sympathy. Political benefits all men can
+     appreciate; and all good men, and a great many more than we
+     might well dare to call good, can appreciate also the value,
+     not of all, but of some religious truth which to them may seem
+     all: the way to obtain God's favour and to worship Him aright,
+     is a thing which great bodies of men can value, and be moved to
+     the most determined efforts if they fancy that they are
+     hindered from attaining to it. But intellectual movement in
+     itself is a thing which few care for. Political truth may be
+     dear to them, so far as it effects their common well-being; and
+     religious truth so far as they may think it their duty to learn
+     it; but truth abstractedly, and because it is truth, which is
+     the object, I suppose, of the pure intellect, is to the mass of
+     mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the workings of the intellect
+     come even to be regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we have
+     got, we say, what we want, and we are well contented with it;
+     why should we be kept in perpetual restlessness, because you
+     are searching after some new truths which, when found, will
+     compel us to derange the state of our minds in order to make
+     room for them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and
+     hated Socrates; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew that
+     Cleon's partizans, no less than his own aristocratical friends,
+     would sympathize with his satire when directed against the
+     philosophers. But if this hold in political matters, much more
+     does it hold religiously. The two great parties of the
+     Christian world have each their own standard of truth, by which
+     they try all things: Scripture on the one hand, the voice of
+     the church on the other. To both, therefore, the pure
+     intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, but they dislike
+     it. It will question what they will not allow to be questioned;
+     it may arrive at conclusions which they would regard as
+     impious. And, therefore, in an age of religious movement
+     particularly, the spirit of intellectual movement soon finds
+     itself proscribed rather than countenanced."
+
+In the extract which follows, the pure and tender morality of the
+sentiment vies with the atmosphere of fine writing that invests it. The
+passage is one which Plato might have envied, and which we should
+imagine the most hardened and successful of our modern apostates cannot
+read without some feeling like contrition and remorse. Fortunate indeed
+were the youth trained to virtue by such a monitor, and still more
+fortunate the country where such a duty was confided to such a man:--
+
+     "I have tried to analyze the popular party: I must now
+     endeavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of
+     course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly at different
+     times; when it is in the ascendant, its vilest elements are
+     sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,--just men, wise men,
+     noble-minded men,--then refuse to take part with it. But when
+     it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to imitate its
+     practices, then again many of the best and noblest spirits
+     return to it, and share its defeat though they abhorred its
+     victory. We must distinguish, therefore, very widely, between
+     the anti-popular party in 1640, before the Long Parliament met,
+     and the same party a few years, or even a few months,
+     afterwards. Now, taking the best specimens of this party in its
+     best state, we can scarcely admire them too highly. A man who
+     leaves the popular cause when it is triumphant, and joins the
+     party opposed to it, without really changing his principles and
+     becoming a renegade, is one of the noblest characters in
+     history. He may not have the clearest judgment, or the firmest
+     wisdom; he may have been mistaken, but, as far as he is
+     concerned personally, we cannot but admire him. But such a man
+     changes his party not to conquer but to die. He does not allow
+     the caresses of his new friends to make him forget that he is a
+     sojourner with them, and not a citizen: his old friends may
+     have used him ill, they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly:
+     still their faults, though they may have driven him into exile,
+     cannot banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is
+     his true home: that their cause is habitually just and
+     habitually the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray
+     by an unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly
+     against their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather
+     than in their company; but die he must, for there is no place
+     left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is
+     obliged to leave the country of his affections, and life
+     elsewhere is intolerable. This man is no renegade, no apostate,
+     but the purest of martyrs: for what testimony to truth can be
+     so pure as that which is given uncheered by any sympathy; given
+     not against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing
+     enemies. And such a martyr was Falkland!
+
+     "Others who fall off from a popular party in its triumph, are
+     of a different character; ambitious men, who think that they
+     become necessary to their opponents and who crave the glory of
+     being able to undo their own work as easily as they had done
+     it: passionate men, who, quarrelling with their old associates
+     on some personal question, join the adversary in search of
+     revenge; vain men, who think their place unequal to their
+     merits, and hope to gain a higher on the opposite side: timid
+     men, who are frightened as it were at the noise of their own
+     guns, and the stir of actual battle--who had liked to dally
+     with popular principles in the parade service of debating or
+     writing in quiet times, but who shrink alarmed when both sides
+     are become thoroughly in earnest: and again, quiet and honest
+     men, who never having fully comprehended the general principles
+     at issue, and judging only by what they see before them, are
+     shocked at the violence of their party, and think that the
+     opposite party is now become innocent and just, because it is
+     now suffering wrong rather than doing it. Lastly, men who
+     rightly understand that good government is the result of
+     popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather
+     than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim, therefore, is
+     to prevent either from going too far, and to throw their weight
+     into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful, up to the
+     moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war,
+     and the question is--which shall conquer? For no man can
+     pretend to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the
+     arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves:
+     and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the
+     whole the best, or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one
+     must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party
+     so crushed should be the worse."
+
+Dr Arnold--rightly, we hope--assumes, that in lectures addressed to
+Englishmen and Protestants, it is unnecessary to vindicate the
+principles of the Revolution; it would, indeed, be an affront to any
+class of educated Protestant freemen, to argue that our present
+constitution was better than a feudal monarchy, or the religion of
+Tillotson superior to that of Laud--in his own words, "whether the
+doctrine and discipline of our Protestant Church of England, be not
+better and truer than that of Rome." He therefore supposes the
+Revolution complete, the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act already
+passed, the authority of King William recognized in England and in
+Scotland, while in Ireland the party of King James was still
+predominant. He then bids us consider the character and object of the
+parties by which Great Britain was then divided; on the side of the
+Revolution were enlisted the great families of our aristocracy, and the
+bulk of the middle classes. The faction of James included the great mass
+of country gentlemen, the lower orders, and, (after the first dread of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed away,) except in a very few
+instances, the parochial and teaching clergy; civil and religious
+liberty was the motto of one party--hereditary right and passive
+obedience, of the other. As the Revolution had been bloodless, it might
+have been supposed that its reward would have been secure, and that our
+great deliverer would have been allowed to pursue his schemes for the
+liberty of Europe, if not without opposition, at least without
+hostility. But the old Royalist party had been surprised and confounded,
+not broken or altogether overcome. They rallied--some from pure, others
+from selfish and sordid motives--under the banner to which they had been
+so long accustomed; and, though ultimately baffled, they were able to
+place in jeopardy, and in some measure to fling away the advantages
+which the blood and treasure of England had been prodigally lavished to
+obtain.
+
+The conquest of Ireland was followed by that terrible code against the
+Catholics, the last remnant of which is now obliterated from our
+statute-book. It is singular that this savage proscription should have
+been the work of the party at whose head stood the champion of
+toleration. The account which Mr Burke has given of it, and for the
+accuracy of which he appeals to Bishop Burnet, does not entirely
+coincide with the view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke says--
+
+     "A party in this nation, enemies to the system of the
+     Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King
+     William. They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy to
+     all persecution. They knew that he came to free us from slavery
+     and Popery, out of a country where a third of the people are
+     contented Catholics, under a Protestant government. He came,
+     with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to
+     overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a
+     tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty served in every way,
+     and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own principles.
+     Whilst freedom is true to itself, every thing becomes subject
+     to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its hands.
+
+     "The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage
+     the best friends of their country) resolved to make the King
+     either violate his principles of toleration, or incur the odium
+     of protecting Papists. They, therefore, brought in this bill,
+     and made it purposely wicked and absurd, that it might be
+     rejected. The then court-party discovering their game, turned
+     the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed
+     with still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon
+     its original authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back
+     to them, kicked it back again to their adversaries. And thus
+     this act, loaded with the double injustice of two parties,
+     neither of whom intended to pass what they hoped the other
+     would be persuaded to reject, went through the legislature,
+     contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the
+     parties that composed it. In this manner these insolent and
+     profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and
+     counters, made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of
+     their fellow-creatures. Other acts of persecution have been
+     acts of malice. This was a subversion of justice from
+     wantonness."
+
+Whether Dr Arnold's theory be applicable or not to this particular case,
+it furnishes but too just a solution of Irish misgovernment in general.
+It is, that excessive severity toward conquered rebels, is by no means
+inconsistent with the principles of free government, or even with the
+triumph of a democracy. The truth of this fact is extorted from us by
+all history, and may be accounted for first, by the circumstance, that
+large bodies of men are less affected than individuals, by the feelings
+of shame and a sense of responsibility; and, secondly, that conduct the
+most selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion of which would be enough
+to brand an individual with everlasting infamy, assumes, when adopted by
+popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike wisdom and patriotic
+inflexibility. The main cause of the difference with which the lower
+orders in France and England regarded the Revolution in their respective
+countries, is to be found in the different nature of the evils which
+they were intended to remove. The English Revolution was merely
+political--the French was social also; the benefits of the Bill of
+Rights, great and inestimable as they were, were such as demanded some
+knowledge and reflection to appreciate--they did not come home directly
+to the business and bosom of the peasant; it was only in rare and great
+emergencies that he could become sensible of the rights they gave, or of
+the means of oppression they took away: while the time-honoured
+dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells were menaced and assailed,
+nothing but the most senseless tyranny could render the cottage
+insecure; but the abolition of the seignorial rights in France, free
+communication between her provinces, equal taxation, impartial
+justice--these were blessings which it required no economist to
+illustrate, and no philosopher to explain. Every labourer in France,
+whose sweat had flowed for the benefit of others, whose goods had been
+seized by the exactors of the Taille and the Gabelle,[1] the fruits of
+whose soil had been wasted because he was not allowed to sell them at
+the neighbouring market, whose domestic happiness had been polluted, or
+whose self-respect had been lowered by injuries and insults, all
+retribution for which was hopeless, might well be expected to value
+these advantages more than life itself. But when the principles of the
+Revolution were triumphant, and the House of Brunswick finally seated on
+the throne of this country, it remains to be seen what were, during the
+eighteenth century, the fruits of this great and lasting victory. The
+answer is a melancholy one. Content with what had been achieved, the
+nation seems at once to have abandoned all idea of any further moral or
+intellectual progress. In private life the grossest ignorance and
+debauchery were written upon our social habits, in the broadest and most
+legible characters. In public life, we see chicanery in the law, apathy
+in the Church, corruption in Parliament, brutality on the seat of
+justice; trade burdened with a great variety of capricious restrictions;
+the punishment of death multiplied with the most shocking indifference;
+the state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment--which might be, and
+in those days often was, the lot of the most innocent of mankind--became
+in itself a tremendous punishment; the press virtually shackled;
+education every where wanted, and no where to be found.
+
+     [1] "_Taille and the Gabelle_." Sully thus describes these
+     fertile sources of crime and misery:--"Taille, source
+     principale d'abus et de vexations de toute espèce, sans sa
+     repartition et sa perception. Il est bien à souhaiter, mais pas
+     à espérer, qu'on change un jour en entier le fond de cette
+     partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau avec la
+     Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouvé de si _bizarrement
+     tyrannique_ que de faire acheter à un particulier, plus de sel
+     qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de lui défendre
+     encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop."
+
+The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and
+even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the
+common welfare, by the representatives of a free people. Turn to any of
+the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of
+Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the
+melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the
+delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the
+present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten
+me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and
+sordid violence. Throughout the volumes of these great writers, the
+features perpetually recur of insolence, corruption, violence, and
+debauchery in the one class, and of servility and cunning in the other.
+It is impossible for the worst quality of an aristocracy--nominally, to
+be sure, subject to the restraint of the law, but practically, almost
+wholly exempt from its operation--to be more clearly and more fearfully
+represented. The South Sea scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the
+disgraceful expeditions on the coast of France; the conduct of Lord
+George Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt on Carthagena, the
+loss of Minorca, the convention of Closterseven, the insecurity of the
+high-roads, nay, of the public streets in the metropolis itself, all
+serve to show the deplorable condition into which the nation was fast
+sinking, abroad and at home, when the "Great Commoner" once more aroused
+its energies, concentrated its strength, and carried it to a higher
+pinnacle of glory than it has ever been the lot even of Great Britain to
+attain. Yet this effect was transient--the progress of corruption was
+checked, but the disease still lurked in the heart, and tainted the
+life-blood of the community. The orgies of Medmenham Abbey, the triumphs
+of Wilkes, and the loss of America, bear fatal testimony to the want of
+decency and disregard of merit in private as well as public life which
+infected Great Britain, polluting the sources of her domestic virtues,
+and bringing disgrace upon her arms and councils during the greater part
+of the eighteenth century. It is with a masterly review of this period
+of our history that Dr Arnold closes his analysis of the three last
+centuries. His remaining lecture is dedicated to the examination of
+historical evidence--a subject on which it is not our present intention
+to offer any commentary.
+
+To trace effects to their causes, is the object of all science; and by
+this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any
+particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in
+reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human
+actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as
+that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth,
+though the connexion between cause and effect is not equally
+discernible. The depression of the nobles and the rise of the commons in
+England, after the statutes of alienation, were the result of causes as
+infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and
+the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is
+heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more
+questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely
+dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to those of
+yesterday, and those of to-morrow will be bound to those of to-day, no
+less certainly than the harvest of the present year springs from the
+grain which is the produce of former harvests. When by a severe and
+diligent analysis we have ascertained all the ingredients of any
+phenomenon, and have separated it from all that is foreign and
+adventitious, we know its true nature, and may deduce a general law from
+our experiment; for a general law is nothing more than an expression of
+the effect produced by the same cause operating under the same
+circumstances. In the reign of Louis XV., a Montmorency was convicted of
+an atrocious murder. He was punished by a short imprisonment in the
+Bastile. His servant and accomplice was, for the same offence at the
+same time, broken alive upon the wheel. Is the proposition, that the
+angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, more certain than
+the ruin of a system under which such a state of things was tolerated?
+How, then, does it come to pass, that the same people who cling to one
+set of truths reject the other with obstinate incredulity? Cicero shall
+account for it:--"Sensus nostros non parens, non nutrix, non poeta, non
+scena depravat; animis omnes tendentur insidiæ." The discoveries of
+physical science, in the present day at least, allow little scope to
+prejudice and inclination. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative,
+agree, that fire will burn and water suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so
+far as we know, has ventured to call in question the truths established
+by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political
+science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable
+hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and
+prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or
+stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river
+and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread--another vote that sixteen
+shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public
+credit--proceedings in no degree more reasonable than a denial that two
+and two make four, or using gunpowder instead of water to stop a
+conflagration. Again, in physical science, the chain which binds the
+cause to its effect is short, simple, and passes through no region of
+vapour and obscurity; in moral phenomena, it is long hidden and
+intertwined with the links of ten thousand other chains, which ramify
+and cross each other in a confusion which it requires no common patience
+and sagacity to unravel. Therefore it is that the lessons of history,
+dearly as they have been purchased, are forgotten and thrown
+away--therefore it is that nations sow in folly and reap in
+affliction--that thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed, and commerce
+fettered by vexatious restrictions, by those who live in one century,
+without enabling their descendants to become wiser or richer in the
+next. The death of Charles I. did not prevent the exile of James II.,
+and, in spite of the disasters of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted fortune
+too often and too long. It is not, then, by the mere knowledge of
+separate facts that history can contribute to our improvement or our
+happiness; it would then exchange the character of philosophy treated by
+examples, for that of sophistry misleading by empiricism. The more
+systematic the view of human events which it enables us to gain, the
+more nearly does it approach its real office, and entitle itself to the
+splendid panegyric of the Roman statesman--"Historia, testis temporum,
+lux veritatis, vita memoriæ, magistra vitæ, nuntia vetustatis."
+
+But while we insist upon the certainty of those truths which a calm
+examination of history confirms, and the sure operation of those general
+laws by which Providence in its wisdom has ordained that the affairs of
+this lower world shall be controlled--let it not be supposed that we for
+a moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes took such pains to inculcate
+upon his countrymen, that fortune in human affairs is for a time
+omnipotent. That fortune, which "erring men call chance," is the name
+which finite beings must apply to those secret and unknown causes which
+no human sagacity can penetrate or comprehend. What depends upon a few
+persons, observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed to chance; what arises from
+a great number, may often be accounted for by known and determinate
+causes; and he illustrates this position by the instance of a loaded
+die, the bias of which, however it may for a short time escape
+detection, will certainly in a great number of instances become
+predominant. The issue of a battle may be decided by a sunbeam or a
+cloud of dust. Had an heir been born to Charles II. of Spain--had the
+youthful son of Monsieur De Bouillé not fallen asleep when Louis XVI.
+entered Varennes--had Napoleon, on his return from Egypt, been stopped
+by an English cruizer--how different would have been the face of Europe.
+The _poco di piu_ and _poco di meno_ has, in such contingencies, an
+unbounded influence. The trade-winds are steady enough to furnish
+grounds for the most accurate calculation; but will any man in our
+climate venture to predict from what quarter, on any particular day, the
+wind may chance to blow?
+
+Therefore, in forming our judgment of human affairs, we must apply a
+"Lesbian rule," instead of one that is inflexible. Here it is that the
+line is drawn between science, and the wisdom which has for its object
+the administration of human affairs. The masters of science explore a
+multitude of phenomena to ascertain a single cause; the statesman and
+legislator, engaged in pursuits "hardliest reduced to axiom," examine a
+multitude of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon. The
+investigations, however, to which such questions lead, are singularly
+difficult, as they require an accurate analysis of the most complicated
+class of facts which can possibly engross our attention, and to the
+complete examination of which the faculties of any one man must be
+inadequate. The finest specimens of such enquiries which we possess are
+the works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu. The latter, indeed, may be
+called a great historian. He sought in every quarter for his account of
+those fundamental principles which are common to all governments, as
+well as of those peculiarities by which they are distinguished one from
+another. The analogy which reaches from the first dim gleam of civility
+to the last and consummate result of policy and intelligence, from the
+law of the Salian Franks to the Code Napoleon, it was reserved for him
+to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the
+expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a
+tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even
+monstrous--that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the
+same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's
+project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a
+magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, and will serve
+as a landmark to future enquirers when its puny critics are not known
+enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual
+observations, detached hints--from the principles concealed in the
+intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which
+barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany--from the
+manners of the polished Athenian, and from the usages of the wandering
+Tartar--from the rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions of refined
+society--a digest of luminous and coherent evidence, by which the
+condition of man, in the different stages of his social progress, is
+exemplified and ascertained. The loss of the History of Louis XI.--a
+work which he had projected, and of which he had traced the outline--is
+a disappointment which the reader of modern history can never enough
+deplore.
+
+The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable;
+that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate.
+What is universally true is alone necessarily true--the knowledge that
+rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains
+experience--the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who
+read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who
+knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new
+road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is
+the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of
+the "Cierge."
+
+    "Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie
+    Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la même envie;
+    Et nouvel Empédocle, aux flammes condamné
+        Par sa pure et propre folie,
+    Il se lança dédans--ce fût mal raisonné,
+    Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie."
+
+The mere chemist or mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the
+man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars,
+while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the
+philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the
+other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the
+realms of practice and experience.
+
+History teems with instances that--although the general course of the
+human mind is marked out, and each succeeding phasis in which it
+exhibits itself appears inevitable--the human race cannot be considered,
+as Vico and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to look upon it, as a mass
+without intelligence, traversing its orbit according to laws which it
+has no power to modify or control. On such an hypothesis, Wisdom and
+Folly, Justice and Injustice, would be the same, followed by the same
+consequences and subject to the same destiny--no certain laws
+establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions
+of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end; the
+feelings, faculties, and instincts of man would be useless in a world
+where the wise was always as the foolish, the just as the unjust, where
+calculation was impossible, and experience of no avail.
+
+Man is no doubt the instrument, but the unconscious instrument, of
+Providence; and for the end they propose to themselves, though not for
+the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are
+responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would
+be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent
+ravings, a disordered chaos of antagonist illusions--
+
+        ----"A tale
+    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
+    Signifying nothing."
+
+But on the contrary, it is in history that the lessons of morality are
+delivered with most effect. The priest may provoke our suspicion--the
+moralist may fail to work in us any practical conviction; but the
+lessons of history are not such as vanish in the fumes of unprofitable
+speculation, or which it is possible for us to mistrust, or to deride.
+Obscure as the dispensations of Providence often are, it sometimes, to
+use Lord Bacon's language--"pleases God, for the confutation of such as
+are without God in the world, to write them in such text and capital
+letters that he who runneth by may read it--that is, mere sensual
+persons which hasten by God's judgments, and never tend or fix their
+cogitations upon them, are nevertheless in their passage and race urged
+to discern it." In all historical writers, philosophical or trivial,
+sacred or profane, from the meagre accounts of the monkish chronicler,
+no less than from the pages stamped with all the indignant energy of
+Tacitus, gleams forth the light which, amid surrounding gloom and
+injustice, amid the apparent triumph of evil, discovers the influence of
+that power which the heathens personified as Nemesis. Her tread, indeed,
+is often noiseless--her form may be long invisible--but the moment at
+length arrives when the measure of forbearance is complete; the echoes
+of her step vibrate upon the ear, her form bursts upon the eye, and her
+victim--be it a savage tyrant, or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical
+church, or a corrupt nation--perishes.
+
+        "Come quei che va di notte,
+    Che porta il lume dietro, _e a se non giova,
+    Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte_."
+
+And as in daily life we rejoice to trace means directed to an end, and
+proofs of sagacity and instinct even among the lower tribes of animated
+nature, with how much greater delight do we seize the proofs vouchsafed
+to us in history of that eternal law, by which the affairs of the
+universe are governed? How much more do we rejoice to find that the
+order to which physical nature owes its existence and perpetuity, does
+not stop at the threshold of national life--that the moral world is not
+_fatherless_, and that man, formed to look before and after, is not
+abandoned to confusion and insecurity?
+
+Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history, comprising
+the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction--all the
+various shapes into which man has been cast--all the different scenes in
+which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his
+weakness, his folly and his wisdom, his virtues in their meridian
+height, his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation, are
+displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely
+diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price--a vast
+repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or
+so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so
+abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation
+so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and
+elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and
+sufferings, and genius, and experience, of our species have laboured for
+successive generations to accumulate and preserve. The fruit of their
+blood, of their labour, of their doubts, and their struggles, is before
+us--a treasure that no malignity can corrupt, or violence take away. And
+above all, it is here that, when tormented by doubt, or startled by
+anomalies, stung by disappointment, or exasperated by injustice, we may
+look for consolation and encouragement. As we see the same events, that
+to those who witnessed them must have appeared isolated and capricious,
+tending to one great end, and accomplishing one specific purpose, we may
+learn to infer that those which appear to us most extraordinary, are
+alike subservient to a wise and benevolent dispensation. Poetry, the
+greatest of all critics has told us, has this advantage over history,
+that the lessons which it furnishes are not mixed and confined to
+particular cases, but pure and universal. Studied, however, in this
+spirit, history, while it improves the reason, may satisfy the heart,
+enabling us to await with patience the lesson of the great instructor,
+Time, and to employ the mighty elements it places within our reach, to
+the only legitimate purpose of all knowledge--"The advancement of God's
+glory, and the relief of man's estate."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
+
+No. V.
+
+THE VICTORY FEAST.
+
+
+[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which
+Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender
+philosophy which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the
+heroes introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where
+reminded of Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, _there is
+an under current of sentiment_ which betrays the thoughtful _Northern_
+minstrel. This detracts from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation,
+but constitutes its very charm as an original composition. Its
+inspiration rises from a source purely Hellenic, but the streamlets it
+receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to change the metaphor) it
+has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the toning down of the
+colours betrays the German.]
+
+    The stately walls of Troy had sunken,
+      Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;
+    The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,
+      Richly laden with the spoil,
+    Are on their lofty barks reclin'd
+      Along the Hellespontine strand;
+    A gleesome freight the favouring wind
+      Shall bear to Greece's glorious land;
+      And gleesome sounds the chaunted strain,
+        As towards the household altars, now,
+        Each bark inclines the painted prow--
+      For Home shall smile again!
+
+    And there the Trojan women, weeping,
+      Sit ranged in many a length'ning row;
+    Their heedless locks, dishevell'd, sweeping
+      Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.
+    No festive sounds that peal along,
+      _Their_ mournful dirge can overwhelm;
+    Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song
+      Commingled, wails the ruin'd realm.
+      "Farewell, beloved shores!" it said,
+        "From home afar behold us torn,
+        By foreign lords as captives borne--
+      Ah, happy are the Dead!"
+
+    And Calchas, while the altars blaze,
+      Invokes the high gods to their feast!
+    On Pallas, mighty or to raise
+      Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest--
+    And Him, who wreathes around the land
+      The girdle of his watery world,
+    And Zeus, from whose almighty hand
+      The terror and the bolt are hurl'd.
+      Success at last awards the crown--
+        The long and weary war is past;
+        Time's destined circle ends at last--
+      And fall'n the Mighty Town!
+
+    The Son of Atreus, king of men,
+      The muster of the hosts survey'd,
+    How dwindled from the thousands, when
+      Along Scamander first array'd!
+    With sorrow and the cloudy thought,
+      The Great King's stately look grew dim--
+    Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,
+      How few to Greece return with him!
+      Still let the song to gladness call,
+        For those who yet their home shall greet!--
+        For them the blooming life is sweet:
+      Return is not for all!
+
+    Nor all who reach their native land
+      May long the joy of welcome feel--
+    Beside the household gods may stand
+      Grim Murther with awaiting steel;
+    And they who 'scape the foe, may die
+      Beneath the foul familiar glaive.
+    Thus He[2] to whose prophetic eye
+      Her light the wise Minerva gave:--
+      "Ah! blest whose hearth, to memory true,
+        The goddess keeps unstain'd and pure--
+        For woman's guile is deep and sure,
+      And Falsehood loves the New!"
+
+    The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,
+      By the best blood of Greece recaptured;
+    Round that fair form his glowing arms--
+      (A second bridal)--wreathe enraptured.
+    "Woe waits the work of evil birth--
+      Revenge to deeds unblest is given!
+    For watchful o'er the things of earth,
+      The eternal Council-Halls of Heaven.
+      Yes, ill shall ever ill repay--
+        Jove to the impious hands that stain
+        The Altar of Man's Hearth, again
+      The doomer's doom shall weigh!"
+
+    "Well they, reserved for joy to day,"
+      Cried out Oïleus' valiant son,
+    "May laud the favouring gods who sway
+      Our earth, their easy thrones upon;
+    Without a choice they mete our doom,
+      Our woe or welfare Hazard gives--
+    Patroclus slumbers in the tomb,
+      And all unharm'd Thersites lives.
+      While luck and life to every one
+        Blind Fate dispenses, well may they
+        Enjoy the life and luck to day
+      By whom the prize is won!
+
+    "Yes, war will still devour the best!--
+      Brother, remember'd in this hour!
+    His shade should be in feasts a guest,
+      Whose form was in the strife a tower!
+    What time our ships the Trojan fired,
+      Thine arm to Greece the safety gave--
+    The prize to which thy soul aspired,
+      The crafty wrested from the brave.[3]
+      Peace to thine ever-holy rest--
+        Not thine to fall before the foe!
+        Ajax alone laid Ajax low:
+      Ah--wrath destroys the best!"
+
+    To his dead sire--(the Dorian king)--
+      The bright-hair'd Pyrrhus[4] pours the wine:--
+    "Of every lot that life can bring,
+      My soul, great Father, prizes thine.
+    Whate'er the goods of earth, of all,
+      The highest and the holiest--FAME!
+    For when the Form in dust shall fall,
+      O'er dust triumphant lives the Name!
+      Brave Man, thy light of glory never
+        Shall fade, while song to man shall last;
+        The Living, soon from earth are pass'd,
+      'THE DEAD--ENDURE FOR EVER!'"
+
+    "While silent in their grief and shame,
+      The conquer'd hear the conqueror's praise,"
+    Quoth Tydeus' son, "let Hector's fame,
+      In me, his foe, its witness raise!
+    Who, battling for the altar-hearth,
+      A brave defender, bravely fell--
+    It takes not from the victor's worth,
+      If honour with the vanquish'd dwell.
+      Who falleth for the altar-hearth,
+        A rock and a defence laid low,
+        Shall leave behind him, in the foe,
+      The lips that speak his worth!"
+
+    Lo, Nestor now, whose stately age
+      Through threefold lives of mortals lives!--
+    The laurel'd bowl, the kingly sage
+      To Hector's tearful mother gives.
+    "Drink--in the draught new strength is glowing,
+      The grief it bathes forgets the smart!
+    O Bacchus! wond'rous boons bestowing,
+      Oh how thy balsam heals the heart!
+      Drink--in the draught new vigour gloweth,
+        The grief it bathes forgets the smart--
+        And balsam to the breaking heart,
+      The healing god bestoweth.
+
+    "As Niobe, when weeping mute,
+      To angry gods the scorn and prey,
+    But tasted of the charmed fruit,
+      And cast despair itself away;
+    So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
+      This stream of life enchanted flows,
+    Remember'd grief, that stung before,
+      Sinks down to Lethè's calm repose.
+      So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
+        The stream of life enchanted flows--
+        Drown'd deep in Lethè's calm repose,
+      The grief that stung before!"
+
+    Seized by the god--behold the dark
+      And dreaming Prophetess[5] arise!
+    She gazes from the lofty bark,
+      Where Home's dim vapour wraps the skies--
+    "A vapour, all of human birth!
+      As mists ascending, seen and gone,
+    So fade earth's great ones from the earth,
+      And leave the changeless gods alone!
+      Behind the steed that skirs away,
+        Or on the galley's deck--sits Care!
+        To-morrow comes--and Life is where?
+      At least--we'll live to-day!"
+
+     [2] Ulysses.
+
+     [3] Need we say to the general reader, that Oileus here alludes
+     to the strife between Ajax and Ulysses, which has furnished a
+     subject to the Greek tragic poet, who has depicted, more
+     strikingly than any historian, that intense emulation for
+     glory, and that mortal agony in defeat, which made the main
+     secret of the prodigious energy of the Greek character? The
+     poet, in taking his hero from the Homeric age, endowed him with
+     the feelings of the Athenian republicans he addressed.
+
+     [4] Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.
+
+     [5] Cassandra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG.--A BALLAD.
+
+
+[Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet
+grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to
+depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in
+Ægidius Tschudi--a Swiss chronicler--and Schiller (who, as Hinrichs
+suggests,) probably met with it in the researches connected with the
+compositions of his drama, "William Tell," appears to have adhered, with
+much fidelity, to the original narrative.]
+
+    At Aachen, in imperial state,
+      In that time-hallow'd hall renown'd,
+    At solemn feast King Rudolf sate,
+      The day that saw the hero crown'd!
+    Bohemia and thy Palgrave, Rhine,
+    Give this the feast, and that the wine;
+        The Arch Electoral Seven,
+    Like choral stars around the sun,
+    Gird him whose hand a world has won,
+        The anointed choice of Heaven.
+
+    In galleries raised above the pomp,
+      Press'd crowd on crowd, their panting way;
+    And with the joy-resounding tromp,
+      Rang out the million's loud hurra!
+    For closed at last the age of slaughter,
+    When human blood was pour'd as water--
+        LAW dawns upon the world![6]
+    Sharp Force no more shall right the wrong,
+    And grind the weak to crown the strong--
+        War's carnage-flag is furl'd!
+
+    In Rudolf's hand the goblet shines--
+      And gaily round the board look'd he;
+    "And proud the feast, and bright the wines,
+      My kingly heart feels glad to me!
+    Yet where the lord of sweet desire,
+    Who moves the heart beneath the lyre,
+        And dulcet Sound Divine?
+    Dear from my youth the craft of song,
+    And what as knight I loved so long,
+        As Kaisar, still be mine."
+
+    Lo, from the circle bending there,
+      With sweeping robe the Bard appears,
+    As silver, white his gleaming hair,
+      Bleach'd by the many winds of years:
+    "And music sleeps in golden strings--
+    The minstrel's hire, the LOVE he sings;
+        Well known to him the ALL
+    High thoughts and ardent souls desire!--
+    What would the Kaisar from the lyre
+        Amidst the banquet-hall?"
+
+    The Great One smiled--"Not mine the sway--
+      The minstrel owns a loftier power--
+    A mightier king inspires the lay--
+      Its hest--THE IMPULSE OF THE HOUR!
+    As through wide air the tempests sweep,
+    As gush the springs from mystic deep,
+        Or lone untrodden glen;
+    So from dark hidden fount within,
+    Comes SONG, its own wild world to win
+        Amidst the souls of men!"
+
+    Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,
+      And loud the music swept the ear:--
+    "Forth to the chase a Hero rode,
+      To hunt the bounding chamois-deer:
+    With shaft and horn the squire behind:--
+    Through greensward meads the riders wind--
+        A small sweet bell they hear.
+    Lo, with the HOST, a holy man,--
+    Before him strides the sacristan,
+        And the bell sounds near and near.
+
+    The noble hunter down-inclined
+      His reverent head and soften'd eye,
+    And honour'd with a Christian's mind
+      The Christ who loves humility!
+    Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves
+    A brook--the rains had fed the waves,
+        And torrents from the hill.
+    His sandal shoon the priest unbound,
+    And laid the Host upon the ground,
+        And near'd the swollen rill!
+
+    "What wouldst thou, priest?" the Count began,
+      As, marvelling much, he halted there.
+    "Sir Count, I seek a dying man,
+      Sore hungering for the heavenly fare.
+    The bridge that once its safety gave,
+    Rent by the anger of the wave,
+        Drifts down the tide below.
+    Yet barefoot now, I will not fear
+    (The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)
+        Through the wild wave to go!"
+
+    He gave that priest the knightly steed,
+      He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,
+    That he might serve the sick man's need,
+      Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.
+    He took the horse the squire bestrode;
+    On to the chase the hunter rode,
+        On to the sick the priest!
+    And when the morrow's sun was red,
+    The servant of the Saviour led
+        Back to its lord the beast.
+
+    "Now Heaven forefend," the hero cried,
+      "That e'er to chase or battle more
+    These limbs the sacred steed bestride,
+      That once my Maker's image bore!
+    But not for sale or barter given;
+    Henceforth its Master is the Heaven--
+        My tribute to that King,
+    From whom I hold as fiefs, since birth,
+    Honour, renown, the goods of earth,
+        Life, and each living thing."
+
+    "So may the God who faileth never
+      To hear the weak and guide the dim,
+    To thee give honour here and ever,
+      As thou hast duly honour'd Him!
+    Far-famed ev'n now through Switzerland
+    Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;
+        And fair from thine embrace
+    Six daughters bloom--six crowns to bring--
+    Blest as the Daughters of a KING--
+        The Mothers of a RACE!"
+
+    The mighty Kaisar heard amazed;
+      His heart was in the days of old:
+    Into the minstrel's eyes he gazed--
+      That tale the Kaisar's own had told.
+    Yes, in the bard, the priest he knew,
+    And in the purple veil'd from view
+        The gush of holy tears.
+    A thrill through that vast audience ran,
+    And every heart the godlike man,
+        Revering God, reveres!
+
+     [6] Literally, "_A judge (ein richter)_ was again upon the
+     earth." The word substituted in the translation, is introduced
+     in order to recall to the reader the sublime name given, not
+     without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., "THE LIVING LAW."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE WORDS OF ERROR.
+
+
+        Three errors there are, that for ever are found
+          On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best;
+        But empty their meaning and hollow their sound--
+          And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.
+        The fruits of existence escape from the clasp
+        Of the seeker who strives but these shadows to grasp--
+
+        So long as Man dreams of some Age in _this_ life
+          When the Right and the Good will all evil subdue;
+        For the Right and the Good lead us ever to strife,
+          And wherever they lead us, the Fiend will pursue.
+        And (till from the earth borne, and stifled at length)
+        The earth that he touches still gifts him with strength![7]
+
+        So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,
+          Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;
+        For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give--
+          And Virtue possesses no title to earth!
+        That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,
+        Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!
+
+        So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,
+          The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;
+        The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,
+          And all we can learn is--to guess and divine!
+        Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?
+        The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!
+
+        O, Noble Soul! fly from delusions like these,
+          More heavenly belief be it thine to adore;
+        Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,
+          Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore!
+        Not _without_ thee the streams--there the Dull seek them;--No!
+        Look _within_ thee--behold both the fount and the flow!
+
+     [7] This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat
+     obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antæus, the
+     Son of Earth,--so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring
+     new strength in every fall,--so the soul contends in vain with
+     evil--the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of
+     the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antæus
+     was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and
+     strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the
+     enemy, (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's
+     offspring,) when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it
+     in the higher air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE WORDS OF BELIEF.
+
+
+    Three Words will I name thee--around and about,
+      From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;
+    But they had not their birth in the being without,
+      And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!
+    And all worth in the man shall for ever be o'er
+    When in those Three Words he believes no more.
+
+    Man is made FREE!--Man, by birthright, is free,
+      Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.
+    Whatever the shout of the rabble may be--
+      Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool--
+    Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain,
+    For the Man made a Freeman grows safe in his gain.
+
+    And VIRTUE is more than a shade or a sound,
+      And Man may her voice, in this being, obey;
+    And though ever he slip on the stony ground,
+      Yet ever again to the godlike way.
+    Though _her_ wisdom _our_ wisdom may not perceive,
+    Yet the childlike spirit can still believe.
+
+    And a GOD there is!--over Space, over Time,
+      While the Human Will rocks, like a reed, to and fro,
+    Lives the Will of the Holy--A Purpose Sublime,
+      A Thought woven over creation below;
+    Changing and shifting the All we inherit,
+    But changeless through all One Immutable Spirit!
+
+    Hold fast the Three Words of Belief--though about
+      From the lip to the lip, full of meaning they flee;
+    Yet they take not their birth from the being without--
+      But a voice from within must their oracle be;
+    And never all worth in the Man can be o'er,
+    Till in those Three Words he believes no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE MIGHT OF SONG.
+
+
+    A rain-flood from the mountain-riven,
+      It leaps, in thunder, forth to Day,
+    Before its rush the crags are driven--
+      The oaks uprooted, whirl'd away--
+    Aw'd, yet in awe all wildly glad'ning,
+      The startled wanderer halts below;
+    He hears the rock-born waters mad'ning,
+      Nor wits the source from whence they go,--
+    So, from their high, mysterious Founts along,
+    Stream on the silenc'd world the Waves of Song!
+
+    Knit with the threads of life, for ever,
+      By those dread Powers that weave the woof,--
+    Whose art the singer's spell can sever?
+     Whose breast has mail to music proof?
+    Lo, to the Bard, a wand of wonder
+      The Herald[8] of the Gods has given:
+    He sinks the soul the death-realm under,
+      Or lifts it breathless up to heaven--
+    Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion
+    Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.
+
+    As, when the halls of Mirth are crowded,
+      Portentous, on the wanton scene--
+    Some Fate, before from wisdom shrouded,
+      Awakes and awes the souls of Men--
+    Before that Stranger from ANOTHER,
+      Behold how THIS world's great ones bow--
+    Mean joys their idle clamour smother,
+      The mask is vanish'd from the brow--
+    And from Truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurl'd,
+    Fly all the craven Falsehoods of the World!
+
+    So, rapt from every care and folly,
+      When spreads abroad the lofty lay,
+    The Human kindles to the Holy,
+      And into Spirit soars the Clay!
+    One with the Gods the Bard: before him
+      All things unclean and earthly fly--
+    Hush'd are all meaner powers, and o'er him
+      The dark fate swoops unharming by;
+    And while the Soother's magic measures flow,
+    Smooth'd every wrinkle on the brows of Woe!
+
+    Even as a child that, after pining
+      For the sweet absent mother--hears
+    Her voice--and, round her neck entwining
+      Young arms, vents all his soul in tears;--
+    So, by harsh custom far estranged,
+      Along the glad and guileless track,
+    To childhood's happy home, unchanged,
+      The swift song wafts the wanderer back--
+    Snatch'd from the coldness of unloving Art
+    To Nature's mother arms--to Nature's glowing heart!
+
+     [8] Hermes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HONOUR TO WOMAN.
+
+
+        Honour to Woman! To her it is given
+        To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
+          All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir--
+        In the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,
+        She tends on each altar that's hallow'd to Feeling,
+          And keeps ever-living the fire!
+
+          From the bounds of Truth careering,
+            Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
+          With each hasty impulse veering,
+            Down to Passion's troubled deeps.
+          And his heart, contented never,
+            Greeds to grapple with the Far,
+          Chasing his own dream for ever,
+            On through many a distant Star!
+
+        But Woman with looks that can charm and enchain,
+        Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,
+          By the spell of her presence beguil'd--
+        In the home of the Mother her modest abode,
+        And modest the manners by Nature bestow'd
+          On Nature's most exquisite child!
+
+          Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,
+            Foe to foe, the angry strife;
+          Man the Wild One, never resting,
+            Roams along the troubled life;
+          What he planneth, still pursuing;
+            Vainly as the Hydra bleeds,
+          Crest the sever'd crest renewing--
+            Wish to wither'd wish succeeds.
+
+        But Woman at peace with all being, reposes,
+        And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses--
+          Whose sweets to her culture belong.
+        Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
+        The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,
+          And the infinite Circle of Song.
+
+          Strong, and proud, and self-depending,
+            Man's cold bosom beats alone;
+          Heart with heart divinely blending,
+            In the love that Gods have known,
+          Souls' sweet interchange of feeling,
+            Melting tears--he never knows,
+          Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
+            Arms against a world of foes.
+
+        Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever
+        If woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
+          Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;
+        Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
+        How quiver the chords--how thy bosom is heaving--
+          How trembles thy glance through the tear!
+
+          Man's dominion, war and labour;
+            Might to right the Statute gave;
+          Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;
+            Where the Mede reign'd--see the Slave!
+          Peace and Meekness grimly routing,
+            Prowls the War-lust, rude and wild;
+          Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
+            Where the vanish'd Graces smil'd.
+
+        But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth--
+        Of the Senses she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;
+          She lulls, as she looks from above,
+        The Discord whose Hell for its victims is gaping,
+        And blending awhile the for-ever escaping,
+          Whispers Hate to the Image of Love!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.
+
+
+    Who comes?--why rushes fast and loud,
+    Through lane and street the hurtling crowd,
+    Is Rhodes on fire?--Hurrah!--along
+    Faster and fast storms the throng!
+    High towers a shape in knightly garb--
+    Behold the Rider and the Barb!
+    Behind is dragg'd a wondrous load;
+    Beneath what monster groans the road?
+    The horrid jaws--the Crocodile,
+      The shape the mightier Dragon, shows--
+    From Man to Monster all the while--
+      The alternate wonder glancing goes.
+
+    Shout thousands, with a single voice,
+    "Behold the Dragon, and rejoice,
+    Safe roves the herd, and safe the swain!
+    Lo!--there the Slayer--here the Slain!
+    Full many a breast, a gallant life,
+    Has waged against the ghastly strife,
+    And ne'er return'd to mortal sight--
+    Hurrah, then, for the Hero Knight!"
+    So to the Cloister, where the vow'd
+      And peerless Brethren of St John
+    In conclave sit--that sea-like crowd,
+      Wave upon wave, goes thundering on.
+
+    High o'er the rest, the chief is seen--
+    There wends the Knight with modest mien;
+    Pours through the galleries raised for all
+    Above that Hero-council Hall,
+    The crowd--And thus the Victor One:--
+    "Prince--the knight's duty I have done.
+    The Dragon that devour'd the land
+    Lies slain beneath thy servant's hand;
+    Free, o'er the pasture, rove the flocks--
+      And free the idler's steps may stray--
+    And freely o'er the lonely rocks,
+      The holier pilgrim wends his way!"
+
+    A lofty look the Master gave,
+    "Certes," he said; "thy deed is brave;
+    Dread was the danger, dread the fight--
+    Bold deeds bring fame to vulgar knight;
+    But say, what sways with holier laws
+    The knight who sees in Christ his cause,
+    And wears the cross?"--Then every cheek
+    Grew pale to hear the Master speak;
+    But nobler was the blush that spread
+      His face--the Victor's of the day--
+    As bending lowly--"Prince," he said;
+      "His noblest duty--TO OBEY!"
+
+    "And yet that duty, son," replied
+    The chief, "methinks thou hast denied;
+    And dared thy sacred sword to wield
+    For fame in a forbidden field."
+    "Master, thy judgment, howsoe'er
+    It lean, till all is told, forbear--
+    Thy law in spirit and in will,
+    I had no thought but to fulfil.
+    Not rash, as some, did I depart
+      A Christian's blood in vain to shed;
+    But hoped by skill, and strove by art,
+      To make my life avenge the dead.
+
+    "Five of our Order, in renown
+    The war-gems of our saintly crown,
+    The martyr's glory bought with life;
+    'Twas then thy law forbade the strife.
+    Yet in my heart there gnaw'd, like fire,
+    Proud sorrow, fed with stern desire:
+    In the still visions of the night,
+    Panting, I fought the fancied fight;
+    And when the morrow glimmering came,
+      With tales of ravage freshly done,
+    The dream remember'd, turn'd to shame,
+      That night should dare what day should shun.
+
+    "And thus my fiery musings ran--
+    'What youth has learn'd should nerve the man;
+    How lived the great in days of old,
+    Whose Fame to time by bards is told--
+    Who, heathens though they were, became
+    As gods--upborne to heaven by fame?
+    How proved they best the hero's worth?
+    They chased the monster from the earth--
+    They sought the lion in his den--
+      They pierced the Cretan's deadly maze--
+    Their noble blood gave humble men
+      Their happy birthright--peaceful days.
+
+    "'What! sacred, but against the horde
+    Of Mahound, is the Christian's sword?
+    All strife, save one, should he forbear?
+    No! earth itself the Christian's care--
+    From every ill and every harm,
+    Man's shield should be the Christian's arm.
+    Yet art o'er strength will oft prevail,
+    And mind must aid where heart may fail!'
+    Thus musing, oft I roam'd alone,
+      Where wont the Hell-born Beast to lie;
+    Till sudden light upon me shone,
+      And on my hope broke victory!
+
+    "Then, Prince, I sought thee with the prayer
+    To breathe once more my native air;
+    The license given--the ocean past--
+    I reach'd the shores of home at last.
+    Scarce hail'd the old beloved land,
+    Than huge, beneath the artist's hand,
+    To every hideous feature true,
+    The Dragon's monster-model grew.
+    The dwarf'd, deformed limbs upbore
+      The lengthen'd body's ponderous load;
+    The scales the impervious surface wore,
+      Like links of burnish'd harness, glow'd.
+
+    "Life-like, the huge neck seem'd to swell,
+    And widely, as some porch to hell
+    You might the horrent jaws survey,
+    Griesly, and greeding for their prey.
+    Grim fangs an added terror gave,
+    Like crags that whiten through a cave.
+    The very tongue a sword in seeming--
+    The deep-sunk eyes in sparkles gleaming.
+    Where the vast body ends, succeed
+      The serpent spires around it roll'd--
+    Woe--woe to rider, woe to steed,
+      Whom coils as fearful e'er enfold!
+
+    "All to the awful life was done--
+    The very hue, so ghastly, won--
+    The grey, dull tint:--the labour ceased,
+    It stood--half reptile and half beast!
+    And now began the mimic chase;
+    Two dogs I sought, of noblest race,
+    Fierce, nimble, fleet, and wont to scorn
+    The wild bull's wrath and levell'd horn;
+    These, docile to my cheering cry,
+      I train'd to bound, and rend, and spring,
+    Now round the Monster-shape to fly,
+      Now to the Monster-shape to cling!
+
+    "And where their gripe the best assails,
+    The belly left unsheath'd in scales,
+    I taught the dexterous hounds to hang
+    And find the spot to fix the fang;
+    Whilst I, with lance and mailèd garb,
+    Launch'd on the beast mine Arab barb.
+    From purest race that Arab came,
+    And steeds, like men, are fired by fame.
+    Beneath the spur he chafes to rage;
+      Onwards we ride in full career--
+    I seem, in truth, the war to wage--
+      The monster reels beneath my spear!
+
+    "Albeit, when first the _destrier_[9] eyed
+    The laidly thing, it swerved aside,
+    Snorted and rear'd--and even they,
+    The fierce hounds, shrank with startled bay;
+    I ceased not, till, by custom bold,
+    After three tedious moons were told,
+    Both barb and hounds were train'd--nay, more,
+    Fierce for the fight--then left the shore!
+    Three days have fleeted since I prest
+      (Return'd at length) this welcome soil,
+    Nor once would lay my limbs to rest,
+      Till wrought the glorious crowning toil.
+
+    "For much it moved my soul to know
+    The unslack'ning curse of that grim foe.
+    Fresh rent, mens' bones lay bleach'd and bare
+    Around the hell-worm's swampy lair;
+    And pity nerved me into steel:--
+    Advice?--I had a heart to feel,
+    And strength to dare! So, to the deed.--
+    I call'd my squires--bestrode my steed,
+    And with my stalwart hounds, and by
+      Lone secret paths, we gaily go
+    Unseen--at least by human eye--
+      Against a worse than human foe!
+
+    "Thou know'st the sharp rock--steep and hoar?--
+    The abyss?--the chapel glimmering o'er?
+    Built by the Fearless Master's hand,
+    The fane looks down on all the land.
+    Humble and mean that house of prayer--
+    Yet God hath shrined a wonder there:--
+    Mother and Child, to whom of old
+    The Three Kings knelt with gifts, behold!
+    By three times thirty steps, the shrine
+      The pilgrim gains--and faint, and dim,
+    And dizzy with the height, divine
+      Strength on the sudden springs to him!
+
+    "Yawns wide within that holy steep
+    A mighty cavern dark and deep--
+    By blessed sunbeam never lit--
+    Rank foetid swamps engirdle it;
+    And there by night, and there by day,
+    Ever at watch, the fiend-worm lay,
+    Holding the Hell of its abode
+    Fast by the hallow'd House of God.
+    And when the pilgrim gladly ween'd
+      His feet had found the healing way,
+    Forth from its ambush rush'd the fiend,
+      And down to darkness dragg'd the prey.
+
+    "With solemn soul, that solemn height
+    I clomb, ere yet I sought the fight--
+    Kneeling before the cross within,
+    My heart, confessing, clear'd its sin.
+    Then, as befits the Christian knight,
+    I donn'd the spotless surplice white,
+    And, by the altar, grasp'd the spear:--
+    So down I strode with conscience clear--
+    Bade my leal squires afar the deed,
+      By death or conquest crown'd, await--
+    Leapt lightly on my lithesome steed,
+      And gave to God his soldier's fate!
+
+    "Before me wide the marshes lay--
+    Started the hounds with sudden bay--
+    Aghast the swerving charger slanting
+    Snorted--then stood abrupt and panting--
+    For curling there, in coilèd fold,
+    The Unutterable Beast behold!
+    Lazily basking in the sun.
+    Forth sprang the dogs. The fight's begun!
+    But lo! the hounds in cowering fly
+      Before the mighty poison-breath--
+    A yell, most like the jackall's cry,
+      Howl'd, mingling with that wind of death!
+
+    "No halt--I gave one cheering sound;
+    Lustily springs each dauntless hound--
+    Swift as the dauntless hounds advance,
+    Whirringly skirrs my stalwart lance--
+    Whirringly skirrs; and from the scale
+    Bounds, as a reed aslant the mail.
+    Onward--but no!--the craven steed
+    Shrinks from his lord in that dread need--
+      Smitten and scared before that eye
+    Of basilisk horror, and that blast
+      Of death, it only seeks to fly--
+    And half the mighty hope is past!
+
+    "A moment, and to earth I leapt;
+    Swift from its sheath the falchion swept;
+    Swift on that rock-like mail it plied--
+    The rock-like mail the sword defied:
+    The monster lash'd its mighty coil--
+    Down hurl'd--behold me on the soil!
+    Behold the hell-jaws gaping wide--
+    When lo! they bound--the flesh is found;
+      Upon the scaleless parts they spring!
+    Springs either hound;--the flesh is found--
+      It roars; the blood-dogs cleave and cling!
+
+    "No time to foil its fast'ning foes--
+    Light, as it writhed, I sprang, and rose;
+    The all-unguarded place explored,
+    Up to the hilt I plunged the sword--
+    Buried one instant in the blood--
+    The next, upsprang the bubbling flood!
+    The next, one Vastness spread the plain--
+    Crush'd down--the victor with the slain;
+    And all was dark--and on the ground
+      My life, suspended, lost the sun,
+    Till waking--lo my squires around--
+      And the dead foe!--my tale is done."
+
+    Then burst, as from a common breast,
+    The eager laud so long supprest--
+    A thousand voices, choral-blending,
+    Up to the vaulted dome ascending--
+    From groined roof and banner'd wall,
+    Invisible echoes answering all--
+    The very Brethren, grave and high,
+    Forget their state, and join the cry.
+    "With laurel wreaths his brows be crown'd,
+      Let throng to throng his triumph tell;
+    Hail him all Rhodes!"--the Master frown'd,
+      And raised his hand--and silence fell.
+
+    "Well," said that solemn voice, "thy hand
+    From the wild-beast hath freed the land.
+    An idol to the People be!
+    A foe our Order frowns on thee!
+    For in thy heart, superb and vain,
+    A hell-worm laidlier than the slain,
+    To discord which engenders death,
+    Poisons each thought with baleful breath!
+    That hell-worm is the stubborn Will--
+      Oh! What were man and nations worth
+    If each his own desire fulfil,
+      And law be banish'd from the earth?
+
+    "_Valour_ the Heathen gives to story--
+    _Obedience_ is the Christian's glory;
+    And on that soil our Saviour-God
+    As the meek low-born mortal trod.
+    We the Apostle-knights were sworn
+    To laws thy daring laughs to scorn--
+    Not _fame_, but _duty_ to fulfil--
+    Our noblest offering--man's wild will.
+    Vain-glory doth thy soul betray--
+      Begone--thy conquest is thy loss:
+    No breast too haughty to obey,
+      Is worthy of the Christian's cross!"
+
+    From their cold awe the crowds awaken,
+    As with some storm the halls are shaken;
+    The noble brethren plead for grace--
+    Mute stands the doom'd, with downward face;
+    And mutely loosen'd from its band
+    The badge, and kiss'd the Master's hand,
+    And meekly turn'd him to depart:
+    A moist eye follow'd, "To my heart
+    Come back, my son!"--the Master cries:
+      "Thy grace a harder fight obtains;
+    When Valour risks the Christian's prize,
+      Lo, how Humility regains!"
+
+[In the ballad just presented to the reader, Schiller designed, as he
+wrote to Goethe, to depict the old Christian chivalry--half-knightly,
+half-monastic. The attempt is strikingly successful; and, even in so
+humble a translation, the unadorned simplicity and earnest vigour of a
+great poet, enamoured of his subject, may be sufficiently visible to a
+discerning critic. "The Fight of the Dragon" appears to us the most
+spirited and nervous of all Schiller's ballads, with the single
+exception of "The Diver;" and if its interest is less intense than that
+of the matchless "Diver," and its descriptions less poetically striking
+and effective, its interior meaning or philosophical conception is at
+once more profound and more elevated. The main distinction, indeed,
+between the ancient ballad and the modern, as revived and recreated by
+Goethe and Schiller, is, that the former is a simple narrative, and the
+latter a narrative which conveys some intellectual idea--some dim, but
+important truth. The one has but the good faith of the minstrel, the
+other the high wisdom of the poet. In "The Fight of the Dragon,"
+is expressed the moral of that humility which consists in
+self-conquest--even merit may lead to vain-glory--and, after vanquishing
+the fiercest enemies without, Man has still to contend with his worst
+foe,--the pride or disobedience of his own heart. "Every one," as a
+recent and acute, but somewhat over-refining critic has remarked, "has
+more or less--his own 'fight with the Dragon,'--his own double victory
+(without and within) to achieve." The origin of this poem is to be found
+in the Annals of the Order of Malta--and the details may be seen in
+Vertot's History. The date assigned to the conquest of the Dragon is
+1342. Helion de Villeneuve was the name of the Grand Master--that of the
+Knight, Dieu-Donné de Gozon. Thevenot declares, that the head of the
+monster, (to whatever species it really belonged,) or its effigies, was
+still placed over one of the gates of the city in his time.]
+
+     [9] War-horse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.
+
+
+Having shown that the standard of Taste is in the Truth of Nature, and
+that this truth is in the mind, Sir Joshua, in the Eighth Discourse,
+proceeds to a further development of the principles of art. These
+principles, whether poetry or painting, have their foundation in the
+mind; which by its sensitive faculties and intellectual requirements,
+remodels all that it receives from the external world, vivifying and
+characterizing all with itself, and thus bringing forth into light the
+more beautiful but latent creations of nature. The "activity and
+restlessness" of the mind seek satisfaction from curiosity, novelty,
+variety, and contrast. Curiosity, "the anxiety for the future, the
+keeping the event suspended," he considers to be exclusively the
+province of poetry, and that "the painter's art is more confined, and
+has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this
+power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally
+engaged. What is done by painting must be done at one blow; curiosity
+has received at once all the satisfaction it can have." Novelty,
+variety, and contrast, however, belong to the painter. That poetry has
+this power, and operates by more extensively raising our curiosity,
+cannot be denied; but we hesitate in altogether excluding this power
+from painting. A momentary action may be so represented, as to elicit a
+desire for, and even an intimation of its event. It is true _that_
+curiosity cannot be satisfied, but it works and conjectures; and we
+suspect there is something of it in most good pictures. Take such a
+subject as the "Judgment of Solomon:" is not the "event suspended," and
+a breathless anxiety portrayed in the characters, and freely
+acknowledged by the sympathy of the spectator? Is there no mark of this
+"curiosity" in the "Cartoon of Pisa?" The trumpet has sounded, the
+soldiers are some half-dressed, some out of the water, others bathing;
+one is anxiously looking for the rising of his companion, who has just
+plunged in, and we see but his hands above the water; the very range of
+rocks, behind which the danger is shown to come, tends to excite our
+curiosity; we form conjectures of the enemy, their number, nearness of
+approach, and from among the manly warriors before us form episodes of
+heroism in the great intimated epic: and have we not seen pictures by
+Rembrandt, where "curiosity" delights to search unsatisfied and
+unsatiated into the mysteries of colour and chiaro-scuro, receding
+further as we look into an atmosphere pregnant with all uncertain
+things? We think we have not mistaken the President's meaning. Mr Burnet
+appears to agree with us: though he makes no remark upon the power of
+raising curiosity, yet it surely is raised in the very picture to which
+we presume he alludes, Raffaelle's "Death of Ananias;" the event, in
+Sapphira, is intimated and suspended. "Though," says Mr Burnet, "the
+painter has but one page to represent his story, he generally chooses
+that part which combines the most illustrative incidents with the most
+effective denouement of the event. In Raffaelle we often find not only
+those circumstances which precede it, _but its effects upon the_
+personages introduced after the catastrophe."
+
+There is, however, a natural indolence of our disposition, which seeks
+pleasure in repose, and the resting in old habits, which must not be too
+violently opposed by "variety," "reanimating the attention, which is apt
+to languish under a continual sameness;" nor by "novelty," making "more
+forcible impression on the mind than can be made by the representation
+of what we have often seen before;" nor by "contrasts," that "rouse the
+power of comparison by opposition."
+
+The mind, then, though an active principle, having likewise a
+disposition to indolence, (might we have said repose?) limits the
+quantity of variety, novelty, and contrast which it will bear;--these
+are, therefore, liable to excesses. Hence arise certain rules of art,
+that in a composition objects must not be too scattered and divided into
+many equal parts, that perplex and fatigue the eye, at a loss where to
+find the principal action. Nor must there be that "absolute unity,"
+"which, consisting of one group or mass of light only, would be as
+defective as an heroic poem without episode, or any collateral incidents
+to recreate the mind with that variety which it always requires." Sir
+Joshua instances Rembrandt and Poussin, the former as having the defect
+of "absolute unity," the latter the defect of the dispersion and
+scattering his figures without attention to their grouping. Hence there
+must be "the same just moderation observed in regard to ornaments;" for
+a certain repose must never be destroyed. Ornament in profusion, whether
+of objects or colours, does destroy it; and, "on the other hand, a work
+without ornament, instead of simplicity, to which it makes pretensions,
+has rather the appearance of poverty." "We may be sure of this truth,
+that the most ornamental style requires repose to set off even its
+ornaments to advantage." He instances, in the dialogue between Duncan
+and Banquo, Shakspeare's purpose of repose--the mention of the martlets'
+nests, and that "where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is
+delicate;" and the practice of Homer, "who, from the midst of battles
+and horrors, relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader, by
+introducing some quiet rural image, or picture of familiar domestic
+life. The writers of every age and country, where taste has begun to
+decline, paint and adorn every object they touch; are always on the
+stretch; never deviate or sink a moment from the pompous and the
+brilliant."[10]
+
+     [10] Could Sir Joshua now be permitted to visit his own
+     Academy, and our exhibitions in general, he would be startled
+     at the excess of ornament, in defiance of his rule of repose,
+     succeeding the slovenliness of his own day. Whatever be the
+     subject, history, landscape, or familiar life, it superabounds
+     both in objects and colour. In established academies, the
+     faults of genius are more readily adopted than their
+     excellences; they are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy
+     of imitation. We have, therefore, less hesitation in referring
+     the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir
+     Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more
+     injurious the delinquency. We therefore adduce as examples,
+     works of our most inventive and able artist, his "Macbeth" and
+     his "Hamlet"--they are greatly overloaded with the faults of
+     superabundance of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works
+     of great power, and such as none but a painter of high genius
+     could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and
+     where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate,
+     and even in the multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by
+     their grouping and management, he has preserved a seeming
+     moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the
+     wholeness, the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The
+     story is told, and admirably--as Sir Joshua says, "at one
+     blow." We speak of his "Sleeping Beauty." We see at once that
+     the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united
+     by that light and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too
+     prominently, the magic under whose working and whose light the
+     whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the
+     prince--there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the
+     execution of the figure that considerably dignifies the story,
+     and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it. The many
+     groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way
+     injure the simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast
+     in not undue proportion, because that simplicity is preserved.
+     Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,) and
+     chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of
+     repose, and a sunny repose, too, befitting the "Sleeping
+     Beauty." Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty and
+     danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not
+     in such subjects alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's
+     rule; we too often see portraits where the dress and
+     accessaries obtrude--there is too much lace and too little
+     expression--and our painters of views follow the fashion most
+     unaccountably--ornament is every where; we have not a town
+     where the houses are not "turned out of windows," and all the
+     furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to
+     show a pretty general bankruptcy, together with the artist's
+     own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every
+     other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging
+     from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in a turnpike
+     road.
+
+Novelty, Variety, and Contrast are required in Art, because they are the
+natural springs that move the mind to attention from its indolent
+quiescence; but having moved, their duty is performed--the mind of
+itself will do the rest; they must not act prominent parts. In every
+work there must be a simplicity which binds the whole together, as a
+whole; and whatever comes not within that girdle of the graces, is worse
+than superfluous--it draws off and distracts the attention which should
+be concentrated. Besides that simplicity which we have spoken of--and we
+have used the word in its technical sense, as that which keeps together
+and makes one thing of many parts--there is a simplicity which is best
+known by its opposite, affectation; upon this Sir Joshua enlarges.
+"Simplicity, being a negative virtue, cannot be described or defined."
+But it is possible, even in avoiding affectation, to convert simplicity
+into the very thing we strive to avoid. N. Poussin--whom, with regard to
+this virtue, he contrasts with others of the French school--Sir Joshua
+considers, in his abhorrence of the affectation of his countrymen,
+somewhat to approach it, by "what in writing would be called pedantry."
+Du Piles is justly censured for his recipe of grace and dignity. "If,"
+says he, "you draw persons of high character and dignity, they ought to
+be drawn in such an attitude that the portraits must seem to speak to
+us of themselves, and as it were to say to us, 'Stop, take notice of
+me--I am the invincible king, surrounded by majesty.' 'I am the valiant
+commander who struck terror every where,' 'I am that great minister, who
+knew all the springs of politics.' 'I am that magistrate of consummate
+wisdom and probity.'" This is indeed affectation, and a very vulgar
+notion of greatness. We are reminded of Partridge, and his admiration of
+the overacting king. All the characters in thus seeming to say, would be
+little indeed. Not so Raffaelle and Titian understood grace and dignity.
+Simplicity he holds to be "our barrier against that great enemy to truth
+and nature, affectation, which is ever clinging to the pencil, and ready
+to drop and poison every thing it touches." Yet that, "when so very
+inartificial as to seem to evade the difficulties of art, is a very
+suspicious virtue." Sir Joshua dwells much upon this, because he thinks
+there is a perpetual tendency in young artists to run into affectation,
+and that from the very terms of the precepts offered them. "When a young
+artist is first told that his composition and his attitudes must be
+contrasted; that he must turn the head contrary to the position of the
+body, in order to produce grace and animation; that his outline must be
+undulating and swelling, to give grandeur; and that the eye must be
+gratified with a variety of colours; when he is told this with certain
+animating words of spirit, dignity, energy, greatness of style, and
+brilliancy of tints, he becomes suddenly vain of his newly-acquired
+knowledge, and never thinks he can carry those rules too far. It is then
+that the aid of simplicity ought to be called in to correct the
+exuberance of youthful ardour." We may add that hereby, too, is shown
+the danger of particular and practical rules; very few of the kind are
+to be found in the "Discourses." Indeed the President points out, by
+examples from Raffaelle, the good effect of setting aside these
+academical rules. We suspect that they are never less wanted than when
+they give direction to attitudes and forms of action. He admits that, in
+order "to excite attention to the more manly, noble, and dignified
+manner," he had perhaps left "an impression too contemptuous of the
+ornamental parts of our art." He had, to use his own expression, bent
+the bow the contrary way to make it straight. "For this purpose, then,
+and to correct excess or neglect of any kind, we may here add, that it
+is not enough that a work be learned--it must be pleasing." Pretty much
+as Horace had said of poetry,
+
+    "Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, _dulcia_ sunto."
+
+To which maxim the Latin poet has unconsciously given the grace of
+rhyme--
+
+    "Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto."
+
+He again shows the danger of particular practical rules.--"It is given
+as a rule by Fresnoy, that '_the principal figure of a subject must
+appear in the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to
+distinguish it from the rest._' A painter who should think himself
+obliged strictly to follow this rule, would encumber himself with
+needless difficulties; he would be confined to great uniformity of
+composition, and be deprived of many beauties which are incompatible
+with its observance. The meaning of this rule extends, or ought to
+extend, no further than this: that the principal figure should be
+immediately distinguished at the first glance of the eye; but there is
+no necessity that the principal light should fall on the principal
+figure, or that the principal figure should be in the middle of the
+picture." He might have added that it is the very place where generally
+it ought not to be. Many examples are given; we could have wished he had
+given a plate from any one in preference to that from Le Brun. Felebein,
+in praising this picture, according to preconceived recipe, gives
+Alexander, who is in shade, the principal light. "Another instance
+occurs to me where equal liberty may be taken in regard to the
+management of light. Though the general practice is to make a large mass
+about the middle of the picture surrounded by shadow, the reverse may be
+practised, and _the spirit of the rule be preserved_." We have marked in
+italics the latter part of the sentence, because it shows that the rule
+itself must be ill-defined or too particular. Indeed, we receive with
+caution all such rules as belong to the practical and mechanical of the
+art. He instances Paul Veronese. "In the great composition of Paul
+Veronese, the 'Marriage of Cana,' the figures are for the most part in
+half shadow. The great light is in the sky; and indeed the general
+effect of this picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we
+often see in landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts:
+but those principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large
+scale, to a space containing near a hundred figures as large as life,
+and conducted, to all appearance, with as much facility, and with
+attention as steadily fixed upon _the whole together_, as if it were a
+small picture immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our
+admiration, the difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged."
+We suspect that _the rule_, when it attempts to direct beyond the words
+Sir Joshua has marked in italics, refutes itself, and shackles the
+student. Infinite must be the modes of composition, and as infinite the
+modes of treating them in light and shadow and colour. "Whatever mode of
+composition is adopted, every variety and license is allowable." All
+that is absolutely necessary is, that there be no confusion or
+distraction, no conflicting masses--in fact, that the picture tell its
+tale at once and effectually. A very good plate is given by Mr Burnet of
+the "Marriage of Cana," by Paul Veronese. Sir Joshua avoids entering
+upon rules that belong to "the detail of the art." He meets with
+combatants, as might have been expected, where he is thus particular. We
+will extract the passage which has been controverted, and to oppose the
+doctrine of which, Gainsborough painted his celebrated "Blue Boy."
+
+"Though it is not my _business_ to enter into the detail of our art, yet
+I must take this opportunity of mentioning one of the means of producing
+that great effect which we observe in the works of the Venetian
+painters, as I think it is not generally known or observed, that the
+masses of light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow
+red or yellowish white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green
+colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to
+support and set off these warm colours; and for this purpose a small
+proportion of cold colours will be sufficient. Let this conduct be
+reversed; let the light be cold, and the surrounding colours warm, as we
+often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will
+be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian, to
+make a picture splendid and harmonious." Le Brun and Carlo Maratti are
+censured as being "deficient in this management of colours." The
+"Bacchus and Ariadne," now in our National Gallery, has ever been
+celebrated for its harmony of colour. Sir Joshua supports his theory or
+rule by the example of this picture: the red of Ariadne's scarf, which,
+according to critics, was purposely given to relieve the figure from the
+sea, has a better object. "The figure of Ariadne is separated from the
+great group, and is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the
+sea, makes that quantity of cold colour which Titian thought necessary
+for the support and brilliancy of the great group; which group is
+composed, with very little exception, entirely of mellow colours. But as
+the picture in this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one
+half cold and the other warm, it was necessary to carry some of the
+mellow colours of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and
+a part of the cold into the great group; accordingly Titian gave Ariadne
+a red scarf, and to one of the Bacchantes a little blue drapery." As
+there is no picture more splendid, it is well to weigh and consider
+again and again remarks upon the cause of the brilliancy, given by such
+an authority as Sir Joshua Reynolds. With regard to his rule, even among
+artists, "adhuc sub judice lis est." He combats the common notion of
+relief, as belonging only to the infancy of the art, and shows the
+advance made by Coreggio and Rembrandt; though the first manner of
+Coreggio, as well as of Leonardo da Vinci and Georgione, was dry and
+hard. "But these three were among the first who began to correct
+themselves in dryness of style, by no longer considering relief as a
+principal object. As these two qualities, relief and fulness of effect,
+can hardly exist together, it is not very difficult to determine to
+which we ought to give the preference." "Those painters who have best
+understood the art of producing a good effect, have adopted one
+principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason--that a part may be
+sacrificed for the good of the whole. Thus, whether the masses consist
+of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact, and of
+a pleasing shape; to this end some parts may be made darker and some
+lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant." He
+instances a "Moonlight" by Rubens, now, we believe, in the possession of
+Mr Rogers, in which Rubens had given more light and more glowing colours
+than we recognize in nature,--"it might easily be mistaken, if he had
+not likewise added stars, for a fainter setting sun." We stop not to
+enquire if that harmony so praised, might not have been preserved had
+the resemblance to nature been closer. Brilliancy is produced. The fact
+is, the _practice_ of art is a system of compensation. We cannot exactly
+in all cases represent nature,--we have not the means, but our means
+will achieve what, though _particularly_ unlike, may, by itself or in
+opposition, produce similar effects. Nature does not present a varnished
+polished surface, nor that very transparency that our colours can give;
+but it is found that this transparency, in all its degrees, in
+conjunction and in opposition to opaque body of colour, represents the
+force of light and shade of nature, which is the principal object to
+attain. _The_ richness of nature is not the exact richness of the
+palette. The painter's success is in the means of compensation.
+
+This Discourse concludes with observations on the Prize pictures. The
+subject seems to have been the Sacrifice of Iphigenia. All had copied
+the invention of Timanthes, in hiding the face of Agamemnon. Sir Joshua
+seems to agree with Mr Falconet, in a note in his translation of Pliny,
+who would condemn the painter, but that he copied the idea from the
+authority of Euripides; Sir Joshua considers it at best a trick, that
+can only with success be practised once. Mr Fuseli criticises the
+passage, and assumes that the painter had better reason than that given
+by Mr Falconet. Mr Burnet has added but two or three notes to this
+Discourse--they are unimportant, with the exception of the last, wherein
+he combats Sir Joshua's theory of the cold and warm colours. He candidly
+prints an extract of a letter from Sir Thomas Lawrence, who differs with
+him. It is so elegantly written that we quote the passage. Sir Thomas
+says,--"Agreeing with you in so many points, I will venture to differ
+from you in your question with Sir Joshua. Infinitely various as nature
+is, there are still two or three truths that limit her variety, or,
+rather, that limit art in the imitation of her. I should instance for
+one the ascendency of white objects, which can never be departed from
+with impunity, and again, the union of colour with light. Masterly as
+the execution of that picture is (viz. the Boy in a blue dress,) I
+always feel a never-changing impression on my eye, that the "Blue Boy"
+of Gainsborough is a difficulty boldly combated, not conquered. The
+light blue drapery of the Virgin in the centre of the "Notte" is
+another instance; a check to the harmony of the celestial radiance round
+it." "Opposed to Sir Thomas's opinion," says Mr Burnet, "I might quote
+that of Sir David Wilkie, often expressed, and carried out in his
+picture of the 'Chelsea Pensioners' and other works." It strikes us,
+from our recollection of the "Chelsea Pensioners," that it is not at all
+a case in point; the blue there not being light but dark, and serving as
+dark, forcibly contrasting with warmer light in sky and other objects;
+the _colour_ of blue is scarcely given, and is too dark to be allowed to
+enter into the question. He adds, "A very simple method may be adopted
+to enable the student to perceive where the warm and red colours are
+placed by the great colourists, by his making a sketch of light and
+shade of the picture, and then touching in the warm colours with red
+chalk; or by looking on his palette at twilight, he will see what
+colours absorb the light, and those that give it out, and thus select
+for his shadows, colours that have the property of giving depth and
+richness." Unless the pictures are intended to be seen at twilight, we
+do not see how this can bear upon the question; if it does, we would
+notice what we have often observed, that at twilight blue almost
+entirely disappears, to such a degree that in a landscape where the blue
+has even been deep, and the sky by no means the lightest part of the
+picture, at twilight the whole landscape comes out too hard upon the
+sky, which with its colour has lost its tone, and become, with relation
+to the rest, by far too light. It is said that of all the pictures in
+the National Gallery, when seen at twilight, the Coreggios retire
+last--we speak of the two, the "Ecce Homo" and the "Venus, Mercury, and
+Cupid." In these there is no blue but in the drapery of the fainting
+mother, and that is so dark as to serve for black or mere shadow; the
+lighter blue close upon the neck is too small to affect the power of the
+picture. It certainly is a fact, that blue fades more than any colour at
+twilight, and, relatively speaking, leaves the image that contains it
+lighter. We should almost be inclined to ask the question, though with
+great deference to authority, is blue, when very light, necessarily
+cold; and if so, has it not an activity which, being the great quality
+of light, assimilates it with light, and thus takes in to itself the
+surrounding "radiance?" A very little positive warm colour, as it were
+set in blue, from whatever cause, gives it a surprising glow. We desire
+to see the theory of colours treated, not with regard to their
+corresponding harmony in their power one upon the other, nor in their
+light and shadow, but, if we may so express it, in their
+sentimentality--the effect they are capable of in moving the passions.
+We alluded to this in our last paper, and the more we consider the
+subject, the more we convinced that it is worth deeper investigation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The NINTH DISCOURSE is short, and general in its character; it was
+delivered at the opening of the Royal Academy in Somerset Place, October
+16, 1780. It is an elegant address; raises the aim of the artist; and
+gives a summary of the origin of arts and their use. "Let us for a
+moment take a short survey of the progress of the mind towards what is,
+or ought to be, its true object of attention. Man in his lowest state
+has no pleasures but those of sense, and no wants but those of appetite;
+afterwards, when society is divided into different ranks, and some are
+appointed to labour for the support of others, those whom their
+superiority sets free from labour begin to look for intellectual
+entertainments. Thus, while the shepherds were attending their flocks,
+their masters made the first astronomical observations; so music is said
+to have had its origin from a man at leisure listening to the strokes of
+a hammer. As the senses in the lowest state of nature are necessary to
+direct us to our support, when that support is once secure, there is
+danger in following them further; to him who has no rule of action but
+the gratification of the senses, plenty is always dangerous. It is
+therefore necessary to the happiness of individuals, and still more
+necessary to the security of society, that the mind should be elevated
+to the idea of general beauty, and the contemplation of general truth;
+by this pursuit the mind is always carried forward in search of
+something more excellent than it finds, and obtains its proper
+superiority over the common sense of life, by learning to feel itself
+capable of higher aims and nobler enjoyments." This is well said.
+Again.--"Our art, like all arts which address the imagination, is
+applied to a somewhat lower faculty of the mind, which approaches nearer
+to sensuality, but through sense and fancy it must make its way to
+reason. For such is the progress of thought, that we perceive by sense,
+we combine by fancy, and distinguish by reason; and without carrying our
+art out of its natural and true character, the more we purify it from
+every thing that is gross in sense, in that proportion we advance its
+use and dignity, and in proportion as we lower it to mere sensuality, we
+pervert its nature, and degrade it from the rank of a liberal art; and
+this is what every artist ought well to remember. Let him remember,
+also, that he deserves just so much encouragement in the state as he
+makes himself a member of it virtuously useful, and contributes in his
+sphere to the general purpose and perfection of society." Sir Joshua has
+been blamed by those who have taken lower views of art, in that he has
+exclusively treated of the Great Style, which neither he nor the
+academicians of his day practised; but he would have been unworthy the
+presidential chair had he taken any other line. His was a noble effort,
+to assume for art the highest position, to dignify it in its aim, and
+thus to honour and improve first his country, then all human kind. We
+rise from such passages as these elevated above all that is little.
+Those only can feel depressed who would find excuses for the lowness of
+their pursuits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TENTH DISCOURSE.--Sir Joshua here treats of Sculpture, a less
+extensive field than Painting. The leading principles of both are the
+same; he considers wherein they agree, and wherein they differ.
+Sculpture cannot, "with propriety and best effect, be applied to many
+subjects." Its object is "form and character." It has "one style
+only,"--that one style has relation only to one style of painting, the
+Great Style, but that so close as to differ only as operating upon
+different materials. He blames the sculptors of the last age, who
+thought they were improving by borrowing from the ornamental,
+incompatible with its essential character. Contrasts, and the
+littlenesses of picturesque effects, are injurious to the formality its
+austere character requires. As in painting, so more particularly in
+sculpture, that imitation of nature which we call illusion, is in no
+respect its excellence, nor indeed its aim. Were it so, the Venus di
+Medici would be improved by colour. It contemplates a higher, a more
+perfect beauty, more an intellectual than sensual enjoyment. The
+boundaries of the art have been long fixed. To convey "sentiment and
+character, as exhibited by attitude, and expression of the passions," is
+not within its province. Beauty of form alone, the object of sculpture,
+"makes of itself a great work." In proof of which are the designs of
+Michael Angelo in both arts. As a stronger instance:--"What artist,"
+says he, "ever looked at the Torso without feeling a warmth of
+enthusiasm as from the highest efforts of poetry? From whence does this
+proceed? What is there in this fragment that produces this effect, but
+the perfection of this science of abstract form?" Mr Burnet has given a
+plate of the Torso. The expectation of deception, of which few divest
+themselves, is an impediment to the judgment, consequently to the
+enjoyment of sculpture. "Its essence is correctness." It fully
+accomplishes its purpose when it adds the "ornament of grace, dignity of
+character, and appropriated expression, as in the Apollo, the Venus, the
+Laocoon, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and many others." Sir Joshua uses
+expression as will be afterwards seen, in a very limited sense. It is
+necessary to lay down perfect correctness as its essential character;
+because, as in the case of the Apollo, many have asserted the beauty to
+arise from a certain incorrectness in anatomy and proportion. He denies
+that there is this incorrectness, and asserts that there never ought to
+be; and that even in painting these are not the beauties, but defects,
+in the works of Coreggio and Parmegiano. "A supposition of such a
+monster as Grace begot by Deformity, is poison to the mind of a young
+artist." The Apollo and the Discobolus are engaged in the same
+purpose--the one watching the effect of his arrow, the other of his
+discus. "The graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and
+the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish a signal instance of the
+skill of the ancient sculptors in their nice discrimination of
+character. They are both equally true to nature, and equally admirable."
+Grace, character, and expression, are rather in form and attitude than
+in features; the general figure more presents itself; "it is there we
+must principally look for expression or character; _patuit in corpore
+vultus_." The expression in the countenances of the Laocoon and his two
+sons, though greater than in any other antique statues, is of pain only;
+and that is more expressed "by the writhing and contortion of the body
+than by the features." The ancient sculptors paid but little regard to
+features for their expression, their object being solely beauty of form.
+"Take away from Apollo his lyre, from Bacchus his thyrsus and
+vine-leaves, and from Meleager the boar's head, and there will remain
+little or no difference in their characters." John di Bologna, he tells
+us, after he had finished a group, called his friends together to tell
+him what name to give it: they called it the "Rape of the Sabines." A
+similar anecdote is told of Sir Joshua himself, that he had painted the
+head of the old man who attended him in his studio. Some one observed
+that it would make a Ugolino. The sons were added, and it became the
+well-known historical picture from Dante. He comments upon the
+ineffectual attempts of modern sculptors to detach drapery from the
+figure, to give it the appearance of flying in the air; to make
+different plans on the same bas-relievos; to represent the effects of
+perspective; to clothe in a modern dress. For the first attempt he
+reprehends Bernini, who, from want of a right conception of the province
+of sculpture, never fulfilled the promise given in his early work of
+Apollo and Daphne. He was ever attempting to make drapery flutter in the
+air, which the very massiveness of the material, stone, should seem to
+forbid. Sir Joshua does not notice the very high authority for such an
+attempt--though it must be confessed the material was not stone, still
+it was sculpture, and multitudinous are the graces of ornament, and most
+minutely described--the shield of Hercules, by Hesiod; even the noise of
+the furies' wings is affected. The drapery of the Apollo he considers to
+have been intended more for support than ornament; but the mantle from
+the arm he thinks "answers a much higher purpose, by preventing that
+dryness of effect which would inevitably attend a naked arm, extended
+almost at full length; to which we may add, the disagreeable effect
+which would proceed from the body and arm making a right angle." He
+conjectures that Carlo Maratti, in his love for drapery, must have
+influenced the sculptors of the Apostles in the church of St John
+Lateran. "The weight and solidity of stone was not to be overcome."
+
+To place figures on different plans is absurd, because they must still
+appear all equally near the eye; the sculptor has not adequate means of
+throwing them back; and, besides, the thus cutting up into minute parts,
+destroys grandeur. "Perhaps the only circumstance in which the modern
+have excelled the ancient sculptors, is the management of a single group
+in basso-relievo." This, he thinks, may have been suggested by the
+practice of modern painters. The attempt at perspective must, for the
+same reason, be absurd; the sculptor has not the means for this "humble
+ambition." The ancients represented only the elevation of whatever
+architecture they introduced into their bas-reliefs, "which is composed
+of little more than horizontal and perpendicular lines." Upon the
+attempt at modern dress in sculpture, he is severe in his censure.
+"Working in stone is a very serious business, and it seems to be scarce
+worth while to employ such durable materials in conveying to posterity a
+fashion, of which the longest existence scarcely exceeds a year;" and
+which, he might have added, the succeeding year makes ridiculous. We not
+only change our dresses, but laugh at the sight of those we have
+discarded. The gravity of sculpture should not be subject to contempt.
+"The uniformity and simplicity of the materials on which the sculptor
+labours, (which are only white marble,) prescribe bounds to his art, and
+teach him to confine himself to proportionable simplicity of design." Mr
+Burnet has not given a better note than that upon Sir Joshua's remark,
+that sculpture has but one style. He shows how strongly the ancient
+sculptors marked those points wherein the human figure differs from that
+of other animals. "Let us take, for example, the human foot; on
+examining, in the first instance, those of many animals, we perceive the
+toes either very long or very short in proportion; of an equal size
+nearly, and the claws often long and hooked inwards: now, in rude
+sculpture, and even in some of the best of the Egyptians, we find little
+attempt at giving a character of decided variation; but, on the
+contrary, we see the foot split up with toes of an equal length and
+thickness; while, in Greek sculpture, these points characteristic of man
+are increased, that the affinity to animals may be diminished. In the
+Greek marbles, the great toe is large and apart from the others, where
+the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and
+sweep round to the outside of the foot, with the greatest regularity of
+curve; the nails are short, and the toes broad at the points, indicative
+of pressure on the ground." Rigidity he considers to have been the
+character of the first epochs, changing ultimately as in the Elgin
+marbles, "from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified
+character of flesh." He thinks Reynolds "would have acknowledged the
+supremacy of beautiful nature, uncontrolled by the severe line of
+mathematical exactness," had he lived to see the Elgin marbles. "The
+outline of life, which changes under every respiration, seems to have
+undulated under the plastic mould of Phidias." This is well expressed.
+He justly animadverts upon the silly fashion of the day, in lauding the
+vulgar imitation of the worsted stockings by Thom. The subjects chosen
+were most unfit for sculpture,--their only immortality must be in Burns.
+We do not understand his extreme admiration of Wilkie; in a note on
+parallel perspective in sculpture, he adduces Raffaelle as an example of
+the practice, and closes by comparing him with Sir David Wilkie,--"known
+by the appellation of the Raffaelle of familiar life,"--men perfect
+antipodes to each other! There is a proper eulogy on Chantrey,
+particularly for his busts, in which he commonly represented the eye. We
+are most anxious for the arrival of the ancient sculpture from Lycia,
+collected and packed for Government by the indefatigable and able
+traveller, Mr Fellowes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ELEVENTH DISCOURSE is upon Genius, the particular genius of the
+painter in his power of seizing and representing nature, or his subject
+as a whole. He calls it the "genius of mechanical performance." This,
+with little difference, is enforcing what has been laid down in former
+Discourses. Indeed, as far as precepts may be required, Sir Joshua had
+already performed his task; hence, there is necessary repetition. Yet
+all is said well, and conviction perpetuates the impressions previously
+made. Character is something independent of minute detail; genius alone
+knows what constitutes this character, and practically to represent it,
+is to be a painter of genius. Though it be true that he "who does not at
+all express particulars expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice
+discrimination of minute circumstances, and a punctilious delineation of
+them, whatever excellence it may have, (and I do not mean to detract
+from it,) never did confer on the artist the character of genius." The
+impression left upon the mind is not of particulars, when it would seem
+to be so; such particulars are taken out of the subject, and are each a
+whole of themselves. Practically speaking, as we before observed, genius
+will be exerted in ascertaining how to paint the "_nothing_" in every
+picture, to satisfy with regard to detail, that neither its absence nor
+its presence shall be noticeable.
+
+Our pleasure is not in minute imitation; for, in fact, that is not true
+imitation, for it forces upon our notice that which naturally we do not
+see. We are not pleased with wax-work, which may be nearer reality; "we
+are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing ends accomplished by seemingly
+inadequate means." If this be sound, we ought to be sensible of the
+inadequacy of the means, which sets aside at once the common notion that
+art is illusion. "The properties of all objects, as far as the painter
+is concerned with them, are outline or drawing, the colour, and the
+light and shade. The drawing gives the form, the colour its visible
+quality, and the light and shade its solidity:" in every one of these
+the habit of seeing as a whole must be acquired. From this habit arises
+the power of imitating by "dexterous methods." He proceeds to show that
+the fame of the greatest painters does not rest upon their high finish.
+Raffaelle and Titian, one in drawing the other in colour, by no means
+finished highly; but acquired by their genius an expressive execution.
+Most of his subsequent remarks are upon practice in execution and
+colour, in contradistinction to elaborate finish. Vasari calls Titian,
+"giudicioso, bello, e stupendo," with regard to this power. He
+generalized by colour, and by execution. "In his colouring, he was large
+and general." By these epithets, we think Sir Joshua has admitted that
+the great style comprehends colouring. "Whether it is the human figure,
+an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however
+unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey
+sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a painter of genius." He
+condemns that high finish which softens off. "This extreme softening,
+instead of producing the effect of softness, gives the appearance of
+ivory, or some other hard substance, highly polished. The value set upon
+drawings, such as of Coreggio and Parmegiano, which are but slight, show
+how much satisfaction can be given without high finishing, or minute
+attention to particulars. "I wish you to bear in mind, that when I speak
+of a whole, I do not mean simply _a whole_ as belonging to composition,
+but _a whole_ with respect to the general style of colouring; _a whole_
+with regard to light and shade; and _a whole_ of every thing which may
+separately become the main object of a painter. He speaks of a landscape
+painter in Rome, who endeavoured to represent every individual leaf upon
+a tree; a few happy touches would have given a more true resemblance.
+There is always a largeness and a freedom in happy execution, that
+finish can never attain. Sir Joshua says above, that even "unpromising"
+subjects may be thus treated. There is a painter commonly thought to
+have finished highly, by those who do not look into his manner, whose
+dexterous, happy execution was perhaps never surpassed; the consequence
+is, that there is "a largeness," in all his pictures. We mean Teniers.
+The effect of the elaborate work that has been added to his class of
+subjects, is to make them heavy and fatiguing to the eye. He praises
+Titian for the same large manner which he had given to his history and
+portraits, applied to his landscapes, and instances the back-ground to
+the "Peter Martyr." He recommends the same practice in portrait
+painting--the first thing to be attained, is largeness and general
+effect. The following puts the truth clearly. "Perhaps nothing that we
+can say will so clearly show the advantage and excellence of this
+faculty, as that it confers the character of genius on works that
+pretend to no other merit, in which is neither expression, character,
+nor dignity, and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot
+refuse the character of genius to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese,
+without opposing the general sense of mankind, (great authorities have
+called it the triumph of painting,) or to the Altar of St Augustine at
+Antwerp, by Rubens, which equally deserves that title, and for the same
+reason. Neither of these pictures have any interesting story to support
+them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation of a great
+concourse of people at a dinner; and the subject of Rubens, if it may be
+called a subject where nothing is doing, is an assembly of various
+saints that lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those
+pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however, under the
+influence of that comprehensive faculty which I have so often
+mentioned."
+
+The power of _a whole_ is exemplified by the anecdote of a child going
+through a gallery of old portraits. She paid very little attention to
+the finishing, or naturalness of drapery, but put herself at once to
+mimic the awkward attitudes. "The censure of nature uninformed, fastened
+upon the greatest fault that could be in a picture, because it related
+to the character and management of the whole." What he would condemn is
+that substitute for deep and proper study, which is to enable the
+painter to conceive and execute every subject as a whole, and a finish
+which Cowley calls "laborious effects of idleness." He concludes this
+Discourse with some hints on method of study. Many go to Italy to copy
+pictures, and derive little advantage. "The great business of study is,
+to form a mind adapted and adequate to all times and all occasions, to
+which all nature is then laid open, and which may be said to possess the
+key of her inexhaustible riches."
+
+Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of the Monk flying from the scene of
+murder, in Titian's "Peter Martyr," showing how that great painter could
+occasionally adopt the style of Michael Angelo in his forms. In the same
+note he observes, that Sir Joshua had forgotten the detail of this
+picture, which detail is noticed and praised by Algarotti, for its
+minute discrimination of leaves and plants, "even to excite the
+admiration of a botanist."--Sir Joshua said they were not there. Mr
+Burnet examined the picture at Paris, and found, indeed, the detail, but
+adds, that "they are made out with the same hue as the general tint of
+the ground, which is a dull brown," an exemplification of the rule, "Ars
+est celare artem." Mr Burnet remarks, that there is the same minute
+detail in Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne."--He is right--we have noticed
+it, and suspected that it had lost the glazing which had subdued it. As
+it is, however, it is not important. Mr Burnet is fearful lest the
+authority of Sir Joshua should induce a habit of generalizing too much.
+He expresses this fear in another note. He says, "the great eagerness to
+acquire what the poet calls
+
+        'That voluntary style,
+    Which careless plays, and seems to mock at toil,'
+
+and which Reynolds describes as so captivating, has led many a student
+to commence his career at the wrong end. They ought to remember, that
+even Rubens founded this excellence upon years of laborious and careful
+study. His picture of himself and his first wife, though the size of
+life, exhibits all the detail and finish of Holbein." Sir Joshua nowhere
+recommends _careless_ style; on the contrary, he every where urges the
+student to laborious toil, in order that he may acquire that facility
+which Sir Joshua so justly calls captivating, and which afterwards
+Rubens himself did acquire, by studying it in the works of Titian and
+Paul Veronese; and singularly, in contradiction to his fears and all he
+would imply, Mr Burnet terminates his passage thus:--"Nor did he
+(Rubens) quit the dry manner of Otho Venius, till a contemplation of the
+works of Titian and Paul Veronese enabled him to display with rapidity
+those materials which industry had collected." It is strange to argue
+upon the abuse of a precept, by taking it at the wrong end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TWELFTH DISCOURSE recurs likewise to much that had been before laid
+down. It treats of methods of study, upon which he had been consulted by
+artists about to visit Italy. Particular methods of study he considers
+of little consequence; study must not be shackled by too much method. If
+the painter loves his art, he will not require prescribed tasks;--to go
+about which sluggishly, which he will do if he have another impulse, can
+be of little advantage. Hence would follow, as he admirably expresses
+it, "a reluctant understanding," and a "servile hand." He supposes,
+however, the student to be somewhat advanced. The boy, like other
+school-boys, must be under restraint, and learn the "Grammar and
+Rudiments" laboriously. It is not such who travel for knowledge. The
+student, he thinks, may be pretty much left to himself; if he undertake
+things above his strength, it is better he should run the risk of
+discouragement thereby, than acquire "a slow proficiency" by "too easy
+tasks." He has little confidence in the efficacy of method, "in
+acquiring excellence in any art whatever." Methodical studies, with all
+their apparatus, enquiry, and mechanical labour, tend too often but "to
+evade and shuffle off real labour--the real labour of thinking." He has
+ever avoided giving particular directions. He has found students who
+have imagined they could make "prodigious progress under some particular
+eminent master." Such would lean on any but themselves. "After the
+Rudiments are past, very little of our art can be taught by others." A
+student ought to have a just and manly confidence in himself, "or rather
+in the persevering industry which he is resolved to possess." Raffaelle
+had done nothing, and was quite young, when fixed upon to adorn the
+Vatican with his works; he had even to direct the best artists of his
+age. He had a meek and gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent
+with that manly confidence that insured him success--a confidence in
+himself arising from a consciousness of power, and a determination to
+exert it. The result is "in perpetuum."--There are, however, artists who
+have too much self-confidence, that is ill-founded confidence, founded
+rather upon a certain dexterity than upon a habit of thought; they are
+like the improvisatori in poetry; and most commonly, as Metastasio
+acknowledged of himself, had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit of
+thinking with selection. To be able to draw and to design with rapidity,
+is, indeed, to be master of the grammar of art; but in the completion,
+and in the final settlement of the design, the portfolio must again and
+again have been turned over, and the nicest judgment exercised. This
+judgment is the result of deep study and intenseness of thought--thought
+not only upon the artist's own inventions, but those of others. Luca
+Giordano and La Fage are brought as examples of great dexterity and
+readiness of invention--but of little selection; for they borrowed very
+little from others: and still less will any artist, that can distinguish
+between excellence and insipidity, ever borrow from them. Raffaelle, who
+had no lack of invention, took the greatest pains to select; and when
+designing "his greatest as well as latest works, the Cartoons," he had
+before him studies he had made from Masaccio. He borrowed from him "two
+noble figures of St Paul." The only alteration he made was in the
+showing both hands, which he thought in a principal figure should never
+be omitted. Masaccio's work was well known; Raffaelle was not ashamed to
+have borrowed. "Such men, surely, need not be ashamed of that friendly
+intercourse which ought to exist among artists, of receiving from the
+dead, and giving to the living, and perhaps to those who are yet unborn.
+The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an artist is found in the
+great works of his predecessors. 'Serpens nisi serpentem comederit, non
+fit draco.'" The fact is, the most self-sufficient of men are greater
+borrowers than they will admit, or perhaps know; their very novelties,
+if they have any, commence upon the thoughts of others, which are laid
+down as a foundation in their own minds. The common sense, which is
+called "common property," is that stock which all that have gone before
+us have left behind them; and we are but admitted to the heirship of
+what they have acquired. Masaccio Sir Joshua considers to have been "one
+of the great fathers of modern art." He was the first who gave
+largeness, and "discovered the path that leads to every excellence to
+which the art afterwards arrived." It is enough to say of him, that
+Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle,
+Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, and Pierino del Vaga, formed
+their taste by studying his works. "An artist-like mind" is best formed
+by studying the works of great artists. It is a good practice to
+consider figures in works of great masters as statues which we may take
+in any view. This did Raffaelle, in his "Sergius Paulus," from Masaccio.
+Lest there should be any misunderstanding of this sort of borrowing,
+which he justifies, he again refers to the practice of Raffaelle in this
+his borrowing from Masaccio. The two figures of St Paul, he doubted if
+Raffaelle could have improved; but "he had the address to change in some
+measure without diminishing the grandeur of their character." For a
+serene composed dignity, he has given animation suited to their
+employment. "In the same manner, he has given more animation to the
+figure of Sergius Paulus, and to that which is introduced in the picture
+of Paul preaching, of which little more than hints are given by
+Masaccio, which Raffaelle has finished. The closing the eyes of this
+figure, which in Masaccio might be easily mistaken for sleeping, is not
+in the least ambiguous in the Cartoon. His eyes, indeed are closed, but
+they are closed with such vehemence, that the agitation of a mind
+_perplexed in the extreme_ is seen at the first glance; but what is most
+extraordinary, and I think particularly to be admired, is, that the same
+idea is continued through the whole figure, even to the drapery, which
+is so closely muffled about him, that even his hands are not seen: By
+this happy correspondence between the expression of the countenance and
+the disposition of the parts, the figure appears to think from head to
+foot. Men of superior talents alone are capable of thus using and
+adapting other men's minds to their own purposes, or are able to make
+out and finish what was only in the original a hint or imperfect
+conception. A readiness in taking such hints, which escape the dull and
+ignorant, makes, in my opinion, no inconsiderable part of that faculty
+of mind which is called genius." He urges the student not even to think
+himself qualified to invent, till he is well acquainted with the stores
+of invention the world possesses; and insists that, without such study,
+he will not have learned to select from nature. He has more than once
+enforced this doctrine, because it is new. He recommends, even in
+borrowing, however, an immediate recurrence to the model, that every
+thing may be finished from nature. Hence he proceeds to give some
+directions for placing the model and the drapery--first to impress upon
+the model the purpose of the attitude required--next, to be careful not
+to alter drapery with the hand, rather trusting, if defective, to a new
+cast. There is much in being in the way of accident. To obtain the
+freedom of accident Rembrandt put on his colours with his palette-knife;
+a very common practice at the present day. "Works produced in an
+accidental manner will have the same free unrestrained air as the works
+of nature, whose particular combinations seem to depend upon accident."
+He concludes this Discourse by more strenuously insisting upon the
+necessity of ever having nature in view--and warns students by the
+example of Boucher, Director of the French Academy, whom he saw working
+upon a large picture, "without drawings or models of any kind." He had
+left off the use of models many years. Though a man of ability, his
+pictures showed the mischief of his practice. Mr Burnet's notes to this
+Discourse add little to the material of criticism; they do but reiterate
+in substance what Sir Joshua had himself sufficiently repeated. His
+object seems rather to seize an opportunity of expressing his admiration
+of Wilkie, whom he adduces as a parallel example with Raffaelle of
+successful borrowing. It appears from the account given of Wilkie's
+process, that he carried the practice much beyond Raffaelle. We cannot
+conceive any thing _very_ good coming from so very methodical a manner
+of setting to work. Would not the fire of genius be extinguished by the
+coolness of the process? "When he had fixed upon his subject, he thought
+upon _all_ pictures of that class already in existence." The after
+process was most elaborate. Now, this we should think a practice quite
+contrary to Raffaelle's, who more probably trusted to his own conception
+for the character of his picture as a whole, and whose borrowing was
+more of single figures; but, if of the whole manner of treating his
+subject, it is not likely that he would have thought of more than one
+work for his imitation. The fact is, Sir David Wilkie's pictures show
+that he did carry this practice too far--for there is scarcely a picture
+of his that does not show patches of imitations, that are not always
+congruous with each other; there is too often in one piece, a bit of
+Rembrandt, a bit of Velasquez, a bit of Ostade, or others. The most
+perfect, as a whole, is his "Chelsea Pensioners." We do not quite
+understand the brew of study fermenting an accumulation of knowledge,
+and imagination exalting it. "An accumulation of knowledge impregnated
+his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination;" this is very
+ambitious, but not very intelligible. He speaks of Wilkie attracting the
+attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider
+criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following
+passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student
+to study the great book of nature, without being biassed by what has
+been done by other painters; it is as absurd as if they would recommend
+a youth to learn astronomy by lying in the fields, and looking on the
+stars, without reference to the works of Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or of
+Newton." There is indeed a world of cant in the present day, that a man
+must do all to his own unprejudiced reason, contemning all that has been
+done before him. We have just now been looking at a pamphlet on
+Materialism (a pamphlet of most ambitious verbiage,) in which, with
+reference to all former education, we are "the slaves of prejudice;" yet
+the author modestly requires that minds--we beg his pardon, we have _no
+minds_--intellects must be _trained_ to his mode of thinking, ere they
+can arrive at the truth and the perfection of human nature. If this
+training is prejudice in one set of teachers, may it not be in another?
+We continually hear artists recommend nature without "a prejudice in
+favour of old masters." Such artists are not likely to eclipse the fame
+of those great men, the study of whose works has so long _prejudiced_
+the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows that art is not imitation, but is under
+the influence and direction of the imagination, and in what manner
+poetry, painting, acting, gardening, and architecture, depart from
+nature. However good it is to study the beauties of artists, this is
+only to know art through them. The principles of painting remain to be
+compared with those of other arts, all of them with human nature. All
+arts address themselves only to two faculties of the mind, its
+imagination and its sensibility. We have feeling, and an instantaneous
+judgment, the result of the experience of life, and reasonings which we
+cannot trace. It is safer to trust to this feeling and judgment, than
+endeavour to control and direct art upon a supposition of what ought in
+reason to be the end or means. We should, therefore, most carefully
+store first impressions. They are true, though we know not the process
+by which the first conviction is formed. Partial and after reasoning
+often serves to destroy that character, the truth of which came upon us
+as with an instinctive knowledge. We often reason ourselves into narrow
+and partial theories, not aware that "_real_ principles of _sound
+reason_, and of so much more weight and importance, are involved, and
+as it were lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment.
+Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine every thing; at this
+minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way
+to feeling." Sir Joshua again refers to the mistaken views of art, and
+taken too by not the poorest minds, "that it entirely or mainly depends
+on imitation." Plato, even in this respect, misleads by a partial
+theory. It is with "such a false view that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to
+distinguish even Raffaelle himself, whom our enthusiasm honours with the
+name divine. The same sentiment is adopted by Pope in his epitaph on Sir
+Godfrey Kneller; and he turns the panegyric solely on imitation as it is
+a sort of deception." It is, undoubtedly, most important that the world
+should be taught to honour art for its highest qualities; until this is
+done, the profession will be a degradation. So far from painting being
+imitation, he proceeds to show that "it is, and ought to be, in many
+points of view, and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external
+nature." Civilization is not the gross state of nature; imagination is
+the result of cultivation, of civilization; it is to this state of
+nature art must be more closely allied. We must not appeal for judgment
+upon art to those who have not acquired the faculty to admire. The
+lowest style of all arts please the uncultivated. But, to speak of the
+unnaturalness of art--let it be illustrated by poetry, which speaks in
+language highly artificial, and "a construction of measured words, such
+as never is nor ever was used by man." Now, as there is in the human
+mind "a sense of congruity, coherence, and consistency," which must be
+gratified; so, having once assumed a language and style not adopted in
+common discourse, "it is required that the sentiments also should be in
+the same proportion raised above common nature." There must be an
+agreement of all the parts with the whole. He recognizes the chorus of
+the ancient drama, and the recitative of the Italian opera as natural,
+under this view. "And though the most violent passions, the highest
+distress, even death itself, are expressed in singing or recitative, I
+would not admit as sound criticism the condemnation of such exhibitions
+on account of their being unnatural." "Shall reason stand in the way,
+and tell us that we ought not to like what we know we do like, and
+prevent us from feeling the full effect of this complicated exertion of
+art? It appears to us that imagination is that gift to man, to be
+attained by cultivation, that enables him to rise above and out of his
+apparent nature; it is the source of every thing good and great, we had
+almost said of every virtue. The parent of all arts, it is of a higher
+devotion; it builds and adorns temples more worthy of the great Maker of
+all, and praises Him in sounds too noble for the common intercourse and
+business of life, which demand of the most cultivated that they put
+themselves upon a lower level than they are capable of assuming. So
+far, therefore, is a servile imitation from being necessary, that
+whatever is familiar, or in any way reminds us of what we see and hear
+every day, perhaps does not belong to the higher provinces of art,
+either in poetry or painting. The mind is to be transported, as
+Shakspeare expresses it, _beyond the ignorant present_, to ages past.
+Another and a higher order of beings is supposed, and to those beings
+every thing which is introduced into the work must correspond." He
+speaks of a picture by Jan Steen, the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," wherein
+the common nature, with the silks and velvets, would make one think the
+painter had intended to burlesque his subject. "Ill taught reason" would
+lead us to prefer a portrait by Denner to one by Titian or Vandyke.
+There is an eloquent passage, showing that landscape painting should in
+like manner appeal to the imagination; we are only surprised that the
+author of this description should have omitted, throughout these
+Discourses, the greatest of all landscape painters, whose excellence he
+should seem to refer to by his language. "Like the poet, he makes the
+elements sympathize with his subject, whether the clouds roll in
+volumes, like those of Titian or Salvator Rosa--or, like those of
+Claude, are gilded with the setting sun; whether the mountains have
+hidden and bold projections, or are gently sloped; whether the branches
+of his trees shoot out abruptly in right angles from their trunks, or
+follow each other with only a gentle inclination. All these
+circumstances contribute to the general character of the work, whether
+it be of the elegant or of the more sublime kind. If we add to this the
+powerful materials of lightness and darkness, over which the artist has
+complete dominion, to vary and dispose them as he pleases--to diminish
+or increase them, as will best suit his purpose, and correspond to the
+general idea of his work; a landscape, thus conducted, under the
+influence of a poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the
+more ordinary and common views, as Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso"
+have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a picture
+would make a more forcible impression on the mind than the real scenes,
+were they presented before us." We have quoted the above passage,
+because it is wanted--we are making great mistakes in that delightful,
+and (may we not say?) that high branch of art. He pursues the same
+argument with regard to acting, and condemns the _ignorant_ praise
+bestowed by Fielding on Garrick. Not an idea of deception enters the
+mind of actor or author. On the stage, even the expression of strong
+passion must be without the natural distortion and screaming voice.
+Transfer, he observes, acting to a private room, and it would be
+ridiculous. "Quid enim deformius, quum scenam in vitam transferre?" Yet
+he gives here a caution, "that no art can be grafted with success on
+another art." "If a painter should endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp
+and parade of dress and attitude, instead of that simplicity which is
+not a greater beauty in life than it is in painting, we should condemn
+such pictures, as painted in the meanest style." What will our
+academician, Mr Maclise, say of this remark? He then adduces gardening
+in support of his theory,--"nature to advantage dressed," "beautiful and
+commodious for the recreation of man." We cannot, however, go with Sir
+Joshua, who adds, that "so dressed, it is no longer a subject for the
+pencil of a landscape painter, as all landscape painters know." It is
+certainly unlike the great landscape he has described, but not very
+unlike Claude's, nor out of the way of his pencil. We have in our mind's
+eye a garden scene by Vander Heyden, most delightful, most elegant. It
+is some royal garden, with its proper architecture, the arch, the steps,
+and balustrades, and marble walks. The queen of the artificial paradise
+is entering, and in the shade with her attendants, but she will soon
+place her foot upon the prepared sunshine. Courtiers are here and there
+walking about, or leaning over the balustrades. All is elegance--a scene
+prepared for the recreation of pure and cultivated beings. We cannot
+say the picture is not landscape. We are sure it gave us ten times more
+pleasure than ever we felt from any of our landscape views, with which
+modern landscape painting has covered the walls of our exhibitions, and
+brought into disrepute our "annuals." He proceeds to architecture, and
+praises Vanburgh for his poetical imagination; though he, with Perrault,
+was a mark for the wits of the day.[11] Sir Joshua points to the façade
+of the Louvre, Blenheim, and Castle Howard, as "the fairest ornaments."
+He finishes this admirable discourse with the following eloquent
+passage:--"It is allowed on all hands, that facts and events, however
+they may bind the historian, have no dominion over the poet or the
+painter. With us history is made to bend and conform to this great idea
+of art. And why? Because these arts, in their highest province, are not
+addressed to the gross senses; but to the desires of the mind, to that
+spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed
+and pent up by the world which is about us. Just so much as our art has
+of this, just so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it
+exhibits; and those of our artists who possessed this mark of
+distinction in the highest degree, acquired from thence the glorious
+appellation of divine.
+
+     [11] The reader will remember the supposed epitaph,
+             "Lie heavy on him, earth, for he
+              Laid many a heavy load on thee."
+
+Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse are not important to art. There is
+an amusing one on acting, that discusses the question of naturalness on
+the stage, and with some pleasant anecdotes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is chiefly occupied with the character of
+Gainsborough, and landscape painting. It has brought about him, and his
+name, a hornet's nest of critics, in consequence of some remarks upon a
+picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some
+degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has been said that Wilson and
+Gainsborough never liked each other. It is a well-known anecdote that
+Sir Joshua, at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough, adding "the
+greatest landscape painter of the age," to which Wilson, at whom the
+words were supposed to be aimed, dryly added, "and the greatest portrait
+painter too." We can, especially under circumstances, for there had been
+a coolness between the President and Gainsborough, pardon the too
+favourable view taken of Gainsborough's landscape pictures. He was
+unquestionably much greater as a portrait painter. The following account
+of the interview with Gainsborough upon his death-bed, is touching, and
+speaks well of both:--"A few days before he died he wrote me a letter,
+to express his acknowledgments for the good opinion I entertained of his
+abilities, and the manner in which (he had been informed) I always spoke
+of him; and desired that he might see me once before he died. I am aware
+how flattering it is to myself to be thus connected with the dying
+testimony which this excellent painter bore to his art. But I cannot
+prevail upon myself to suppress that I was not connected with him by any
+habits of familiarity. If any little jealousies had subsisted between
+us, they were forgotten in these moments of sincerity; and he turned
+towards me as one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who
+deserved his good opinion by being sensible of his excellence. Without
+entering into a detail of what passed at this last interview, the
+impression of it upon my mind was, that his regret at losing life was
+principally the regret of leaving his art; and more especially as he now
+began, he said, to see what his deficiencies were; which, he said, he
+flattered himself in his last works were in some measure supplied." When
+the Discourse was delivered, Raffaelle Mengs and Pompeo Batoni were
+great names. Sir Joshua foretells their fall from that high estimation.
+Andrea Sacchi, and "_perhaps_" Carlo Maratti, he considers the "ultimi
+Romanorum." He prefers "the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works
+of those regular graduates in the great historical style." He gives some
+account of the "customs and habits of this extraordinary man."
+Gainsborough's love for his art was remarkable. He was ever remarking to
+those about him any peculiarity of countenance, accidental combination
+of figures, effects of light and shade, in skies, in streets, and in
+company. If he met a character he liked, he would send him home to his
+house. He brought into his painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, &c. He
+even formed models of landscapes on his table, composed of broken
+stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which, magnified,
+became rocks, trees, and water. Most of this is the common routine of
+every artist's life; the modelling his landscapes in the manner
+mentioned, Sir Joshua himself seems to speak doubtingly about. It in
+fact shows, that in Gainsborough there was a poverty of invention; his
+scenes are of the commonest kind, such as few would stop to admire in
+nature; and, when we consider the wonderful variety that nature did
+present to him, it is strange that his sketches and compositions should
+have been so devoid of beauty. He was in the habit of painting by night,
+a practice which Reynolds recommends, and thought it must have been the
+practice of Titian and Coreggio. He might have mentioned the portrait of
+Michael Angelo with the candle in his cap and a mallet in his hand.
+Gainsborough was ambitious of attaining excellence, regardless of
+riches. The style chosen by Gainsborough did not require that he should
+go out of his own country. No argument is to be drawn from thence, that
+travelling is not desirable for those who choose other walks of
+art--knowing that "the language of the art must be learned somewhere,"
+he applied himself to the Flemish school, and certainly with advantage,
+and occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers, and Vandyke. Granting
+him as a painter great merit, Sir Joshua doubts whether he excelled most
+in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures. Few now will doubt upon the
+subject--next to Sir Joshua, he was the greatest portrait painter we
+have had, so as to be justly entitled to the fame of being one of the
+founders of the English School. He did not attempt historical painting;
+and here Sir Joshua contrasts him with Hogarth; who did so
+injudiciously. It is strange that Sir Joshua should have characterised
+Hogarth as having given his attention to "the Ridicule of Life." We
+could never see any thing ridiculous in his deep tragedies. Gainsborough
+is praised in that he never introduced "mythological learning" into his
+pictures. "Our late ingenious academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been
+guilty, like many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and
+goddesses, ideal beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to
+receive such personages. His landscapes were in reality too near common
+nature to admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in
+a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many
+figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress, and
+some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by lightning:
+had not the painter injudiciously, (as I think,) rather chosen that
+their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky
+with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the
+children of Niobe." This is the passage that gave so much offence;
+foolish admirers will fly into flame at the slightest spark--the
+question should have been, is the criticism just, not whether Sir Joshua
+had been guilty of the same error--but we like critics, the only true
+critics, who give their reason: and so did Sir Joshua. "To manage a
+subject of this kind a peculiar style of art is required; and it can
+only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we
+adopt the character of the landscape, and that too in all its parts, to
+the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult
+adventure, and requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, like that
+of Nicolo Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture alluded to, the first
+idea that presents itself is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so
+uncommon a situation as that in which Apollo is placed: for the clouds
+on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to support
+him--they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the receptacle
+of a human figure, and they do not possess, in any respect, that
+romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and which
+alone can harmonize with poetical stories." We presume Reynolds alludes
+to the best of the two Niobes by Wilson--that in the National Gallery.
+The other is villanously faulty as a composition, where loaf is piled
+upon loaf for rock and castle, and the tree is common and hedge-grown,
+for the purpose of making gates; but the other would have been a fine
+picture, not of the historical class--the parts are all common, the
+little blown about underwood is totally deficient in all form and
+character--rocks and trees, and they do not, as in a former
+discourse--Reynolds had laid down that they should--sympathize with the
+subject; then, as to the substance of the cloud, he is right--it is not
+voluminous, it is mere vapour. In the received adoption of clouds as
+supporting figures, they are, at least, pillowy, capacious, and
+round--here it is quite otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well call it a
+little Apollo, with that immense cloud above him, which is in fact too
+much a portrait of a cloud, too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject
+where the sky is not to be all in all. We do not say it is not fine and
+grand, and what you please; but it is not subordinate, it casts its
+lightning as from its own natural power, there was no need of a god's
+assistance.
+
+    "Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;"
+
+and the action does not take place in a "prepared" landscape. There is
+nothing to take us back to a fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust to
+Wilson's merits, for he calls it, notwithstanding this defect, "a very
+admirable picture;" which picture will, we suspect, in a few years lose
+its principal charm, if it has not lost it; the colour is sadly
+changing, there is now little aerial in the sky. It is said of Wilson,
+that he ridiculed the experiments of Sir Joshua, and spoke of using
+nothing but "honest linseed"--to which, however, he added varnishes and
+wax, as will easily be seen in those pictures of his which have so
+cracked--and now lose their colour. "Honest" linseed appears to have
+played him a sad trick, or he to have played a trick upon honest
+linseed. Sir Joshua, however, to his just criticism, adds the best
+precept, example--and instances two pictures, historical landscape,
+"Jacob's Dream"--which was exhibited a year or two ago in the
+Institution, Pall-Mall--by Salvator Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian
+Bourdon, "The Return of the Ark from Captivity," now in the National
+Gallery. The latter picture, as a composition, is not perhaps good--it
+is cut up into too many parts, and those parts are not sufficiently
+poetical; in its hue, it may be appropriate. The other, "Jacob's Dream"
+is one of the finest by the master--there is an extraordinary boldness
+in the clouds, an uncommon grandeur, strongly marked, sentient of
+angelic visitants. This picture has been recently wretchedly engraved in
+mezzotinto; all that is in the picture firm and hard, is in the print
+soft, fuzzy, and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats very tenderly the
+mistaken manner of Gainsborough in his late pictures, the "odd scratches
+and marks." "This chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
+kind of magic at a certain distance, assumes form, and all their parts
+seem to drop into their places, so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of
+chance and heavy negligence." The _heavy_ negligence happily describes
+the fault of the manner. It is horribly manifest in that magnitude of
+vulgarity for landscape, the "Market Cart" in our National Gallery, and
+purchased at we know not what vast sum, and presented by the governors
+of the institution to the nation. We have a very high opinion of the
+genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, with
+very few exceptions. His portraits have an air of truth never exceeded,
+and that set off with great power and artistical skill; and his rustic
+children are admirable. He stands alone, and never has had a successful
+imitator. The mock sentimentality, the affected refinement, which has
+been added to his simple style by other artists, is disgusting in the
+extreme. Gainsborough certainly studied colour with great success. He is
+both praised and blamed for a lightness of manner and effect possessed
+"to an unexampled degree of excellence;" but "the sacrifice which he
+made, to this ornament of our art, was too great." We confess we do not
+understand Sir Joshua, nor can we reconcile "the _heavy_ negligence"
+with this "lightness of manner." Mr Burnet, in one of his notes,
+compares Wilson with Gainsborough; he appears to give the preference to
+Wilson--why does he not compare Gainsborough with Sir Joshua himself?
+the rivalry should have been in portrait. There is a long note upon Sir
+Joshua's remarks upon Wilson's "Niobe." We are not surprised at
+Cunningham's "Castigation." He did not like Sir Joshua, and could not
+understand nor value his character. This is evident in his Life of the
+President. Cunningham must have had but an ill-educated classic eye when
+he asserted so grandiloquently,--"He rose at once from the tame
+insipidity of common scenery into natural grandeur and magnificence; his
+streams seem all abodes for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts for the
+muses, and his temples worthy of gods,"--a passage, we think, most
+worthy the monosyllable commonly used upon such occasions by the manly
+and simple-minded Mr Burchell. That Sir Joshua occasionally transgressed
+in his wanderings into mythology, it would be difficult to deny; nor was
+it his only transgression from his legitimate ground, as may be seen in
+his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique
+upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may
+not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the
+bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the
+drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought
+against him, it is without attention to their application in his
+critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical nor
+voluminous--faults that do not attach to the clouds, if clouds they must
+be in the picture (the finest of Sir Joshua's works) of Mrs Siddons as
+the Tragic Muse. It is not our business to enter upon the supposed fact,
+that Sir Joshua was jealous of Wilson; the one was a polished, the other
+perhaps a somewhat coarse man. We have only to see if the criticism be
+just. In this Discourse Sir Joshua has the candour to admit, that there
+were at one time jealousies between him and Gainsborough; there may have
+been between him and Wilson, but, at all events, we cannot take a just
+criticism as a proof of it, or we must convict him, and all others too,
+of being jealous of artists and writers whose works they in any manner
+censure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE.--We come now to Sir Joshua's last Discourse, in
+which the President takes leave of the Academy, reviews his
+"Discourses," and concludes with recommending the study of Michael
+Angelo.
+
+Having gone along with the President of the Academy in the pursuit of
+the principles of the art in these Discourses, and felt a portion of the
+enthusiasm which he felt, and knew so well how to impart to others, we
+come to this last Discourse, with a melancholy knowledge that it was the
+last; and reflect with pain upon that cloud which so soon interposed
+between Reynolds and at least the practical enjoyment of his art. He
+takes leave of the Academy affectionately, and, like a truth-loving man
+to the last, acknowledges the little contentions (in so softening a
+manner does he speak of the "rough hostility of Barry," and "oppositions
+of Gainsborough") which "ought certainly," says he, "to be lost among
+ourselves in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements: every
+controversy ought to be--I am persuaded will be--sunk in our zeal for
+the perfection of our common art." "My age, and my infirmities still
+more than my age, make it probable that this will be the last time I
+shall have the honour of addressing you from this place." This last
+visit seemed to be threatened with a tragical end;--the circumstance
+showed the calm mind of the President; it was characteristic of the man
+who would die with dignity, and gracefully. A large assembly were
+present, of rank and importance, besides the students. The pressure was
+great--a beam in the floor gave way with a loud crash; a general rush
+was made to the door, all indiscriminately falling one over the other,
+except the President, who kept his seat "silent and unmoved." The floor
+only sunk a little, was soon supported, and Sir Joshua recommenced his
+Discourse.
+
+    "Justum et tenacem propositi
+    Impavidum ferient ruinæ."
+
+He compliments the Academy upon the ability of the professors, speaks
+with diffidence of his power as a writer, (the world has in this respect
+done him justice;) but that he had come not unprepared upon the subject
+of art, having reflected much upon his own and the opinions of others.
+He found in the art many precepts and rules, not reconcilable with each
+other. "To clear away those difficulties and reconcile those contrary
+opinions, it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it
+may be called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea
+of nature from the more narrow and confined: that which addresses itself
+to the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye. In
+consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of our art to
+which those different truths were referred, were perceived to make so
+wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that they seemed
+scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different
+rules and regulations which presided over each department of art,
+followed of course; every mode of excellence, from the grand style of
+the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still life,
+had its due weight and value--fitted to some class or other; and nothing
+was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that
+perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some
+time experienced from the variety of styles, and the variety of
+excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope, in some
+measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for himself
+what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit." Besides the
+practice of art, the student must think, and speculate, and consider
+"upon what ground the fabric of our art is built." An artist suffers
+throughout his whole life, from uncertain, confused, and erroneous
+opinions. We are persuaded there would be fewer fatal errors were these
+Discourses more in the hands of our present artists--"Nocturnâ versate
+manu, versate diurnâ."--An example is given of the mischief of erroneous
+opinions. "I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with
+a student of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the
+qualities requisite to make a great artist, if he had suffered his taste
+and feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He
+saw and felt the excellences of the great works of art with which we
+were surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that nature
+which is so admirable in the inferior schools,--and he supposed with
+Felebien, Du Piles, and other theorists, that such an union of different
+excellences would be the perfection of art. He was not aware that the
+narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence in the works of
+those great artists, would have destroyed the grandeur of the general
+ideas which he admired, and which was indeed the cause of his
+admiration. My opinions being then confused and unsettled, I was in
+danger of being borne down by this plausible reasoning, though I
+remember I then had a dawning suspicion that it was not sound doctrine;
+and at the same time I was unwilling obstinately to refuse assent to
+what I was unable to confute." False and low views of art are now so
+commonly taken both in and out of the profession, that we have not
+hesitated to quote the above passage; the danger Sir Joshua confesses he
+was in, is common, and demands the warning. To make it more direct we
+should add, "Read his Discourses." Again, without intending to fetter
+the student's mind to a particular method of study, he urges the
+necessity and wisdom of previously obtaining the appropriated
+instruments of art, in a first correct design, and a plain manly
+colouring, before any thing more is attempted. He does not think it,
+however, of very great importance whether or not the student aim first
+at grace and grandeur before he has learned correctness, and adduces the
+example of Parmegiano, whose first public work was done when a boy, the
+"St Eustachius" in the Church of St Petronius, in Bologna--one of his
+last is the "Moses breaking the Tables," in Parma. The former has
+grandeur and incorrectness, but "discovers the dawnings of future
+greatness." In mature age he had corrected his defects, and the drawing
+of his Moses was equally admirable with the grandeur of the
+conception--an excellent plate is given of this figure by Mr Burnet. The
+fact is, the impulse of the mind is not to be too much restrained--it is
+better to give it its due and first play, than check it until it has
+acquired correctness--good sense first or last, and a love of the art,
+will generally insure correctness in the end; the impulses often
+checked, come with weakened power, and ultimately refuse to come at all;
+and each time that they depart unsatisfied, unemployed, take away with
+them as they retire a portion of the fire of genius. Parmegiano formed
+himself upon Michael Angelo: Michael Angelo brought the art to a
+"sudden maturity," as Homer and Shakspeare did theirs. "Subordinate
+parts of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow
+and progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour of
+imagination, generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty."
+Correctness of drawing and imagination, the one of mechanical genius the
+other of poetic, undoubtedly work together for perfection--"a confidence
+in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic." He expresses his
+surprise that the race of painters, before Michael Angelo, never thought
+of transferring to painting the grandeur they admired in ancient
+sculpture. "Raffaelle himself seemed to be going on very contentedly in
+the dry manner of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael Angelo had never
+appeared, the art might still have continued in the same style." "On
+this foundation the Caracci built the truly great academical Bolognian
+school; of which the first stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi." The
+Caracci called him "nostro Michael Angelo riformato." His figure of
+Polyphemus, which had been attributed to Michael Angelo in Bishop's
+"Ancient Statues," is given in a plate by Mr Burnet. The Caracci he
+considers sufficiently succeeded in the mechanical, not in "the divine
+part which addresses itself to the imagination," as did Tibaldi and
+Michael Angelo. They formed, however, a school that was "most
+respectable," and "calculated to please a greater number." The Venetian
+school advanced "the dignity of their style, by adding to their
+fascinating powers of colouring something of the strength of Michael
+Angelo." Here Sir Joshua seems to contradict his former assertion; but
+as he is here abridging, as it were, his whole Discourses, he cannot
+avoid his own observations. It was a point, however, upon which he was
+still doubtful; for he immediately adds--"At the same time it may still
+be a doubt, how far their ornamental elegance would be an advantageous
+addition to his grandeur. But if there is any manner of painting, which
+may be said to unite kindly with his (Michael Angelo's) style, it is
+that of Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours are left
+on the canvass, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from congenial
+mind, equally disdainful of vulgar criticism. He is reminded of a remark
+of Johnson's, that Pope's Homer, had it not been clothed with graces and
+elegances not in Homer, would have had fewer readers, thus justifying by
+example and authority of Johnson, the graces of the Venetian school.
+Some Flemish painters at "the great era of our art" took to their
+country "as much of this grandeur as they could carry." It did not
+thrive, but "perhaps they contributed to prepare the way for that free,
+unconstrained, and liberal outline, which was afterwards introduced by
+Rubens, through the medium of the Venetian painters." The grandeur of
+style first discovered by Michael Angelo passed through Europe, and
+totally "changed the whole character and style of design. His works
+excite the same sensation as the Epic of Homer. The Sybils, the statue
+of Moses, "come nearer to a comparison with his Jupiter, his demigods,
+and heroes; those Sybils and prophets being a kind of intermediate
+beings between men and angels. Though instances may be produced in the
+works of other painters, which may justly stand in competition with
+those I have mentioned, such as the 'Isaiah,' and 'Vision of Ezekiel,'
+by Raffaelle, the 'St Mark' of Frate Bartolomeo, and many others; yet
+these, it must be allowed, are inventions so much in Michael Angelo's
+manner of thinking, that they may be truly considered as so many rays
+which discover manifestly the centre from whence they emanated." The
+style of Michael Angelo is so highly artificial that the mind must be
+cultivated to receive it; having once received it, the mind is improved
+by it, and cannot go very far back. Hence the hold this great style has
+had upon all who are most learned in art, and upon nearly all painters
+in the best time of art. As art multiplies, false tastes will arise, the
+early painters had not so much to unlearn as modern artists. Where
+Michael Angelo is not felt, there is a lost taste to recover. Sir Joshua
+recommends young artists to follow Michael Angelo as he did the ancient
+sculptors. "He began, when a child, a copy of a mutilated Satyr's head,
+and finished in his model what was wanting in the original." So would he
+recommend the student to take his figures from Michael Angelo, and to
+change, and alter, and add other figures till he has caught the manner.
+Change the purpose, and retain the attitude, as did Titian. By habit of
+seeing with this eye of grandeur, he will select from nature all that
+corresponds with this taste. Sir Joshua is aware that he is laying
+himself open to sarcasm by his advice, but asserts the courage becoming
+a teacher addressing students: "they both must equally dare, and bid
+defiance to narrow criticism and vulgar opinion." It is the conceited
+who think that art is nothing but inspiration; and such appropriate it
+in their own estimation; but it is to be learned,--if so, the right
+direction to it is of vast importance; and once in the right direction,
+labour and study will accomplish the better aspirations of the artist.
+Michael Angelo said of Raffaelle, that he possessed not his art by
+nature but by long study. "Che Raffaelle non ebbe quest' arte da natura,
+ma per longo studio." Raffaelle and Michael Angelo were rivals, but ever
+spoke of each other with the respect and veneration they felt, and the
+true meaning of the passage was to the praise of Raffaelle; those were
+not the days when men were ashamed of being laborious,--and Raffaelle
+himself "thanked God that he was born in the same age with that
+painter."--"I feel a self-congratulation," adds Sir Joshua, "in knowing
+myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect,
+not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my
+admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last
+words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place,
+might be the name of Michael Angelo." They were his last words from the
+academical chair. He died about fourteen months after the delivery of
+this Discourse. Mr Burnet has given five excellent plates to this
+Discourse--one from Parmegiano, one from Tibaldi, one from Titian, one
+from Raffaelle, and one from Michael Angelo. Mr Burnet's first note
+repeats what we have again and again elsewhere urged, the advantage of
+establishing at our universities, Oxford and Cambridge, Professorships
+of Painting--infinite would be the advantage to art, and to the public.
+We do not despair. Mr Burnet seems to fear incorrect drawing will arise
+from some passages, which he supposes encourages it, in these
+Discourses; and fearing it, very properly endeavours to correct the
+error in a note. We had intended to conclude this paper with some few
+remarks upon Sir Joshua, his style, and influence upon art, but we have
+not space. Perhaps we may fulfil this part of our intention in another
+number of Maga.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.
+
+        Grief hath been known to turn the young head grey--
+        To silver over in a single day
+        The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime
+        Scarcely o'erpast: as in the fearful time
+        Of Gallia's madness, that discrownèd head
+        Serene, that on the accursed altar bled
+        Miscall'd of Liberty. Oh! martyr'd Queen!
+        What must the sufferings of that night have been--
+        _That one_--that sprinkled thy fair tresses o'er
+        With time's untimely snow! But now no more
+        Lovely, august, unhappy one! of thee--
+        I have to tell an humbler history;
+        A village tale, whose only charm, in sooth,
+        (If any) will be sad and simple truth.
+
+        "Mother," quoth Ambrose to his thrifty dame--
+        So oft our peasant's use his wife to name,
+        "Father" and "Master" to himself applied,
+        As life's grave duties matronize the bride--
+        "Mother," quoth Ambrose, as he faced the north,
+        With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth
+        To his day labour, from the cottage door--
+        "I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before,
+        There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton[12] roar?
+        It's brewing up down westward; and look there,
+        One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair;
+        And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on,
+        As threats, the waters will be out anon.
+        That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way--
+        Best let the young ones bide from school to-day."
+
+        "Do, mother, do!" the quick-ear'd urchins cried;
+        Two little lasses to the father's side
+        Close clinging, as they look'd from him, to spy
+        The answering language of the mother's eye.
+        _There_ was denial, and she shook her head:
+        "Nay, nay--no harm will come to them," she said,
+        "The mistress lets them off these short dark days
+        An hour the earlier; and our Liz, she says,
+        May quite be trusted--and I know 'tis true--
+        To take care of herself and Jenny too.
+        And so she ought--she's seven come first of May--
+        Two years the oldest: and they give away
+        The Christmas bounty at the school to-day."
+
+        The mother's will was law, (alas for her
+        That hapless day, poor soul!) _She_ could not err,
+        Thought Ambrose; and his little fair-hair'd Jane
+        (Her namesake) to his heart he hugg'd again,
+        When each had had her turn; she clinging so
+        As if that day she could not let him go.
+        But Labour's sons must snatch a hasty bliss
+        In nature's tend'rest mood. One last fond kiss,
+        "God bless my little maids!" the father said,
+        And cheerly went his way to win their bread.
+        Then might be seen, the playmate parent gone,
+        What looks demure the sister pair put on--
+        Not of the mother as afraid, or shy,
+        Or questioning the love that could deny;
+        But simply, as their simple training taught,
+        In quiet, plain straightforwardness of thought,
+        (Submissively resign'd the hope of play,)
+        Towards the serious business of the day.
+
+        To me there's something touching, I confess,
+        In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,
+        Seen often in some little childish face
+        Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace
+        (Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!)
+        The unnatural sufferings of the factory child,
+        But a staid quietness, reflective, mild,
+        Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes,
+        Sense of life's cares, without its miseries.
+
+        So to the mother's charge, with thoughtful brow,
+        The docile Lizzy stood attentive now;
+        Proud of her years and of imputed sense,
+        And prudence justifying confidence--
+        And little Jenny, more _demurely_ still,
+        Beside her waited the maternal will.
+        So standing hand in hand, a lovelier twain
+        Gainsb'rough ne'er painted: no--nor he of Spain,
+        Glorious Murillo!--and by contrast shown
+        More beautiful. The younger little one,
+        With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair,
+        By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair,
+        Sable and glossy as the raven's wing,
+        And lustrous eyes as dark.
+
+                               "Now, mind and bring
+        Jenny safe home," the mother said--"don't stay
+        To pull a bough or berry by the way:
+        And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast
+        Your little sister's hand, till you're quite past--
+        That plank's so crazy, and so slippery
+        (If not o'erflowed) the stepping-stones will be.
+        But you're good children--steady as old folk,
+        I'd trust ye any where." Then Lizzy's cloak,
+        A good grey duffle, lovingly she tied,
+        And amply little Jenny's lack supplied
+        With her own warmest shawl. "Be sure," said she,
+        "To wrap it round and knot it carefully
+        (Like this) when you come home; just leaving free
+        One hand to hold by. Now, make haste away--
+        Good will to school, and then good right to play."
+
+        Was there no sinking at the mother's heart,
+        When all equipt, they turn'd them to depart?
+        When down the lane, she watch'd them as they went
+        Till out of sight, was no forefeeling sent
+        Of coming ill? In truth I cannot tell:
+        Such warnings _have been sent_, we know full well,
+        And must believe--believing that they are--
+        In mercy then--to rouse--restrain--prepare.
+
+        And, now I mind me, something of the kind
+        Did surely haunt that day the mother's mind,
+        Making it irksome to bide all alone
+        By her own quiet hearth. Tho' never known
+        For idle gossipry was Jenny Gray,
+        Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay
+        At home with her own thoughts, but took her way
+        To her next neighbour's, half a loaf to borrow--
+        Yet might her store have lasted out the morrow.
+        --And with the loan obtain'd, she linger'd still--
+        Said she--"My master, if he'd had his will,
+        Would have kept back our little ones from school
+        This dreadful morning; and I'm such a fool,
+        Since they've been gone, I've wish'd them back. But then
+        It won't do in such things to humour men--
+        Our Ambrose specially. If let alone
+        He'd spoil those wenches. But it's coming on,
+        That storm he said was brewing, sure enough--
+        Well! what of that?--To think what idle stuff
+        Will come into one's head! and here with you
+        I stop, as if I'd nothing else to do--
+        And they'll come home drown'd rats. I must be gone
+        To get dry things, and set the kettle on."
+
+        His day's work done, three mortal miles and more
+        Lay between Ambrose and his cottage door.
+        A weary way, God wot! for weary wight!
+        But yet far off, the curling smoke in sight
+        From his own chimney, and his heart felt light.
+        How pleasantly the humble homestead stood,
+        Down the green lane by sheltering Shirley Wood!
+        How sweet the wafting of the evening breeze
+        In spring-time, from his two old cherry-trees
+        Sheeted with blossom! And in hot July
+        From the brown moor-track, shadowless and dry,
+        How grateful the cool covert to regain
+        Of his own _avenue_--that shady lane,
+        With the white cottage, in a slanting glow
+        Of sunset glory, gleaming bright below,
+        And jasmine porch, his rustic portico!
+
+        With what a thankful gladness in his face,
+        (Silent heart-homage--plant of special grace!)
+        At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace,
+        Would Ambrose send a loving look before;
+        Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door,
+        The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat
+        In welcome, with a more rejoicing note;
+        And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed,
+        All bristle, back, and tail, but "good at need,"
+        Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear;
+        But of all welcomes pleasantest, most dear,
+        The ringing voices, like sweet silver bells,
+        Of his two little ones. How fondly swells
+        The father's heart, as, dancing up the lane,
+        Each clasps a hand in her small hand again;
+        And each must tell her tale, and "say her say,"
+        Impeding as she leads, with sweet delay,
+        (Childhood's blest thoughtlessness!) his onward way.
+
+        And when the winter day closed in so fast,
+        Scarce for his task would dreary daylight last;
+        And in all weathers--driving sleet and snow--
+        Home by that bare, bleak moor-track must he go,
+        Darkling and lonely. Oh! the blessed sight
+        (His pole-star) of that little twinkling light
+        From one small window, thro' the leafless trees,
+        Glimmering so fitfully; no eye but his
+        Had spied it so far off. And sure was he,
+        Entering the lane, a steadier beam to see,
+        Ruddy and broad as peat-fed hearth could pour,
+        Streaming to meet him from the open door.
+        Then, tho' the blackbird's welcome was unheard--
+        Silenced by winter--note of summer bird
+        Still hail'd him from no mortal fowl alive,
+        But from the cuckoo-clock just striking five--
+        And Tinker's ear and Tinker's nose were keen--
+        Off started he, and then a form was seen
+        Dark'ning the doorway; and a smaller sprite,
+        And then another, peer'd into the night,
+        Ready to follow free on Tinker's track,
+        But for the mother's hand that held her back;
+        And yet a moment--a few steps--and there,
+        Pull'd o'er the threshold by that eager pair,
+        He sits by his own hearth, in his own chair;
+        Tinker takes post beside, with eyes that say,
+        "Master! we've done our business for the day."
+        The kettle sings, the cat in chorus purs,
+        The busy housewife with her tea-things stirs;
+        The door's made fast, the old stuff curtain drawn;
+        How the hail clatters! Let it clatter on.
+        How the wind raves and rattles! What cares he?
+        Safe housed, and warm beneath his own roof-tree,
+        With a wee lassie prattling on each knee.
+
+        Such was the hour--hour sacred and apart--
+        Warm'd in expectancy the poor man's heart.
+        Summer and winter, as his toil he plied,
+        To him and his the literal doom applied,
+        Pronounced on Adam. But the bread was sweet
+        So earn'd, for such dear mouths. The weary feet
+        Hope-shod, stept lightly on the homeward way;
+        So specially it fared with Ambrose Gray
+        That time I tell of. He had work'd all day
+        At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke
+        Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke,
+        And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that?
+        There was a treasure hidden in his hat--
+        A plaything for the young ones. He had found
+        A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round
+        For its long winter sleep; and all his thought
+        As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought
+        But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,
+        And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize,
+        When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer,
+        Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.
+
+        'Twas a wild evening--wild and rough. "I knew,"
+        Thought Ambrose, "those unlucky gulls spoke true--
+        And Gaffer Chewton never growls for nought--
+        I should be mortal 'mazed now, if I thought
+        My little maids were not safe housed before
+        That blinding hail-storm--ay, this hour and more--
+        Unless, by that old crazy bit of board,
+        They've not passed dry-foot over Shallow-ford,
+        That I'll be bound for--swollen as it must be ...
+        Well! if my mistress had been ruled by me ..."
+        But, checking the half-thought as heresy,
+        He look'd out for the Home-Star. There it shone,
+        And with a gladden'd heart he hasten'd on.
+
+        He's in the lane again--and there below,
+        Streams from the open doorway that red glow,
+        Which warms him but to look at. For his prize
+        Cautious he feels--all safe and snug it lies--
+        "Down Tinker!--down, old boy!--not quite so free--
+        The thing thou sniffest is no game for thee.--
+        But what's the meaning?--no look-out to-night!
+        No living soul a-stir!--Pray God, all's right!
+        Who's flittering round the peat-stack in such weather?
+        Mother!" you might have fell'd him with a feather
+        When the short answer to his loud--"Hillo!"
+        And hurried question--"Are they come?"--was--"No."
+
+        To throw his tools down--hastily unhook
+        The old crack'd lantern from its dusty nook,
+        And while he lit it, speak a cheering word,
+        That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,
+        Was but a moment's act, and he was gone
+        To where a fearful foresight led him on.
+        Passing a neighbour's cottage in his way--
+        Mark Fenton's--him he took with short delay
+        To bear him company--for who could say
+        What need might be? They struck into the track
+        The children should have taken coming back
+        From school that day; and many a call and shout
+        Into the pitchy darkness they sent out,
+        And, by the lantern light, peer'd all about,
+        In every road-side thicket, hole, and nook,
+        Till suddenly--as nearing now the brook--
+        Something brush'd past them. That was Tinker's bark--
+        Unheeded, he had follow'd in the dark,
+        Close at his master's heels, but, swift as light,
+        Darted before them now. "Be sure he's right--
+        He's on the track," cried Ambrose. "Hold the light
+        Low down--he's making for the water. Hark!
+        I know that whine--the old dog's found them, Mark."
+        So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on
+        Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!
+        And all his dull contracted light could show
+        Was the black void and dark swollen stream below.
+        "Yet there's life somewhere--more than Tinker's whine--
+        That's sure," said Mark. "So, let the lantern shine
+        Down yonder. There's the dog--and, hark!"
+
+                                      "Oh dear!"
+        And a low sob came faintly on the ear,
+        Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,
+        Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught
+        Fast hold of something--a dark huddled heap--
+        Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep,
+        For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd
+        By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt
+        Endways the broken plank, when it gave way
+        With the two little ones that luckless day!
+        "My babes!--my lambkins!" was the father's cry.
+        _One little voice_ made answer--"Here am I!"
+        'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouch'd, with face as white,
+        More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light,
+        Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips, drawn tight,
+        Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,
+        And eyes on some dark object underneath,
+        Wash'd by the turbid water, fix'd like stone--
+        One arm and hand stretch'd out, and rigid grown,
+        Grasping, as in the death-gripe--Jenny's frock.
+        There she lay drown'd. Could he sustain that shock,
+        The doating father? Where's the unriven rock
+        Can bide such blasting in its flintiest part
+        As that soft sentient thing--the human heart?
+
+        They lifted her from out her wat'ry bed--
+        Its covering gone, the lonely little head
+        Hung like a broken snowdrop all aside--
+        And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied,
+        Leaving _that_ free, about the child's small form,
+        As was her last injunction--"_fast_ and warm"--
+        Too well obeyed--too fast! A fatal hold
+        Affording to the scrag by a thick fold
+        That caught and pinn'd her in the river's bed,
+        While through the reckless water overhead
+        Her life-breath bubbled up.
+
+                                "She might have lived
+        Struggling like Lizzy," was the thought that rived
+        The wretched mother's heart when she knew all.
+        "But for my foolishness about that shawl--
+        And Master would have kept them back the day;
+        But I was wilful--driving them away
+        In such wild weather!"
+
+                           Thus the tortured heart,
+        Unnaturally against itself takes part,
+        Driving the sharp edge deeper of a woe
+        Too deep already. They had raised her now,
+        And parting the wet ringlets from her brow,
+        To that, and the cold cheek, and lips as cold,
+        The father glued his warm ones, ere they roll'd
+        Once more the fatal shawl--her winding-sheet--
+        About the precious clay. One heart still beat,
+        Warm'd by _his heart's_ blood. To his _only child_
+        He turn'd him, but her piteous moaning mild
+        Pierced him afresh--and now she knew him not.--
+        "Mother!"--she murmur'd--"who says I forgot?
+        Mother! indeed, indeed, I kept fast hold,
+        And tied the shawl quite close--she can't be cold--
+        But she won't move--we slipt--I don't know how--
+        But I held on--and I'm so weary now--
+        And it's so dark and cold! oh dear! oh dear!--
+        And she won't move--if daddy was but here!"
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Poor lamb--she wander'd in her mind, 'twas clear--
+        But soon the piteous murmur died away,
+        And quiet in her father's arms she lay--
+        They their dead burthen had resign'd, to take
+        The living so near lost. For her dear sake,
+        And one at home, he arm'd himself to bear
+        His misery like a man--with tender care,
+        Doffing his coat her shivering form to fold--
+        (His neighbour bearing _that_ which felt no cold,)
+        He clasp'd her close--and so, with little said,
+        Homeward they bore the living and the dead.
+
+        From Ambrose Gray's poor cottage, all that night,
+        Shone fitfully a little shifting light,
+        Above--below:--for all were watchers there,
+        Save one sound sleeper.--_Her_, parental care,
+        Parental watchfulness, avail'd not now.
+        But in the young survivor's throbbing brow,
+        And wandering eyes, delirious fever burn'd;
+        And all night long from side to side she turn'd,
+        Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,
+        With now and then the murmur--"She won't move"--
+        And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright
+        Shone on that pillow, passing strange the sight--
+        That young head's raven hair was streak'd with white!
+        No idle fiction this. Such things have been
+        We know. And _now I tell what I have seen_.
+
+        Life struggled long with death in that small frame,
+        But it was strong, and conquer'd. All became
+        As it had been with the poor family--
+        All--saving that which never more might be--
+        There was an empty place--they were but three.
+
+C.
+
+     [12] A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton
+     Bunny.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.
+
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak,
+lad? Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth,
+it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no
+issue at such capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face again.
+Prythee what, in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair Master
+Oliver?
+
+_Oliver_.--In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love
+and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a sort,
+unto my zeal.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em. I
+have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his
+devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do suspect,
+Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and nobody will
+promise or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did.
+So! because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as
+their representative in Parliament, thou art free of all men's houses,
+forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter
+for the house they have chaired thee unto than for mine. Yet I do not
+question but thou wilt be as troublesome and unruly there as here. Did I
+not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook when thou wert scarcely half the rogue
+thou art latterly grown up to? And yet wert thou immeasurably too big a
+one for it to hold.
+
+_Oliver_.--It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth
+the Lord had not touched me.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.
+
+_Oliver_.--Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill
+conditions, and that my name--even your godson's--stank in your
+nostrils.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough,
+that stank first; in my house, at least.[13] But perhaps there are worse
+maggots in stauncher mummeries.
+
+_Oliver_.--Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my
+urgency.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within
+it another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why thou shouldst
+stand before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun,
+counting the stones of the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head,
+I warrant thee. Come, put on thy beaver.
+
+_Oliver_.--Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered
+in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered
+at baptism for my good behaviour.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so
+presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to
+do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-hand
+business in the neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more have
+come under my archway.
+
+_Oliver_.--These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay in
+the hand of the potter.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in
+their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the
+wheel of these artificers; and little was left but rags when we got off.
+Sanctified folks are the cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and
+their Jordan tans and constringes us to the averdupoise of mummies.
+
+_Oliver_.--The Lord hath chosen his own vessels.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them
+anywhere on ass-back or cart, (cart preferably,) to rid our country of
+'em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we
+shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command in
+the army, and hast a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and stately piece
+of horse-flesh, I cannot but take it into my fancy that thou hast some
+commission of array or disarray to execute hereabout.
+
+_Oliver_.--With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of
+swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put back
+nor staid in anywise, as you bear testimony unto me, uncle Oliver.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Thou never art more
+pery than when it rains with thee. Wet days, among those of thy kidney,
+portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at?
+
+_Oliver_.--That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this
+work!
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--What work, prythee?
+
+_Oliver_.--I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in his loving-kindness
+having pity and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand,
+administer unto our necessities and righteously command us, _by the
+aforesaid as aforesaid_ (thus runs the commission) hither am I deputed
+(woe is me!) to levy certain fines in this county, or shire, on such as
+the Parliament in its wisdom doth style malignants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--If there is anything left about the house, never be over
+nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county or
+shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.
+
+_Oliver_.--O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be
+witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.
+
+_Oliver_.--From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose his
+servants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Then, faith! thou art his first butler.
+
+_Oliver_.--Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found worthy
+of advancement.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy
+own: he does not sniffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or
+unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for an
+hour's rest. Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest
+heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank it might: and my
+wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty near as commodious as that over-yonder at
+Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and places too! yet the
+cellar holds good.
+
+_Oliver_.--Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the other
+side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they
+are.
+
+_Oliver_.--They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I
+trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of
+tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in the
+outer court.
+
+_Oliver_.--Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the
+most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the
+sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--But who are they?
+
+_Oliver_.--The Lord knows. May-be priests, deacons, and such like.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my
+mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your
+behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-door. With your
+permission, or without it, I shall take the liberty to invite them to
+partake of my poor hospitality.
+
+_Oliver_.--But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances whereby
+it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure--not mine--not
+mine--but my milk must not flow for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--You may enter the house or remain where you are at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,[14] Oliver! (but God will not
+surely let this be,) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of
+doubtful fidelity in the service of the body.
+
+_Oliver_.--Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been
+taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in
+asking your worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the
+_men-at-belly_ under the custody of the _men-at-arms_? This pestilence,
+like unto one I remember to have read about in some poetry of Master
+Chapman's,[15] began with the dogs and the mules, and afterwards crope
+up into the breasts of men.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not
+let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting
+down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their
+colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
+
+_Oliver_.--Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or his Saints; no, not even
+stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth against
+those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they raise not
+up their voices to cry for our deliverance.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in college
+halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought hither?
+
+_Oliver_.--They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
+and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which,
+unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but
+simply to undertake awhile the heavier office of burser for them, to
+cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring of their plate; and to
+lay a list thereof, with a few specimens, before those who fight the
+fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abasement of the proud
+and the chastisement of worldlymindedness, may rejoice.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings.
+But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty
+and jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing
+a jocularity. Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who
+lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering
+and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant,
+but they were not all hypocritical; they had not always "_the Lord_" in
+their mouths.
+
+_Oliver_.--According to their own notions, they might have had at an
+outlay of a farthing.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out as
+any thing else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little the
+grimmer and sourer.
+
+But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
+hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and so
+lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.
+
+_Oliver_.--I alway bow submissively before the judgment of mine elders;
+and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with greater
+wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas! those
+collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if you
+measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
+challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
+earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision. Thus
+far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us forbearance and
+self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil spirit moving them
+thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most wisely, might have been
+useful and peaceful, and had formerly been so. Why then did they gird
+the sword of strife about their loins against the children of Israel? By
+their own declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies the
+most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully, and in the
+name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they? Instead of
+surrendering it like honest and conscientious men, they attacked me and
+my people on horseback, with syllogisms and centhymemes, and the Lord
+knows with what other such gimcracks, such venemous and rankling old
+weapons as those who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to
+lay aside. Learning should not make folks mockers--should not make folks
+malignants--should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for
+them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galloon. Tankards and wassil-bowls had
+stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt them.
+
+_Oliver_.--We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--How can these learned societies raise the money you exact
+from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
+
+_Oliver_.--In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
+college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed
+Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
+or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
+metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
+lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
+bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
+Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
+sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
+with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Well--at last thou hast some mercy.
+
+_Oliver_ (_aloud_.)--Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclan! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up behind
+you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you at the
+country-places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable
+that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office
+of discharging the account. If there be any spare beds at the inns,
+allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same--they being used to lie
+softly; and be not urgent that more than three lie in each--they being
+mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and unreproved any light bubble of
+pride or impetuosity, seeing that they have not alway been accustomed to
+the service of guards and ushers. The Lord be with ye!--Slow trot! And
+now, uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no longer your loving-kindness. I
+kiss you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and
+gratefully do I accept of your invitation to dine and lodge with you,
+albeit the least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. After the
+refreshment of needful food, more needful prayer, and that sleep which
+descendeth on the innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak
+I proceed on my journey Londonward.
+
+_Sir Oliver_ (_aloud_.)--Ho, there! (_To a servant_.)--Let dinner be
+prepared in the great diningroom; let every servant be in waiting, each
+in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed upon the
+table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the side-board: a
+gentleman by descent--a stranger, has claimed my hospitality. (_Servant
+goes_.)
+
+Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.
+
+     [13] See Forster's Life of Cromwell.
+
+     [14] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
+     possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting
+     Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has produced from its
+     first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon,
+     Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that
+     attended these leviathans through the intellectual deep. Newton
+     was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh,
+     Spenser, Hooker, Elliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney,
+     Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime; and
+     several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
+
+     [15] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CALEB STUKELY.
+
+PART XI.
+
+SAINTS AND SINNERS.
+
+
+The history of my youth is the history of my life. My contemporaries
+were setting out on their journey when my pilgrimage was at an end. I
+had drained the cup of experience before other men had placed it to
+their lips. The vicissitudes of all seasons occurred in one, and, before
+my spring had closed, I had felt the winter's gloominess and cold. The
+scattered and separated experiences that diversify and mark the passage
+of the "threescore years and ten," were collected and thrust into the
+narrow period of my nonage. Within that boundary, existence was
+condensed. It was the time of action and of suffering. I have passed
+from youth to maturity and decline gently and passively; and now, in the
+cool and quiet sunset, I repose, connected with the past only by the
+adhering memories that will not be excluded from my solitude. I have
+gathered upon my head the enduring snow of age; but it has settled there
+in its natural course, with no accompaniment of storm and tempest. I
+look back to the land over which I have journeyed, and through which I
+have been conveyed to my present humble resting-place, and I behold a
+broad extent of plain, spreading from my very feet, into the hazy
+distance, where all is cloud, mountain, tumult, and agitation. Heaven be
+praised, I can look back with gratitude, chastened and informed!
+
+Amongst all the startling and stirring events that crowded into the
+small division of time to which I refer, none had so confounded,
+perplexed, alarmed, and grieved me, as the discovery of Mr Clayton's
+criminality and falsehood. There are mental and moral concussions,
+which, like physical shocks, stun and stupify with their suddenness and
+violence. This was one of them. Months after I had been satisfied of his
+obliquity, it was difficult to _realize_ the conviction that truth and
+justice authoritatively demanded. When I thought of the minister--when
+his form presented itself to my mind's eye, as it did, day after day,
+and hour after hour, it was impossible to contemplate it with the
+aversion and distaste which were the natural productions of his own base
+conduct. I could see nothing but the figure and the lineaments of him,
+whose eloquence had charmed, whose benevolent hand had nourished and
+maintained me. There are likewise, in this mysterious state of life,
+paroxysms and intervals of disordered consciousness, which memory
+refuses to acknowledge or record; the epileptic's waking dream is
+one--an unreal reality. And similar to this was my impression of the
+late events. They lacked substantiality. Memory took no account of them,
+discarded them, and would connect the present only with the bright
+experience she had treasured up, prior to the dark distempered season. I
+could not hate my benefactor. I could not efface the image, which months
+of apparent love had engraven on my heart.
+
+Thrust from Mr Clayton's chapel, and unable to obtain admission
+elsewhere, I felt how insecure was my tenure of office. I prepared
+myself for dismissal, and hoped that, when the hour arrived, I should
+submit without repining. In the meanwhile, I was careful in the
+performance of every duty, and studious to give no cause, not the
+remotest, for complaint or dissatisfaction. It was not long, however,
+before signs of an altered state of things presented themselves to view.
+A straw tells which way the wind blows, and wisps began to fly in all
+directions. I found at length that I could do nothing right. To-day I
+was too indolent; to-morrow, too officious:--now I was too much of a
+gentlemen; and now not half gentlemanly enough. The hardest infliction
+to bear was the treatment of my new friend and colleague--of him who had
+given me kind warning and advice, when mischief was only threatening,
+but who, on the first appearance of trouble, took alarm, and deserted my
+side. The moment that he perceived my inevitable fate, he decided upon
+leaving me alone to fight my hard battle. At first he spoke to me with
+shyness and reserve; afterwards coolly, and soon, he said nothing at
+all. Sometimes, perhaps, if we were quite alone, and there was no chance
+whatever of discovery, he would venture half a word or so upon the
+convenient subject of the weather; but these occasions were very rare.
+If a superior were present, hurricanes would not draw a syllable from
+his careful lips; and, under the eye of the stout and influential Mr
+Bombasty, it was well for me if frowns and sneers were the only
+exhibitions of rudeness on the part of my worldly and far-seeing friend.
+Ah, Jacob Whining! With all your policy and sagacious selfishness, you
+found it difficult to protract your own official existence a few months
+longer. He had hardly congratulated himself upon the dexterity which had
+kept him from being involved in my misfortunes, before _he_ fell under
+the ban of _his_ church, like me was persecuted, and driven into the
+world a branded and excommunicated outcast. Mr Whining, however, who had
+learnt much in the world, and more in his _connexion_, was a cleverer
+and more fortunate man than this friend and coadjutor. He retired with
+his experience into Yorkshire, drew a small brotherhood about him, and
+in a short time became the revered and beloved founder of the numerous
+and far-spread sect of _Whiningtonians_!
+
+It was just a fortnight after my expulsion from the _Church_, that
+matters were brought to a crisis as far as I was concerned, by the
+determined tone and conduct of the gentleman at the head of our society.
+Mr Bombasty arrived one morning at the office, in a perturbed and
+anxious state, and requested my attendance in his private room. I waited
+upon him. Perspiration hung about his fleshy face--he wiped it off, and
+then began:
+
+"Young man," said he, "this won't do at all."
+
+"What, sir?" I asked.
+
+"Come, don't be impudent. You are done for, I can tell you."
+
+"How, sir?" I enquired. "What have I done?"
+
+"Where are the subscriptions that were due last Saturday?"
+
+"Not yet collected, sir."
+
+"What money have you belonging to the society?"
+
+"Not a sixpence, sir."
+
+"Young man," continued the lusty president in a solemn voice, "you are
+in a woeful state; you are living in the world without _a security_."
+
+"What is the matter, sir."
+
+"Matter!" echoed the gentleman.--"Matter with a man that has lost his
+security! Are you positive you have got no funds about you? Just look
+into your pocket, my friend, and make sure."
+
+"I have nothing, sir. Pray, tell me what I have done?"
+
+"Young man, holding the office that I hold, feeling as I feel, and
+knowing what I know, it would be perfect madness in me to have any thing
+to do with a man who has been given over by his security. Don't you
+understand me? Isn't that very good English? Mr Clayton will have
+nothing more to say to you. The society gives you warning."
+
+"May I not be informed, sir, why I am so summarily dismissed?"
+
+"Why, my good fellow, what is the matter with you? You seem remarkably
+stupid this morning. I can't beat about the bush with you. You must go."
+
+"Without having committed a fault?" I added, mournfully.
+
+"Sir," said the distinguished president, looking libraries at me, "when
+one mortal has become security for another mortal, and suddenly annuls
+and stultifies his bond, to say that the other mortal has committed a
+_fault_ is just to call brandy--_water_. Sir," continued Mr Bombasty,
+adjusting his India cravat, "that man has perpetrated a crime--a crime
+_primy facey--exy fishio_."
+
+I saw that my time was come, and I said nothing.
+
+"If," said Mr Bombasty, "you had lost your intellect, I am a voluntary
+contributor, and could have got you chains and a keeper in Bedlam. If
+you had broken a limb, I am a life-governor, and it would have been a
+pleasure to me to send you to the hospital. But you may as well ask me
+to put life into a dead man, as to be of service to a creature who has
+lost his security. You had better die at once. It would be a happy
+release. I speak as a friend."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said I.
+
+"I hear complaints against you, but I don't listen to them. Every thing
+is swallowed up in one remarkable fact. Your security has let you down.
+You must go about your business. I speak as the president of this
+Christian society, and not, I hope, without the feelings of a man. The
+treasurer will pay your salary immediately, and we dispense with your
+services."
+
+"What am I to do?" I asked, half aloud.
+
+"Just the best you can," answered the gentleman. "The audience is at an
+end."
+
+Mr Bombasty said no more, but drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box of
+enormous dimensions. From it he grasped between his thumb and finger a
+moderate handful of stable-smelling dust. His nose and India
+handkerchief partook of it in equal shares, and then he rang his bell
+with presidential dignity, and ordered up his customary lunch of chops
+and porter. A few hours afterwards I was again upon the world, ready to
+begin the fight of life anew, and armed with fifteen guineas for the
+coming struggle. Mr Clayton had kept his word with me, and did not
+desert me until I was once more fairly on the road to ruin.
+
+One of the first consequences of my unlooked-for meeting with the
+faithful Thompson, was the repayment of the five shillings which he had
+so generously spared me when I was about to leave him for Birmingham,
+without as many pence in my scrip. During my absence, however, fortune
+had placed my honest friend in a new relation to a sum of this value.
+Five shillings were not to him, as before, sixty pence. The proprietor
+of the house in which he lived, and which he had found it so difficult
+to let out to his satisfaction, had died suddenly, and had thought
+proper to bequeath to his tenant the bulk of his property, amounting,
+perhaps, to five thousand pounds. Thompson, who was an upholsterer by
+trade, left the workshop in which he was employed as journeyman
+immediately, and began to work upon his own account. He was a prosperous
+and a thriving man when I rejoined him. His manner was, as the reader
+has seen, kind and straightforward as ever, and the only change that his
+wealth had wrought in him, was that which gold may be supposed to work a
+heart alive to its duties, simple and honest in its intentions, and
+lacking only the means to make known its strong desire of usefulness.
+His generosity had kept pace with his success, his good wishes
+outstripped both. His home was finer, yet scarcely more sightly and
+happier than the one large room, which, with its complement of ten
+children, sire and dame, had still a nook for the needy and friendless
+stranger. The old house had been made over for a twelvemonth to the
+various tenants, free of all charge. At the end of that period it was
+the intention of Thompson to pull it down, and build a better in its
+place. A young widow, with her three orphans, lodged on the attic floor,
+and the grateful prayers of the four went far to establish the buoyancy
+of the landlord's spirit, and to maintain the smile that seldom departed
+from his manly cheek. Well might the poor creature, whom I once visited
+in her happy lodging, talk of the sin of destroying so comfortable a
+residence, and feel assured, that "let them build a palace, they would
+never equal the present house, or make a sleeping-room where a body
+might rest so peacefully and well." Thompson's mode of life had scarcely
+varied. He was not idle amongst his men. When labour was suspended, he
+was with his children; another had been added to the number, and there
+were now eleven to relieve him of the superabundant profits created in
+the manufactory. Mrs Thompson was still a noble housewife, worthy of her
+husband. All was care, cleanliness, and economy at home. Griping stint
+would never have been tolerated by the hospitable master, and virtuous
+plenty only was admitted by the prudent wife. Had there been a oneness
+in the religious views of this good couple, _Paradise_ would have been a
+word fit to write beneath the board that made known to men John
+Thompson's occupation; but this, alas! was wanting to complete a scene
+that otherwise looked rather like perfection. The great enemy of man
+seeks in many ways to defeat the benevolent aims of Providence. Thompson
+had remained at home one Sunday afternoon to smoke a friendly pipe with
+an old acquaintance, when he should have gone to church. His wife set
+out alone. Satan took advantage of her husband's absence, drew her to
+chapel, and made her--a _dissenter_. This was Thompson's statement of
+the case, and severer punishment, he insisted, had never been inflicted
+on a man for Sabbath-breaking.
+
+When I was dismissed by Mr Bombasty, it was a natural step to walk
+towards the abode of the upholsterer. I knew his hour for supper, and
+his long hour after that for ale, and pipe, and recreation. I was not in
+doubt as to my welcome. Mrs Thompson had given me a general invitation
+to supper, "because," she said, "it did Thompson good to chat after a
+hard day's work;" and the respected Thompson himself had especially
+invited me to the long hour afterwards, "because," he added, "it did the
+ale and 'baccy good, who liked it so much better to go out of this here
+wicked world in company." About seven o'clock in the evening I found
+myself under their hospitable roof, seated in the room devoted to the
+general purposes of the house. It was large, and comfortably furnished.
+The walls were of wainscot, painted white, and were graced with two
+paintings. One, a family group, consisting of Thompson, wife, and eight
+children, most wretchedly executed, was the production of a slowly
+rising artist, a former lodger of my friend's, who had contrived to
+compound with his easy landlord for two years and three quarters' rent,
+with this striking display of his ability. Thompson was prouder of this
+picture than of the originals themselves, if that were possible. The
+design had been his own, and had cost him, as he was ready and even
+anxious to acknowledge, more time and trouble than he had ever given
+before, or meant to give again, to any luxury in life. The artist, as I
+was informed, had endeavoured to reduce to form some fifty different
+schemes that had arisen in poor Thompson's brain, but had failed in
+every one, so difficult he found it to introduce the thousand and one
+effects that the landlord deemed essential to the subject. His first
+idea had been to bring upon the canvass every feature of his life from
+boyhood upwards. This being impracticable, he wished to bargain for at
+least the workshop and the private residence. The lodgers, he thought,
+might come into the background well, and the tools, peeping from a
+basket in the corner, would look so much like life and nature. The
+upshot of his plans was the existing work of art, which Thompson
+considered matchless, and pronounced "dirt cheap, if he had even given
+the fellow a seven years' lease of the entire premises." The situations
+were striking certainly. In the centre of the picture were two high
+chairs, on which were seated, as grave as judges, the heads of the
+establishment. They sat there, drawn to their full height, too dignified
+to look at one another, and yet displaying a fond attachment, by a
+joining of the hands. The youngest child had clambered to the father's
+knee, and, with a chisel, was digging at his nose, wonderful to say,
+without disturbing the stoic equanimity that had settled on the father's
+face. This was the favourite son. Another, with a plane larger than
+himself, was menacing the mother's knee. The remaining six had each a
+tool, and served in various ways to effect most artfully the beloved
+purpose of the vain upholsterer's heart--viz. the introduction of the
+entire workshop. The second painting in the centre of the opposite wall,
+represented Mr Clayton. The likeness was a failure, and the colours were
+coarse and glaring; but there needed no instruction to know that the
+carefully framed production attempted to portray the unenviable man,
+who, in spite of his immorality and shameless life, was still revered
+and idolized by the blind disciples who had taken him for their guide.
+This portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar property. There were no other
+articles of _virtu_ in the spacious apartment; but cleanliness and
+decorum bestowed upon it a grace, the absence of which no idle
+decoration could supply. Early as the hour was, a saucepan was on the
+fire, whose bubbling water was busy with the supper that at half-past
+eight must meet the assault of many knives and forks. John Thompson and
+two sons--the eldest--were working in the shop. They had been there with
+little intermission since six that morning. The honest man was fond of
+work; so was he of his children--yes, dearly fond of _them_, and they
+must share with him the evening meal; and he must have them all about
+him; and he must help them all, and see them eat, and look with manly
+joy and pride upon the noisy youngsters, for whom his lusty arm had
+earned the bread that came like manna to him--so wholesome and so sweet!
+Three girls, humbly but neatly dressed, the three first steps of this
+great human ladder, were seated at a table administering to the
+necessities of sundry shirts and stockings that had suffered sensibly in
+their last week's struggle through the world. _They_ were indeed a
+picture worth the looking at. You grew a better man in gazing on their
+innocence and industry. What a lesson stole from their quiet and
+contented looks, their patient perseverance, their sweet unity! How
+shining smooth the faces, how healthy, and how round, and how impossible
+it seemed for wrinkles ever to disturb the fine and glossy surface!
+Modesty never should forsake the humble; the bosom of the lowly born
+should be her home. Here she had enshrined herself, and given to
+simplicity all her dignity and truth. They worked and worked on; who
+should tell which was the most assiduous--which the fairest--which the
+most eager and successful to increase the happiness of all! And turn to
+Billy there, that half-tamed urchin! that likeness in little of his
+sire, rocking not so much against his will, as against conviction, the
+last of all the Thompsons--a six months' infant in the wicker cradle.
+How, obedient to his mother's wish, like a little man at first, he rocks
+with all his might, and then irregularly, and at long intervals--by fits
+and starts--and ceases altogether very soon, bobbing his curly head, and
+falling gently into a deep mesmeric sleep. The older lads are making
+wooden boats, and two, still older, stand on either side their mother. A
+book is in the hands of each, full of instruction and fine learning. It
+was the source of all their knowledge, the cause of all their earliest
+woes. Good Mrs Thompson had been neglected as a child, and was
+enthusiastic in the cause of early education. Sometimes they looked into
+the book, but oftener still they cast attentive eyes upon the fire, as
+if "the book of knowledge fair" was there displayed, and not a noisy
+saucepan, almost unable to contain itself for joy of the cod's head and
+shoulders, that must be ready by John Thompson's supper time. The whole
+family were my friends--with the boys I was on terms of warmest
+intimacy, and smiles and nods, and shouts and cheers, welcomed me
+amongst them.
+
+"Now, close your book, Bob," said the mother, soon after I was seated,
+"and, Alec, give me yours. Put your hands down, turn from the fire, and
+look up at me, dears. What is the capital of Russia?"
+
+"The Birman empire," said Alec, with unhesitating confidence.
+
+"The Baltic sea," cried Bob, emulous and ardent.
+
+"Wait--not so fast; let me see, my dears, which of you is right."
+
+Mrs Thompson appealed immediately to her book, after a long and private
+communication with which, she emphatically pronounced both wrong.
+
+"Give us a chance, mother," said Bob in a wheedling tone, (Bob knew his
+mother's weaknesses.) "Them's such hard words. I don't know how it is,
+but I never can remember 'em. Just tell us the first syllable--oh, do
+now--please."
+
+"Oh, I know now!" cried Alec. "It's something with a G in it."
+
+"Think of the apostles, dears. What are the names of the apostles?"
+
+"Why, there's Moses," began Bob, counting on his fingers, "and there's
+Sammywell, and there's Aaron, and Noah's ark"----
+
+"Stop, my dear," said Mrs Thompson, who was very busy with her manual,
+and contriving a method of rendering a solution of her question easy.
+"Just begin again. I said--who was Peter--no, not that--who was an
+apostle?"
+
+"Oh, I know now!" cried Alec again, (Alec was the sharp boy of the
+family.) "It's Peter. Peter's the capital of Russia."
+
+"No, not quite my dear. You are very warm--very warm indeed, but not
+quite hot. Try again."
+
+"Paul," half murmured Robert, with a reckless hope of proving right.
+
+"No, Peter's right; but there's something else. What has your father
+been taking down the beds for?"
+
+There was a solemn silence, and the three industrious sisters blushed
+the faintest blush that could be raised upon a maiden's cheek.
+
+"To rub that stuff upon the walls," said the ready Alec.
+
+"Yes, but what was it to kill?" continued the instructress.
+
+"The fleas," said Bob.
+
+"Worse than that, my dear."
+
+"Oh, I know now," shrieked Alec, for the third time. "_Petersbug's_ the
+capital of Russia."
+
+Mrs Thompson looked at me with pardonable vanity and triumph, and I
+bestowed upon the successful students a few comfits which I had
+purchased on my road for my numerous and comfit-loving friends. The mere
+sight of this sweet "reward of merit" immediately inspired the two boys
+at work upon the boats with a desire for knowledge, and especially for
+learning the capitals of countries, that was most agreeable to
+contemplate. The lesson was continued, more to my amusement, I fear,
+than the edification of the pupils. The boys were unable to answer a
+single question until they had had so many _chances_, and had become so
+very _hot_, that not to have answered at length would have bordered on
+the miraculous. The persevering governess was not displeased at this,
+for she would not have lost the opportunity of displaying her own skill
+in metaphorical illustration, for a great deal, I am very sure. The
+clock struck eight; there was a general movement. The three sisters
+folded their work, and lodged it carefully in separate drawers. The
+eldest then produced the table-cloth, knives, forks, and spoons. The
+second exhibited bibs and pinafores; and the third brought from their
+hiding-places a dozen modest chairs, and placed them round the table.
+Bob assured the company "he was _so_ hungry;" Alec said, "so was he;"
+and the boatmen, in an under tone, settled what should be done with the
+great cod's eyes, which, they contended, were the best parts of the
+fish, and "shouldn't they be glad if father would give 'em one a-piece."
+The good woman must enquire, of course, how nearly the much-relished
+dainty had reached the critical and interesting state when it became
+most palatable to John Thompson; for John Thompson was an epicure, "and
+must have his little bits of things done to a charm, or not at all."
+Half-past eight had struck. The family were bibbed and pinafored; the
+easy coat and slippers were at the fire, and warmed through and
+through--it was a season of intenseness. "Here's father!" shouted Alec,
+and all the bibs and pinafores rushed like a torrent to the door. Which
+shall the father catch into his ready arms, which kiss, which hug, which
+answer?--all are upon him; they know their playmate, their companion,
+and best friend; they have hoarded up, since the preceding night, a
+hundred things to say, and now they have got their loving and attentive
+listener. "Look what I have done, father," says the chief boatman, "Tom
+and I together." "Well done, boys!" says the father--and Tom and he are
+kissed. "I have been _l_ocking baby," lisps little Billy, who, in
+return, gets rocked himself. "Father, what's the capital of Russia?"
+shrieks Alec, tugging at his coat. "What do you mean, you dog?" is the
+reply, accompanied by a hearty shake of his long flaxen hair.
+"Petersburg," cry Tom and Alec both, following him to the hearth, each
+one endeavouring to relieve him of his boots as soon as he is seated
+there. The family circle is completed. The flaky fish is ready, and
+presented for inspection. The father has served them all, even to little
+Billy--their plates are full and smoking. "Mother" is called upon to ask
+a blessing. She rises, and assumes the looks of Jabez Buster--twenty
+blessings might be asked and granted in half the time she takes--so
+think and look Bob, Alec, and the boatmen; but at length she pauses--the
+word is given, and further ceremony is dispensed with. In childhood,
+supper is a thing to look forward to, and to _last_ when it arrives; but
+not in childhood, any more than in old age, can sublunary joys endure
+for ever. The meal is finished. A short half-hour flies, like lightning,
+by. The children gather round their father; and in the name of all, upon
+his knees, he thanks his God for all the mercies of the day. Thompson is
+no orator. His heart is warm; his words are few and simple. The three
+attendant graces take charge of their brethren, detach them from their
+father's side, and conduct them to their beds. Happy father! happy
+children! May Providence be merciful, and keep the grim enemy away from
+your fireside! Let him not come now in the blooming beauty and the
+freshness of your loves! Let him not darken and embitter for ever the
+life that is still bright, beautiful, and glorious in the power of
+elevating and sustaining thought that leads beyond it. Let him wait the
+matured and not unexpected hour, when the shock comes, not to crush, to
+overwhelm, and to annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and to encourage;
+not to alarm and stagger the untaught spirit, but to bring to the
+subdued and long-tried soul its last lesson on the vanity and
+evanescence of its early dreams!
+
+It is half-past nine o'clock. Thompson, his wife, and two eldest boys
+are present, and, for the first time, I have an opportunity to make
+known the object of my visit.
+
+"And so they have turned you off," said Thompson, when I had finished.
+"And who's surprised at that? Not I, for one. Missus," continued he,
+turning to his wife, "why haven't you got a curtain yet for that ere
+pictur? I can't abear the sight of it."
+
+Mrs Thompson looked plaintively towards the painting, and heaved a sigh.
+
+"Ah, dear good man! He has got his enemies," said she.
+
+"Mrs Thompson!" exclaimed her husband, "I have done with that good man
+from this day for'ards; and I do hope, old 'ooman, that you'll go next
+Sunday to church with me, as we used to do afore you got that pictur
+painted."
+
+"It's no good talking, Thompson," answered the lady, positively and
+firmly. "I can't sit under a cold man, and there's an end of it."
+
+"There, that's the way you talk, missus."
+
+"Why, you know, Thompson, every thing in the church is cold."
+
+"No, not now, my dear--they've put up a large stove. You'll recollect
+you haven't been lately."
+
+"Besides, do you think I can sit in a place of worship, and hear a man
+say, '_Let us pray_,' in the middle of the service, making a fool of
+one, as if we hadn't been praying all the time? As that dear and
+persecuted saint says, (turning to the picture,) it's a common assault
+to our understandings."
+
+"Now, Polly, that's just always how you go off. If you'd only listen to
+reason, that could all be made out right in no time. The clergyman
+doesn't mean to say, _let us pray_, because he hasn't been praying
+afore;--what he means is--we have been praying all this time, and so
+we'll go on praying again--no, not again exactly--but don't leave off.
+That isn't what I mean either. Let me see, _let us pray_. Oh, yes!
+Why--stay. Where is it he does say, _let us pray_? There, I say,
+Stukely, you know it all much better than I do. Just make it right to
+the missus."
+
+"It is not difficult," said I.
+
+"Oh no, Mr Stukely, I daresay not!" added Mrs Thompson, interrupting me.
+"Mr Clayton says, Satan has got his janysarries abroad, and has a reason
+for every thing. It is very proper to say, too, I suppose, that it is an
+_imposition_ when the bishops ordain the ministers? What a word to make
+use of. It's truly frightful!"
+
+"Well, I'm blessed," exclaimed Thompson, "if I don't think you had
+better hold your tongue, old girl, about impositions; for sich oudacious
+robbers as your precious brothers is, I never come across, since I was
+stopped that ere night, as we were courting, on Shooter's Hill. It's a
+system of imposition from beginning to end."
+
+"Look to your Bible, Thompson; what does that say? Does that tell
+ministers to read their sermons? There can't be no truth and right
+feeling when a man puts down what he's going to say; the vital warmth is
+wanting, I'm sure. And then to read the same prayers Sunday after
+Sunday, till a body gets quite tired at hearing them over and over
+again, and finding nothing new! How can you improve an occasion if you
+are tied down in this sort of way."
+
+"Did you ever see one of the brothers eat, Stukely?" asked Thompson,
+avoiding the main subject. "Don't you ask one of them to dinner--that's
+all. That nice boy Buster ought to eat for a wager. I had the pleasure
+of his company to dinner one fine afternoon. I don't mean to send him
+another invitation just yet, at all events."
+
+"Yes," proceeded the fair, but stanch nonconformist; "what does the
+Bible say, indeed! 'Take no thought of what you should say.' Why, in the
+church, I am told they are doing nothing else from Monday morning to
+Saturday night but writing the sermon they are going to read on the
+Sabbath. To _read_ a sermon! What would the apostles say to that?"
+
+"Why, didn't you tell me, my dear, that the gentleman as set for that
+pictur got all his sermons by heart before he preached 'em?"
+
+"Of course I did--but that's a very different thing. Doesn't it all pour
+from him as natural as if it had come to him that minute? He doesn't
+fumble over a book like a schoolboy. His beautiful eyes, I warrant you,
+ain't looking down all the time, as if he was ashamed to hold 'em up.
+Isn't it a privilege to see his blessed eyes rolling all sorts of ways;
+and don't they speak wolumes to the poor benighted sinner? Besides,
+don't tell me, Thompson; we had better turn Catholics at once, if we are
+to have the minister dressing up like the Pope of Rome, and all the rest
+of it."
+
+"You are the gal of my heart," exclaimed the uxorious Thompson; "but I
+must say you have got some of the disgracefulest notions out of that ere
+chapel as ever I heard on. Why, it's only common decency to wear a dress
+in the pulpit; and I believe in my mind, that that's come down to us
+from time immemorable, like every thing else in human natur. What's your
+opinion, Stukely?"
+
+"Yes; and what's your opinion, Mr Stukely," added the lady immediately,
+"about calling a minister of the gospel--a _priest_? Is that
+Paperistical or not?"
+
+"That isn't the pint, Polly," proceeded John. "We are talking about the
+silk dress now. Let's have that out first."
+
+"And then the absolution"----
+
+"No, Poll. Stick to the silk dress."
+
+"Ah, Thompson, it's always the way!" continued the mistress of the
+house, growing red and wroth, and heedless of the presence of the
+eager-listening children; "it's always the way. Satan is ruining of you.
+You'll laugh at the elect, and you'll not find your mistake out till
+it's too late to alter. Mr Clayton says, that the Establishment is the
+hothouse of devils; and the more I see of its ways, the more I feel he
+is right. Thompson, you are in the sink of iniquity."
+
+"Come, I can't stand no more of this!" exclaimed Thompson, growing
+uneasy in his chair, but without a spark of ill-humour. "Let's change
+the topic, old 'ooman; I'm sure it can't do the young un's any good to
+hear this idle talk. Let's teach 'em nothing at all, if we can't larn
+'em something better than wrangling about religion. Now, Jack," he
+continued, turning to his eldest boy, "what is the matter with you? What
+are you sitting there for with your mouth wide open?"
+
+"What's the meaning of Paperist, father?" asked the boy, who had been
+long waiting to propose the question.
+
+"What's that to you, you rascal?" was the reply; "mind your own
+business, my good fellow, and leave the Paperist to mind his'n; that's
+your father's maxim, who got it from his father before him. You'll learn
+to find fault with other people fast enough without my teaching you. I
+tell you what, Jack, if you look well after yourself, you'll find little
+time left to bother about others. If your hands are ever idle--recollect
+you have ten brothers and sisters about you. Look about you--you are the
+oldest boy--and see what you can do for them. Do you mind that?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Very well, old chap. Then just get out the bottle, and give your father
+something to coax the cod down. Poll, that fish won't settle."
+
+The long hour was beginning. That bottle was the signal. A gin and water
+nightcap, on this occasion, officiated for the ale. Jack and his brother
+received a special invitation to a sip or two, which they at once
+unhesitatingly accepted. The sturdy fellows shook their father and
+fellow-labourer's hand, and were not loth to go to rest. Their mother
+was their attendant. The ruffle had departed from her face. It was as
+pleasant as before. She was but half a dissenter. So Thompson thought
+when he called her back again, and bade his "old 'ooman give her hobby
+one of her good old-fashioned busses, and think no more about it."
+
+Thompson and I were left together.
+
+"And what do you mean to do, sir, now?" was his first question.
+
+"I hardly know." I answered.
+
+"Of course, you'll cut the gang entirely--that's a nat'ral consequence."
+
+"No, Thompson, not at present. I must not seem so fickle and inconstant.
+I must not seem so to myself. I joined this sect not altogether without
+deliberation. I must have further proof of the unsoundness of its
+principles. A few of its professors have been faithless even to their
+own position. Of what religious profession may not the same be said? I
+will be patient, and examine further."
+
+"I was a-thinking," said Thompson, musingly, "I was a-thinking, 'till
+you've got something else to do----but no, never mind, you won't like
+that."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why, I was thinking about the young un's. They're shocking back'ard in
+their eddication, and, between you and me, the missus makes them
+back'arder. I don't understand the way she has got of larning 'em at
+all. I don't want to make scholards of 'em. Nobody would but a fool.
+Bless 'em, they'll have enough to do to get their bread with sweating
+and toiling, without addling their brains about things they can't
+understand. But it is a cruelty, mind you, for a parent to hinder his
+child from reading his Bible on a Sunday afternoon, and to make him
+stand ashamed of himself before his fellow workman when he grows up, and
+finds that he can't put _paid_ to a bill on a Saturday night. The boys
+should all know how to read and write, and keep accounts, and a little
+summut of human nature. This is what I wants to give 'em, and nobody
+should I like better to put it into 'em than you, my old friend, if
+you'd just take the trouble 'till you've got something better to do."
+
+"Thompson," I answered instantly, "I will do it with pleasure. I ought
+to have made the offer. It did not occur to me. I shall rejoice to repay
+you, in this trifling way, for all your good feeling and kindness."
+
+"Oh no!" answered my friend, "none of that. We must have an
+understanding. Don't you think I should have asked the question, if I
+meant to sneak out in that dirty sort of way. No, that won't do. It's
+very kind of you, but we must make all that right. We sha'n't quarrel, I
+dare say. If you mean you'll do it, I have only just a word or two to
+say before you begin."
+
+"I shall be proud to serve you, Thompson, and on any terms you please."
+
+"Well, it is a serving me--I don't deny it--but, mind you, only till you
+have dropped into something worth your while. What I wish to say is as
+this: As soon as ever my missus hears of what you are going to do, I
+know as well what she'll be at as I know what I am talking of now.
+She'll just be breaking my heart to have the boys larned French. Now,
+I'd just as soon bind 'em apprentice to that ere Clayton. I've seen too
+much of that ere sort of thing in my time. I'm as positive as I sit
+here, that when a chap begins to talk French he loses all his English
+spirit, and feels all over him as like a mounseer as possible. I'm sure
+he does. I've seen it a hundred times, and that I couldn't a-bear.
+Besides, I've been told that French is the language the thieves talk,
+and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll
+excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must
+say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the
+pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the
+company you have kept. You are--it's the only fault you have got--you
+are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn 'em.
+That's all I have to say, and we'll talk of the pay some other time."
+
+At this turn of the conversation, Thompson insisted upon my lighting a
+pipe and joining him in the gin and water. We smoked for many minutes in
+silence. My friend had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had drawn the table
+nearer to his warm and hospitable fire. A log of wood was burning slowly
+and steadily away, and a small, bright--very bright--copper kettle
+overlooked it from the hob. My host had fixed his feet upon the
+fender--the unemployed hand was in his corduroys. His eyes were three
+parts closed, enjoying what from its origin may be called--a pure
+tobacco-born soliloquy. The smoke arose in thin white curls from the
+clay cup, and at regular periods stole blandly from the corner of his
+lips. The silent man was blessed. He had been happy at his work; he had
+grown happier as the sun went down; his happiness was ripening at the
+supper table; _now_, half-asleep and half-awake--half conscious and half
+dreaming--wholly free from care, and yet not free from pregnant
+thought--the labourer had reached the summit of felicity, and was at
+peace--intensely.
+
+A few evenings only had elapsed after this interesting meeting, before
+I was again spending a delicious hour or two with the simple-hearted and
+generous upholsterer. There was something very winning in these moments
+snatched and secured from the hurricane of life, and passed in thorough
+and undisturbed enjoyment. My friend, notwithstanding that he had
+engaged my services, and was pleased to express his satisfaction at the
+mode in which I rendered them, was yet alive to my interests, and too
+apprehensive of injuring them by keeping me away from loftier
+employment. He did not like my being _thrown out_ of the chapel,
+especially after he had heard my determination not to forsake
+immediately the sect to which I had attached myself. He was indifferent
+to his own fate. His worldly prospects could not be injured by his
+expulsion; on the contrary, he slyly assured me that "his neighbours
+would begin to think better of him, and give him credit for having
+become an honester and more trustworthy man." But with regard to myself
+it was a different thing. I should require "a character" at some time or
+another, and there was a body of men primed and ready to vilify and
+crush me. He advised me, whilst he acknowledged it was a hard thing to
+say, and "it went agin him to do it," to apply once more respectfully
+for my dismission. "It won't do," he pertinently said, "to bite your
+nose off to be revenged on your tongue." I was certainly in a mess, and
+must get out of it in the best way that I could. Buster and Tomkins had
+great power in _the Church_, and if I represented my case to either or
+both of them, he did hope they might be brought to consent not to injure
+me, or stand in the way of my getting bread. "In a quarrel," he said, in
+conclusion, "some one must give in. I was a young man, and had my way to
+make, and though he should despise his-self if he recommended me to do
+any thing mean and dirty in the business, yet, he thought, as the father
+of a numerous family, he ought to advise me to be civil, and to do the
+best for myself in this unfortunate dilemmy."
+
+I accepted his advice, and determined to wait upon the dapper deacon. I
+was physically afraid to encounter Buster, not so much on account of
+what I had seen of his spiritual pretension, as of what I had heard of
+his domestic behaviour. It was not a very difficult task to obtain from
+Mrs Thompson the secret history of many of her highly privileged
+acquaintances and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful degree, the
+peculiar virtue of her amiable sex, and to communicate secrets,
+delivered to her in strictest confidence, and imparted by her again with
+equal caution and provisory care, was the choicest recreation of her
+well employed and useful life. It was through this lady that I was
+favoured with a glance into the natural heart of Mr Buster; or into what
+he would himself have called, with a most unfilial disgust, "HIS OLD
+MAN." It appeared that, like most great _actors_, he was a very
+different personage before and behind the curtain. Kings, who are
+miserable and gloomy through the five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who
+must needs die at the end of it, are your merriest knaves over a tankard
+at the Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool shall be the dullest dog that
+ever spoiled mirth with sour and discontented looks. Jabez Buster, his
+employment being over at Mr Clayton's theatre, his dress thrown aside,
+his mask put by, was not to be recognised by his nearest friend. This is
+the perfection of art. A greater tyrant on a small scale, with limited
+means, never existed than the saintly Buster when his character was
+done, and he found himself again in the bosom of his family. Unhappy
+bosom was it, and a sad flustration did his presence, nine times out of
+ten, produce there. He had four sons, and a delicate creature for a
+wife, born to be crushed. The sons were remarkable chiefly for their
+hypocrisy, which promised, in the fulness of time, to throw their
+highly-gifted parent's far into the shade; and, secondarily, for their
+persecution of their helpless and indulgent mother. They witnessed and
+approved so much the success of Jabez in this particular, that during
+his absence they cultivated the affectionate habit until it became a
+kind of second nature, infinitely more racy and agreeable than the
+primary. In proportion to their deliberate oppression of their mother
+was their natural dread and terror of their father. Mrs Thompson
+pronounced it "the shockingest thing in this world to be present when
+the young blue-beards were worryting their mother's soul out with
+saying, '_I sha'n't_' and '_I won't_' to every thing, and swearing
+'_they'd tell their father this_,' '_and put him up to that, and then
+wouldn't he make a jolly row about it_,' with hollering out for nothing
+at all, only to frighten the poor timid cretur, and then making a
+holabaloo with the chairs, or perhaps falling down, roaring and kicking,
+just to drive the poor thing clean out of her wits, on purpose to laugh
+at her for being so taken in. Well, but it was a great treat, too," she
+added, "to hear, in the midst of all this, Buster's heavy foot in the
+passage, and to see what a scrimmage there was at once amongst all the
+young hypocrites. How they all run in different directions--one to the
+fire--one to the table--one out at the back-door--one any where he
+could--all of 'em as silent as mice, and afeard of the very eye of the
+blacksmith, who knew, good man, how to keep every man Jack of 'em in
+order, and, if a word didn't do, wasn't by no means behind hand with
+blows. Buster," she continued, "had his faults like other men, but he
+was a saint if ever there was one. To be sure he did like to have his
+own way at home, and wasn't it natural? And if he was rather overbearing
+and cruel to his wife, wasn't that, she should like to know, Satan
+warring with the new man, and sometimes getting the better of it? And if
+he was, as Thompson had hinted, rayther partial to the creature, and
+liked good living, what was this to the purpose? it was an infirmity
+that might happen to the best Christian living. Nobody could say that he
+wasn't a renewed man, and a chosen vessel, and faithful to his call. A
+man isn't a backslider because he's carnally weak, and a man isn't a
+saint because he's moral and well-behaved. 'Good works,' Mr Clayton
+said, 'was filthy rags,' and so they were. To be sure, between
+themselves, there were one or two things said about Buster that she
+couldn't approve of. For instance, she had been told--but _this_ was
+quite in confidence, and really must _not_ go further--that he
+was--that--that, in fact, he was overtaken now and then with liquor, and
+then the house could hardly hold him, he got so furious, and, they did
+say, used such horrid language. But, after all, what was this? If a
+man's elected, he is not so much the worse. Besides, if one listened to
+people, one might never leave off. She had actually heard, she wouldn't
+say from whom, that Buster very often kept out late at night--sometimes
+didn't come home at all, and sometimes did at two o'clock in the
+morning, very hungry and ill-tempered, and then forced his poor wife out
+of bed, and made the delicate and shivering creature light a fire, cook
+beefsteaks, go into the yard for beer, and wait upon him till he had
+even eat every morsel up. She for one would never believe all this,
+though Mrs Buster herself had told her every word with tears in her
+eyes, and in the greatest confidence; so she trusted I wouldn't repeat
+it, as it wouldn't look well in her to be found out telling other
+people's secrets." Singular, perhaps, to say, the tale did not go
+further. I kept the lady's secret, and at the same time declined to
+approach Mr Jabez Buster in the character of a suppliant. If his
+advocate and panegyrist had nothing more to say for him, it could not be
+uncharitable to conclude that the pretended saint was as bold a sinner
+as ever paid infamous courtship to religion, and as such was studiously
+to be avoided. I turned my attention from him to Tomkins. There was no
+grossness about him, no brutality, no abominable vice. In the hour of my
+defeat and desertion, he had extended to me his sympathy, and, more in
+sorrow than in anger, I am convinced he voted for my expulsion from the
+church when he found that his vote, and twenty added to it, would not
+have been sufficient to protect me. He could not act in opposition to
+the wishes of his friend and patron, Mr Clayton, but very glad would he
+have been, as every word and look assured me, to meet the wishes of us
+both, had that been practicable. If the great desire of Jehu Tomkins'
+heart could have been gratified, he never would have been at enmity with
+a single soul on earth. He was a soft, good-natured, easy man; most
+desirous to be let alone, and not uneasily envious or distressed to see
+his neighbours jogging on, so long as he could do his own good stroke of
+business, and keep a little way before them. Jehu was a Liberal too--in
+politics and in religion--in every thing, in fact, but the one small
+article of _money_, and here, I must confess, the good dissenter
+dissented little from the best of us. He was a stanch Conservative in
+matters connected with the _till_. For his private life it was
+exemplary--at least it looked so to the world, and the world is
+satisfied with what it sees. Jehu was attentive to his business--yes,
+very--and a business life is not monotonous and dull, if it be relieved,
+as it was in this case, by dexterous arts, that give an interest and
+flavour to the commonest pursuits. Sometimes a customer would die--a
+natural state of things, but a great event for Jehu. First, he would
+"improve the occasion" to the surviving relatives--condole and pray with
+them. Afterwards he would _improve_ it to himself, in his own little
+room, at night, when all the children were asleep, and no one was awake
+but Mrs Tomkins and himself. Then he would get down his ledger, and turn
+to the deceased's account--
+
+    "----How _long_ it is thou see'st,
+    And he would gaze 'till it became _much longer_;"
+
+"For who could tell whether six shirts or twelve were bought in July
+last, and what could be the harm of making those eight handkerchiefs a
+dozen? He was a strange old gentleman; lived by himself--and the books
+might be referred to, and speak boldly for themselves." Yes, cunning
+Jehu, so they might, with those interpolations and erasures that would
+confound and overcome a lawyer. When customers did not die, it was
+pastime to be dallying with the living. In adding up a bill with haste,
+how many times will four and four make _nine_? They generally did with
+Jehu. The best are liable to errors. It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had
+hundreds at command, and the accident was amended. How easy is it
+sometimes to give no bill at all! How very easy to apply, a few months
+afterwards, for second payment; how much more easy still to pocket it
+without a word; or, if discovered and convicted, to apologize without a
+blush for the _mistake_! No, Jehu Tomkins, let me do you justice--this
+is not so easy--it requires all your zeal and holy intrepidity to reach
+this pitch of human frailty and corruption. With regard to the domestic
+position of my interesting friend, it is painful to add, that the less
+that is said about it the better. In vain was his name in full, painted
+in large yellow letters, over the shop front. In vain was _Bot. of Jehu
+Tomkins_ engraven on satin paper, with flourishes innumerable beneath
+the royal arms; he was no more the master of his house than was the
+small boy of the establishment, who did the dirty work of the place for
+nothing a-week and the broken victuals. If Jehu was deacon abroad, he
+was taught to acknowledge an _arch_deacon at home--one to whom he was
+indebted for his success in life, and for reminding him of that
+agreeable fact about four times during every day of his existence. I was
+aware of this delicate circumstance when I ventured to the
+linen-draper's shop on my almost hopeless mission; but, although I had
+never spoken to Mrs Tomkins, I had often seen her in the chapel, and I
+relied much on the feeling and natural tenderness of the female heart.
+The respectable shop of Mr Tomkins was in Fleet Street. The
+establishment consisted of Mrs Tomkins, _première_; Jehu,
+under-secretary; and four sickly-looking young ladies behind the
+counter. It is to be said, to the honour of Mrs Tomkins, that she
+admitted no young woman into her service whose character was not
+_decided_, and whose views were not very clear. Accordingly, the four
+young ladies were members of the chapel. It is pleasing to reflect,
+that, in this well-ordered house of business, the ladies took their
+turns to attend the weekly prayer meetings of the church. Would that I
+might add, that they were _not_ severally met on these occasions by
+their young men at the corner of Chancery Lane, and invariably escorted
+by them some two or three miles in a totally opposite direction. Had Mrs
+Tomkins been born a man, it is difficult to decide what situation she
+would have adorned the most. She would have made a good man of
+business--an acute lawyer--a fine casuist--a great divine. Her
+attainments were immense; her self-confidence unbounded. She was a woman
+of middle height, and masculine bearing. She was not prepossessing,
+notwithstanding her white teeth and large mouth, and the intolerable
+grin that a customer to the amount of a halfpenny and upwards could
+bring upon her face under any circumstances, and at any hour of the day.
+Her complexion might have been good originally. Red blotches scattered
+over her cheek had destroyed its beauty. She wore a modest and becoming
+cap, and a gold eyeglass round her neck. She was devoted to
+money-making--heart and soul devoted to it during business hours. What
+time she was not in the shop, she passed amongst dissenting ministers,
+spiritual brethren, and deluded sinners. It remains to state the fact,
+that, whilst a customer never approached the lady without being repelled
+by the offensive smirk that she assumed, no dependent ever ventured near
+her without the fear of the scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully,
+when she pleased) upon her dark and inauspicious brow. What wonder that
+little Jehu was crushed into nothingness, behind his own counter, under
+the eye of his own wife!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES.
+
+PART II.
+
+
+In our last, we had occasion to speak sharply of that class of our
+aristocratic youth known by the name of fast fellows, and it may be
+thought that we characterized their foibles rather pointedly, and
+tinctured our animadversions with somewhat of undue asperity. This
+charge, however, can be made with no ground of reason or justice: the
+fact is, we only lashed the follies for which that class of men are
+pre-eminent, but left their vices in the shade, in the hope that the
+_raw_ we have already established, will shame the fast fellows into a
+sense of the proprieties of conduct due to themselves and their station.
+
+The misfortune is, that these fast fellows forget, in the pursuit of
+their favourite follies, that the mischief to society begins only with
+themselves: that man is naturally a servile, imitative animal; and that
+he follows in the track of a great name, as vulgar muttons run at the
+heels of a belwether. The poison of fashionable folly runs comparatively
+innocuous while it circulates in fashionable veins; but when vulgar
+fellows are innoculated with the virus, it becomes a plague, a moral
+small-pox, distorting, disfiguring the man's mind, pockpitting his small
+modicum of brains, and blinding his mind's eye to the supreme contempt
+his awkward vagaries inspire.
+
+The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly in the spread of their servile
+imitation of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly profligacy at
+second-hand; and perhaps this is the worst trait in their character, for
+it is at once malicious and unwise: malicious, because the contemplation
+of humanity, degraded by bad example in high station, should rather be a
+source of secret shame than of devilish gratification: unwise, because
+their example is a discredit to their order, and a danger. To posses
+birth, fashion, station, wealth, power, is title enough to envy, and
+handle sufficient for scandal. How much stronger becomes that title--how
+much longer that handle--when men, enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it,
+not using, but abusing their good fortune!
+
+We should not have troubled our heads with the fast fellows at all, if
+it were not absolutely essential to the full consideration of our
+subject, widely to sever the prominent classes of fashionable life, and
+to have no excuse for continuing in future to confound them. We have now
+done with the fast fellows, and shall like them the more the less we
+hear of them.
+
+
+
+CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS.
+
+
+The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable or aristocratic life, comprises those who
+think that, in the nineteenth century, other means must be taken to
+preserve their order in its high and responsible position than those
+which, in dark ages, conferred honour upon the tallest or the bravest.
+They think, and think wisely, that the only method of keeping above the
+masses, in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further into
+the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting, in a fair
+neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth, their purer blood, and
+urging the generous contest for fame, regardless of the allurements of
+pleasure, or the superior advantages of fortune. In truth, we might
+ask, what would become of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they
+came, as a body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their
+black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of
+Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the
+platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these
+harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there
+was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that
+there is better.
+
+We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families, a few men of
+original, commanding, and powerful intellect; many respectable in most
+departments of intellectual rivalry; many more laborious, hard-working
+men; and about the same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed,
+conceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the same
+given number of those commonly called the educated classes. We refer you
+to the aristocracies of other countries, and we think we may safely say,
+that we have more men of that class, in this country, who devote
+themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its
+pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the
+responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think
+they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of
+birth and fortune--who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less
+prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they
+feel, with the poet:
+
+    "At heros, et decus, et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
+    Vix ea nostra voco."
+
+It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that
+the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at
+twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this
+undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man
+in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast
+ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.
+
+This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling
+themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the
+natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one
+way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent
+in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter
+the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by
+virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they
+must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest
+and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy
+responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the
+burden of responsible power.
+
+One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in
+public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of
+the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the
+aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed,
+is yet oftener bestowed without any desert whatever; and that title to
+admiration and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and
+suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the illustrious
+dead to the undistinguished living.
+
+Without giving a catalogue _raisonné_ of the slow fellows, (we use the
+term not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction to the others,)
+we may observe that, besides the public service in which the great names
+are sufficiently known, you have poets, essayists, dramatists,
+astronomers, geologists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than
+all, philanthropists. In compliment to human nature, we take the liberty
+merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart and Lord Ashley. The
+works of the slow fellows, especially their poetry, indicate in a
+greater or less degree the social position of the authors; seldom or
+never deficient in good taste, and not without feeling, they lack power
+and daring. The smooth style has their preference, and their verses
+smack of the school of Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not that, in poetry
+or prose, we can point out one of our slow fellows of the present day
+rising above judicious mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that the most
+daring and original of our noble authors have, in their day, been fast
+fellows; it is only necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.
+
+
+Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to intellect in a
+small way. These patronize a drawing-master, not to learn to draw, but
+to learn to talk of drawing; they also study the _Penny Magazine_ and
+other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London
+University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as
+far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of
+fashionable _screws_, they take care never to subscribe to any thing.
+They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the
+confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every
+thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the
+evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people _can_ eat
+those hot lunches. They take constitutional walks and Cockle's pills;
+and, by virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always
+consulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a guinea. They
+talk of music, of which they know something--of books, of which they
+know little--and of pictures, of which they know less; they have always
+read "the last novel," which is as much as they can well carry; they
+know literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House, but,
+if they meet them in Park Lane, look as if they never saw them before;
+they are very peevish, have something to say against every man, and
+always say the worst first; they are very quiet in their manner, almost
+sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows; they
+treat their inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, "honest
+friend," "my good man," and so on, but have very little heart, and less
+spirit.
+
+They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They
+are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their
+pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows
+ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to
+annoy him, talking of the "autumnal tints," and "the gilding of the
+western hemisphere;" if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a
+root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it
+is a great curiosity in _his line_; if an entomologist, they are sure to
+send him away "with a flea in his ear." If he affects poetry, the fast
+fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from _Bell's Life_,
+Scroggins's poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree,
+or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist
+upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a
+thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren,
+not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "_gagging_," and
+genteel people "_quizzing_," but with a seriousness and gravity that
+heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly
+ridiculous.
+
+It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows,
+that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who
+glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be
+distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against
+it all their lives; but so it is;--the compensating power that rules
+material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is
+given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it.
+Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be
+surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great
+names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule)
+are plebeian.
+
+
+
+OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER.
+
+
+In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the
+present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common
+butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
+
+They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their
+inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress
+of rational liberty, and of----but, in short, you have only to glance
+over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the
+horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England.
+
+The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too
+broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it
+exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim
+lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity
+as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of
+thought or action, especially in state affairs.
+
+Since our late lamented friends, the Whigs, have gone to enjoy a
+virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in
+politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days--no quackery, no
+mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot
+fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and
+now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst _quondam_ leaders of
+the Treasury Benech--now that the camp-followers have followed the
+leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have nobody to
+laugh at; and, like our departed friends, have too little of the
+statesman to be serious about serious matters.
+
+With regard to the aristocracy in their public capacity, this is the way
+we always look at them.
+
+In the first place, they govern us through the tolerance of public
+opinion, as men having station, power, property, much to lose, and
+little comparatively to gain--men who have put in bail to a large amount
+for their good behaviour: and, in the second place, they govern us,
+because really and truly there are so many outrageously discordant
+political quacks, desirous of taking our case in hand, that we find it
+our interest to entrust our public health to an accomplished physician,
+even although he charges a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure a
+perfect cure with a box of pills costing thirteenpence-halfpenny. There
+can be no doubt whatever, that the most careful men are the men who have
+most to care for: he that has a great deal to lose, will think twice,
+where he that has nothing to lose, will not think at all: and the
+government of this vast and powerful empire, we imagine, with great
+deference, must require a good deal of thinking. In a free press, we
+have a never-dying exponent of public opinion, a perpetual advocate of
+rational liberty, and a powerful engine for the exposure, which is
+ultimately the redress, of wrong: and although this influential member
+of our government receives no public money, nor is called right
+honourable, nor speaks in the House, yet in fact and in truth it has a
+seat in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous occasions, a voice of thunder.
+
+That the aristocracy of power should be in advance of public opinion, is
+not in the nature of things, and should no more be imputed as a crime to
+them, than to us not to run when we are not in a hurry: they cannot, as
+a body, move upwards, because they stand so near the top, that dangerous
+ambition is extinguished; and it is hardly to be expected that, as a
+body, they should move downwards, unless they find themselves supported
+in their position upon the right of others, in which case we have always
+seen that, although they descend gradually, they descend at last.
+
+This immobility of our aristocracy is the origin of the fixity of our
+political institutions, which has been, is, and will continue to be, the
+great element of our pre-eminence as a nation: it possesses a force
+corrective and directive, and at once restrains the excess, while it
+affords a point of resistance, to the current of the popular will. And
+this immobility, it should never be forgotten, is owing to that very
+elevation so hated and so envied: wanting which the aristocracy would be
+subject to the vulgar ambitions, vulgar passions, and sordid desires of
+meaner aspirants after personal advantage and distinction. It is a
+providential blessing, we firmly believe, to a great nation to possess a
+class, by fortune and station, placed above the unseemly contentions of
+adventurers in public life: looked up to as men responsible without hire
+for the public weal, and, without sordid ambitions of their own,
+solicitous to preserve it: looked up to, moreover, as examples of that
+refinement of feeling, jealous sense of honour, and manly independence,
+serving as detersives of the grosser humours of commercial life, and
+which, filtering through the successive _strata_ of society, clarify and
+purify in their course, leaving the very dregs the cleaner for their
+passage.
+
+A body thus by habit and constitution opposed to innovation, and
+determined against the recklessness of inconsiderate reforms, has
+furnished a stock argument to those who delight in "going a-head" faster
+than their feet, which are the grounds of their arguments, can carry
+them. We hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks in the way of
+legislative improvements, and, with greater propriety of metaphor,
+likened to drags upon the wheel of progressive reform; and so on,
+through all the regions of illustration, until we are in at the death of
+the metaphor. How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this
+anti-progressive barrier, to the concentration and deepening of the
+flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt
+altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too
+eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which
+gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and reckless
+enthusiasm, and the dregs of agitation, quietly to subside; and, for all
+that, bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with
+accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the
+barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time, only
+to withdraw when the time for interposition is past, we should live in a
+vortex of revolution and counter-revolution. Our whole time, and our
+undivided energies, would be employed in acting hastily, and repenting
+at leisure; in repining either because our biennial revolutions went too
+far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the
+unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with
+adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with
+every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would
+follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and
+trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in
+the eyes of the world what France now is--a people ready to sacrifice
+every solid advantage, every gradual, and therefore permanent,
+improvement, every ripening fruit that time and care, and the sunshine
+of peace only can mature, to a genius for revolution.
+
+This turbulent torrent of headlong reform, to-day flooding its banks,
+to-morrow dribbling in a half-dry channel, the aristocracy of power
+collects, concentrates, and converts into a power, even while it
+circumscribes it, and represses. So have we seen a mountain stream
+useless in summer, dangerous in winter, now a torrent now a puddle,
+wasting its unprofitable waters in needless brawling; let a barrier be
+opposed to its downward course, let it be dammed up, let a point of
+resistance be afforded where its waters may be gathered together, and
+regulated, you find it turned to valuable account, acting with men's
+hands, becoming a productive labourer, and contributing its time and its
+industry to advance the general sum of rational improvement.
+
+From the material to the moral world you may always reason by analogy.
+If you study the theory of revolutions, you will not fail to observe
+that, wherever, in constructing your barrier, you employ ignorant
+engineers, who have not duly calculated the depth and velocity of the
+current; whenever you raise your dam to such a height that no flood will
+carry away the waste waters; whenever you talk of finality to the
+torrent, saying, thus long shalt thou flow, and no longer; whenever you
+put upon your power a larger wheel than it can turn--you are slowly but
+surely preparing for that flood which will overwhelm your work, destroy
+your mills, your dams, and your engines; in a word, you are the remote
+cause of a revolution.
+
+This is the danger into which aristocracies of power are prone to fall:
+the error of democracies is, to delight in the absolutism of liberty;
+but thus it is with liberty itself, that true dignity of man, that
+parent of all blessings: absolute and uncontrolled, a tyranny beyond the
+power to endure itself, the worst of bad masters, a fool who is his own
+client; restrained and tempered, it becomes a wholesome discipline, a
+property with its rights and its duties, a sober responsibility,
+bringing with it, like all other responsibilities, its pleasures and its
+cares; not a toy to be played with, nor even a jewel to be worn in the
+bonnet, but a talent to be put out to interest, and enjoyed in the
+unbroken tranquillity of national thankfulness and peace.
+
+Another defect in the aristocracy of power is, the narrow sphere of
+their sympathies, extending only to those they know, and are familiar
+with; that is to say, only as far as the circumference of their own
+limited circle. This it is that renders them keenly apprehensive of
+danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which
+menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are
+comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles
+along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to
+the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from
+above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their
+position, and there to establish themselves in permanent security.
+
+As a remedy for this short-sightedness, the result of their isolated
+position, the aristocracy of power is always prompt to borrow from the
+aristocracy of talent that assistance in the practical working of its
+government which it requires; they are glad to find safe men among the
+people to whom they can delegate the cares of office, the annoyances of
+patronage, and the odium of power; and, the better to secure these men,
+they are always ready to lift them among themselves, to identify them
+with their exclusive interests, and to give them a permanent
+establishment among the nobles of the land.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS.
+
+
+Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of
+fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their
+manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint;
+staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with
+elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out
+of doors _in cuerpo_, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided
+military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they
+indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that
+these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man
+of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops
+the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as
+an "unsafe" fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our
+men of fashion originate any thing _outré_, or likely to attract
+attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to
+scrupulosity.
+
+Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than
+ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well
+dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a
+Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered
+pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it
+fits him--not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been
+born in it.
+
+There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an
+unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has
+always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the
+artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have
+seen--coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long
+credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the
+world--coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter,
+spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary
+foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly
+executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!
+
+Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into
+the _atelier_ of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in
+his hand, to order such a coat! _Order_ such a coat, forsooth! order a
+Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat--we say it with the
+generous indignation of a free Briton--is one of the exclusive
+privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!
+
+The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited
+approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which
+those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision
+we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age,
+or poverty of customers, _vested_ the office of trouser-cutter and coat
+architect in the same functionary, coats were without _soul_, and
+"inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said,
+"ridiculous exceedingly." In our day, on the contrary, we have attained
+to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give
+expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for
+life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.
+
+The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the
+excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in
+nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which
+people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West
+End fashionable _artistes_ in riding coats, in dress coats, in
+cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers
+of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third
+gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a
+barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other
+men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion
+turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards'
+and of Foot Guards' jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives
+these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a
+marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style
+of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not
+shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these
+disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which
+latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one
+gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of
+box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring,
+which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James's,
+within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a
+high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their
+vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays
+his tailors' bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of
+insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill;
+in a word, to make it pounds--"Excuse me, sir," said Snip, "but pray,
+let _us_ not talk of pounds--pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but
+artists, sir, _artists_ are always remunerated with guineas!"
+
+To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose
+peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in
+tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of
+elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire,
+extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is
+deficient in aught, the accessorial _toggery_, such as hats, boots,
+_choker_, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this
+department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as
+ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never
+see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan
+beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by
+no means allowable latitude of brim--besides, borrowing the fashion of a
+hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is
+with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and
+leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion:
+content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or
+behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man
+of fashion sedulously escheweth--a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a
+gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a
+four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of
+the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk
+worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
+putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of
+rain, has "taken the shine out of it."
+
+In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher
+Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are
+never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think
+their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of
+the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see
+him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days
+proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling
+along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to
+the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been
+attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and
+he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for
+stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want
+that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well
+tied _choker_. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the
+pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical
+investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment.
+A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a
+cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display
+gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than
+wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of
+a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming _choker, fine_ if
+you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour
+harmonizing with his residual _toggery_: this he ties with an easy,
+unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford
+men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not
+know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement
+of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a
+laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the
+principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these,
+as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher
+departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this
+important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the
+bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both
+the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying
+their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as
+possible.
+
+Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be
+sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese
+Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone,
+or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost
+not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever
+make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of
+his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below
+his waistband, as much as to say, "_if you only knew what a watch I have
+inside_!" Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he
+wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they
+are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.
+
+A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double
+stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like
+himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men
+of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take
+care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair
+a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the
+thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose
+kids, and desire to see no more of them.
+
+If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not
+put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the
+ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose
+completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays
+he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as
+possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by
+the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt
+cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by
+supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a
+pleasing contrast with that portion of the original _chemise_, vainly
+attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
+stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at
+the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
+wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a
+sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.
+
+A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble
+inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half
+shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his
+clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly
+_propre_, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:"
+he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the
+same, and has never been other than he now appears.
+
+You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the
+man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I
+will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
+_degagé_, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou
+mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
+will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you
+plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in "topping
+the part."
+
+We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
+into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of
+fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving
+to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto:
+just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall
+merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered
+the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more
+properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human
+species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his
+father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention
+to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional
+dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best _artistes_,
+seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken
+heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating
+propriety of toggery--not at all: the whole secret consists in _never
+paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor_!
+
+Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three
+suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those
+who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand,
+for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to
+consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only
+from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring
+under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible
+depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain,
+and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy
+collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time
+must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to
+them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of
+shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
+walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure.
+They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling
+against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so
+much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the
+proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful
+indifference.
+
+But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never
+thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which
+the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of
+the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon
+themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants,
+the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest
+infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the
+people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be
+victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace
+and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home
+to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which
+you have not the most remote idea of paying for, _in secula seculorum_.
+So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies,
+when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather
+pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow
+you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The
+innate cruelty of the human animal is gratified, and the idea of a
+tailor's suffering is never conceived by a customer without involuntary
+cachinnation. Not only is he denied the attribute of integral
+manhood--which even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys--but that
+principle which induces a few men of enthusiastic temperament to pay
+debts, is always held a fault when applied to the bills of tailors. And,
+what is a curious and instructive fact in the natural history of London
+fashionable tailors, and altogether unnoticed by the Rev. Leonard
+Jenyns, in his _Manual of British Vertebrate Animals_, if you go to one
+of these gentlemen, requesting him to "execute," and professing your
+readiness to pay his bill on demand or delivery, he will be sure to give
+your order to the most scurvy botch in his establishment, put in the
+worst materials, and treat you altogether as a person utterly
+unacquainted with the usages of polite society. But if, on the contrary,
+you are recommended to him by Lord Fly-by-night, of Denman Priory--if
+you give a thundering order, and, instead of offering to pay for it,
+pull out a parcel of bill-stamps, and _promise_ fifty per cent for a few
+hundreds down, you will be surprised to observe what delight will
+express itself in the radiant countenance of your victim: visions of
+cent per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams of bonds with penalties, and
+all those various shapes in which security delights to involve the
+extravagant, rise flatteringly before the inward eye of the man of
+shreds and patches. By these transactions with the great, he becomes
+more and more a man, less and less a tailor; instead of cutting patterns
+and taking measures, he flings the tailoring to his foreman, becoming
+first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to peers of
+the realm.
+
+With a few more of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the
+gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A
+gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military
+man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as
+possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon
+horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who
+always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts higher than a
+threepenny stride on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a gentleman ever wear
+a _moustache_, unless he belongs to one of the regiments of hussars, or
+the household cavalry, who alone are ordered to display that ornamental
+exuberance. Foreigners, military or non-military, are recognized as
+wearing hair on the upper lip with propriety, as is the custom of their
+country. But no gentleman here thinks of such a thing, any more than he
+would think of sporting the uniform of the Tenth Hussars.
+
+There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the
+_moustache_, which they clip and cut _à la Vandyk_: this is useful, as
+affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an
+ass--the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like
+an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair,
+exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like
+an ourang-outang as possible.
+
+Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the
+gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better
+sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and
+behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not
+the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more
+nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and
+gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba
+or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.
+
+In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale
+the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for
+however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed
+when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more
+disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.
+
+Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar
+_habitat_: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the
+hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he
+venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on
+business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in
+Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James's.
+
+
+OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.
+
+     "Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare,
+     taste, high life and the musical glasses."--_Vicar of
+     Wakefield_.
+
+We will venture to assert, that in the course of these essays on the
+aristocracies of London life, we have never attempted to induce any of
+our readers to believe that there was any cause for him to regret,
+whatever condition of life it had pleased Providence to place him in, or
+to suppose, for one moment, that reputable men, though in widely
+different circumstances, are not equally reputable. We have studiously
+avoided portraying fashionable life according to the vulgar notions,
+whether depreciatory or panegyrical. We have shown that that class is
+not to be taken and treated of as an integral quantity, but to be
+analyzed as a component body, wherein is much sterling ore and no little
+dross. We have shown by sufficient examples, that whatever in our eyes
+makes the world of fashion really respectable, is solely owing to the
+real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever
+contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the
+misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible.
+
+Of the former, the example is of infinite value to society, in refining
+its tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed ease, which, if not
+true politeness, is its true substitute; and, of the latter, the
+mischief done to society is enhanced by the multitude of low people
+ready to imitate their vices, inanities, and follies.
+
+Pretenders to fashion, who hang upon the outskirts of fashionable
+society, and whose lives are a perpetual but unavailing struggle to jump
+above their proper position, are horrid nuisances; and they abound,
+unfortunately, in London.
+
+In a republic, where practical equality is understood and acted upon,
+this pretension would be intolerable; in an aristocratic state of
+society, with social gradations pointedly defined and universally
+recognized, it is merely ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the
+pretenders, it is a source of much and deserved misery and isolation.
+
+There are ten thousand varying shades and degrees of this pretension,
+from the truly fashionable people who hanker after the _exclusives_, or
+seventh heaven of high life, down to the courier out of place, who, in a
+pot-house, retails Debrett by heart, and talks of lords, and dukes, and
+earls, as of his particular acquaintance, and how and where he met them
+when on his travels.
+
+The _exclusives_ are a queer set, some of them not by any means people
+of the best pretensions to lead the _ton_. Lady L---- and Lady B---- may
+be very well as patronesses of Almack's; but what do you say to Lady
+J----, a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in money, keeping her shop by
+deputy in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill? Almack's, as every body
+knows who has been there, or who has talked with any observing _habitué_
+of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in
+somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least
+effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men,
+and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes
+they wear: yet, by mere dint of difficulty, by the simple circumstance
+of making admission to this assembly a matter of closeting, canvassing,
+balloting, black-balling, and so forth, people of much better fashion
+than many of the exclusives make it a matter of life and death to have
+their admission secured. Admission to Almack's is to a young _débutante_
+of fashion as great an object as a seat at the Privy Council Board to a
+flourishing politician: your _ton_ is stamped by it, you are of the
+exclusive _set_, and, by virtue of belonging to that set, every other is
+open to you as a matter of course, when you choose to condescend to
+visit it. The room in which Almack's balls are held we need not
+describe, because it has been often described before, and because the
+doorkeeper, any day you choose to go to Duke Street, St James's, will be
+too happy to show it you for sixpence; but we will give you in his own
+words, all the information we could contrive to get from a man of the
+highest fashion, who is a subscriber.
+
+"Why, I really don't know," said he, "that I have any thing to tell you
+about Almack's, except that all that the novel-writers say about it is
+ridiculous nonsense: the lights are good, the refreshments not so good,
+the music excellent; the women dress well, dance a good deal, and talk
+but little. There is a good deal of envy, jealousy, and criticism of
+faces, figures, fortunes, and pretensions: one, or at most two, of the
+balls in a season are pleasant; the others _slow_ and very dull. The
+point of the thing seems to be, that people of rank choose to like it
+because it stamps a set, and low people talk about it because they
+cannot by any possibility know any thing about it."
+
+Such is Almack's, of which volumes have been spun, of most effete and
+lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid appetites of the pretenders to
+fashion.
+
+We must not omit to inform our rural readers, that no conventional rank
+gives any one in London a patent of privilege in truly fashionable
+society. An old baronet shall be exclusive, when a young peer shall have
+no fashionable society at all: a lord is by no means necessarily a man
+in what the fashionable sets call good society: we have many lords who
+are not men of fashion, and many men of fashion who are not lords.
+
+Professional peers, whether legal, naval, or military, bishops, judges,
+and all that class of men who attain by talents, interest, and good
+fortune, or all, or any of these, a lofty social position, have no more
+to do with the exclusive or merely fashionable sets than you or I. A man
+may be a barrister in full practice to-day, an attorney-general
+to-morrow, a chief-justice the day after with a peerage: yet his wife
+and daughter visit the same people, and are visited by the same people,
+that associated with them before. If men of fashion know them, it is
+because they have business to transact or favours to seek for, or
+because it is part of their system to keep up a qualified intimacy with
+all whom they think proper to lift to their own level: but this intimacy
+is only extended by the man of birth to the man of talent. His family do
+not become people of fashion until the third or fourth generation: he
+remains the man of business, the useful, working, practical,
+brains-carrying man that he was; and his family, if they are wise, seek
+not to become the familiars of the old aristocracy, and if they are
+foolish, become the most unfortunate pretenders to fashion. They are too
+near to be pleasant; and the gulf which people of hereditary fashion
+place between is impassable, even though they flounder up to their necks
+in servile mud.
+
+It is the same with baronets, M.P.'s, and all that sort of people. These
+handles to men's names go down very well in the country, where it is
+imagined that a baronet or an M.P. is, _ex officio_, a man of
+consequence, and that, rank being equal, consequence is also equal. In
+London, on the contrary, people laugh at the idea of a man pluming
+himself upon such distinctions without a difference: in town we have
+baronets of all sorts--the "Heathcotes, and such large-acred men," Sir
+Watkyn, and the territorial baronetage: then we have the Hanmers, and
+others of undoubted fashion, to which their patent is the weakest of
+their claims: then we have the military, naval, and medical baronet:
+descending, through infinite gradations, we come down to the
+tallow-chandling, the gin-spinning, the banking, the pastry-cooking
+baronetage.
+
+What is there, what can there be, in common with these widely severed
+classes, save that they equally enjoy _Sir_ at the head and _Bart_. at
+the tail of their sponsorial and patronymic appellations? Do you think
+the landed Bart. knows any more of the medical Bart. than that, when he
+sends for the other to attend his wife, he calls him generally "doctor,"
+and seldom Sir James: or that the military Bart. does not much like the
+naval Bart.? and do not all these incongruous Barts. shudder at the bare
+idea of been seen on the same side of the street with a gin-spinning,
+Patent-British-Genuine-Foreign-Cognac Brandy-making Bart.? and do not
+each and every one of these Barts. from head to tail, even including the
+last-mentioned, look down with immeasurable disdain upon the poor Nova
+Scotia baronets, who move heaven and earth to get permission to wear a
+string round their necks, and a badge like the learned fraternity of
+cabmen?
+
+Then as to the magic capitals M.P., which provincial people look upon as
+embodying in the wearer the concentrated essence of wisdom, eloquence,
+personal distinction, and social eminence. Who, in a country town, on a
+market day, has not seen tradesmen cocking their eye, apprentices
+glowering through the shop front, and ladies subdolously peeping behind
+the window-shutter to catch a glimpse of the "member for our town," and,
+having seen him, think they are rather happier then they were before?
+The greatest fun in the world is to go to a _cul-de-sac_ off a dirty
+lane near Palace Yard, called Manchester Buildings, a sort of senatorial
+pigeon-house, where the meaner fry of houseless M.P.'s live, each in his
+one pair, two pair, three pair, as the case may be, and give a postman's
+knock at every door in rapid succession. In a twinkling, the "collective
+wisdom" of Manchester Buildings and the Midland Counties poke out their
+heads. Cobden appears on the balcony; Muntz glares out of a second
+floor, like a live bear in a barber's window; Wallace of Greenock comes
+to the door in a red nightcap; and a long "tail" of the other immortals
+of a session. You may enjoy the scene as much as you please; but when
+you hear one or two of the young Irish patriotic "mimbers" floundering
+from the attics, the wisest course you can take will be incontinently to
+"mizzle." These men, however, have one redeeming quality--that they
+live in Manchester Buildings, and don't care who knows it; they are out
+of fashion, and don't care who are in; they are minding their business,
+and not hanging at the skirts of people ever ready and willing to kick
+them off.
+
+Then there are the "dandy" M.P.'s, who ride hack-horses, associate with
+fashionable actresses, and hang about the clubs. Then there is the
+chance or accidental M.P., who has been elected he hardly knows how or
+when, and wonders to find himself in Parliament. Then there is the
+desperate, adventuring, ear-wigging M.P., whose hope of political
+existence, and whose very livelihood, depend upon getting or continuing
+in place. Then there is the legal M.P., with one eye fixed on the
+Queen's, the other squinting at the Treasury Bench. Then there is the
+lounging M.P., who is usually the scion of a noble family, and who comes
+now and then into the House, to stare vacantly about, and go out again.
+Then there is the military M.P., who finds the House an agreeable
+lounge, and does not care to join his regiment on foreign service. Then
+there is the bustling M.P. of business, the M.P. of business without
+bustle, and the independent country gentleman M.P., who wants nothing
+for himself or any body else, and who does not care a turnip-top for the
+whole lot of them.
+
+The aggregate distinction, as a member of Parliament, is totally sunk in
+London. It is the man, and not the two letters after his name, that any
+body whose regard is worth the having in the least regard. There are
+M.P.s never seen beyond the exclusive set, except on a committee of the
+House, and then they know and speak to nobody save one of themselves.
+There are other M.P.s that you will find in no society except Tom
+Spring's or Owen Swift's, at the Horse-shoe in Litchborne Street.
+
+These observations upon baronets and M.P.s may be extended upwards to
+the peerage, and downwards to the professional, commercial, and all
+other the better classes. Every man hangs, like a herring, by his own
+tail; and every class would be distinct and separate, but that the
+pretenders to fashion, like some equivocal animals in the chain of
+animated nature, connect these different classes by copying
+pertinaciously the manners, and studying to adopt the tastes and habits
+of the class immediately above them.
+
+Of pretenders to fashion, perhaps the most successful in their imitative
+art are the
+
+SHEENIES.--By this term, as used by men of undoubted _ton_ with
+reference to the class we are about to consider, you are to understand
+runagate Jews rolling in riches, who profess to love roast pork above
+all things, who always eat their turkey with sausages, and who have
+_cut_ their religion for the sake of dangling at the heels of
+fashionable Christians. These people are "swelling" upon the profits of
+the last generation in St Mary Axe or Petticoat Lane. The founders of
+their families have been loan-manufacturers, crimps, receivers of stolen
+goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers and sweaters, rag-merchants,
+and the like, and conscientious Israelites; but their children, not
+having fortitude to abide by their condition, nor right principle to
+adhere to their sect, come to the west end of the town, and, by right of
+their money, make unremitting assaults upon the loose fish of
+fashionable society, who laugh at, and heartily despise them, while they
+are as ashes in the mouths of the respectable members of the persuasion
+to which they originally belonged.
+
+HEAVY SWELLS are another very important class of pretenders to fashion,
+and are divided into civil and military. Professional men, we say it to
+their honour, seldom affect the heavy swell, because the feeblest
+glimmerings of that rationality of thinking which results from among the
+lowest education, preserves them from the folly of the attempt, and, in
+preserving from folly, saves them from the self-reproaching misery that
+attends it. Men of education or of common sense, look upon pretension to
+birth, rank, or any thing else to which they have no legitimate claim,
+as little more than moral forgery; it is with them an uttering base
+coin upon false pretences. It is generally the wives and families of
+professional men who are afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which
+we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of
+gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the
+son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a
+marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains,
+deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and
+bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He
+is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he is--never so
+completely in his element as when acting the thing he is not, nor can
+ever be. He spends his life in jumping, like a cat, at shadows on the
+wall. He has day and night dreams of people, who have not the least idea
+that such a man is in existence, and he comes in time, by mere dint of
+thinking of nobody else, to think that he is one of them. He acquaints
+himself with the titles of lords, as other men do those of books, and
+then boasts largely of the extent of his acquaintance.
+
+Let us suppose that he is an officer of a hard-fighting,
+foreign-service, neglected infantry regiment. This, which to a soldier
+would be an honest pride, is the shame of the Heavy Military Swell. His
+chief business in life, next to knowing the names and faces of lords, is
+concealing from you the corps to which he has the dishonour, he thinks,
+to belong. He talks mightily of the service, of hussars and light
+dragoons; but when he knows that you know better, when you poke him hard
+about the young or old buffs, or the dirty half-hundred, he whispers in
+your ear that "my fellows," as he calls them, are very "fast," and that
+they are "all known in town, very well known indeed"--a piece of
+information you will construe in the case of the heavy swell to mean,
+better known than trusted.
+
+When he is on full pay, the heavy swell is known to the three old women
+and five desperate daughters who compose good society in country
+quarters. He affects a patronizing air at small tea-parties, and is
+wonderfully run after by wretched un-idea'd girls, that is, by ten girls
+in twelve; he is eternally striving to get upon the "staff," or anyhow
+to shirk his regimental duty; he is a whelp towards the men under his
+command, and has a grand idea of spurs, steel scabbards, and flogging;
+to his superiors he is a spaniel, to his brother officers an intolerable
+ass; he makes the mess-room a perfect hell with his vanity, puppyism,
+and senseless bibble-babble.
+
+On leave, or half-pay, he "mounts mustaches," to help the hussar and
+light-dragoon idea, or to delude the ignorant into a belief that he may
+possibly belong to the household cavalry. He hangs about doors of
+military clubs, with a whip in his hand; talks very loud at the "Tiger"
+or the "Rag and famish," and never has done shouting to the waiter to
+bring him a "Peerage;" carries the "Red Book" and "Book of Heraldry" in
+his pocket; sees whence people come, and where they go, and makes them
+out somehow; in short, he is regarded with a thrill of horror by people
+of fashion, fast or slow, civil or military.
+
+The Civil Heavy Swell affects fashionable curricles, and enjoys all the
+consideration a pair of good horses can give. He rides a blood bay in
+Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is detected by galloping, or some other
+solecism; his dress and liveries are always overdone, the money shows on
+every thing about him. He has familiar abbreviations for the names of
+all the fast men about town; calls this Lord "Jimmy," 'tother Chess, a
+third Dolly, and thinks he knows them; keeps an expensive mistress,
+because "Jimmy" and Chess are supposed to do the same, and when he is
+out of the way, his mistress has some of the fast fellows to supper, at
+the heavy swell's expense. He settles the point whether claret is to be
+drank from a jug or black bottle, and retails the merits of a _plateau_
+or _epergne_ he saw, when last he dined with a "fellow" in Belgrave
+Square.
+
+The _Foreigneering_ Heavy Swell has much more spirit, talent, and
+manner, than the home-grown article; but he is poor in a like ratio, and
+is therefore obliged to feather his nest by denuding the pigeon tribe of
+their metallic plumage. He is familiarly known to all the fast fellows,
+who _cut_ him, however, as soon as they marry, but is not accounted good
+_ton_ by heads of families. He is liked at the Hells and Clubs, where he
+has a knack of distinguishing himself without presumption or
+affectation. He is a dresser by right divine, and dresses ridiculously.
+The fashionable fellows affect loudly to applaud his taste, and laugh to
+see the vulgar imitate the foreigneering swell. He is the idol of
+equivocal women, and condescends to patronize unpresentable
+gentility-mongers. He is not unhappy at heart, like the indigenous heavy
+swell, but enjoys his intimacy with the fast fellows, and uses it.
+
+There is an infallible test we should advise you to apply, whenever you
+are bored to desperation by any of these heavy swells. When he talks of
+"my friend, the Duke of Bayswater," ask him, in a quiet tone, where he
+last met the _Duchess_. If he says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl of) is
+an honest good fellow, enquire whether he prefers Lady Mary or Lady
+Seraphina Serpentine. This drops him like a shot--he can't get over it.
+
+It is a rule in good society that you know the set only when you know
+the women of that set; however you may work your way among the men,
+whatever you may do at the Hells and Clubs, goes for nothing--the
+_women_ stamp you counterfeit or current, and--
+
+     "Not to know _them_, argues yourself unknown."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EYRE'S CABUL.
+
+
+     The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat
+     and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842; with a
+     Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan. By Lieutenant Vincent
+     Eyre, Bengal Artillery, late Deputy-Commissary of Ordnance at
+     Cabul. London: John Murray.
+
+This is the first connected account that has appeared of the military
+disasters that befell the British army at Cabul--by far the most signal
+reverse our arms have ever sustained in Asia. The narrative is full of a
+deep and painful interest, which becomes more and more intense as we
+approach the closing catastrophe. The simple detail of the daily
+occurrences stirs up our strongest feelings of indignation, pity; scorn,
+admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any
+attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and
+gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is
+highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion
+both of his head and of his heart.
+
+That a British army of nearly six thousand fighting men--occupying a
+position chosen and fortified by our own officers, and having
+possession, within two miles of this fortified cantonment, of a strong
+citadel commanding the greater part of the town of Cabul, a small
+portion only of whose population rose against us at the commencement of
+the revolt--should not only have made no vigorous effort to crush the
+insurrection; but that it should ultimately have been driven by an
+undisciplined Asiatic mob, destitute of artillery, and which never
+appears to have collected in one place above 10,000 men, to seek safety
+in a humiliating capitulation, by which it surrendered the greater part
+of its artillery, military stores, and treasure, and undertook to
+evacuate the whole country on condition of receiving a safe conduct from
+the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they placed, and could place, no
+reliance; and finally, that, of about 4500 armed soldiers and twelve
+thousand camp-followers, many of whom were also armed, who set out from
+Cabul, only one man, and he wounded, should have arrived at Jellalabad;
+is an amount of misfortune so far exceeding every rational anticipation
+of evil, that we should have been entitled to assume that these
+unparalleled military disasters arose from a series of unparalleled
+errors, even if we had not had, as we now have, the authority of Lord
+Ellenborough for asserting the fact.
+
+But every nation, and more particularly the British nation, is little
+inclined to pardon the men under whose command any portion of its army
+or of its navy may have been beaten. Great Britain, reposing entire
+confidence in the courage of her men, and little accustomed to see them
+overthrown, is keenly jealous of the reputation of her forces; and, as
+she is ever prompt to reward military excellence and success, she heaps
+unmeasured obloquy on those who may have subjected her to the
+degradation of defeat. When our forces have encountered a reverse, or
+even when the success has not been commensurate with the hopes that had
+been indulged; the public mind has ever been prone to condemn the
+commanders; and wherever there has been reason to believe that errors
+have been committed which have led to disaster, there has been little
+disposition to make any allowances for the circumstances of the case, or
+for the fallibility of man; but, on the contrary, the nation has too
+often evinced a fierce desire to punish the leaders for the
+mortification the country has been made to endure.
+
+This feeling may tend to elevate the standard of military character, but
+it must at the same time preclude the probability of calm or impartial
+examination, so far as the great body of the nation is concerned; and it
+is therefore the more obviously incumbent on those who, from a more
+intimate knowledge of the facts, or from habits of more deliberate
+investigation, are not carried away by the tide of popular indignation
+and invective, to weigh the circumstances with conscientious caution,
+and to await the result of judicial enquiry before they venture to
+apportion the blame or even to estimate its amount.
+
+     "The following notes," says Lieutenant Eyre in his preface,
+     "were penned to relieve the monotony of an Affghan prison,
+     while yet the events which they record continued fresh in my
+     memory. I now give them publicity, in the belief that the
+     information which they contain on the dreadful scenes lately
+     enacted in Affghanistan, though clothed in a homely garb, will
+     scarcely fail to be acceptable to many of my countrymen, both
+     in India and England, who may be ignorant of the chief
+     particulars. The time, from the 2d November 1841, on which day
+     the sudden popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to the 13th
+     January 1842, which witnessed the annihilation of the last
+     small remnant of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was one
+     continued tragedy. The massacre of Sir Alexander Burnes and his
+     associates,--the loss of our commissariat fort--the defeat of
+     our troops under Brigadier Shelton at Beymaroo--the treacherous
+     assassination of Sir William Macnaghten, our envoy and
+     minister--and lastly, the disastrous retreat and utter
+     destruction of a force consisting of 5000 fighting men and
+     upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,--are events which will
+     assuredly rouse the British Lion from his repose, and excite an
+     indignant spirit of enquiry in every breast. Men will not be
+     satisfied, in this case, with a bare statement of the facts,
+     but they will doubtless require to be made acquainted with the
+     causes which brought about such awful effects. We have lost six
+     entire regiments of infantry, three companies of sappers, a
+     troop of European horse-artillery, half the mountain-train
+     battery, nearly a whole regiment of regular cavalry, and four
+     squadrons of irregular horse, besides a well-stocked magazine,
+     which _alone_, taking into consideration the cost of transport
+     up to Cabul, may be estimated at nearly a million sterling.
+     From first to last, not less than 104 British officers have
+     fallen: their names will be found in the Appendix. I glance but
+     slightly at the _political_ events of this period, not having
+     been one of the initiated; and I do not pretend to enter into
+     _minute_ particulars with regard to even our _military_
+     transactions, more especially those not immediately connected
+     with the sad catastrophe which it has been my ill fortune to
+     witness, and whereof I now endeavour to portray the leading
+     features. In these notes I have been careful to state only what
+     I know to be undeniable facts. I have set down nothing on mere
+     hearsay evidence, nor any thing which cannot be attested by
+     living witnesses or by existing documentary evidence. In
+     treating of matters which occurred under my personal
+     observation, it has been difficult to avoid _altogether_ the
+     occasional expression of my own individual opinion: but I hope
+     it will be found that I have made no observations bearing hard
+     on men or measures, that are either uncalled for, or will not
+     stand the test of future investigation."
+
+After the surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan, there remained in Affghanistan
+no chief who possessed a dominant power or influence that made him
+formidable to the government of Shah Shoojah, or to his English allies;
+and the kingdom of Cabul seemed to be gradually, though slowly,
+subsiding into comparative tranquillity. In the summer of the year 1841,
+the authority of the sovereign appears to have been acknowledged in
+almost every part of his dominions. A partial revolt of the Giljyes was
+speedily suppressed by our troops. The Kohistan, or more correctly,
+Koohdaman of Cabul, a mountainous tract, inhabited by a warlike people,
+over whom the authority of the governments of the country had long been
+imperfect and precarious, had submitted, or had ceased to resist. A
+detachment from the British force at Kandahar, after defeating Akter
+Khan, who had been instigated by the Vezeer of Herat to rebel, swept the
+country of Zemindawer, drove Akter Khan a fugitive to Herat, received
+the submission of all the chiefs in that part of the kingdom, and
+secured the persons of such as it was not thought prudent to leave at
+large in those districts.
+
+The Shah's authority was not believed to be so firmly established, that
+both Sir William Macnaghten, the British envoy at Cabul, who had
+recently been appointed governor of Bombay, and Sir Alexander Burnes, on
+whom the duties of the envoy would have devolved on Sir W. Macnaghten's
+departure, thought that the time had arrived when the amount of the
+British force in Affghanistan, which was so heavy a charge upon the
+revenues of India, might with safety be reduced, and General Sale's
+brigade was ordered to hold itself in readiness to march to Jellalabad,
+on its route to India.
+
+Even at this time, however, Major Pottinger, the political agent in
+Kohistan, including, we presume, the Koohdaman, thought the force at his
+disposal too small to maintain the tranquillity of the district; and the
+chiefs of the valley of Nijrow, or Nijrab, a valley of Kohistan Proper,
+had not only refused to submit, but had harboured the restless and
+disaffected who had made themselves obnoxious to the Shah's government.
+But although Major Pottinger had no confidence in the good feelings of
+the people of his own district to the government, and even seems to have
+anticipated insurrection, no movement of that description had yet taken
+place.
+
+Early in September, however, Captain Hay, who was with a small force in
+the Zoormut valley, situated nearly west from Ghuznee and south from
+Cabul, having been induced by the representations of Moollah Momin--the
+collector of the revenues, who was a Barikzye, and a near relation of
+one of the leaders of the insurrection, in which he afterwards himself
+took an active part--to move against a fort in which the murderers of
+Colonel Herring were said to have taken shelter, the inhabitants
+resisted his demands, and fired upon the troops. His force was found
+insufficient to reduce it, and he was obliged to retire; a stronger
+force was therefore sent, on the approach of which the people fled to
+the hills, and the forts they had evacuated were blown up. This
+occurrence was not calculated seriously to disturb the confident hopes
+that were entertained of the permanent tranquillity of the country; but
+before the force employed upon that expedition had returned to Cabul, a
+formidable insurrection had broken out in another quarter.
+
+     "Early in October," says Lieutenant Eyre, "three Giljye chiefs
+     of note suddenly quitted Cabul, after plundering a rich cafila
+     at Tezeen, and took up a strong position in the difficult
+     defile of Khoord-Cabul, about ten miles from the capital, thus
+     blocking up the pass, and cutting off our communication with
+     Hindostan. Intelligence had not very long previously been
+     received that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the ex-ruler
+     Dost Mahomed Khan, had arrived at Bameean from Khooloom, for
+     the supposed purpose of carrying on intrigues against the
+     Government. It is remarkable that he is nearly connected by
+     marriage with Mahomed Shah Khan and Dost Mahomed Khan, also
+     Giljyes, who almost immediately joined the above-mentioned
+     chiefs. Mahomed Akber had, since the deposition of his father,
+     never ceased to foster feelings of intense hatred towards the
+     English nation; and, though often urged by the fallen ruler to
+     deliver himself up, had resolutely preferred the life of a
+     houseless exile to one of mean dependence on the bounty of his
+     enemies. It seems, therefore, in the highest degree probable
+     that this hostile movement on the part of the Eastern Giljyes
+     was the result of his influence over them, combined with other
+     causes which will be hereafter mentioned."
+
+The other causes here alluded to, appear to be "the deep offence given
+to the Giljyes by the ill-advised reduction of their annual stipends, a
+measure which had been forced upon Sir William Macnaghten by Lord
+Auckland. This they considered, and with some show of justice, as a
+breach of faith on the part of our Government."
+
+We presume that it is not Mr Eyre's intention to assert that this
+particular measure was ordered by Lord Auckland, but merely that the
+rigid economy enforced by his lordship, led the Envoy to have recourse
+to this measure as one of the means by which the general expenditure
+might be diminished.
+
+Formidable as this revolt of the Giljyes was found to be, we are led to
+suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten and Sir A. Burnes were misled,
+probably by the Shah's government, very greatly to underrate its
+importance and its danger. The force under Colonel Monteath,[16] which
+in the first instance was sent to suppress it, was so small that it was
+not only unable to penetrate into the country it was intended to
+overawe or to subdue, but it was immediately attacked in its camp,
+within ten miles of Cabul, and lost thirty-five sepoys killed and
+wounded.
+
+     [16] 35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.
+
+Two days afterwards, the 11th October, General Sale marched from Cabul
+with H.M.'s 13th light infantry, to join Colonel Monteath's camp at
+Bootkhak; and the following morning the whole proceeded to force the
+pass of Khoord-Cabul, which was effected with some loss. The 13th
+returned through the pass to Bootkhak, suffering from the fire of
+parties which still lurked among the rocks. The remainder of the brigade
+encamped at Khoord-Cabul, at the further extremity of the defile. In
+this divided position the brigade remained for some days, and both camps
+had to sustain night attacks from the Affghans--"that on the 35th native
+infantry being peculiarly disastrous, from the treachery of the Affghan
+horse, who admitted the enemy within their lines, by which our troops
+were exposed to a fire from the least suspected quarter. Many of our
+gallant sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus met their death."
+
+On the 20th October, General Sale, having been reinforced, marched to
+Khoord-Cabul; "and about the 22d, the whole force there assembled, with
+Captain Macgregor, political agent, marched to Tezeen, encountering much
+determined opposition on the road."
+
+"By this time it was too evident that the whole of the Eastern Giljyes
+had risen in one common league against us." The treacherous proceedings
+of their chief or viceroy, Humza Khan, which had for some time been
+suspected, were now discovered, and he was arrested by order of Shah
+Shoojah.
+
+     "It must be remarked," says Lieutenant Eyre, "that for some
+     time previous to these overt acts of rebellion, the always
+     strong and ill-repressed personal dislike of the Affghans
+     towards Europeans, had been manifested in a more than usually
+     open manner in and about Cabul. Officers had been insulted and
+     attempts made to assassinate them. Two Europeans had been
+     murdered, as also several camp-followers; but these and other
+     signs of the approaching storm had unfortunately been passed
+     over as mere ebullitions of private angry feeling. This
+     incredulity and apathy is the more to be lamented, as it was
+     pretty well known that on the occasion of the _shub-khoon_, or
+     first night attack on the 35th native infantry at Bootkhak, a
+     large portion of our assailants consisted of the armed
+     retainers of the different men of consequence in Cabul itself,
+     large parties of whom had been seen proceeding from the city to
+     the scene of action on the evening of the attack, and
+     afterwards returning. Although these men had to pass either
+     through the heart or round the skirts of our camp at Seeah
+     Sung, it was not deemed expedient even to question them, far
+     less to detain them.
+
+     "On the 26th October, General Sale started in the direction of
+     Gundamuk, Captain Macgregor having half-frightened,
+     half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs into what proved to
+     have been a most hollow truce."
+
+On the same day, the 37th native infantry, three companies of the Shah's
+sappers under Captain Walsh, and three guns of the mountain train under
+Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps towards Cabul, where the sappers,
+pushing on, arrived unopposed; but the rest of the detachment was
+attacked on the 2d November--on the afternoon of which day, Major
+Griffiths, who commanded it, received orders to force his way to Cabul,
+where the insurrection had that morning broken out. His march through
+the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul, was one continued conflict; but
+the gallantry of his troops, and the excellence of his own dispositions,
+enabled him to carry the whole of his wounded and baggage safe to the
+cantonments at Cabul, where he arrived about three o'clock on the
+morning of the 3d November, followed almost to the gates by about 3000
+Giljyes.
+
+The causes of the insurrection in the capital are not yet fully
+ascertained, or, if ascertained, they have not been made public.
+Lieutenant Eyre does not attempt to account for it; but he gives us the
+following memorandum of Sir W. Macnaghten's, found, we presume, amongst
+his papers after his death:--
+
+     "The immediate cause of the outbreak in the capital was a
+     seditious letter addressed by Abdoollah Khan to several chiefs
+     of influence at Cabul, stating that it was the design of the
+     Envoy to seize and send them all to London! The principal
+     rebels met on the previous night, and, relying on the
+     inflammable feelings of the people of Cabul, they pretended
+     that the King had issued an order to put all infidels to death;
+     having previously forged an order from him for our destruction,
+     by the common process of washing out the contents of a genuine
+     paper, with the exception of the seal, and substituting their
+     own wicked inventions."
+
+But this invention, though it was probably one of the means employed by
+the conspirators to increase the number of their associates, can hardly
+be admitted to account for the insurrection. The arrival of Akber Khan
+at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes, the previous flight of their
+chiefs from Cabul, and the almost simultaneous attack of our posts in
+the Koohdaman, (called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,) on the 3d
+November--the attack of a party conducting prisoners from Candahar to
+Ghuznee--the immediate interruption of every line of communication with
+Cabul--and the selection of the season of the year the most favourable
+to the success of the insurrection, with many other less important
+circumstances, combine to force upon us the opinion, that the intention
+to attack the Cabul force, so soon as it should have become isolated by
+the approach of winter, had been entertained, and the plan of operations
+concerted, for some considerable time before the insurrection broke out.
+That many who wished for its success may have been slow to commit
+themselves, is to be presumed, and that vigorous measures might, if
+resorted to on the first day, have suppressed the revolt, is probable;
+but it can hardly be doubted that we must look far deeper, and further
+back, for the causes which united the Affghan nation against us.
+
+The will of their chiefs and spiritual leaders--fanatical zeal, and
+hatred of the domination of a race whom they regarded as infidels--may
+have been sufficient to incite the lower orders to any acts of violence,
+or even to the persevering efforts they made to extirpate the English.
+In their eyes the contest would assume the character of a religious
+war--of a crusade; and every man who took up arms in that cause, would
+go to battle with the conviction that, if he should be slain, his soul
+would go at once to paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy of the
+faith, he thereby also secured to himself eternal happiness. But the
+chiefs are not so full of faith; and although we would not altogether
+exclude religious antipathy as an incentive, we may safely assume that
+something more immediately affecting their temporal and personal
+concerns must with them, or at least with the large majority, have been
+the true motives of the conspiracy--of their desire to expel the English
+from their country. Nor is it difficult to conceive what some of these
+motives may have been. The former sovereigns of Affghanistan, even the
+most firmly-established and the most vigorous, had no other means of
+enforcing their commands, than by employing the forces of one part of
+the nation to make their authority respected in another; but men who
+were jealous of their own independence as chiefs, were not likely to aid
+the sovereign in any attempt to destroy the substantial power, the
+importance, or the independence of their class; and although a
+refractory chief might occasionally, by the aid of his feudal enemies,
+be taken or destroyed, and his property plundered, his place was filled
+by a relation, and the order remained unbroken. The Affghan chiefs had
+thus enjoyed, under their native governments, an amount of independence
+which was incompatible with the system we introduced--supported as that
+system was by our military means. These men must have seen that their
+own power and importance, and even their security against the caprices
+of their sovereign, could not long be preserved--that they were about to
+be subjected as well as governed--to be deprived of all power to resist
+the oppressions of their own government, because its will was enforced
+by an army which had no sympathy with the nation, and which was
+therefore ready to use its formidable strength to compel unqualified
+submission to the sovereign's commands.
+
+The British army may not have been employed to enforce any unjust
+command--its movements may have been less, far less, injurious to the
+countries through which it passed than those of an Affghan army would
+have been, and its power in the moment of success may have been far less
+abused; but still it gave a strength to the arm of the sovereign, which
+was incompatible with the maintenance of the pre-existing civil and
+social institutions or condition of the country, and especially of the
+relative positions of the sovereign and the noble. In the measures we
+adopted to establish the authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted to
+carry out a system of government which could only have been made
+successful by a total revolution in the social condition of the people,
+and in the relative positions of classes; and as these revolutions are
+not effected in a few years, the attempt failed.[17]
+
+     [17] The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no
+     doubt, have been carried through by an overwhelming military
+     force, if the country had been worth the cost; but if it was
+     not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it
+     appears to us that the native government was far too much
+     interfered with--that the British envoy, the British officers
+     employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army,
+     stood too much between the Shah and his subjects--that we were
+     forming a government which it would be impossible to work in
+     our absence, and creating a state of things which, the longer
+     it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which
+     our interference could be dispensed with.
+
+But if the predominance of our influence and of our military power, and
+the effects of the system we introduced, tended to depress the chiefs,
+it must have still more injuriously affected or threatened the power of
+the priesthood.
+
+This we believe to have been one of the primary and most essential
+causes of the revolt--this it was that made the insurrection spread with
+such rapidity, and that finally united the whole nation against us. With
+the aristocracy and the hierarchy of the country, it must have been but
+a question of courage and of means--a calculation of the probability of
+success; and as that probability was greatly increased by the results of
+the first movement at Cabul, and by the inertness of our army after the
+first outbreak, all acquired courage enough to aid in doing what all had
+previously desired to see done.
+
+But if there be any justice in this view of the state of feeling in
+Affghanistan, even in the moments of its greatest tranquillity, it is
+difficult to account for the confidence with which the political
+authorities charged with the management of our affairs in that country
+looked to the future, and the indifference with which they appear to
+have regarded what now must appear to every one else to have been very
+significant, and even alarming, intimations of dissaffection in Cabul,
+and hostility in the neighbouring districts.
+
+But it is time we should return to Lieutenant Eyre, whose narrative of
+facts is infinitely more attractive than any speculations we could
+offer.
+
+     "At an early hour this morning, (2d November 1841,) the
+     startling intelligence was brought from the city, that a
+     popular outbreak had taken place; that the shops were all
+     closed; and that a general attack had been made on the houses
+     of all British officers residing in Cabul. About 8 A.M., a
+     hurried note was received by the Envoy in cantonments from Sir
+     Alexander Burnes, stating that the minds of the people had been
+     strongly excited by some mischievous reports, but expressing a
+     hope that he should succeed in quelling the commotion. About 9
+     A.M., however, a rumour was circulated, which afterwards proved
+     but too well founded, that Sir Alexander had been murdered, and
+     Captain Johnson's treasury plundered. Flames were now seen to
+     issue from that part of the city where they dwelt, and it was
+     too apparent that the endeavour to appease the people by quiet
+     means had failed, and that it would be necessary to have
+     recourse to stronger measures. The report of firearms was
+     incessant, and seemed to extend through the town from end to
+     end.
+
+     "Sir William Macnaghten now called upon General Elphinstone to
+     act. An order was accordingly sent to Brigadier Shelton, then
+     encamped at Seeah Sung, about a mile and a half distant from
+     cantonments, to march forthwith to the _Bala Hissar_, or _royal
+     citadel_, where his Majesty Shah Shoojah resided, commanding a
+     large portion of the city, with the following troops:--viz. one
+     company of H.M. 44th foot; a wing of the 54th regiment native
+     infantry, under Major Ewart; the 6th regiment Shah's infantry,
+     under Captain Hopkins; and four horse-artillery guns, under
+     Captain Nicholl; and on arrival there, to act according to his
+     own judgment, after consulting with the King.
+
+     "The remainder of the troops encamped at Seeah Sung were at the
+     same time ordered into cantonments: viz. H.M. 44th foot, under
+     Lieutenant-Colonel Mackerell; two horse-artillery guns, under
+     Lieutenant Waller; and Anderson's irregular horse. A messenger
+     was likewise dispatched to recall the 37th native infantry from
+     Khoord-Cabul without delay. The troops at this time in
+     cantonments were as follows: viz. 5th regiment native infantry,
+     under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver; a wing of 54th native
+     infantry; five six-pounder field guns, with a detachment of the
+     Shah's artillery, under Lieutenant Warburton; the Envoy's
+     body-guard; a troop of Skinner's horse, and another of local
+     horse, under Lieutenant Walker; three companies of the Shah's
+     sappers, under Captain Walsh; and about twenty men of the
+     Company's sappers, attached to Captain Paton,
+     assistant-quartermaster-general.
+
+     "Widely spread and formidable as this insurrection proved to be
+     afterwards, it was at first a mere insignificant ebullition of
+     discontent on the part of a few desperate and restless men,
+     which military energy and promptitude ought to have crushed in
+     the bud. Its commencement was an attack by certainly not 300
+     men on the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and Captain
+     Johnson, paymaster to the Shah's force; and so little did Sir
+     Alexander himself apprehend serious consequences, that he not
+     only refused, on its first breaking out, to comply with the
+     earnest entreaties of the wuzeer to accompany him to the Bala
+     Hissar, but actually forbade his guard to fire on the
+     assailants, attempting to check what he supposed to be a mere
+     riot, by haranguing the attacking party from the gallery of his
+     house. The result was fatal to himself; for in spite of the
+     devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed his guard, and
+     that of the paymaster's office and treasury on the opposite
+     side of the street, who yielded their trust only with their
+     latest breath, the latter were plundered, and his two
+     companions, Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal European
+     regiment, and his brother, Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay
+     army, were massacred, in common with every man, woman, and
+     child found on the premises, by these bloodthirsty miscreants.
+     Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six men with his own hand,
+     before he was shot down.
+
+     "The King, who was in the Bala Hissar, being somewhat startled
+     by the increasing number of the rioters, although not at the
+     time aware, so far as we can judge, of the assassination of Sir
+     A. Burnes, dispatched one of his sons with a number of his
+     immediate Affghan retainers, and that corps of Hindoostanees
+     commonly called Campbell's regiment, with two guns, to restore
+     order: no support, however, was rendered to these by our
+     troops, whose leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the
+     intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable of adopting
+     more than the most puerile defensive measures. Even Sir William
+     Macnaghten seemed, from a note received at this time from him
+     by Captain Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he therein
+     expressed his perfect confidence as to the speedy and complete
+     success of Campbell's Hindoostanees in putting an end to the
+     disturbance. Such, however, was not the case; for the enemy,
+     encouraged by our inaction, increased rapidly in spirit and
+     numbers, and drove back the King's guard with great slaughter,
+     the guns being with difficulty saved.
+
+     "It must be understood that Captain Trevor lived at this time
+     with his family in a strong _bourge_ or tower, situated by the
+     river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter, which, on the west, is
+     wholly distinct from the remainder of the city. Within
+     musket-shot, on the opposite side of the river, in the
+     direction of the strong and populous village of Deh Affghan, is
+     a fort of some size, then used as a godown, or storehouse, by
+     the Shah's commissariat, part of it being occupied by Brigadier
+     Anquetil, commanding the Shah's force. Close to this fort,
+     divided by a narrow watercourse, was the house of Captain
+     Troup, brigade-major of the Shah's force, perfectly defensible
+     against musketry. Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain Troup had
+     gone out on horseback early in the morning towards cantonments,
+     and were unable to return; but the above fort and house
+     contained the usual guard of sepoys; and in a garden close at
+     hand, called the _Yaboo-Khaneh_, or lines of the
+     baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of the Shah's sappers
+     and miners, and a party of Captain Ferris's juzailchees.
+     Captain Trevor's tower was capable of being made good against a
+     much stronger force than the rebels at this present time could
+     have collected, had it been properly garrisoned.
+
+     "As it was, the Hazirbash,[18] or King's lifeguards, were,
+     under Captain Trevor, congregated round their leader, to
+     protect him and his family; which duty, it will be seen, they
+     well performed under very trying circumstances. For what took
+     place in this quarter I beg to refer to a communication made to
+     me at my request by Captain Colin Mackenzie,[19] assistant
+     political agent at Peshawur, who then occupied the godown
+     portion of the fort above mentioned, which will be found
+     hereafter.[20]
+
+     "I have already stated that Brigadier Shelton was, early in the
+     day, directed to proceed with part of the Seeah Sung force to
+     occupy the Bala Hissar, and, if requisite, to lead his troops
+     against the insurgents. Captain Lawrence, military secretary to
+     the Envoy, was at the same time sent forward to prepare the
+     King for that officer's reception. Taking with him four
+     troopers of the body-guard, he was galloping along the main
+     road, when, shortly after crossing the river, he was suddenly
+     attacked by an Affghan, who, rushing from behind a wall, made a
+     desperate cut at him with a large two-handed knife. He
+     dexterously avoided the blow by spurring his horse on one side;
+     but, passing onwards, he was fired upon by about fifty men,
+     who, having seen his approach, ran out from the Lahore gate of
+     the city to intercept him. He reached the Bala Hissar safe,
+     where he found the King apparently in a state of great
+     agitation, he having witnessed the assault from the window of
+     his palace. His Majesty expressed an eager desire to conform to
+     the Envoy's wishes in all respects in this emergency.
+
+     "Captain Lawrence was still conferring with the King, when
+     Lieutenant Sturt, our executive engineer, rushed into the
+     palace, stabbed in three places about the face and neck. He had
+     been sent by Brigadier Shelton to make arrangements for the
+     accommodation of the troops, and had reached the gate of the
+     _Dewan Khaneh_, or hall of audience, when the attempt at his
+     life was made by some one who had concealed himself there for
+     that purpose, and who immediately effected his escape. The
+     wounds were fortunately not dangerous, and Lieutenant Sturt was
+     conveyed back to cantonments in the King's own palanquin, under
+     a strong escort. Soon after this Brigadier Shelton's force
+     arrived; but the day was suffered to pass without any thing
+     being done demonstrative of British energy and power. The
+     murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation of public and
+     private property, was perpetrated with impunity within a mile
+     of our cantonment, and under the very walls of the Bala Hissar.
+
+     "Such an exhibition on our part taught the enemy their
+     strength--confirmed against us those who, however disposed to
+     join in the rebellion, had hitherto kept aloof from prudential
+     motives, and ultimately encouraged the nation to unite as one
+     man for our destruction.
+
+     "It was, in fact, the crisis of all others calculated to test
+     the qualities of a military commander. Whilst, however, it is
+     impossible for an unprejudiced person to approve the military
+     dispositions of this eventful period, it is equally our duty to
+     discriminate. The most _responsible_ party is not always the
+     most culpable. It would be the height of injustice to a most
+     amiable and gallant officer not to notice the long course of
+     painful and wearing illness, which had materially affected the
+     nerves, and probably even the intellect, of General
+     Elphinstone; cruelly incapacitating him, so far as he was
+     personally concerned, from acting in this sudden emergency with
+     the promptitude and vigour necessary for our preservation.
+
+     "Unhappily, Sir William Macnaghten at first made light of the
+     insurrection, and, by his representations as to the general
+     feeling of the people towards us, not only deluded himself, but
+     misled the General in council. The unwelcome truth was soon
+     forced upon us, that in the whole Affghan nation we could not
+     reckon on a single friend.
+
+     "But though no active measures of aggression were taken, all
+     necessary preparations were made to secure the cantonment
+     against attack. It fell to my own lot to place every available
+     gun in position round the works. Besides the guns already
+     mentioned, we had in the magazine 6 nine-pounder iron guns, 3
+     twenty-four pounder howitzers, 1 twelve-pounder ditto, and 3
+     5-1/2-inch mortars; but the detail of artillerymen fell very
+     short of what was required to man all these efficiently,
+     consisting of only 80 Punjabees belonging to the Shah, under
+     Lieutenant Warburton, very insufficiently instructed, and of
+     doubtful fidelity."
+
+     [18] Affghan horse.
+
+     [19] The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about
+     seventy juzailchees or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers,
+     who had been left in the town in charge of the wives and
+     children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the
+     cantonments by that gallant party, who fought their way from
+     the heart of the town.
+
+     [20] "I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me
+     with the rest of the manuscript. I have not struck out the
+     reference, because there is hope that it still exists, and may
+     yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else
+     from Captain Mackenzie's pen will be regretted by all who read
+     his other communication, the account of the Envoy's
+     murder.--EDITOR."
+
+The fortified cantonment occupied by the British troops was a quadrangle
+of 1000 yards long by 600 broad, with round flanking bastions at each
+corner, every one of which was commanded by some fort or hill. To one
+end of this work was attached the Mission compound and enclosure, about
+half as large as the cantonment, surrounded by a simple wall. This space
+required to be defended in time of war, and it rendered the whole of one
+face of the cantonment nugatory for purposes of defence. The profile of
+the works themselves was weak, being in fact an ordinary field-work. But
+the most strange and unaccountable circumstance recorded by Lieutenant
+Eyre respecting these military arrangements, is certainly the fact, that
+the commissariat stores, containing whatever the army possessed of food
+or clothing, was not within the circuit of these fortified cantonments,
+but in a detached and weak fort, the gate of which was commanded by
+another building at a short distance. Our author thus sums up his
+observations on these cantonments:--
+
+     "In fact, we were so hemmed in on all sides, that, when the
+     rebellion became general, the troops could not move out a dozen
+     paces from either gate without being exposed to the fire of
+     some neighbouring hostile fort, garrisoned, too, by marksmen
+     who seldom missed their aim. The country around us was likewise
+     full of impediments to the movements of artillery and cavalry,
+     being in many places flooded, and every where closely
+     intersected by deep water-cuts.
+
+     "I cannot help adding, in conclusion, that almost all the
+     calamities that befell our ill-starred force may be traced more
+     or less to the defects of our position; and that our cantonment
+     at Cabul, whether we look to its situation or its construction,
+     must ever be spoken of as a disgrace to our military skill and
+     judgment."
+
+_Nov_. 3.--The 37th native infantry arrived in cantonments, as
+previously stated.
+
+     "Early in the afternoon, a detachment under Major Swayne,
+     consisting of two companies 5th native infantry, one of H.M.
+     44th, and two H.A. guns under Lieutenant Waller, proceeded out
+     of the western gate towards the city, to effect, if possible, a
+     junction at the Lahore gate with a part of Brigadier Shelton's
+     force from the Bala Hissar. They drove back and defeated a
+     party of the enemy who occupied the road near the Shah Bagh,
+     but had to encounter a sharp fire from the Kohistan gate of the
+     city, and from the walls of various enclosures, behind which a
+     number of marksmen had concealed themselves, as also from the
+     fort of Mahmood Khan, commanding the road along which they had
+     to pass. Lieutenant Waller and several sepoys were wounded.
+     Major Swayne, observing the whole line of road towards the
+     Lahore gate strongly occupied by some Affghan horse and
+     juzailchees, and fearing that he would be unable to effect the
+     object in view with so small a force unsupported by cavalry,
+     retired into cantonments. Shortly after this, a large body of
+     the rebels having issued from the fort of Mahmood Khan, 900
+     yards southeast of cantonments, extended themselves in a line
+     along the bank of the river, displaying a flag; an iron
+     nine-pounder was brought to bear on them from our southeast
+     bastion, and a round or two of shrapnell caused them to seek
+     shelter behind some neighbouring banks, whence, after some
+     desultory firing on both sides, they retired.
+
+     "Whatever hopes may have been entertained, up to this period,
+     of a speedy termination to the insurrection, they began now to
+     wax fainter every hour, and an order was dispatched to the
+     officer commanding at Candahar to lose no time in sending to
+     our assistance the 16th and 43d regiments native infantry,
+     (which were under orders for India,) together with a troop of
+     horse-artillery and half a regiment of cavalry; an order was
+     likewise sent off to recall General Sale with his brigade from
+     Gundamuk. Captain John Conolly, political assistant to the
+     Envoy, went into the Bala Hissar early this morning, to remain
+     with the King, and to render every assistance in his power to
+     Brigadier Shelton."
+
+On this day Lieutenants Maule and Wheeler were murdered at Kahdarrah in
+Koohdaman; the Kohistan regiment of Affghans which they commanded,
+offering no resistance to the rebels. The two officers defended
+themselves resolutely for some time, but fell under the fire of the
+enemy. Lieutenant Maule had been warned of his danger by a friendly
+native, but refused to desert his post.
+
+On this day also Lieutenant Rattray, Major Pottinger's assistant, was
+treacherously murdered at Lughmanee, during a conference to which he had
+been invited, and within sight of the small fort in which these two
+gentlemen resided. This act was followed by a general insurrection in
+Kohistan and Koohdaman, which terminated in the destruction of the
+Goorkha regiment at Charikar, and the slaughter of all the Europeans in
+that district except Major Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, both
+severely wounded, who, with one sepoy and one or two followers,
+succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Affghan parties, who were
+patrolling the roads for the purpose of intercepting them, and at length
+arrived in cantonments, having actually passed at night through the town
+and bazars of Cabul. For the details of this interesting and afflicting
+episode in Mr Eyre's narrative, we must refer our readers to the work
+itself. Major Pottinger appears on this occasion to have exhibited the
+same high courage and promptitude and vigour in action, and the same
+resources in difficulty, that made him conspicuous at Herat, and
+Lieutenant Haughton was no unworthy companion of such a man.
+
+     "_November_ 4.--The enemy having taken strong possession of the
+     _Shah Bagh_, or King's Garden, and thrown a garrison into the
+     fort of Mahomed Shereef, nearly opposite the bazar, effectually
+     prevented any communication between the cantonment and
+     commissariat fort, the gate of which latter was commanded by
+     the gate of the Shah Bagh on the other side of the road.
+
+     "Ensign Warren of the 5th native infantry at this time occupied
+     the commissariat fort with 100 men, and having reported that he
+     was very hard pressed by the enemy, and in danger of being
+     completely cut off, the General, either forgetful or unaware at
+     the moment of the important fact, that upon the possession of
+     this fort we were entirely dependent for provisions, and
+     anxious only to save the lives of men whom he believed to be in
+     imminent peril, hastily gave directions that a party under the
+     command of Captain Swayne, of H.M.'s 44th regiment, should
+     proceed immediately to bring off Ensign Warren and his garrison
+     to cantonments, abandoning the fort to the enemy. A few minutes
+     previously an attempt to relieve him had been made by Ensign
+     Gordon, with a company of the 37th native infantry and eleven
+     camels laden with ammunition; but the party were driven back,
+     and Ensign Gordon killed. Captain Swayne now accordingly
+     proceeded towards the spot with two companies of H.M.'s 44th;
+     scarcely had they issued from cantonments ere a sharp and
+     destructive fire was poured upon them from Mahomed Shereef's
+     fort which, as they proceeded, was taken up by the marksmen in
+     the Shah Bagh, under whose deadly aim both officers and men
+     suffered severely; Captains Swayne and Robinson of the 44th
+     being killed, and Lieutenants Hallahan, Evans, and Fortye
+     wounded in this disastrous business. It now seemed to the
+     officer, on whom the command had devolved, impracticable to
+     bring off Ensign Warren's party without risking the
+     annihilation of his own, which had already sustained so rapid
+     and severe a loss in officers; he therefore returned forthwith
+     to cantonments. In the course of the evening another attempt
+     was made by a party of the 5th light cavalry; but they
+     encountered so severe a fire from the neighbouring enclosures
+     as obliged them to return without effecting their desired
+     object, with the loss of eight troopers killed and fourteen
+     badly wounded. Captain Boyd, the assistant commissary-general,
+     having meanwhile been made acquainted with the General's
+     intention to give up the fort, hastened to lay before him the
+     disastrous consequences that would ensue from so doing. He
+     stated that the place contained, besides large supplies of
+     wheat and attah, all his stores of rum, medicine, clothing,
+     &c., the value of which might be estimated at four lacs of
+     rupees; that to abandon such valuable property would not only
+     expose the force to the immediate want of the necessaries of
+     life, but would infallibly inspire the enemy with tenfold
+     courage. He added that we had not above two days' supply of
+     provisions in cantonments, and that neither himself nor Captain
+     Johnson of the Shah's commissariat had any prospect of
+     procuring them elsewhere under existing circumstances. In
+     consequence of this strong representation on the part of
+     Captain Boyd, the General sent immediate orders to Ensign
+     Warren to hold out the fort to the last extremity. (Ensign
+     Warren, it must be remarked, denied having received this note.)
+     Early in the night a letter was received from him to the effect
+     that he believed the enemy were busily engaged in mining one of
+     the towers, and that such was the alarm among the sepoys that
+     several of them had actually made their escape over the wall to
+     cantonments; that the enemy were making preparations to burn
+     down the gate; and that, considering the temper of his men, he
+     did not expect to be able to hold out many hours longer, unless
+     reinforced without delay. In reply to this he was informed
+     that he would be reinforced by two A.M.
+
+     "At about nine o'clock P.M., there was an assembly of staff and
+     other officers at the General's house, when the Envoy came in
+     and expressed his serious conviction, that unless Mahomed
+     Shereef's fort were taken that very night, we should lose the
+     commissariat fort, or at all events be unable to bring out of
+     it provisions for the troops. The disaster of the morning
+     rendered the General extremely unwilling to expose his officers
+     and men to any similar peril; but, on the other hand, it was
+     urged that the darkness of the night would nullify the enemy's
+     fire, who would also most likely be taken unawares, as it was
+     not the custom of the Affghans to maintain a very strict watch
+     at night. A man in Captain Johnson's employ was accordingly
+     sent out to reconnoitre the place. He returned in a few minutes
+     with the intelligence that about twenty men were seated outside
+     the fort near the gate, smoking and talking; and, from what he
+     overheard of their conversation, he judged the garrison to be
+     very small, and unable to resist a sudden onset. The debate was
+     now resumed, but another hour passed and the General could not
+     make up his mind. A second spy was dispatched, whose report
+     tended to corroborate what the first had said. I was then sent
+     to Lieutenant Sturt, the engineer, who was nearly recovered
+     from his wounds, for his opinion. He at first expressed himself
+     in favour of an immediate attack, but, on hearing that some of
+     the enemy were on the watch at the gate, he judged it prudent
+     to defer the assault till an early hour in the morning: this
+     decided the General, though not before several hours had
+     slipped away in fruitless discussion.
+
+     "Orders were at last given for a detachment to be in readiness
+     at four A.M. at the Kohistan gate; and Captain Bellew,
+     deputy-assistant quartermaster-general, volunteered to blow
+     open the gate; another party of H.M.'s 44th were at the same
+     time to issue by a cut in the south face of the rampart, and
+     march simultaneously towards the commissariat fort, to
+     reinforce the garrison. Morning had, however, well dawned ere
+     the men could be got under arms; and they were on the point of
+     marching off, when it was reported that Ensign Warren had just
+     arrived in cantonments with his garrison, having evacuated the
+     fort. It seems that the enemy had actually set fire to the
+     gate; and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect of a reinforcement,
+     and expecting the enemy every moment to rush in, led out his
+     men by a hole which he had prepared in the wall. Being called
+     upon in a public letter from the assistant adjutant-general to
+     state his reasons for abandoning his post, he replied that he
+     was ready to do so before a court of enquiry, which he
+     requested might be assembled to investigate his conduct; it was
+     not, however, deemed expedient to comply with his request.
+
+     "It is beyond a doubt that our feeble and ineffectual defence
+     of this fort, and the valuable booty it yielded, was the first
+     _fatal_ blow to our supremacy at Cabul, and at once determined
+     those chiefs--and more particularly the Kuzzilbashes--who had
+     hitherto remained neutral, to join in the general combination
+     to drive us from the country."
+
+"_Nov_. 5.--It no sooner became generally known that the commissariat
+fort, upon which we were dependent for supplies, had been abandoned,
+than one universal feeling of indignation pervaded the garrison. Nor can
+I describe," says Lieutenant Eyre, "the impatience of the troops, but
+especially of the native portion, to be led out for its recapture--a
+feeling that was by no means diminished by seeing the Affghans crossing
+and re-crossing the road between the commissariat fort and the gate of
+the _Shah Bagh_, laden with the provisions upon which had depended our
+ability to make a protracted defence."
+
+That the whole commissariat should have been deposited in a detached
+fort is extraordinary and inexcusable, but that the garrison of that
+fort should not have been reinforced, is even more unintelligible; and
+that a sufficient force was not at once sent to succour and protect it
+when attacked, is altogether unaccountable. General Elphinstone was
+disabled by his infirmities from efficiently discharging the duties that
+had devolved upon him, but he appears to have been ready to act upon the
+suggestion of others. What then were his staff about?--some of them are
+said to have had little difficulty or delicacy in urging their own views
+upon their commander. Did they not suggest to him in time the
+importance, the necessity, of saving the commissariat at all hazards?
+
+At the suggestion of Lieutenant Eyre, it was determined to attempt the
+capture of Mahomed Shereef's fort by blowing open the gate, Mr Eyre
+volunteering to keep the road clear for the storming party with the
+guns. "The General agreed; a storming party under Major Swayne, 6th
+native infantry, was ordered; the powder bags were got ready, and at
+noon we issued from the western gate." "For twenty minutes the guns were
+worked under a very sharp fire from the fort;" but "Major Swayne,
+instead of rushing forward with his men as had been agreed, had in the
+mean time remained stationary, under cover of the wall by the
+road-side." The General, seeing that the attempt had failed, recalled
+the troops into cantonments.
+
+"_Nov_. 6.--It was now determined to take the fort of Mahomed Shereef by
+regular breach and assault." A practicable breach was effected, and a
+storming party composed of one company H.M. 44th, under Ensign Raban,
+one ditto 5th native infantry, under Lieutenant Deas, and one ditto 37th
+native infantry, under Lieutenant Steer, the whole commanded by Major
+Griffiths, speedily carried the place. "Poor Raban was shot through the
+heart when conspicuously waving a flag on the summit of the breach."
+
+As this fort adjoined the Shah Bagh, it was deemed advisable to dislodge
+the enemy from the latter if possible. This was partially effected, and,
+had advantage been taken of the opportunity to occupy the buildings of
+the garden gateway, "immediate re-possession could have been taken of
+the commissariat fort opposite, which had not yet been emptied of half
+its contents."
+
+In the mean time, our cavalry were engaged in an affair with the enemy's
+horse, in which we appear to have had the advantage. "The officers
+gallantly headed their men, and encountered about an equal number of the
+enemy who advanced to meet them. A hand-to-hand encounter took place,
+which ended in the Affghan horse retreating to the plain, leaving the
+hill in our possession. In this affair, Captain Anderson personally
+engaged and slew the brother in-law of Abdoolah Khan."
+
+But the Affghans collected from various quarters; the juzailchees,[21]
+under Captain Mackenzie, were driven with great loss from the Shah Bagh
+which they had entered; and a gun which had been employed to clear that
+enclosure was with difficulty saved. Our troops having been drawn up on
+the plain, remained prepared to receive an attack from the enemy, who
+gradually retired as the night closed in.
+
+     [21] Affghan riflemen.
+
+_Nov_. 8.--An attempt was made by the enemy to mine a tower of the fort
+that had been taken, which they could not have done had the gate of the
+Shah Bagh been occupied. The chief cause of anxiety now was the empty
+state of the granary. Even with high bribes and liberal payment, the
+Envoy could not procure sufficient for daily consumption. The plan of
+the enemy now was to starve us out, and the chiefs exerted all their
+influence to prevent our being supplied.
+
+_Nov_. 9.--The General's weak state of health rendered it necessary to
+relieve him from the command of the garrison, and at the earnest request
+of the Envoy, Brigadier Shelton was summoned from the Bala Hissar, "in
+the hope that, by heartily co-operating with the Envoy and General, he
+would strengthen their hands and rouse the sinking confidence of the
+troops. He entered cantonments this morning, bringing with him one H.A.
+gun, one mountain-train ditto, one company H.M.'s 44th, the Shah's 6th
+infantry, and a small supply of attah (flour.)"
+
+     "_November_ 10.--Henceforward Brigadier Shelton bore a
+     conspicuous part in the drama, upon the issue of which so much
+     depended. He had, however, from the very first, seemed to
+     despair of the force being able to hold out the winter at
+     Cabul, and strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to
+     Jellalabad.
+
+     "This sort of despondency proved, unhappily, very infectious.
+     It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers, and
+     was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of
+     _croakers_ in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious
+     looks and dismal prophecies being encountered every where. The
+     severe losses sustained by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on
+     the 4th instant, had very much discouraged the men of that
+     regiment; and it is a lamentable fact that some of those
+     European soldiers, who were naturally expected to exhibit to
+     their native brethren in arms an example of endurance and
+     fortitude, were among the first to loose confidence, and give
+     vent to feelings of discontent at the duties imposed on them.
+     The evil seed, once sprung up, became more and more difficult
+     to eradicate, showing daily more and more how completely
+     demoralizing to the British soldier is the very idea of a
+     retreat.
+
+     "Sir William Macnaghten and his suite were altogether opposed
+     to Brigadier Shelton in this matter, it being in his (the
+     Envoy's) estimation a duty we owed the Government to retain our
+     post, at whatsoever risk. This difference of opinion, on a
+     question of such vital importance, was attended with unhappy
+     results, inasmuch as it deprived the General, in his hour of
+     need, of the strength which unanimity imparts, and produced an
+     uncommunicative and disheartening reserve in an emergency which
+     demanded the freest interchange of counsel and ideas."
+
+On the morning of this day, large parties of the enemy's horse and foot
+occupied the heights to the east and to the west of the cantonments,
+which, it was supposed, they intended to assault. No attack was made;
+but "on the eastern quarter, parties of the enemy, moving down into the
+plain, occupied all the forts in that direction. ... At this time, not
+above two days' provisions remained in garrison; and it was very clear,
+that unless the enemy were quickly driven out from their new possession,
+we should soon be completely hemmed in on all sides." At the Envoy's
+urgent desire, he taking the entire responsibility on himself, the
+General ordered a force, under Brigadier Shelton, to storm the
+Rikabashee fort, which was within musket-shot of the cantonments, and
+from which a galling fire had been poured into the Mission compound by
+the Affghans. About noon, the troops assembled at the eastern gate; a
+storming party of two companies from each regiment taking the lead,
+preceded by Captain Bellew, who hurried forward to blow open the
+gate--but missing the gate, he blew open a small wicket, through which
+not more than two or three men could enter abreast, and these in a
+stooping posture. A sharp fire was kept up from the walls, and many of
+the bravest fell in attempting to force their entrance through the
+wicket; but Colonel Mackerell of the 44th, and Lieutenant Bird of the
+Shah's 6th infantry, with a handful of Europeans and a few sepoys,
+forced their way in--the garrison fled through the gate which was at the
+opposite side, and Colonel Mackerell and his little party closed it,
+securing the chain with a bayonet; but, at this moment, some Affghan
+horse charged round the corner--the cry of cavalry was raised--"the
+Europeans gave way simultaneously with the sepoys--a bugler of the 6th
+infantry, through mistake, sounded the retreat--and it became for a
+time, a scene of _sauve qui peut_." In vain did the officers endeavour
+to rally the men, and to lead them back to the rescue of their
+commanding-officer and their comrades; only one man, private Stewart of
+the 44th, listened to the appeal and returned.
+
+"Let me here (says Lieutenant Eyre) do Brigadier Shelton justice: his
+acknowledged courage redeemed the day." After great efforts, at last he
+rallied them--again advancing to the attack, again they faltered. A
+third time did the Brigadier bring on his men to the assault, which now
+proved successful; but while this disgraceful scene was passing outside
+the fort, the enemy had forced their way into it, and had cut to pieces
+Colonel Mackerell and all his little party, except Lieutenant Bird, who,
+with one sepoy, was found in a barricaded apartment, where these two
+brave men had defended themselves till the return of the troops, killing
+above thirty of the enemy by the fire of their two muskets.
+
+Our loss on this occasion was not less than 200 killed and wounded; but
+the results of this success, though dearly purchased, were important.
+Four neighbouring forts were immediately evacuated by the enemy, and
+occupied by our troops: they were found to contain 1400 maunds of grain,
+of which about one-half was removed into cantonments immediately; but
+Brigadier Shelton not having thought it prudent to place a guard for the
+protection of the remainder, it was carried off during the night by the
+Affghans. "Permanent possession was, however, taken of the Rikabashee
+and Zoolfikar forts, and the towers of the remainder were blown up on
+the following day."
+
+It cannot fail to excite surprise, that these forts, which do not seem
+to have been occupied by the enemy till the 10th, were not either
+occupied or destroyed by the British troops before that day.
+
+_Nov_. 13.--The enemy appeared in great force on the western heights,
+where, having posted two guns, they fired into cantonments with
+considerable precision. At the entreaty of the Envoy, it was determined
+to attack them--a force, under Brigadier Shelton, moved out for that
+purpose--the advance, under Major Thain, ascended the hill with great
+gallantry; "but the enemy resolutely stood their ground at the summit of
+the ridge, and unflinchingly received the discharge of our musketry,
+which, strange to say, even at the short range of ten or twelve yards,
+did little or no execution."
+
+The fire of our guns, however, threw the Affghans into confusion. A
+charge of cavalry drove them up the hill, and the infantry advancing,
+carried the height, the enemy retreating along the ridge, closely
+followed by our troops, and abandoning their guns to us; but, owing to
+the misconduct of the troops, only one of them was carried away, the men
+refusing to advance to drag off the other, which was therefore spiked by
+Lieutenant Eyre, with the aid of one artilleryman.
+
+     "This was the last success our arms were destined to
+     experience. Henceforward it becomes my weary task to relate a
+     catalogue of errors, disasters, and difficulties, which,
+     following close upon each other, disgusted our officers,
+     disheartened our soldiers, and finally sunk us all into
+     irretrievable ruin, as though Heaven itself, by a combination
+     of evil circumstances, for its own inscrutable purposes, had
+     planned our downfall.
+
+     "_November 16th_.--The impression made by the enemy by the
+     action of the 13th was so far salutary, that they did not
+     venture to annoy us again for several days. Advantage was taken
+     of this respite to throw magazine supplies from time to time
+     into the Bala Hissar, a duty which was ably performed by
+     Lieutenant Walker, with a resalah of irregular horse, under
+     cover of night. But even in this short interval of comparative
+     rest, such was the wretched construction of the cantonment,
+     that the mere ordinary routine of garrison duty, and the
+     necessity of closely manning our long line of rampart both by
+     day and night, was a severe trial to the health and patience of
+     the troops; especially now that the winter began to show
+     symptoms of unusual severity. There seemed, indeed, every
+     probability of an early fall of snow, to which all looked
+     forward with dread, as the harbinger of fresh difficulties and
+     of augmented suffering.
+
+     "These considerations, and the manifest superiority of the Bala
+     Hissar as a military position, led to the early discussion of
+     the expediency of abandoning the cantonment, and consolidating
+     our forces in the above-mentioned stronghold. The Envoy himself
+     was, from the first, greatly in favour of this move, until
+     overruled by the many objections urged against it by the
+     military authorities; to which, as will be seen by a letter
+     from him presently quoted, he learned by degrees to attach some
+     weight himself; but to the very last it was a measure that had
+     many advocates, and I venture to state my own firm belief that,
+     had we at this time moved into the Bala Hissar, Cabul would
+     have been still in our possession.
+
+     "But Brigadier Shelton having firmly set his face against the
+     movement from the first moment of its proposition, all serious
+     idea of it was gradually abandoned, though it continued to the
+     very last a subject of common discussion."
+
+"_Nov_. 18. Accounts were this day received from Jellalabad, that
+General Sale, having sallied from the town, had repulsed the enemy with
+considerable loss.... The hope of his return has tended much to support
+our spirits; our disappointment was therefore great, to learn that all
+expectation of aid from that quarter was at an end. Our eyes were now
+turned towards the Kandahar force as our last resource though an advance
+from that quarter seemed scarcely practicable so late in the year."
+
+The propriety of attacking Mahomed Khan's fort, the possession of which
+would have opened an easy communication with the Bala Hissar, was
+discussed; but, on some sudden objection raised by Lieutenant Sturt of
+the engineers, the project was abandoned.
+
+On the 19th, a letter was addressed by the Envoy to the General, the
+object of which seems not to be very apparent. He raises objections to a
+retreat either to Jellalabad or to the Bala Hissar, and expresses a
+decided objection to abandon the cantonment under any circumstances, if
+food can be procured; but, nevertheless, it is sufficiently evident
+that his hopes of successful resistance had even now become feeble, and
+he refers to the possibility that succours may arrive from Kandahar, or
+that "something might turn up in our favour."
+
+The village of Beymaroo, (or Husbandless, from a beautiful virgin who
+was nursed there,) within half a mile of the cantonments, had been our
+chief source of supply, to which the enemy had in some measure put a
+stop by occupying it every morning. It was therefore determined to
+endeavour to anticipate them by taking possession of it before their
+arrival. For this purpose, a party moved out under Major Swayne of the
+5th native infantry; but the Major, "it would seem, by his own account,
+found the village already occupied, and the entrance blocked up in such
+a manner that he considered it out of his power to force a passage." It
+does not appear that the attempt was made. Later in the day there was
+some skirmishing in the plain, in the course of which Lieutenant Eyre
+was wounded.
+
+"It is worthy of note that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the late
+Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan, arrived in Cabul this night (22d Nov.) from
+Bameean. This man was destined to exercise an evil influence over our
+future fortunes. The crisis of our struggle was already nigh at hand."
+
+"_Nov_. 23.--This day decided the fate of the Cabul force." It had been
+determined by a council, at the special recommendation of the Envoy,
+that a force under Brigadier Shelton should storm the village of
+Beymaroo, and maintain the hill above it against any numbers of the
+enemy that might appear. At two A.M., the troops[22] moved out of
+cantonments, ascended the hill by the gorge, dragging up the gun, and
+moved along the ridge to a point overlooking the village. A sharp fire
+of grape created great confusion, and it was suggested by Captain Bellew
+and others to General Shelton, to storm the village, while the evident
+panic of the enemy lasted. To this the Brigadier did not accede.
+
+     [22] Five companies 44th; six companies 5th native infantry;
+     six companies 37th native infantry; 100 sappers; 2-1/2
+     squadrons cavalry; one gun.
+
+When day broke, the enemy, whose ammunition had failed, were seen
+hurrying from the village--not 40 men remained. A storming party, under
+Majors Swayne and Kershaw, was ordered to carry the village; but Major
+Swayne missed the gate, which was open, and arrived at a barricaded
+wicket, which he had no means of forcing. Major Swayne was wounded, and
+lost some men, and was ultimately recalled. Leaving a reserve of three
+companies of the 37th native infantry, under Major Kershaw, at the point
+overhanging Beymaroo, the Brigadier moved back with the rest of the
+troops and the gun to the part of the hill which overlooked the gorge.
+It was suggested to raise a sungar or breastwork to protect the troops,
+for which purpose the sappers had been taken out, but it was not done.
+Immense numbers of the enemy, issuing from the city, had now crowned the
+opposite hill--in all, probably 10,000 men. Our skirmishers were kept
+out with great difficulty, and chiefly by the exertions and example of
+Colonel Oliver. The remainder of the troops were formed into two
+squares, and the cavalry drawn up _en masse_ immediately in their rear,
+and all suffered severely--the vent of the only gun became too hot to be
+served. A party of cavalry under Lieutenant Walker was recalled to
+prevent its destruction, and a demonstration of the Affghan cavalry on
+our right flank, which had been exposed by the recall of Lieutenant
+Walker, was repulsed by a fire of shrapnell, which mortally wounded a
+chief of consequence. The enemy surrounded the troops on three sides.
+The men were faint with fatigue and thirst--the Affghan skirmishers
+pressed on, and our's gave way. The men could not be got to charge
+bayonets. The enemy made a rush at the guns, the cavalry were ordered to
+charge, but would not follow their officers. The first square and the
+cavalry gave way, and were with difficulty rallied behind the second
+square, leaving the gun in the hands of the enemy, who immediately
+carried off the limber and horses. News of Abdoolah Khan's wound spread
+amongst the Affghans, who now retired. Our men resumed courage, and
+regained possession of the gun; and fresh ammunition having arrived from
+cantonments, it again opened on the enemy: but our cavalry would not
+act, and the infantry were too much exhausted and disheartened to make a
+forward movement, and too few in number. The whole force of the enemy
+came on with renewed vigour--the front of the advanced square had been
+literally mowed down, and most of the gallant artillerymen had fallen.
+The gun was scarcely limbered up preparatory to retreat, when a rush
+from the Ghazees broke the first square. All order was at an end, the
+entreaties and commands of the officers were unheeded, and an utter rout
+ensued down the hill towards the cantonments, the enemy's cavalry making
+a fearful slaughter among the unresisting fugitives. The retreat of
+Major Kershaw's party was cut off, and his men were nearly all
+destroyed. The mingled tide of flight and pursuit seemed to be about to
+enter the cantonments together; but the pursuers were checked by the
+fire of the Shah's 5th infantry and the juzailchees, and by a charge of
+a fresh troop of cavalry under Lieutenant Hardyman, and fifteen or
+twenty of his own men rallied by Lieutenant Walker, who fell in that
+encounter. Osman Khan, too, a chief whose men were amongst the foremost,
+voluntarily halted them and drew them off, "which may be reckoned,
+indeed, (says Lieutenant Eyre,) the chief reason why _all_ of our people
+who on that day went forth to battle were not destroyed." The gun and
+the second limber which had arrived from the cantonments, in attempting
+to gallop down hill, was overturned and lost. "Our loss was
+tremendous--the greater part of the wounded, including Colonel Oliver,
+having been left in the field, where they were miserably cut to
+pieces."[23]
+
+     [23] In Mr Eyre's observations on this disastrous affair, he
+     enumerates six errors, which he says must present themselves to
+     the most unpractised military eye. "The first, and perhaps the
+     most fatal mistake of all, was the taking only one gun;" but he
+     admits that there was only one gun ready, and that, if the
+     Brigadier had waited for the second, he must have postponed the
+     enterprise for a day. This would probably have been the more
+     prudent course.
+
+     The second error was, that advantage was not taken of the panic
+     in the village, to storm it at once in the dark; but it appears
+     from his own account, that there were not more than forty men
+     remaining in the village when it was attacked, after daylight,
+     and that the chief cause of the failure of that attack, was
+     Major Swayne's having missed the gate, a misfortune which was,
+     certainly, at least as likely to have occurred in the dark.
+
+     The third was, that the sappers were not employed to raise a
+     breastwork for the protection of the troops. This objection
+     appears to be well founded.
+
+     The fourth was, that the infantry were formed into squares, to
+     resist the distant fire of infantry, on ground over which no
+     cavalry could have charged with effect. It appears to be so
+     utterly unintelligible that any officer should have been guilty
+     of so manifest an absurdity, that the circumstances seem to
+     require further elucidation; but that the formation was
+     unfortunate, is sufficiently obvious.
+
+     Fifthly, that the position chosen for the cavalry was
+     erroneous; and sixthly, that the retreat was too long deferred.
+     Both these objections appear to be just.
+
+Thus terminated in disaster the military struggle at Cabul, and then
+commenced that series of negotiations not less disastrous, which led to
+the murder of the Envoy, to the retreat of the army, and to its ultimate
+annihilation. In Lieutenant Eyre's account of their military operations,
+we look in vain for any evidence of promptitude, vigour, or decision,
+skill or judgment, in the commanders; and we have abundant evidence of a
+lamentable want of discipline and proper spirit in the troops,
+especially amongst the Europeans. Instances of high personal courage and
+gallantry amongst the officers are numerous, and they always will be,
+when the occasion requires them; but if the facts of this narrative had
+been given without the names, no man would have recognised in it the
+operations of a British army.
+
+     "_Nov_. 24.--Our troops (says Eyre) had now lost all
+     confidence; and even such of the officers as had hitherto
+     indulged the hope of a favourable turn in our affairs, began at
+     last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our
+     future fate. Our force resembled a ship in danger of wrecking
+     among rocks and shoals, for want of an able pilot to guide it
+     safely through them. Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the
+     helm of affairs been grasped by a hand competent to the
+     important task, we might perhaps have steered clear of
+     destruction; but, in the absence of any such deliverer, it was
+     but too evident that Heaven alone could save us by some
+     unforeseen interposition. The spirit of the men was gone; the
+     influence of the officers over them declined daily; and that
+     boasted discipline, which alone renders a handful of our troops
+     superior to an irregular multitude, began fast to disappear
+     from among us. The enemy, on the other hand, waxed bolder every
+     day and every hour; nor was it long ere we got accustomed to be
+     bearded with impunity from under the very ramparts of our
+     garrison.
+
+     "Never were troops exposed to greater hardships and dangers;
+     yet, sad to say, never did soldiers shed their blood with less
+     beneficial result than during the investment of the British
+     lines at Cabul."
+
+Captain Conolly now wrote from the Bala Hissar, urging an immediate
+retreat thither; "but the old objections were still urged against the
+measure by Brigadier Shelton and others," though several of the chief
+military, and all the political officers, approved of it. Shah Shoojah
+was impatient to receive them.
+
+The door to negotiation was opened by a letter to the Envoy from Osman
+Khan Barukzye, a near relation of the new king, Nuwab Mahomed Zuman
+Khan, who had sheltered Captain Drummond in his own house since the
+first day of the outbreak. He took credit to himself for having checked
+the ardour of his followers on the preceding day, and having thus saved
+the British force from destruction; he declared that the chiefs only
+desired we should quietly evacuate the country, leaving them to govern
+it according to their own rules, and with a king of their own choosing.
+The General, on being referred to, was of opinion that the cantonments
+could not be defended throughout the winter, and approved of opening a
+negotiation on the basis of the evacuation of the country. On the 27th,
+two deputies were sent by the assembled chiefs to confer with Sir W.
+Macnaghten; but the terms they proposed were such as he could not
+accept. The deputies took leave of the Envoy, with the exclamation, that
+"we should meet again in battle." "We shall at all events meet," replied
+Sir William, "at the day of judgment."
+
+At night the Envoy received a letter, proposing "that we should deliver
+up Shah Shoojah and all his family--lay down our arms, and make an
+unconditional surrender--when they might, perhaps, be induced to spare
+our lives, and allow us to leave the country on condition of never
+returning."
+
+The Envoy replied, "that these terms were too dishonourable to be
+entertained for a moment; and that, if they were persisted in, he must
+again appeal to arms, leaving the result to the God of battles."
+
+Active hostilities were not renewed till the 1st of December, when a
+desperate effort was made by the enemy to gain possession of the Bala
+Hissar; but they were repulsed by Major Ewart with considerable
+slaughter. On the 4th, they cannonaded the cantonment from the Beymaroo
+hills, but did little mischief, and at night they made an unsuccessful
+attempt on Mahomed Shereef's fort. On the 5th, they completed, without
+opposition, the destruction of the bridge over the Cabul river. On the
+6th, the garrison of Mahomed Shereef's fort disgracefully abandoned it,
+the men of the 44th apparently being the first to fly; and a garrison of
+the same regiment, in the bazar village, was with difficulty restrained
+from following their example. On the 7th, this post of honour was
+occupied by the 37th native infantry; the 44th, who had hitherto been
+intrusted with it, being no longer considered worthy to retain it.
+
+It is but justice to Mr Eyre to give in his own words some remarks which
+he has thought it right to make, with reference to what he has recorded
+of the conduct of that unhappy regiment:--
+
+     "In the course of this narrative, I have been compelled by
+     stern truth to note down facts nearly affecting the honour and
+     interests of a British regiment. It may, or rather I fear it
+     must, inevitably happen, that my unreserved statements of the
+     Cabul occurrences will prove unacceptable to many, whose
+     private or public feelings are interested in glossing over or
+     suppressing the numerous errors committed and censures
+     deservedly incurred. But my heart tells me that no paltry
+     motives of rivalry or malice influence my pen; rather a sincere
+     and honest desire to benefit the public service, by pointing
+     out the rocks on which our reputation was wrecked, the means by
+     which our honour was sullied, and our Indian empire endangered,
+     as a warning to future actors in similar scenes. In a word, I
+     believe that more good is likely to ensue from the publication
+     of the whole unmitigated truth, than from a mere garbled
+     statement of it. A kingdom has been lost--an army slain;--and
+     surely, if I can show that, had we been but true to ourselves,
+     and had vigorous measures been adopted, the result might have
+     been widely different, I shall have written an instructive
+     lesson to rulers and subjects, to generals and armies, and
+     shall not have incurred in vain the disapprobation of the
+     self-interested or the proud."
+
+The Envoy having again appealed to the General, again received an
+answer, stating the impossibility of holding out, and recommending that
+the Envoy should lose no time in entering into negotiations. This letter
+was countersigned by Brigadiers Shelton and Anquetil, and Colonel
+Chambers.
+
+On the 11th December, the Envoy, accompanied by Captains Lawrence,
+Trevor, and Mackenzie, and a few troopers, went out by agreement to meet
+the chiefs on the plain towards the Seah Sung hills. A conciliatory
+address from the Envoy was met by professions of personal esteem and
+approbation of the views he had laid before them, and of gratitude for
+the manner in which the Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan had been treated. The
+Envoy then read to them a sketch of the proposed treaty, which was to
+the following effect:--
+
+     "That the British should evacuate Affghanistan, including
+     Candahar, Ghuznee, Cabul, Jellalabad, and all the other
+     stations absolutely within the limits of the country so called;
+     that they should be permitted to return not only unmolested to
+     India, but that supplies of every description should be
+     afforded them in their road thither, certain men of consequence
+     accompanying them as hostages; that the Ameer Dost Mahomed
+     Khan, his family, and every Affghan now in exile for political
+     offences, should be allowed to return to their country; that
+     Shah Shoojah and his family should be allowed the option of
+     remaining at Cabul, or proceeding with the British troops to
+     Loodiana, in either case receiving from the Affghan Government
+     a pension of one lac of rupees per annum; that means of
+     transport, for the conveyance of our baggage, stores, &c.,
+     including that required by the royal family, in case of their
+     adopting the latter alternative, should be furnished by the
+     existing Affghan Government: that an amnesty should be granted
+     to all those who had made themselves obnoxious on account of
+     their attachment to Shah Shoojah and his allies, the British;
+     that all prisoners should be released; that no British force
+     should be ever again sent into Affghanistan, unless called for
+     by the Affghan government, between whom and the British nation
+     perpetual friendship should be established on the sure
+     foundation of mutual good offices."
+
+After some objections on the part of Mahomed Akber Khan, the terms were
+agreed to, and it was further arranged that provisions should be
+supplied to our troops, and that they should evacuate the cantonment in
+three days.
+
+Preparations were immediately commenced for the retreat. Arms were
+ordered to be distributed from the stores, now about to be abandoned, to
+some of the camp-followers, and such of the soldiers as might require
+them; and a disgraceful scene of confusion and tumult followed, which
+showed the fearful extent to which the army was disorganized.
+
+The troops in the Bala Hissar were moved into cantonments, not without a
+foretaste of what they had to expect on their march to Jellalabad, under
+the safe conduct of Akber Khan.
+
+The demands of the chiefs now rose from day to day. They refused to
+supply provisions until we should further assure them of our sincerity,
+by giving up every fort in the immediate vicinity of the cantonment. The
+troops were accordingly withdrawn, the forts were immediately occupied
+by the Affghans, and the cantonment thus placed at their mercy. On the
+18th, the promised cattle for carriage had not yet been supplied, and a
+heavy fall of snow rendered the situation of the troops more desperate.
+On the 19th, the Envoy wrote an order for the evacuation of Ghuznee. On
+the 20th, the Envoy had another interview with the chiefs, who now
+demanded that a portion of the guns and ammunition should be given up.
+This also was agreed to. At this stage of the proceedings, Lieutenant
+Sturt of the engineers proposed to the General to break off the treaty,
+and march forthwith to Jellalabad; but the proposal was not approved.
+The arrangements for giving effect to the treaty were still carried on;
+and the Envoy again met Akber Khan and Osman Khan on the plain, when
+Captains Conolly and Airey were given up as hostages, and the Envoy sent
+his carriage and horses, and a pair of pistols, as presents to Akber
+Khan, who further demanded an Arab horse, the property of Captain Grant,
+assistant adjutant-general:--
+
+     "Late in the evening of the 22d December," (says Capt.
+     Mackenzie, in a letter to Lieut. Eyre,) "Capt. James Skinner,
+     who, after having been concealed in Cabul during the greater
+     part of the siege, had latterly been the guest of Mahomed
+     Akber, arrived in cantonments, accompanied by Mahomed Sudeeq
+     Khan, a first cousin of Mahomed Akber, and by Sirwar Khan, the
+     Arhanee merchant, who, in the beginning of the campaign, had
+     furnished the army with camels, and who had been much in the
+     confidence of Sir A. Burnes, being, in fact, one of our
+     stanchest friends. The two latter remained in a different
+     apartment, while Skinner dined with the Envoy. During dinner,
+     Skinner jestingly remarked that he felt as if laden with
+     combustibles, being charged with a message from Mahomed Akber
+     to the Envoy of a most portentous nature.
+
+     "Even then I remarked that the Envoy's eye glanced eagerly
+     towards Skinner with an expression of hope. In fact, he was
+     like a drowning man catching at straws. Skinner, however,
+     referred him to his Affghan companions, and after dinner the
+     four retired into a room by themselves. My knowledge of what
+     there took place is gained from poor Skinner's own relation, as
+     given during my subsequent captivity with him in Akber's house.
+     Mahomed Sudeeq disclosed Mahomed Akber's proposition to the
+     Envoy, which was, that the following day Sir William should
+     meet him (Mahomed Akber) and a few of his immediate friends,
+     viz. the chiefs of the Eastern Giljyes, outside the
+     cantonments, when a final agreement should be made, so as to be
+     fully understood by both parties; that Sir William should have
+     a considerable body of troops in readiness, which, on a given
+     signal, were to join with those of Mahomed Akber and the
+     Giljyes, assault and take Mahmood Khan's fort, and secure the
+     person of Ameenoolah. At this stage of the proposition Mahomed
+     Sudeeq signified that, for a certain sum of money, the head of
+     Ameenoolah should be presented to the Envoy; but from this Sir
+     William shrunk with abhorrence, declaring that it was neither
+     his custom nor that of his country to give a price for blood.
+     Mahomed Sudeeq then went on to say, that, after having subdued
+     the rest of the khans, the English should be permitted to
+     remain in the country eight months longer, so as to save their
+     _purdah_, (veil, or credit,) but that they were then to
+     evacuate Affghanistan, as if of their own accord; that Shah
+     Shoojah was to continue king of the country, and that Mahomed
+     Akber was to be his wuzeer. As a further reward for his
+     (Mahomed Akber's) assistance, the British Government were to
+     pay him thirty lacs of rupees, and four lacs of rupees per
+     annum during his life! To this extraordinary and wild proposal,
+     Sir William gave ear with an eagerness which nothing can
+     account for but the supposition, confirmed by many other
+     circumstances, that his strong mind had been harassed until it
+     had in some degree lost its equipoise; and he not only assented
+     fully to these terms, but actually gave a Persian paper to that
+     effect, written in his own hand, declaring as his motives that
+     it was not only an excellent opportunity to carry into effect
+     the real wishes of Government--which were to evacuate the
+     country with as much credit to ourselves as possible--but that
+     it would give England time to enter into a treaty with Russia,
+     defining the bounds beyond which neither were to pass in
+     Central Asia. So ended this fatal conference, the nature and
+     result of which, contrary to his usual custom, Sir William
+     communicated to none of those who, on all former occasions,
+     were fully in his confidence, viz. Trevor, Lawrence, and
+     myself. It seemed as if he feared that we might insist on the
+     impracticability of the plan, which he must have studiously
+     concealed from himself. All the following morning his manner
+     was distracted and hurried, in a way that none of us had ever
+     before witnessed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "After breakfast, Trevor, Lawrence, and myself were summoned to
+     attend the Envoy during his conference with Mahomed Akber Khan.
+     I found him alone, when, for the first time, he disclosed to me
+     the nature of the transaction he was engaged in. I immediately
+     warned him that it was a plot against him. He replied hastily,
+     'A plot! let me alone for that--trust me for that!' and I
+     consequently offered no further remonstrance. Sir William then
+     arranged with General Elphinstone that the 54th regiment, under
+     Major Ewart, should be held in readiness for immediate service.
+     The Shah's 6th, and two guns, were also warned."
+
+Sir W. Macnaghten, halting the troopers of the escort, advanced about
+500 or 600 yards from the eastern rampart of the cantonment, and there
+awaited Akber Khan and his party:--
+
+     "Close by where some hillocks, on the further side of which
+     from the cantonment a carpet was spread where the snow lay
+     least thick, and there the khans and Sir William sat down to
+     hold their conference. Men talk of presentiment; I suppose it
+     was something of the kind which came over me, for I could
+     scarcely prevail upon myself to quit my horse. I did so,
+     however, and was invited to sit down among the Sirdars. After
+     the usual salutations, Mahomed Akber commenced business by
+     asking the Envoy if he was perfectly ready to carry into effect
+     the proposition of the preceding night? The Envoy replied, 'Why
+     not?' My attention was then called off by an old Affghan
+     acquaintance of mine, formerly chief of the Cabul police, by
+     name Gholam Moyun-ood-deen. I rose from my recumbent posture,
+     and stood apart with him conversing. I afterwards remembered
+     that my friend betrayed much anxiety as to where my pistols
+     were, and why I did not carry them on my person. I answered,
+     that although I wore my sword for form, it was not necessary to
+     be armed _cap-à-pie_. His discourse was also full of
+     extravagant compliments, I suppose for the purpose of lulling
+     me to sleep. At length my attention was called off from what he
+     was saying, by observing that a number of men, armed to the
+     teeth, had gradually approached to the scene of conference, and
+     were drawing round in a sort of circle. This Lawrence and
+     myself pointed out to some of the chief men, who affected at
+     first to drive them off with whips; but Mahomed Akber observed,
+     that it was of no consequence, as they were in the secret. I
+     again resumed my conversation with Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, when
+     suddenly I heard Mahomed Akber call out, 'Begeer, begeer,'
+     (seize! seize!) and, turning round, I saw him grasp the Envoy's
+     left hand, with an expression in his face of the most
+     diabolical ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who laid hold of
+     the Envoy's right hand. They dragged him in a stooping posture
+     down the hillock; the only words I heard poor Sir William utter
+     being, 'Az barae Khooda' (for God's sake!) I saw his face,
+     however, and it was full of horror and astonishment. I did not
+     see what became of Trevor, but Lawrence was dragged past me by
+     several Affghans, whom I saw wrest his weapons from him. Up to
+     this moment I was so engrossed in observing what was taking
+     place, that I actually was not aware that my own right arm was
+     mastered, that my urbane friend held a pistol to my temple, and
+     that I was surrounded by a circle of Ghazees, with drawn swords
+     and cocked juzails. Resistance was in vain, so, listening to
+     the exhortations of Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, which were enforced
+     by the whistling of divers bullets over my head, I hurried
+     through the snow with him to the place where his horse was
+     standing, being despoiled _en route_ of my sabre, and narrowly
+     escaping divers attempts made on my life. As I mounted behind
+     my captor, now my energetic defender, the crowd increased
+     around us, the cries of 'Kill the Kafir' became more vehement,
+     and, although we hurried on at a fast canter, it was with the
+     utmost difficulty Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, although assisted by
+     one or two friends or followers, could ward off and avoid the
+     sword-cuts aimed at me, the rascals being afraid to fire lest
+     they should kill my conductor. Indeed he was obliged to wheel
+     his horse round once, and taking off his turban, (the last
+     appeal a Mussulman can make,) to implore them for God's sake to
+     respect the life of his friend. At last, ascending a slippery
+     bank, the horse fell. My cap had been snatched off, and I now
+     received a heavy blow on the head from a bludgeon, which
+     fortunately did not quite deprive me of my senses. I had
+     sufficient sense left to shoot a-head of the fallen horse,
+     where my protector with another man joined me, and clasping me
+     in their arms, hurried me towards the wall of Mahomed Khan's
+     fort. How I reached the spot where Mahomed Akber was receiving
+     the gratulations of the multitude I know not, but I remember a
+     fanatic rushing on me, and twisting his hand in my collar until
+     I became exhausted from suffocation. I must do Mahomed Akber
+     the Justice to say, that, finding the Ghazees bent on my
+     slaughter, even after I had reached his stirrup, he drew his
+     sword and laid about him right manfully, for my conductor and
+     Meerza Bàoodeen Khan were obliged to press me up against the
+     wall, covering me with their own bodies, and protesting that no
+     blow should reach me but through their persons.
+
+     "Pride, however, overcame Mahomed Akber's sense of courtesy,
+     when he thought I was safe, for he then turned round to me, and
+     repeatedly said, in a tone of triumphant derision, 'Shuma
+     moolk-i-ma me geered!' (_You'll_ seize my country, will
+     you!)--he then rode off, and I was hurried towards the gate of
+     the fort. Here new dangers awaited me, for Moolah Momin, fresh
+     from the slaughter of poor Trevor, who was killed riding close
+     behind me--Sultan Jan having the credit of having given him the
+     first sabre-cut--stood here with his followers, whom he
+     exhorted to slay me, setting them the example by cutting
+     fiercely at me himself. Fortunately a gun stood between us, but
+     still he would have effected his purpose, had not Mahomed Shah
+     Khan at that instant, with some followers, come to my
+     assistance. These drew their swords in my defence, the chief
+     himself throwing his arm round my neck, and receiving on his
+     shoulder a cut aimed by Moollah Momin at my head. During the
+     bustle I pushed forward into the fort, and was immediately
+     taken to a sort of dungeon, where I found Lawrence safe, but
+     somewhat exhausted by his hideous ride and the violence he had
+     sustained, although unwounded. Here the Giljye chiefs, Mahomed
+     Shah Khan, and his brother Dost Mahomed Khan, presently joined
+     us, and endeavoured to cheer up our flagging spirits, assuring
+     us that the Envoy and Trevor were not dead, but on the contrary
+     quite well. They stayed with us during the afternoon, their
+     presence being absolutely necessary for our protection. Many
+     attempts were made by the fanatics to force the door to
+     accomplish our destruction. Others spit at us and abused us
+     through a small window, through which one fellow levelled a
+     blunderbuss at us, which was struck up by our keepers and
+     himself thrust back. At last Ameenoollah made his appearance,
+     and threatened us with instant death. Some of his people most
+     officiously advanced to make good his word, until pushed back
+     by the Giljye chiefs, who remonstrated with this iniquitous old
+     monster, their master, whom they persuaded to relieve us from
+     his hateful presence. During the afternoon, a human hand was
+     held up in mockery to us at the window. We said that it had
+     belonged to an European, but were not aware at the time that it
+     was actually the hand of the poor Envoy. Of all the Mahomedans
+     assembled in the room discussing the events of the day, one
+     only, an old moollah, openly and fearlessly condemned the acts
+     of his brethren, declaring that the treachery was abominable,
+     and a disgrace to Islam. At night they brought us food, and
+     gave us each a postheen to sleep on. At midnight we were
+     awakened to go to the house of Mahomed Akber in the city.
+     Mahomed Shah Khan then, with the meanness common to all
+     Affghans of rank, robbed Lawrence of his watch, while his
+     brother did me a similar favour. I had been plundered of my
+     rings and every thing else previously, by the understrappers.
+
+     "Reaching Mahomed Akber's abode, we were shown into the room
+     where he lay in bed. He received us with great outward show of
+     courtesy, assuring us of the welfare of the Envoy and Trevor,
+     but there was a constraint in his manner for which I could not
+     account. We were shortly taken to another apartment, where we
+     found Skinner, who had returned, being on parole, early in the
+     morning. Doubt and gloom marked our meeting, and the latter was
+     fearfully deepened by the intelligence which we now received
+     from our fellow-captive of the base murder of Sir William and
+     Trevor. He informed us that the head of the former had been
+     carried about the city in triumph. We of course spent a
+     miserable night. The next day we were taken under a strong
+     guard to the house of Zuman Khan, where a council of the Khans
+     were being held. Here we found Captains Conolly and Airey, who
+     had some days previously been sent to the hurwah's house as
+     hostage for the performance of certain parts of the treaty
+     which was to have been entered into. A violent discussion took
+     place, in which Mahomed Akber bore the most prominent part. We
+     were vehemently accused of treachery, and every thing that was
+     bad, and told that the whole of the transactions of the night
+     previous had been a trick of Mahomed Akber, and Ameenoollah, to
+     ascertain the Envoy's sincerity. They declared that they would
+     now grant us no terms, save on the surrender of the whole of
+     the married families as hostages, all the guns, ammunition, and
+     treasure. At this time Conolly told me that on the preceding
+     day the Envoy's head had been paraded about in the court-yard;
+     that his and Trevor's bodies had been hung up in the public
+     bazar, or _chouk_; and that it was with the greatest difficulty
+     that the old hurwah, Zuman Khan, had saved him and Airey from
+     being murdered by a body of fanatics, who had attempted to rush
+     into the room where they were. Also, that previous to the
+     arrival of Lawrence, Skinner, and myself, Mahomed Akber had
+     been relating the events of the preceding day to the _Jeerga_
+     or council, and that he had unguardedly avowed having, while
+     endeavouring to force the Envoy either to mount on horseback or
+     to move more quickly, _struck_ him; and that, seeing Conolly's
+     eyes fastened upon him with an expression of intense
+     indignation, he had altered the phrase and said, 'I mean I
+     _pushed_ him.' After an immense deal of gabble, a proposal for
+     a renewal of the treaty, not, however, demanding all the guns,
+     was determined to be sent to the cantonments, and Skinner,
+     Lawrence, and myself were marched back to Akber's house,
+     enduring _en route_ all manner of threats and insults. Here we
+     were closely confined in an inner apartment, which was indeed
+     necessary for our safety. That evening we received a visit from
+     Mahomed Akber, Sultan Jan, and several other Affghans. Mahomed
+     Akber exhibited his double-barrelled pistols to us, which he
+     had worn the previous day, requesting us to put their locks to
+     rights, something being amiss. _Two of the barrels had been
+     recently discharged_, which he endeavoured in a most confused
+     way to account for by saying, that he had been charged by a
+     havildar of the escort, and had fired both barrels at him. Now
+     all the escort had run away without even attempting to charge,
+     the only man who advanced to the rescue having been a Hindoo
+     Jemadar of Chuprassies, who was instantly cut to pieces by the
+     assembled Ghazees. This defence he made without any accusation
+     on our part, betraying the anxiety of a liar to be believed. On
+     the 26th, Captain Lawrence was taken to the house of
+     Ameenoollah, whence he did not return to us. Captain Skinner
+     and myself remained in Akber's house until the 30th. During
+     this time we were civilly treated, and conversed with numbers
+     of Affghan gentlemen who came to visit us. Some of them
+     asserted that the Envoy had been murdered by the unruly
+     soldiery. Others could not deny that Akber himself was the
+     assassin. For two or three days we had a fellow-prisoner in
+     poor Sirwar Khan, who had been deceived throughout the whole
+     matter, and out of whom they were then endeavouring to screw
+     money. He, of course, was aware from his countrymen, that not
+     only had Akber committed the murder, but that he protested to
+     the Ghazees that he gloried in the deed. On one occasion a
+     moonshee of Major Pottinger, who had escaped from Charekhar,
+     named Mohun Beer, came direct from the presence of Mahomed
+     Akber to visit us. He told us that Mahomed Akber had begun to
+     see the impolicy of having murdered the Envoy, which fact he
+     had just avowed to him, shedding many tears, either of
+     pretended remorse or of real vexation at having committed
+     himself. On several occasions Mahomed Akber personally, and by
+     deputy, besought Skinner and myself to give him advice as to
+     how he was to extricate himself from the dilemma in which he
+     was placed, more than once endeavouring to excuse himself for
+     not having effectually protected the Envoy, by saying that Sir
+     William had drawn a sword-stick upon him. It seems that
+     meanwhile the renewed negotiations with Major Pottinger, who
+     had assumed the Envoy's place in cantonments, had been brought
+     to a head; for on the night of the 30th, Akber furnished me
+     with an Affghan dress, (Skinner already wore one,) and sent us
+     both back to cantonments. Several Affghans, with whom I fell in
+     afterwards, protested to me that they had seen Mahomed Akber
+     shoot the Envoy with his own hand; amongst them Meerza Báoodeen
+     Khan, who, being an old acquaintance, always retained a
+     sneaking kindness for the English.
+
+     "I am, my dear Eyre, yours very truly,
+
+     "C. MACKENZIE.
+
+     "Cabul, 29th July, 1842."
+
+The negotiations were now renewed by Major Pottinger, who had been
+requested by General Elphinstone to assume the unenviable office of
+political agent and adviser.
+
+     "The additional clauses in the treaty now proposed for our
+     renewed acceptance were--1st. That we should leave behind our
+     guns, excepting six. 2nd. That we should immediately give up
+     all our treasures. 3d. That the hostages should be all
+     exchanged for married men, with their wives and families. The
+     difficulties of Major Pottinger's position will be readily
+     perceived, when it is borne in mind that he had before him the
+     most conclusive evidence of the late Envoy's ill-advised
+     intrigue with Mahomed Akber Khan, in direct violation of that
+     very treaty which was now once more tendered for
+     consideration."
+
+A sum of fourteen lacs of rupees, about L.140,000, was also demanded,
+which was said to be payable to the several chiefs on the promise of the
+late Envoy.
+
+Major Pottinger, at a council of war convened by the General, "declared
+his conviction that no confidence could be placed in any treaty formed
+with the Affghan chiefs; that, under such circumstances, to bind the
+hands of the Government by promising to evacuate the country, and to
+restore the deposed Ameer, and to waste, moreover, so much public money
+merely to save our own lives and property, would be inconsistent with
+the duty we owed to our country and the Government we served; and that
+the only honourable course would be, either to hold out at Cabul, or to
+force our immediate retreat to Jellalabad."
+
+"This however, the officers composing the council, one and all declared
+to be impracticable, owing to the want of provisions, the surrender of
+the surrounding forts, and the insuperable difficulties of the road at
+the present season." The new treaty was therefore, forthwith accepted.
+The demand of the chiefs, that married officers with their families
+should be left as hostages, was successfully resisted. Captains
+Drummond, Walsh, Warburton, and Webb, were accepted in their place, and
+on the 29th went to join Captains Conolly and Airey at the house of
+Nuwab Zuman Khan. Lieutenant Haughton and a portion of the sick and
+wounded, were sent into the city, and placed under the protection of the
+chiefs. "Three of the Shah's guns, with the greater portion of our
+treasure, were made over during the day, much to the evident disgust of
+the soldiery." On the following day, "the remainder of the sick went
+into the city, Lieutenant Evans, H.M. 44th foot, being placed in
+command, and Dr Campbell, 54th native infantry, with Dr Berwick of the
+mission, in medical charge of the whole. Two more of the Shah's guns
+were given up. It snowed hard the whole day."
+
+"_January_ 5.--Affairs continued in the same unsettled state to this
+date. The chiefs postponed our departure from day to day on various
+pretexts.... Numerous cautions were received from various well-wishers,
+to place no confidence in the professions of the chiefs, who had sworn
+together to accomplish our entire destruction."
+
+It is not our intention to offer any lengthened comments on these
+details. They require none. The facts, if they be correctly stated,
+speak for themselves; and, for reasons already referred to, we are
+unwilling to anticipate the result of the judicial investigation now
+understood to be in progress. This much, however, we may be permitted to
+say, that the traces of fatal disunion amongst ourselves will, we fear,
+be made every where apparent. It is notorious that Sir William
+Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes were on terms the reverse of
+cordial. The Envoy had no confidence in the General. The General was
+disgusted with the authority the Envoy had assumed, even in matters
+exclusively military--and, debilitated by disease, was unable always to
+assert his authority even in his own family. The arrival of General
+Shelton in the cantonments does not appear to have tended to restore
+harmony, cordiality, or confidence, or even to have revived the drooping
+courage of the troops, or to have renovated the feelings of obedience,
+and given effect to the bonds of discipline, which had been too much
+relaxed. But, even after admitting all these things, much more still
+remains to be explained before we can account for all that has
+happened--before we can understand how the political authorities came to
+reject every evidence of approaching danger, and therefore to be quite
+unprepared for it when it came. Why no effort was made on the first day
+to put down the insurrection: Why, in the arrangements for the defence
+of the cantonments, the commisariat fort was neglected, and the other
+forts neither occupied nor destroyed: Why almost every detachment that
+was sent out was too small to effect its object: Why, with a force of
+nearly six thousand men, we should never on any one occasion have had
+two thousand in the field, and, as in the action at Beymaroo, only one
+gun: Why so many orders appear to have been disregarded; why so few were
+punctually obeyed.
+
+     "At last the fatal morning dawned (the 6th January) which was
+     to witness the departure of the Cabul force from the
+     cantonments in which it had endured a two months' siege.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Dreary indeed was the scene over which, with drooping spirits
+     and dismal forebodings, we had to bend our unwilling steps.
+     Deep snow covered every inch of mountain and plain with one
+     unspotted sheet of dazzling whiteness; and so intensely bitter
+     was the cold, as to penetrate and defy the defences of the
+     warmest clothing."
+
+Encumbered with baggage, crowded with 12,000 camp-followers, and
+accompanied by many helpless women and children, of all ranks and of all
+ages--with misery before, and death behind, and treachery all around
+them--with little hope of successful resistance if attacked, without
+tents enough to cover them, and without food or fuel for the march, 4500
+fighting men, with nine guns, set out on this march of death.
+
+At 9 A.M. the advance moved out, but was delayed for upwards of an hour
+at the river, having found the temporary bridge incomplete; and it was
+noon ere the road was clear for the main column, which, with its long
+train of loaded camels, continued to pour out of the gate until the
+evening, by which time thousands of Affghans thronged the area of the
+cantonment rending the air with exulting cries, and committing every
+kind of atrocity. Before the rearguard commenced its march it was night;
+but by the light of the burning buildings the Affghan marksmen laid
+Lieut. Hardyman, and fifty rank and file, lifeless on the snow. The
+order of march was soon lost; scores of sepoys and camp-followers sat
+down in despair to perish, and it was 2 A.M. before the rearguard
+reached the camp at Bygram, a distance of five miles. Here all was
+confusion; different regiments, with baggage, camp-followers, camels,
+and horses, mixed up together. The cold towards morning became more
+intense, and thousands were lying on the bare snow, without shelter,
+fire, or food. Several died during the night, amongst whom was an
+European conductor; and the proportion of those who escaped without
+frostbites was small. Yet this was but the _beginning_ of sorrows.
+
+_January 7th_.--At 8 A.M. the force moved on in the same inextricable
+confusion. Already nearly half the sepoys, from sheer inability to keep
+their ranks, had joined the crowd of non-combatants. The rearguard was
+attacked, and much baggage lost, and one of the guns having been
+overturned, was taken by the Affghans, whose cavalry charged into the
+very heart of the column.
+
+Akber Khan said, that the force had been attacked because it had marched
+contrary to the wish of the chiefs. He insisted that it should halt, and
+promised to supply food, forage, and fuel for the troops, but demanded
+six more hostages, which were given. These terms having been agreed to,
+the firing ceased for the present, and the army encamped at Bootkhak,
+where the confusion was indescribable. "Night again," says Lieutenant
+Eyre, "closed over us, with its attendant horrors--starvation, cold,
+exhaustion, death."
+
+At an early hour on the 8th the Affghans commenced firing into the camp;
+and as they collected in considerable numbers, Major Thain led the 44th
+to attack them. In this business the regiment behaved with a resolution
+and gallantry worthy of British soldiers. Again Akber Khan demanded
+hostages. Again they were given, and again the firing ceased. This seems
+to prove that Akber Khan had the power, if he had chosen to exert it, to
+restrain those tribes. Once more the living mass of men and animals was
+put in motion. The frost had so crippled the hands and feet of the
+strongest men, as to prostrate their powers and to incapacitate them for
+service.
+
+The Khoord-Cabul pass, which they were about to enter, is about five
+miles long, shut in by lofty hills, and by precipices of 500 or 600 feet
+in height, whose summits approach one another in some parts to within
+about fifty or sixty yards. Down the centre dashed a torrent, bordered
+with ice, which was crossed about eight-and-twenty times.
+
+While in this dark and narrow gorge, a hot fire was opened upon the
+advance, with whom were several ladies, who, seeing no other chance of
+safety, galloped forwards, "running the gauntlet of the enemy's bullets,
+which whizzed in hundreds about their ears, until they were fairly out
+of the pass. Providentially the whole escaped, except Lady Sale, who was
+slightly wounded in the arm." Several of Akber Khan's chief adherents
+exerted themselves in vain to restrain the Giljyes; and as the crowd
+moved onward into the thickest of the fire, the slaughter was fearful.
+Another horse-artillery gun was abandoned, and the whole of its
+artillerymen slain, and some of the children of the officers became
+prisoners. It is supposed that 3000 souls perished in the pass, amongst
+whom were many officers.
+
+     "On the force reaching Khoord-Cabul, snow began to fall, and
+     continued till morning. Only four small tents were saved, of
+     which one belonged to the General: two were devoted to the
+     ladies and children, and one was given up to the sick; but an
+     immense number of poor wounded wretches wandered about the camp
+     destitute of shelter, and perished during the night. Groans of
+     misery and distress assailed the ear from all quarters. We had
+     ascended to a still colder climate than we had left behind, and
+     we were without tents, fuel, or food: the snow was the only bed
+     for all, and of many, ere morning, it proved the
+     _winding-sheet_. It is only marvellous that any should have
+     survived that fearful night!
+
+     "_January 9th_.--Another morning dawned, awakening thousands to
+     increased misery; and many a wretched survivor cast looks of
+     envy at his comrades, who lay stretched beside him in the
+     quiet sleep of death. Daylight was the signal for a renewal of
+     that confusion which attended every movement of the force."
+
+Many of the troops and followers moved without orders at 8 A.M., but
+were recalled by the General, in consequence of an arrangement with
+Akber Khan. "This delay, and prolongation of their sufferings in the
+snow, of which one more march would have carried them clear, made a very
+unfavourable impression on the minds of the native soldiery, who now,
+for the first time, began very generally to entertain the idea of
+deserting." And it is not to be wondered at, that the instinct of
+self-preservation should have led them to falter in their fealty when
+the condition of the whole army had become utterly hopeless.
+
+Akber Khan now proposed that the ladies and children should be made over
+to his care; and, anxious to save them further suffering, the General
+gave his consent to the arrangement, permitting their husbands and the
+wounded officers to accompany them.
+
+     "Up to this time scarcely one of the ladies had tasted a meal
+     since leaving Cabul. Some had infants a few days old at the
+     breast, and were unable to stand without assistance. Others
+     were so far advanced in pregnancy, that, under ordinary
+     circumstances, a walk across a drawing-room would have been an
+     exertion; yet these helpless women, with their young families,
+     had already been obliged to rough it on the backs of camels,
+     and on the tops of the baggage yaboos: those who had a horse to
+     ride, or were capable of sitting on one, were considered
+     fortunate indeed. Most had been without shelter since quitting
+     the cantonment--their servants had nearly all deserted or been
+     killed--and, with the exception of Lady Macnaghten and Mrs
+     Trevor, they had lost all their baggage, having nothing in the
+     world left but the clothes on their backs; _those_, in the case
+     of some of the invalids, consisted of _night dresses_ in which
+     they had started from Cabul in their litters. Under such
+     circumstances, a few more hours would probably have seen some
+     of them stiffening corpses. The offer of Mahomed Akber was
+     consequently their only chance of preservation. The husbands,
+     better clothed and hardy, would have infinitely preferred
+     taking their chance with the troops; but where is the man who
+     would prefer his own safety, when he thought he could by his
+     presence assist and console those near and dear to him?
+
+     "It is not, therefore, wonderful, that from persons so
+     circumstanced the General's proposal should have met with
+     little opposition, although it was a matter of serious doubt
+     whether the whole were not rushing into the very jaws of death,
+     by placing themselves at the mercy of a man who had so lately
+     imbrued his hands in the blood of a British envoy, whom he had
+     lured to destruction by similar professions of peace and
+     good-will."
+
+Anticipating an attack, the troops paraded to repel it, and it was now
+found that the 44th mustered only 100 files, and the native infantry
+regiments about sixty each. "The promises of Mahomed Akber to provide
+food and fuel were unfulfilled, and another night of starvation and cold
+consigned more victims to a miserable death."
+
+_January_ 10.--At break of day all was again confusion, every one
+hurrying to the front, and dreading above all things to be left in the
+rear. The Europeans were the only efficient men left, the Hindostanees
+having suffered so severely from the frost in their hands and feet, that
+few could hold a musket, much less pull a trigger. The enemy had
+occupied the rocks above the gorge, and thence poured a destructive fire
+upon the column as it slowly advanced. Fresh numbers fell at every
+volley. The sepoys, unable to use their arms, cast them away, and, with
+the followers, fled for their lives.
+
+     "The Affghans now rushed down upon their helpless and
+     unresisting victims sword in hand, and a general massacre took
+     place. The last small remnant of the native infantry regiments
+     were here scattered and destroyed; and the public treasure,
+     with all the remaining baggage, fell into the hands of the
+     enemy. Meanwhile, the advance, after pushing through the Tungee
+     with great loss, had reached Kubbur-i-Jubbar, about five miles
+     a-head, without more opposition. Here they halted to enable the
+     rear to join, but, from the few stragglers who from time to
+     time came up, the astounding truth was brought to light, that
+     of all who had that morning marched from Khoord-Cabul they were
+     almost the sole survivors, nearly the whole of the main and
+     rear columns having been cut off and destroyed. About 50
+     horse-artillerymen, with one twelve-pounder howitzer, 70 files
+     H.M.'s 44th, and 150 cavalry troopers, now composed the whole
+     Cabul force; but, notwithstanding the slaughter and dispersion
+     that had taken place, the camp-followers still formed a
+     considerable body."
+
+Another remonstrance was now addressed to Akber Khan. He declared, in
+reply, his inability to restrain the Giljyes. As the troops entered a
+narrow defile at the foot of the Huft Kotul, they found it strewn with
+the dead bodies of their companions. A destructive fire was maintained
+on the troops from the heights on either side, and fresh numbers of dead
+and wounded lined the course of the stream. "Brigadier Shelton commanded
+the rear with a few Europeans, and but for his persevering energy and
+unflinching fortitude in repelling the assailants, it is probable the
+whole would have been there sacrificed." They encamped in the Tezeen
+valley, having lost 12,000 men since leaving Cabul; fifteen officers had
+been killed and wounded in this day's march.
+
+After resting three hours, they marched, under cover of the darkness, at
+seven P.M. Here the last gun was abandoned, and with it Dr Cardew, whose
+zeal and gallantry had endeared him to the soldiers; and a little
+further on Dr Duff was left on the road in a state of utter exhaustion.
+
+     "Bodies of the neighbouring tribes were by this time on the
+     alert, and fired at random from the heights, it being
+     fortunately too dark for them to aim with precision; but the
+     panic-stricken camp-followers now resembled a herd of startled
+     deer, and fluctuated backwards and forwards, _en masse_, at
+     every shot, blocking up the entire road, and fatally retarding
+     the progress of the little body of soldiers who, under
+     Brigadier Shelton, brought up the rear.
+
+     "At Burik-àb a heavy fire was encountered by the hindmost from
+     some caves near the road-side, occasioning fresh disorder,
+     which continued all the way to Kutter-Sung, where the advance
+     arrived at dawn of day, and awaited the junction of the rear,
+     which did not take place till 8 A.M."
+
+_January_ 11.-- ...
+
+     "From Kutter-Sung to Jugdulluk it was one continued conflict;
+     Brigadier Shelton, with his brave little band in the rear,
+     holding overwhelming numbers in check, and literally performing
+     wonders. But no efforts could avail to ward off the withering
+     fire of juzails, which from all sides assailed the crowded
+     column, lining the road with bleeding carcasses. About three
+     P.M. the advance reached Jugdulluk, and took up its position
+     behind some ruined walls that crowned a height by the
+     road-side. To show an imposing front, the officers extended
+     themselves in line, and Captain Grant, assistant
+     adjutant-general, at the same moment received a wound in the
+     face. From this eminence they cheered their comrades under
+     Brigadier Shelton in the rear, as they still struggled their
+     way gallantly along every foot of ground, perseveringly
+     followed up by their merciless enemy, until they arrived at
+     their ground. But even here rest was denied them; for the
+     Affghans, immediately occupying two hills which commanded the
+     position, kept up a fire from which the walls of the enclosure
+     afforded but a partial shelter.
+
+     "The exhausted troops and followers now began to suffer greatly
+     from thirst, which they were unable to satisfy. A tempting
+     stream trickled near the foot of the hill, but to venture down
+     to it was certain death. Some snow that covered the ground was
+     eagerly devoured, but increased, instead of alleviating, their
+     sufferings. The raw flesh of three bullocks, which had
+     fortunately been saved, was served out to the soldiers, and
+     ravenously swallowed."
+
+About half-past three Akber Khan sent for Capt. Skinner, who promptly
+obeyed the call, hoping still to effect some arrangement for the
+preservation of those who survived. The men now threw themselves down,
+hoping for a brief repose, but the enemy poured volleys from the heights
+into the enclosures in rapid succession. Captain Bygrave, with about
+fifteen brave Europeans, sallied forth, determined to drive the enemy
+from the heights or perish in the attempt. They succeeded; but the
+enemy, who had fled before them, returned and resumed their fatal fire.
+At five P.M. Captain Skinner returned with a message from Akber Khan,
+requesting the presence of the General at a conference, and demanding
+Brigadier Shelton and Capt. Johnson as hostages for the surrender of
+Jellalabad. The troops saw the departure of these officers with despair,
+feeling assured that these treacherous negotiations "were preparatory to
+fresh sacrifices of blood." The General and his companions were received
+with every outward token of kindness, and they were supplied with food,
+but they were not permitted to return. The Sirdar put the General off
+with promises; and at seven P.M. on the 12th, firing being heard, it was
+ascertained that the troops, impatient of further delay, had actually
+moved off. Before their departure Captain Skinner had been treacherously
+shot. They had been exposed during the whole day to the fire of the
+enemy--"sally after sally had been made by the Europeans, bravely led by
+Major Thain, Captain Bygrave, and Lieutenants Wade and Macartney, but
+again and again the enemy returned to worry and destroy. Night came, and
+all further delay in such a place being useless, the whole sallied
+forth, determined to pursue the route to Jellalabad at all risks."
+
+The sick and the wounded were necessarily abandoned to their fate. For
+some time the Giljyes seemed not to be on the alert; but in the defile,
+at the top of the rise, further progress was obstructed by barriers
+formed of prickly trees. This caused great delay, and "a terrible fire
+was poured in from all quarters--a massacre even worse than that of the
+Tunga Tarikee[24] commenced, the Affghans rushing in furiously upon the
+pent-up crowd of troops and followers, and committing wholesale
+slaughter. A miserable remnant managed to clear the barriers. Twelve
+officers, amongst whom was Brigadier Anquetil, were killed. Upwards of
+forty others succeeded in pushing through, about twelve of whom, being
+pretty well mounted, rode on a-head of the rest with the few remaining
+cavalry, intending to make the best of their way to Jellalabad."
+
+     [24] Strait of Darkness.
+
+The country now became more open--the Europeans dispersed, in small
+parties under different officers. The Giljyes were too much occupied in
+plundering the dead to pursue them, but they were much delayed by the
+amiable anxiety of the men to carry on their wounded comrades. The
+morning of the 13th dawned as they approached Gundamuk, revealing to the
+enemy the insignificance of their numerical strength; and they were
+compelled, by the vigorous assaults of the Giljyes, to take up a
+defensive position on a height to the left of the road, "where they
+made a resolute stand, determined to sell their lives at the dearest
+possible price. At this time they could only muster about twenty
+muskets." An attempt to effect an amicable arrangement terminated in a
+renewal of hostilities, and "the enemy marked off man after man, and
+officer after officer, with unerring aim. Parties of Affghans rushed up
+at intervals to complete the work of extermination, but were as often
+driven back by the still dauntless handful of invincibles. At length,
+all being wounded more or less, a final onset of the enemy, sword in
+hand, terminated the unequal struggle and completed the dismal tragedy."
+Captain Souter, who was wounded, and three or four privates, were spared
+and led away captive. Major Griffiths and Captain Blewitt, having
+descended to confer with the enemy, had been previously led off. Of the
+twelve officers who had gone on in advance eleven were destroyed, and Dr
+Brydon alone of the whole Cabul force reached Jellalabad.
+
+"Such was the memorable retreat of the British army from Cabul, which,
+viewed in all its circumstances--in the military conduct which preceded
+and brought about such a consummation, the treachery, disaster, and
+suffering which accompanied it--is, perhaps, without a parallel in
+history."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.
+
+
+Since the day when Lord Auckland, by his famous proclamation in October
+1838, "directed the assemblage of a British force for service across the
+Indus," we have never ceased to denounce the invasion and continued
+occupation of Affghanistan as equally unjust and impolitic[25]--unjust,
+as directed against a people whose conduct had afforded us no legitimate
+grounds of hostility, and against a ruler whose only offence was, that
+he had accepted[26] the proffer from another quarter of that support and
+alliance which we had denied to his earnest entreaty--and impolitic, as
+tending not only to plunge us into an endless succession of ruinous and
+unprofitable warfare, but to rouse against us an implacable spirit of
+enmity, in a nation which had hitherto shown every disposition to
+cultivate amicable relations with our Anglo-Indian Government. In all
+points, our anticipations have been fatally verified. After more than
+two years consumed in unavailing efforts to complete the reduction of
+the country, our army of occupation was at last overwhelmed by the
+universal and irresistible outbreak of an indignant and fanatic
+population; and the restored monarch, Shah-Shoojah, ("whose popularity
+throughout Affghanistan had been proved to the Governor-general by the
+strong and unanimous testimony of the best authorities") perished, as
+soon as he lost the protection of foreign bayonets, by the hands of his
+outraged countrymen.[27]
+
+     [25] See the articles "Persia, Affghanistan, and India," in
+     Jan. 1839--"Khiva, Central Asia, and Cabul," in April
+     1840--"Results of our Affghan Conquests," in Aug.
+     1841--"Affghanistan and India," in July 1842.
+
+     [26] It now seems even doubtful whether the famous letter of
+     Dost Mohammed to the Emperor of Russia, which constituted the
+     _gravamen_ of the charge against him, was ever really written,
+     or at least with his concurrence.--_Vide_ "Report of the
+     Colonial Society on the Affghan War," p. 35.
+
+     [27] The particulars of Shah-Shoojah's fate, which were unknown
+     when we last referred to the subject, have been since
+     ascertained. After the retreat of the English from Cabul, he
+     remained for some time secluded in the Bala-Hissar, observing
+     great caution in his intercourse with the insurgent leaders;
+     but he was at length prevailed upon, by assurances of loyalty
+     and fidelity, (about the middle of April,) to quit the
+     fortress, in order to head an army against Jellalabad. He had
+     only proceeded, however, a short distance from the city, when
+     his litter was fired upon by a party of musketeers placed in
+     ambush by a Doorauni chief named Soojah-ed-Dowlah; and the king
+     was shot dead on the spot. Such was the ultimate fate of a
+     prince, the vicissitudes of whose life almost exceed the
+     fictions of romance, and who possessed talents sufficient, in
+     more tranquil times, to have given _éclat_ to his reign. During
+     his exile at Loodiana, he composed in Persian a curious
+     narrative of his past adventures, a version of part of which
+     appears in the 30th volume of the _Asiatic Journal_.
+
+The tottering and unsubstantial phantom of a _Doorauni kingdom_ vanished
+at once and for ever--and the only remaining alternative was, (as we
+stated the case in our number of last July,) "either to perpetrate a
+second act of violence and national injustice, by reconquering
+Affghanistan _for the vindication_ (as the phrase is) _of our military
+honour_, and holding it without disguise as a province of our empire--or
+to make the best of a bad bargain, by contenting ourselves with the
+occupation of a few posts on the frontier, and leaving the unhappy
+natives to recover, without foreign interference, from the dreadful
+state of anarchy into which our irruption has thrown them." Fortunately
+for British interests in the East, the latter course has been adopted.
+After a succession of brilliant military triumphs, which, in the words
+of Lord Ellenborough's recent proclamation, "have, in one short
+campaign, avenged our late disasters upon every scene of past
+misfortune," the evacuation of the country has been directed--not,
+however, before a fortunate chance had procured the liberation of _all_
+the prisoners who had fallen into the power of the Affghans in January
+last; and ere this time, we trust, not a single British regiment remains
+on the bloodstained soil of Affghanistan.
+
+The proclamation above referred to,[28] (which we have given at length
+at the conclusion of this article,) announcing these events, and
+defining the line of policy in future to be pursued by the Anglo-Indian
+Government, is in all respects a remarkable document. As a specimen of
+frankness and plain speaking, it stands unique in the history of
+diplomacy; and, accordingly, both its matter and its manner have been
+made the subjects of unqualified censure by those scribes of the
+Opposition press who, "content to dwell in forms for ever," have
+accustomed themselves to regard the mystified protocols of Lord
+Palmerston as the models of official style. The _Morning Chronicle_,
+with amusing ignorance of the state of the public mind in India,
+condemns the Governor-general for allowing it to become known to the
+natives that the abandonment of Affghanistan was in consequence of a
+change of policy! conceiving (we suppose) that our Indian subjects would
+otherwise have believed the Cabul disasters to have formed part of the
+original plan of the war, and to have veiled some purpose of inscrutable
+wisdom; while the _Globe_, (Dec. 3,) after a reluctant admission that
+"the policy itself of evacuating the country _may be wise_," would fain
+deprive Lord Ellenborough of the credit of having originated this
+decisive step, by an assertion that "we have discovered no proof that a
+permanent possession of the country beyond the Indus was contemplated by
+his predecessor." It would certainly have been somewhat premature in
+Lord Auckland to have announced his ultimate intentions on this point
+while the country in question was as yet but imperfectly subjugated, or
+when our troops were subsequently almost driven out of it; but the views
+of the then home Government, from which it is to be presumed that Lord
+Auckland received his instructions, were pretty clearly revealed in the
+House of Commons on the 10th of August last, by one whose authority the
+_Globe_, at least, will scarcely dispute--by Lord Palmerston himself.
+To prevent the possibility of misconstruction, we quote the words
+attributed to the late Foreign Secretary. After drawing the somewhat
+unwarrantable inference, from Sir Robert Peel's statement, "that no
+immediate withdrawal of our troops from Candahar and Jellalabad was
+contemplated," that an order had at one time been given for the
+abandonment of Affghanistan, he proceeds--"I do trust that her Majesty's
+Government will not carry into effect, either immediately or at _any_
+future time, the arrangement thus contemplated. It was all very well
+when we were in power, and it was suited to party purposes, to run down
+any thing we had done, and to represent as valueless any acquisition on
+which we may have prided ourselves--it was all very well to raise an
+outcry against the Affghan expedition, and to undervalue the great
+advantages which the possession of the country was calculated to afford
+us--but I trust the Government will rise above any consideration of that
+sort, and that they will give the matter their fair, dispassionate, and
+deliberate consideration. I must say, I never was more convinced of any
+thing in the whole course of my life--and I may be believed when I speak
+my earnest conviction--that the most important interests of this
+country, both commercial and political, would be sacrificed, if we were
+to sacrifice the military possession of the country of Eastern
+Affghanistan." Is it in the power of words to convey a clearer
+admission, that the pledge embodied in Lord Auckland's manifesto--"to
+withdraw the British army as soon as the independence and integrity of
+Affghanistan should be secured by the establishment of the Shah"--was in
+fact mere moonshine: and the real object of the expedition was the
+conquest of a country advantageously situated for the defence of our
+Indian frontier against (as it now appears) an imaginary invader? Thus
+Napoleon, in December 1810, alleged "the necessity, in consequence of
+the new order of things which has arisen, of new guarantees for the
+security of my empire," as a pretext for that wholesale measure of
+territorial spoliation in Northern Germany, which, from the umbrage it
+gave Russia, proved ultimately the cause of his downfall: but it was
+reserved for us of the present day, to hear a _British_ minister avow
+and justify a violent and perfidious usurpation on the plea of political
+expediency. It must indeed be admitted that, in the early stages of the
+war, the utter iniquity of the measure met with but faint reprobation
+from any party in the state: the nation, dazzled by the long-disused
+splendours of military glory, was willing, without any very close
+enquiry, to take upon trust all the assertions so confidently put forth
+on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah, the hostile machinations of Dost
+Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian
+Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than
+once previously referred) "_the reconstruction of the social edifice_"
+in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were
+at best, have been utterly dissipated by this undisguised declaration of
+Lord Palmerston, that the real object of the war was to seize and hold
+the country on our own account, the attempt of the _Globe_ to claim for
+Lord Auckland the credit of having from the first contemplated a measure
+thus vehemently protested against and disclaimed by the late official
+leader of his party, is rather too barefaced to be passed over without
+comment.
+
+     [28] It is singular that this proclamation was issued on the
+     fourth anniversary of Lord Auckland's "Declaration" of Oct. 1,
+     1838; and from the same place, Simla.
+
+Without, however, occupying ourselves further in combating the attacks
+of the Whig press on this proclamation, which may very well be left to
+stand on its own merits, we now proceed to recapitulate the course of
+the events which have, in a few months, so completely changed the aspect
+of affairs beyond the Indus. When we took leave, in July last, of the
+subject of the Affghan campaign, we left General Pollock, with the force
+which had made its way through the Khyber Pass, still stationary at
+Jellalabad, for want (as it was said) of camels and other means of
+transport: while General Nott, at Candahar, not only held his ground,
+but victoriously repulsed in the open field the Affghan _insurgents_,
+(as it is the fashion to call them,) who were headed by the prince
+Seifdar-Jung, son of Shah Shoojah! and General England, after his
+repulse on the 28th of March at the Kojuck Pass, remained motionless at
+Quettah. The latter officer (in consequence, as it is said, of
+peremptory orders from General Nott to meet him on a given day at the
+further side of the Pass) was the first to resume active operations; and
+on the 28th of April, the works at Hykulzie in the Kojuck, which had
+been unaccountably represented on the former occasion as most formidable
+defences,[29] were carried without loss or difficulty, and the force
+continued its march uninterrupted to Candahar. The fort of
+Khelat-i-Ghiljie, lying about halfway between Candahar and Ghazni, was
+at the sane time gallantly and successfully defended by handful of
+Europeans and sepoys, till relieved by the advance of a division from
+Candahar, which brought off the garrison, and razed the fortifications
+of the place. Girishk, the hereditary stronghold of the Barukzye chiefs,
+about eighty miles west of Candahar, was also dismantled and abandoned;
+and all the troops in Western Affghanistan were thus concentrated under
+the immediate command of General Nott, whose success in every encounter
+with the Affghans continued to be so decisive, that all armed opposition
+disappeared from the neighbourhood of Candahar; and the prince
+Seifdar-Jung, despairing of the cause, of which he had perhaps been from
+the first not a very willing supporter, came in and made his submission
+to the British commander.
+
+     [29] "The fieldworks _believed to be described_ in the despatch
+     as 'consisting of a succession of breastworks, improved by a
+     ditch and abattis--the latter being filled with thorns,' turned
+     out to be a paltry stone wall, with a cut two feet deep, and of
+     corresponding width, to which the designation of ditch was most
+     grossly misapplied.... A score or two of active men might have
+     completed the work in a few days."--(Letter quoted in the
+     _Asiatic Journal_, Sept., p. 107.) On whom the blame of these
+     misrepresentations should be laid--whether on the officer who
+     reconnoitred the ground, or on the general who wrote the
+     despatch--does not very clearly appear: yet the political agent
+     at Quettah was removed from his charge, for not having given
+     notice of the construction in his vicinity of works which are
+     now proved to have had no existence!
+
+During the progress of these triumphant operations in Western
+Affghanistan, General Pollock still lay inactive at Jellalabad; and some
+abortive attempts were made to negotiate with the dominant party at
+Cabul for the release of the prisoners taken the preceding winter. Since
+the death of Shah-Shoojah, the throne had been nominally filled by his
+third son, Futteh-Jung, the only one of the princes who was on the spot;
+but all the real power was vested, with the rank of vizier, in the hands
+of Akhbar Khan, who had not only possessed himself of the Bala-Hissar
+and the treasure of the late king, but had succeeded in recruiting the
+forces of the Affghan league, by a reconciliation with Ameen-ullah
+Khan,[30] the original leader of the outbreak, with whom he had formerly
+been at variance. All efforts, however, to procure the liberation of the
+captives, on any other condition than the liberation of Dost Mohammed,
+and the evacuation of Affghanistan by the English, (as hostages for
+which they had originally been given,) proved fruitless; and at length,
+after more than four months' delay, during which several sharp affairs
+had taken place with advanced bodies of the Affghans, General Pollock
+moved forward with his whole force, on the 20th of August, against
+Cabul. This city had again in the mean time become a scene of tumult and
+disorder--the Kizilbashes or Persian inhabitants, as well as many of the
+native chiefs, resisting the exactions of Akhbar Khan; who, at last,
+irritated by the opposition to his measures, imprisoned the titular
+shah, Futteh-Jung, in the Bala-Hissar; whence he succeeded after a time
+in escaping, and made his appearance, in miserable plight, (Sept. 1,) at
+the British headquarters at Futtehabad, between Jellalabad and
+Gundamuck. The advance of the army was constantly opposed by detached
+bodies of the enemy, and several spirited skirmishes took place:--till,
+on the 13th of September, the main Affghan force, to the number of
+16,000 men, under Akhbar Khan and other leaders, was descried on the
+heights near Tazeen, (where the slaughter of our troops had taken place
+in January,) at the entrance of the formidable defiles called the
+Huft-Kothul, or Seven Passes. It is admitted on all hands that in this
+last struggle, (as they believed, for independence,) the Affghans fought
+with most distinguished gallantry, frequently charging sword in hand
+upon the bayonets; but their irregular valour eventually gave way before
+the discipline of their opponents, and a total rout took place. The
+chiefs fled in various directions, "abandoning Cabul to the _avengers of
+British wrongs_," who entered the city in triumph on the 15th, and
+hoisted the British colours on the Bala-Hissar. The principal point now
+remaining to be effected was the rescue of the prisoners whom Akhbar
+Khan had carried off with him in his flight, with the intention (as was
+rumoured) of transporting them into Turkestan; but from this peril they
+were fortunately delivered by the venality of the chief to whose care
+they had been temporarily intrusted; and on the 21st they all reached
+the camp in safety, with the exception of Captain Bygrave, who was also
+liberated, a few days later, by the voluntary act of Akhbar himself.[31]
+
+     [30] It was this chief whose betrayal or destruction Sir
+     William McNaghten is accused, on the authority of General
+     Elphinstone's correspondence, of having meditated, on the
+     occasion when he met with his own fate. We hope, for the honour
+     of the English name, that the memory of the late Resident at
+     Cabul may be cleared from this heavy imputation; but he
+     certainly cannot be acquitted of having, by his wilful
+     blindness and self-sufficiency, contributed to precipitate the
+     catastrophe to which he himself fell a victim. In proof of this
+     assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the tenor of his
+     remarks on the letter addressed to him by Sir A. Burnes on the
+     affairs of Cabul, August 7, 1840, which appeared some time
+     since in the _Bombay Times_, and afterwards in the _Asiatic
+     Journal_ for October and November last.
+
+     [31] The kindness and humanity which these unfortunate
+     _detenus_ experienced from first to last at the hands of
+     Akhbar, reflect the highest honour on the character of this
+     chief, whom it has been the fashion to hold up to execration as
+     a monster of perfidy and cruelty. As a contrast to this conduct
+     of the Affghan _barbarians_, it is worth while to refer to
+     Colonel Lindsay's narrative of his captivity in the dungeons of
+     Hyder and Tippoo, which has recently appeared in the _Asiatic
+     Journal_, September, December, 1842.
+
+General Nott, meanwhile, in pursuance of his secret orders from the
+Supreme Government, had been making preparations for abandoning
+Candahar; and, on the 7th and 8th of August, the city was accordingly
+evacuated, both by his corps and by the division of General England--the
+Affghan prince, Seifdar-Jung, being left in possession of the place. The
+routes of the two commanders were now separated. General England, with
+an immense train of luggage, stores, &c., directed his march through the
+Kojuck Pass to Quettah, which he reached with little opposition;--while
+Nott, with a more lightly-equipped column, about 7000 strong, advanced
+by Khelat-i-Ghiljie against Ghazni. This offensive movement appears to
+have taken the Affghans at first by surprise; and it was not till he
+arrived within thirty-eight miles of Ghazni that General Nott found his
+progress opposed (August 30) by 12,000 men under the governor,
+Shams-o-deen Khan, a cousin of Mohammed Akhbar. The dispersion of this
+tumultuary array was apparently accomplished (as far as can be gathered
+from the extremely laconic despatches of the General) without much
+difficulty; and, on the 6th of September, after a sharp skirmish in the
+environs, the British once more entered Ghazni. In the city and
+neighbouring villages were found not fewer than 327 sepoys of the former
+garrison, which had been massacred to a man (according to report)
+immediately after the surrender; but notwithstanding this evidence of
+the moderation with which the Affghans had used their triumph, General
+Nott, (in obedience, as is said, to the _positive tenor of his
+instructions_,) "directed the city of Ghazni, with the citadel and the
+whole of its works, to be destroyed;" and this order appears, from the
+engineer's report, to have been rigorously carried into effect. The mace
+of Mamood Shah Ghaznevi, the first Moslem conqueror of Hindostan, and
+the famous sandal-wood portals of his tomb, (once the gates of the great
+Hindoo temple at Somnaut,[32]) were carried off as trophies: the ruins
+of Ghazni were left as a monument of British vengeance; and General Nott,
+resuming his march, and again routing Shams-o-deen Khan at the defiles
+of Myden, effected his junction with General Pollock, on the 17th of
+September, at Cabul; whence the united corps, together mustering 18,000
+effective men, were to take the route for Hindostan through the Punjab
+early in October.
+
+     [32] The value still attached by the Hindoos to these relics
+     was shown on the conclusion of the treaty, in 1832, between
+     Shah-Shoojah and Runjeet Singh, previous to the Shah's last
+     unaided attempt to recover his throne; in which their
+     restoration, in case of his success, was an express
+     stipulation.
+
+Such have been the principal events of the brief but brilliant campaign
+which has concluded the Affghan war, and which, if regarded solely in a
+military point of view, must be admitted to have amply vindicated the
+lustre of the British arms from the transient cloud cast on them by the
+failures and disasters of last winter.
+
+The Affghan tragedy, however, may now, we hope, be considered as
+concluded, so far as related to our own participation in its crimes and
+calamities; but for the Affghans themselves, "left to create a
+government in the midst of anarchy," there can be at present little
+chance of even comparative tranquillity, after the total dislocation of
+their institutions and internal relations by the fearful torrent of war
+which has swept over the country. The last atonement now in our power to
+make, both to the people and the ruler whom we have so deeply injured,
+as well as the best course for our own interests, would be at once to
+release Dost Mohammed from the unmerited and ignominious confinement to
+which he has been subjected in Hindostan, and to send him back in honour
+to Cabul; where his own ancient partisans, as well as those of his son,
+would quickly rally round him; and where his presence and accustomed
+authority might have some effect in restraining the crowd of fierce
+chiefs, who will be ready to tear each other to pieces as soon as they
+are released from the presence of the _Feringhis_. There would thus be
+at least a possibility of obtaining a nucleus for the re-establishment
+of something like good order; while in no other quarter does there
+appear much prospect of a government being formed, which might be either
+"approved by the Affghans themselves," or "capable of maintaining
+friendly relations with neighbouring states." If the accounts received
+may be depended upon, our troops had scarcely cleared the Kojuck Pass,
+on their way from Candahar to the Indus, when that city became the scene
+of a contest between the Prince Seifdar-Jung and the Barukzye chiefs in
+the vicinity; and though the latter are said to have been worsted in the
+first instance, there can be little doubt that our departure will be the
+signal for the speedy return of the quondam _Sirdars_, or rulers of
+Candahar, (brothers of Dost Mohammed,) who have found an asylum in
+Persia since their expulsion in 1839, but who will scarcely neglect so
+favourable an opportunity for recovering their lost authority. Yet
+another competitor may still, perhaps, be found in the same quarter--one
+whose name, though sufficiently before the public a few years since, has
+now been almost forgotten in the strife of more mighty interests. This
+is Shah Kamran of Herat, the rumours of whose death or dethronement
+prove to have been unfounded, and who certainly would have at this
+moment a better chance than he has ever yet had, for regaining at least
+Candahar and Western Affghanistan. He was said to be on the point of
+making the attempt after the repulse of the Persians before Herat, just
+before our adoption of Shah-Shoojah; and his title to the crown is at
+least as good as that of the late Shah, or any of his sons. It will be
+strange if this prince, whose danger from Persia was the original
+pretext for crossing the Indus, should be the only one of all the
+parties concerned, whose condition underwent no ultimate change, through
+all the vicissitudes of the tempest which has raged around him.
+
+Nor are the elements of discord less abundant and complicated on the
+side of Cabul. The defeat of Tazeen will not, any more than the
+preceding ones, have annihilated Akhbar Khan and his confederate
+chiefs:--they are still hovering in the Kohistan, and will doubtless
+lose no time in returning to Cabul as soon as the retreat of the English
+is ascertained. It is true that the civil wars of the Affghans, though
+frequent, have never been protracted or sanguinary:--like the
+Highlanders, as described by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, "though they may
+quarrel among themselves, and gie ilk ither ill names, and may be a
+slash wi' a claymore, they are sure to join in the long run against a'
+civilized folk:"--but it is scarcely possible that so many conflicting
+interests, now that the bond of common danger is removed, can be
+reconciled without strife and bloodshed. It is possible, indeed, that
+Futteh-Jung (whom the last accounts state to have remained at Cabul when
+our troops withdrew, in the hope of maintaining himself on the musnud,
+and who is said to be the most acceptable to the Affghans of the four
+sons[33] of Shah-Shoojah) may be allowed to retain for a time the title
+of king; but he had no treasure and few partizans; and the rooted
+distaste of the Affghans for the titles and prerogatives of royalty is
+so well ascertained, that Dost Mohammed, even in the plenitude of his
+power, never ventured to assume them. All speculations on these points,
+however, can at present amount to nothing more than vague conjecture;
+the troubled waters must have time to settle, before any thing can be
+certainly prognosticated as to the future destinies of Affghanistan.
+
+     [33] The elder of these princes, Timour, who was governor of
+     Candahar during the reign of his father, has accompanied
+     General England to Hindostan, preferring, as he says, the life
+     of a private gentleman under British protection to the perils
+     of civil discord in Affghanistan. Of the second,
+     Mohammed-Akhbar, (whose mother is said to be sister of Dost
+     Mohammed,) we know nothing;--Futteh-Jung is the third, and was
+     intended by Shah-Shoojah for his successor;--Seifdar-Jung, now
+     at Candahar, is the youngest.
+
+The kingdom of the Punjab will now become the barrier between
+Affghanistan and our north-western frontier in India; and it is said
+that the Sikhs, already in possession of Peshawer and the rich plain
+extending to the foot of the Khyber mountains, have undertaken in future
+to occupy the important defiles of this range, and the fort of
+Ali-Musjid, so as to keep the Affghans within bounds. It seems to us
+doubtful, however, whether they will be able to maintain themselves
+long, unaided, in this perilous advanced post: though the national
+animosity which subsists between them and the Affghans is a sufficient
+pledge of their good-will for the service--and their co-operation in the
+late campaign against Cabul has been rendered with a zeal and
+promptitude affording a strong contrast to their lukewarmness at the
+beginning of the war, when they conceived its object to be the
+re-establishment of the monarchy and national unity of their inveterate
+foes. But the vigour of the Sikh kingdom, and the discipline and
+efficiency of their troops, have greatly declined in the hands of the
+present sovereign, Shere Singh, who, though a frank and gallant soldier,
+has little genius for civil government, and is thwarted and overborne in
+his measures by the overweening power of the minister, Rajah Dhian
+Singh, who originally rose to eminence by the favour of Runjeet. At
+present, our information as to the state of politics in the Punjab is
+not very explicit, the intelligence from India during several months,
+having been almost wholly engrossed by the details of the campaign in
+Affghanistan; but as far as can be gathered from these statements, the
+country has been brought, by the insubordination of the troops, and the
+disputes of the Maharajah and his Minister, to a state not far removed
+from anarchy. It is said that the fortress of Govindghur, where the vast
+treasures amassed by Runjeet are deposited, has been taken possession
+of by the malecontent faction, and that Shere Singh has applied for the
+assistance of our troops to recover it; and the _Delhi Gazette_ even
+goes so far as to assert that this prince, "disgusted with the perpetual
+turmoil in which he is embroiled, and feeling his incapacity of ruling
+his turbulent chieftains, is willing to cede his country to us, and
+become a pensioner of our Government." But this announcement, though
+confidently given, we believe to be at least premature. That the Punjab
+must inevitably, sooner or later, become part of the Anglo-Indian
+empire, either as a subsidiary power, like the Nizam, or directly, as a
+province, no one can doubt; but its incorporation at this moment, in the
+teeth of our late declaration against any further extension of
+territory, and at the time when the Sikhs are zealously fulfilling their
+engagements as our allies, would be both injudicious and unpopular in
+the highest degree. An interview, however, is reported to have been
+arranged between Lord Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which is to take
+place in the course of the ensuing summer, and at which some definitive
+arrangements will probably be entered into, on the future political
+relations of the two Governments.[34]
+
+     [34] The war in Tibet, to which we alluded in July last,
+     between the followers of the Sikh chief Zorawur Singh and the
+     Chinese, is still in progress--and the latter are said to be on
+     the point of following up their successes by an invasion of
+     Cashmeer. As we are now at peace with the Celestial Empire, our
+     mediation may be made available to terminate the contest.
+
+The only permanent accession of territory, then, which will result from
+the Affghan war, will consist in the extension of our frontier along the
+whole course of the Sutlej and Lower Indus--"the limits which nature
+appears to have assigned to the Indian empire"--and in the altered
+relations with some of the native states consequent on these
+arrangements. As far as Loodeana, indeed, our frontier on the Sutlej has
+long been well established, and defined by our recognition of the Sikh
+kingdom on the opposite bank;--but the possessions of the chief of
+Bhawulpoor, extending on the left bank nearly from Loodeana to the
+confluence of the Sutlej with the Indus, have hitherto been almost
+exempt from British interference;[35] as have also the petty Rajpoot
+states of Bikaneer, Jesulmeer, &c., which form oases in the desert
+intervening between Scinde and the provinces more immediately under
+British control. These, it is to be presumed, will now be summarily
+taken under the _protection_ of the Anglo-Indian Government:--but more
+difficulty will probably be experienced with the fierce and imperfectly
+subdued tribes of Scindians and Belooches, inhabiting the lower valley
+of the Indus;--and, in order to protect the commerce of the river, and
+maintain the undisputed command of its course, it will be necessary to
+retain a sufficient extent of vantage-ground on the further bank, and to
+keep up in the country an amount of force adequate to the effectual
+coercion of these predatory races. For this purpose, a _place d'armes_
+has been judiciously established at Sukkur, a town which, communicating
+with the fort of Bukkur on an island of the Indus, and with Roree on the
+opposite bank, effectually secures the passage of the river; and the
+ports of Kurrachee and Sonmeani on the coast, the future marts of the
+commerce of the Indus, have also been garrisoned by British troops.
+
+     [35] Bhawulpoor is so far under British protection, that it was
+     saved from the arms of the Sikhs by the treaty with Runjeet
+     Singh, which confined him to the other bank of the Sutlej; but
+     it has never paid allegiance to the British Government. Its
+     territory is of considerable extent, stretching nearly 300
+     miles along the river, by 100 miles average breadth; but great
+     part of the surface consists of sandy desert.
+
+
+It has long since been evident[36] that Scinde, by that _principle of
+unavoidable expansion_ to which we had so often had occasion to refer,
+must eventually have been absorbed into the dominions of the Company;
+but the process by which it at last came into our hands is so curious a
+specimen of our Bonapartean method of dealing with reluctant or
+refractory neutrals, that we cannot pass it altogether without notice.
+Scinde, as well as Beloochistan, had formed part of the extensive empire
+subdued by Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Doorani monarchy; but in the
+reign of his indolent son Timour, the Affghan yoke was shaken off by the
+_Ameers_, or chiefs of the Belooch family of Talpoor, who, fixing their
+residences respectively at Hydrabad, Meerpoor, and Khyrpoor, defied all
+the efforts of the kings of Cabul to reduce them to submission, though
+they more than once averted an invasion by the promise of tribute. It
+has been rumoured that Shah-Shoojah, during his long exile, made
+repeated overtures to the Cabinet of Calcutta for the cession of his
+dormant claims to the _suzerainté_ of Scinde, in exchange for an
+equivalent, either pecuniary or territorial; but the representations of
+a fugitive prince, who proposed to cede what was not in his possession,
+were disregarded by the rulers of India; and even in the famous
+manifesto preceding the invasion of Affghanistan, Lord Auckland
+announced, that "a guaranteed independence, on favourable conditions,
+would be tendered to the Ameers of Scinde." On the appearance of our
+army on the border, however, the Ameers demurred, not very unreasonably,
+to the passage of this formidable host; and considerable delay ensued,
+from the imperfect information possessed by the British commanders of
+the amount of resistance to be expected; but at last the country and
+fortress were forcibly occupied; the seaport of Kurrachee (where alone
+any armed opposition was attempted) was bombarded and captured by our
+ships of war; and a treaty was imposed at the point of the bayonet on
+the Scindian rulers, by virtue of which they paid a contribution of
+twenty-seven laks of rupees (nearly £300,000) to the expenses of the
+war, under the name of arrears of tribute to Shah-Shoojah,
+acknowledging, at the same time, the supremacy, _not of Shah-Shoojah_,
+but of the English Government! The tolls on the Indus were also
+abolished, and the navigation of the river placed, by a special
+stipulation, wholly under the control of British functionaries. Since
+this summary procedure, our predominance in Scinde has been undisturbed,
+unless by occasional local commotions; but the last advices state that
+the whole country is now "in an insurrectionary state;" and it is fully
+expected that an attempt will erelong be made to follow the example of
+the Affghans, and get rid of the intrusive _Feringhis_; in which case,
+as the same accounts inform us, "the Ameers will be sent as
+state-prisoners to Benares, and the territory placed wholly under
+British administration."
+
+     [36] So well were the Scindians aware of this, that Burnes,
+     when ascending the Indus, on his way to Lahore in 1831,
+     frequently heard it remarked, "Scinde is now gone, since the
+     English have seen the river, which is the road to its
+     conquest."
+
+But whatever may be thought of the strict legality of the conveyance, in
+virtue of which Scinde has been converted into an integral part of our
+Eastern empire, its geographical position, as well as its natural
+products, will render it a most valuable acquisition, both in a
+commercial and political point of view. At the beginning of the present
+century, the East-India Company had a factory at Tatta, (the Pattala of
+the ancients,) the former capital of Scinde, immediately above the Delta
+of the Indus; but their agents were withdrawn during the anarchy which
+preceded the disruption of the Doorani monarchy. From that period till
+the late occurrences, all the commercial intercourse with British India
+was maintained either by land-carriage from Cutch, by which mode of
+conveyance the opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast quantities of which are
+exported in this direction) chiefly found its way into Scinde and
+Beloochistan; or by country vessels of a peculiar build, with a
+disproportionately lofty poop, and an elongated bow instead of a
+bowsprit, which carried on an uncertain and desultory traffic with
+Bombay and some of the Malabar ports. To avoid the dangerous sandbanks
+at the mouths of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation through
+the winding streams of the Delta, (the course of which, as in the
+Mississippi, changes with every inundation,) they usually discharged
+their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence they were transported sixty miles
+overland to Tatta, and there embarked in flat-bottomed boats on the main
+stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen miles N.W. from the Pittee, or
+western mouth of the Indus, and Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the
+territory of Lus, between forty and fifty miles further in the same
+direction, are the only harbours of import in the long sea-coast of
+Beloochistan; and the possession of them gives the British the undivided
+command of a trade which, in spite of the late disasters, already
+promises to become considerable; while the interposition of the now
+friendly state of Khelat[37] between the coast and the perturbed tribes
+of Affghanistan, will secure the merchandise landed here a free passage
+into the interior. The trade with these ports deserves, indeed, all the
+fostering care of the Indian Government; since they must inevitably be,
+at least for some years to come, the only inlet for Indian produce into
+Beloochistan, Cabul, and the wide regions of Central Asia beyond them.
+The overland carrying trade through Scinde and the Punjab, in which
+(according to M. Masson) not less than 6500 camels were annually
+employed, has been almost annihilated--not only by the confusion arising
+from the war, but from the absolute want of means of transport, from the
+unprecedented destruction of the camels occasioned by the exigencies of
+the commissariat, &c. The rocky defiles of Affghanistan were heaped with
+the carcasses of these indispensable animals, 50,000 of which (as is
+proved by the official returns) perished in this manner in the course of
+three years; and some years must necessarily elapse before the chasm
+thus made in the numbers of the species throughout North-western India
+can be supplied. The immense expenditure of the Army of Occupation, at
+the same time, brought such an influx of specie into Affghanistan, as
+had never been known since the sack of Delhi by Ahmed Shah
+Doorani--while the traffic with India being at a stand-still for the
+reasons we have just given, the superfluity of capital thus produced was
+driven to find an outlet in the northern markets of Bokhara and
+Turkestan. The consequence of this has been, that Russian manufactures
+to an enormous amount have been poured into these regions, by way of
+Astrakhan and the Caspian, to meet this increasing demand; and the value
+of Russian commerce with Central Asia, which (as we pointed out in April
+1840, p. 522) had for many years been progressively declining, was
+doubled during 1840 and 1841, (_Bombay Times_, April 2, 1842,) and is
+believed to be still on the increase! The opening of the navigation of
+the Indus, with the exertions of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce to
+establish depots on its course, and to facilitate the transmission of
+goods into the surrounding countries, has already done much for the
+restoration of traffic in this direction, in spite of the efforts of the
+Russian agents in the north to keep possession of the opening thus
+unexpectedly afforded them; but it cannot be denied that the "great
+enlargement of our field of commerce," so confidently prognosticated by
+Lord Palmerston, from "the great operations undertaken in the countries
+lying west of the Indus," has run a heavy risk of being permanently
+diverted into other channels, by the operation of the causes detailed
+above.
+
+     [37] Khelat (more properly Khelat-i-Nussear Khan, "the citadel
+     of Nussear Khan," by whom it was strongly fortified in 1750,)
+     is the principal city and fortress of the Brahooes or Eastern
+     Baloochee, and the residence of their chief. It had never been
+     taken by any of the Affghan kings, and had even opposed a
+     successful resistance to the arms of Ahmed Shah;--but on
+     November 13, 1839, it was stormed by an Anglo-Indian force
+     under General Wiltshire, and the Khan Mihrab was slain sword in
+     hand, gallantly fighting to the last at the entrance of his
+     zenana. The place, however, was soon after surprised and
+     recaptured by the son of the fallen chief, Nussear Khan, who,
+     though again expelled, continued to maintain himself with a few
+     followers in the mountains, and at last effected an
+     accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud.
+     He has since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary
+     fidelity; and as his fears of compulsory vassalage to the
+     nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at an end, he
+     appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian
+     chief converted into a firm friend and ally.
+
+Before we finally dismiss the subject of the Affghan war and its
+consequences, we cannot overlook one feature in the termination of the
+contest, which is of the highest importance, as indicating a return to a
+better system than that miserable course of reduction and parsimony,
+which, for some years past, has slowly but surely been alienating the
+attachment, and breaking down the military spirit, of our native army.
+We refer to the distribution, by order of Lord Ellenborough, of badges
+of honorary distinction, as well as of more substantial rewards, in the
+form of augmented allowances,[38] &c., to the sepoy corps which have
+borne the brunt of the late severe campaign. Right well have these
+honours and gratuities been merited; nor could any measure have been
+better timed to strengthen in the hearts of the sepoys the bonds of the
+_Feringhi salt_, to which they have so long proved faithful. The policy,
+as well as the justice, of holding out every inducement which may rivet
+the attachment of the native troops to our service, obvious as it must
+appear, has in truth been of late too much neglected;[39] and it has
+become at this juncture doubly imperative, both from the severe and
+unpopular duty in which a considerable portion of the troops have
+recently been engaged, and from the widely-spread disaffection which has
+lately manifested itself in various quarters among the native
+population. We predicted in July, as the probable consequence of our
+reverses in Affghanistan, some open manifestation of the spirit of
+revolt constantly smouldering among the various races of our subjects in
+India, but the prophecy had already been anticipated by the event. The
+first overt resistance to authority appeared in Bhundelkund, a wild and
+imperfectly subjugated province in the centre of Hindostan, inhabited by
+a fierce people called Bhoondelahs. An insurrection, in which nearly all
+the native chiefs are believed to be implicated, broke out here early
+in April; and a desultory and harassing warfare has since been carried
+on in the midst of the almost impenetrable jungles and ravines which
+overspread the district. The Nawab of Banda and the Bhoondee Rajah, a
+Moslem and a Hindoo prince, respectively of some note in the
+neighbourhood of the disturbed tracts, have been placed under
+surveillance at Allahabad as the secret instigators of these movements,
+"which," (says the _Agra Ukhbar_) "appear to have been regularly
+organized all over India, the first intimation of which was the Nawab of
+Kurnool's affair"--whose deposition we noticed in July. The valley of
+Berar, also, in the vicinity of the Nizam's frontier, has been the scene
+of several encounters between our troops and irregular bands of
+insurgents; and the restless Arab mercenaries in the Dekkan are still in
+arms, ready to take service with any native ruler who chooses to employ
+them against the _Feringhis_. In the northern provinces, the aspect of
+affairs is equally unfavourable. The Rohillas, the most warlike and
+nationally-united race of Moslems in India, have shown alarming symptoms
+of a refractory temper, fomented (as it has been reported) by the
+disbanded troopers of the 2d Bengal cavalry,[40] (a great proportion of
+whom were Rohillas,) and by Moslem deserters from the other regiments in
+Affghanistan, who have industriously magnified the amount of our
+losses--a pleasing duty, in which the native press, as usual, has
+zealously co-operated. One of the newspapers printed in the Persian
+language at Delhi, recently assured its readers that, at the forcing of
+the Khyber Pass, "six thousand Europeans fell under the sharp swords of
+the Faithful"--with other veracious intelligence, calculated to produce
+the belief that the campaign must inevitably end, like the preceding, in
+the defeat and extermination of the whole invading force. The fruits of
+these inflammatory appeals to the pride and bigotry of the Moslems, is
+thus painted in a letter from Rohilcund, which we quote from that
+excellent periodical the _Asiatic Journal_ for September:--"The
+Mahomedans throughout Rohilcund hate us to a degree only second to what
+the Affghans do, their interest in whose welfare they can scarcely
+conceal.... There are hundreds of heads of tribes, all of whom would
+rise to a man on what they considered a fitting opportunity, which they
+are actually thirsting after. A hint from their moolahs, and the display
+of the green flag, would rally around it every Mussulman. In March last,
+the population made no scruple of declaring that the _Feringhi raj_
+(English rule) was at an end; and some even disputed payment of the
+revenue, saying it was probable they should have to pay it again to
+another Government! They have given out a report that Akhbar Khan has
+disbanded his army for the present, in order that his men may visit
+their families; but in the cold weather, when our troops will be
+weakened and unfit for action, he will return with an overwhelming
+force, aided by every Mussulman as far as Ispahan, when they will
+annihilate our whole force and march straight to Delhi, and ultimately
+send us to our ships. The whole Mussulman population, in fact, are
+filled with rejoicing and _hope_ at our late reverses."
+
+     [38] By a general order, issued from Simla October 4, all
+     officers and soldiers, of whatever grade, who took part in the
+     operations about Candahar, the defence of Khelat-i-Ghiljie, the
+     recapture of Ghazni or Cabul, or the forcing of the Khyber
+     Pass, are to receive a silver medal with appropriate
+     inscriptions--a similar distinction having been previously
+     conferred on the defenders of Jellalabad. _What is at present
+     the value of the Order of the Doorani Empire_, with its showy
+     decorations of the first, second, and third classes, the last
+     of which was so rightfully spurned by poor Dennie?
+
+     [39] The following remarks of the _Madras United Service
+     Gazette_, though intended to apply only to the Secunderabad
+     disturbances, deserve general attention at present:--"We
+     attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for
+     their European officers to _a diminished inclination for the
+     service_, the duties whereof have of late years increased in
+     about the same proportion that its advantages have been
+     reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than
+     double the work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;...
+     and the infantry sepoy's garrison guard-work has been for years
+     most fatiguing at every station, from the numerical strength of
+     the troops being quite inadequate to the duties.... These
+     several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a
+     distaste for the service, which has been augmented by the
+     stagnant state of promotion, caused by the reductions in 1829,
+     when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the cavalry,
+     native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became
+     supernumerary, thus effectually closing the door of promotion
+     to the inferior grades for years to come. Hopeless of
+     advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less
+     attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as
+     careless of a service which no longer held out any prospect of
+     promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline were not
+     altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of
+     corporal punishment; and from the promulgation of that
+     ill-judged order may be dated the decided change for the worse
+     which has taken place in the character of the native soldiery."
+
+     [40] This corps, it will be remembered, was broken for its
+     misconduct in the battle of Purwan-Durrah, against Dost
+     Mohammed, November 2, 1840.
+
+It may be said that we are unnecessarily multiplying instances, and that
+these symptoms of local fermentation are of little individual
+importance; but nothing can be misplaced which has a tendency to dispel
+the universal and unaccountable error which prevails in England, as to
+the _popularity of our sway in India_. The signs of the times are
+tolerably significant--and the apprehensions of a coming commotion which
+we expressed in July, as well as of the quarter in which it will
+probably break out, are amply borne out by the language of the
+best-informed publications of India. "That the seeds of discontent" says
+the _Delhi Gazette_--"have been sown by the Moslems, and have partially
+found root among the Hindoos, is more than conjecture"--and the
+warnings of the _Agra Ukhbar_ are still more unequivocal. "Reports have
+reached Agra that a general rise will erelong take place in the Dekkan.
+There have already been several allusions made to a very extensive
+organization among the native states[41] against the British power, the
+resources of which will, no doubt, be stretched to the utmost during the
+ensuing cold season. Disaffection is wide and prevalent, and when our
+withdrawal from Affghanistan becomes known, it will ripen into open
+insurrection. With rebellion in Central India, and famine in Northern,
+Government have little time to lose in collecting their energies to meet
+the crisis." The increase of means which the return of the army from
+Affghanistan will place at the disposal of the Governor-General, will
+doubtless do much in either overawing or suppressing these
+insurrectionary demonstrations; but even in this case the snake will
+have been only "scotched, not killed;" and the most practical and
+effectual method of rendering such attempts hopeless for the future,
+will be the replacing the Indian army on the same efficient footing, as
+to numbers and composition, on which it stood before the ill-judged
+measures of Lord William Bentinck. The energies of the native troops
+have been heavily tasked, and their fidelity severely tried, during the
+Affghan war; and though they have throughout nobly sustained the high
+character which they had earned by their past achievements, the
+experiment on their endurance should not be carried too far. Many of the
+errors of past Indian administrations have already been remedied by Lord
+Ellenborough; and we cannot refrain from the hope, that the period of
+his Government will not be suffered to elapse without a return to the
+old system on this point also--the vital point on which the stability of
+our empire depends.
+
+     [41] The Nawab of Arcot, one of the native princes, whose
+     fidelity is now strongly suspected, assured the Resident, in
+     his reply to the official communication of the capture of
+     Ghazni in 1839, that from his excessive joy at the triumph of
+     his good friend the Company, his bulk of body had so greatly
+     increased that he was under the necessity of providing himself
+     with a new wardrobe--his garments having become too strait for
+     his unbounded stomach! A choice specimen of oriental bombast.
+
+Such have been the consequences, as far as they have hitherto been
+developed, to the foreign and domestic relations of our Eastern empire,
+of the late memorable Affghan war. In many points, an obvious parallel
+may be drawn between its commencement and progress, and that of the
+invasion of Spain by Napoleon. In both cases, the territory of an
+unoffending people was invaded and overrun, in the plenitude of (as was
+deemed by the aggressors) irresistible power, on the pretext, in each
+case, that it was necessary to anticipate an ambitious rival in the
+possession of a country which might be used as a vantage ground against
+us. In both cases, the usurpation was thinly veiled by the elevation of
+a pageant-monarch to the throne; till the invaded people, goaded by the
+repeated indignities offered to their religious and national pride, rose
+_en masse_ against their oppressors at the same moment in the capital
+and the provinces, and either cut them off, or drove them to the
+frontier. In each case the intruders, by the arrival of reinforcements,
+regained for a time their lost ground; and if our Whig rulers had
+continued longer at the helm of affairs, the parallel might have become
+complete throughout. The strength and resources of our Indian empire
+might have been drained in the vain attempt to complete the subjugation
+of a rugged and impracticable country, inhabited by a fierce and bigoted
+population; and an "Affghan _ulcer_." (to use the ordinary phrase of
+Napoleon himself in speaking of the Spanish war) might have corroded the
+vitals, and undermined the fabric, of British domination in the East.
+Fortunately, however, for our national welfare and our national
+character, better counsels are at length in the ascendant. The triumphs
+which have again crowned our arms, have not tempted our rulers to resume
+the perfidious policy which their predecessors, in the teeth of their
+own original declarations, have now openly avowed, by "retaining
+military possession of the countries west of the Indus;" and the candid
+acknowledgement of the error committed in the first instance, affords
+security against the repetition of such acts of wanton aggression, and
+for adherence to the pacific policy now laid down. The ample resources
+of India have yet in a great measure to be explored and developed, and
+it is impossible to foresee what results may be attained, when (in the
+language of the _Bombay Times_) "wisdom guides for good and worthy ends,
+that resistless energy which madness has wasted on the opposite. We now
+see that, even with Affghanistan as a broken barrier, Russia dares not
+move her finger against us--that with seventeen millions sterling thrown
+away, we are able to recover all our mischances, if relieved from the
+rulers and the system which imposed them upon us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The late proclamation of Lord Ellenborough has been so frequently
+referred to in the foregoing pages, that for the sake of perspicuity we
+subjoin it in full.
+
+"Secret Department, Simla,
+
+"Oct. 1, 1842.
+
+"The Government of India directed its army to pass the Indus, in order
+to expel from Affghanistan a chief believed to be hostile to British
+interests, and to replace upon his throne a sovereign represented to be
+friendly to those interests, and popular with his former subjects.
+
+"The chief believed to be hostile became a prisoner, and the sovereign
+represented to be popular was replaced upon his throne; but after events
+which brought into question his fidelity to the Government by which he
+was restored, he lost, by the hands of an assassin, the throne he had
+only held amidst insurrections, and his death was preceded and followed
+by still existing anarchy.
+
+"Disasters, unparalleled in their extent, unless by the errors in which
+they originated, and by the treachery by which they were completed, have
+in one short campaign been avenged upon every scene of past misfortune;
+and repeated victories in the field, and the capture of the cities and
+citadels of Ghazni and Cabul, have again attached the opinion of
+invincibility to the British arms.
+
+"The British army in possession of Affghanistan will now be withdrawn to
+the Sutlej.
+
+"The Governor-General will leave it to the Affghans themselves to create
+a government amidst the anarchy which is the consequence of their
+crimes.
+
+"To force a sovereign upon a reluctant people, would be as inconsistent
+with the policy, as it is with the principles, of the British
+Government, tending to place the arms and resources of that people at
+the disposal of the first invader, and to impose the burden of
+supporting a sovereign without the prospect of benefit from his
+alliance.
+
+"The Governor-General will willingly recognize any government approved
+by the Affghans themselves, which shall appear desirous and capable of
+maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring states.
+
+"Content with the limits nature appears to have assigned to its empire,
+the Government of India will devote all its efforts to the establishment
+and maintenance of general peace, to the protection of the sovereigns
+and chiefs its allies, and to the prosperity and happiness of its own
+faithful subjects.
+
+"The rivers of the Punjab and the Indus, and the mountainous passes and
+the barbarous tribes of Affghanistan, will be placed between the British
+army and an enemy from the west, if indeed such an enemy there can be,
+and no longer between the army and its supplies.
+
+"The enormous expenditure required for the support of a large force in a
+false military position, at a distance from its own frontier and its
+resources, will no longer arrest every measure for the improvement of
+the country and of the people.
+
+"The combined army of England and of India, superior in equipment, in
+discipline, in valour, and in the officers by whom it is commanded, to
+any force which can be opposed to it in Asia, will stand in unassailable
+strength upon its own soil, and for ever, under the blessing of
+Providence, preserve the glorious empire it has won, in security and in
+honour.
+
+"The Governor-General cannot fear the misconstruction of his motives in
+thus frankly announcing to surrounding states the pacific and
+conservative policy of his Government.
+
+"Affghanistan and China have seen at once the forces at his disposal,
+and the effect with which they can be applied.
+
+"Sincerely attached to peace for the sake of the benefits it confers
+upon the people, the Governor-General is resolved that peace shall be
+observed, and will put forth the whole power of the British Government
+to coerce the state by which it shall be infringed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
+
+
+There are few things more painful connected with the increase of years
+in an established periodical like our own, than to observe how "friend
+after friend departs," to witness the gradual thinning of the ranks of
+its contributors by death, and the departure, from the scene, of those
+whose talents or genius had contributed to its early influence and
+popularity. Many years have not elapsed since we were called on to
+record the death of the upright and intelligent publisher, to whose
+energy and just appreciation of the public taste, its origin and success
+are in a great degree to be ascribed. On the present occasion another of
+these melancholy memorials is required of us; the accomplished author of
+"Cyril Thornton," whose name and talents had been associated with the
+Magazine from its commencement, is no more. He died at Pisa on the 7th
+December last.
+
+Mr Hamilton exhibited a remarkable union of scholarship, high breeding,
+and amiability of disposition. To the habitual refinement of taste which
+an early mastery of the classics had produced, his military profession
+and intercourse with society had added the ease of the man of the world,
+while they had left unimpaired his warmth of feeling and kindliness of
+heart. Amidst the active services of the Peninsular and American
+campaigns, he preserved his literary tastes; and, when the close of the
+war restored him to his country, he seemed to feel that the peaceful
+leisure of a soldier's life could not be more appropriately filled up
+than by the cultivation of literature. The characteristic of his mind
+was rather a happy union and balance of qualities than the possession of
+any one in excess; and the result was a peculiar composure and
+gracefulness, pervading equally his outward deportment and his habits of
+thought. The only work of fiction which he has given to the public
+certainly indicates high powers both of pathetic and graphic
+delineation; but the qualities which first and most naturally attracted
+attention, were rather his excellent judgment of character, at once just
+and generous, his fine perception and command of wit and quiet humour,
+rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into satire or sarcasm, and the
+refinement, taste, and precision with which he clothed his ideas,
+whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous or
+extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society and in
+taste.
+
+Of his contributions to this Magazine it would be out of place here to
+speak, further than to say that they indicated a wide range and
+versatility of talent, embraced both prose and verse, and were
+universally popular. "Cyril Thornton," which appeared in 1827, instantly
+arrested public attention and curiosity, even in an age eminently
+fertile in great works of fiction. With little of plot--for it pursued
+the desultory ramblings of military life through various climes--it
+possessed a wonderful truth and reality, great skill in the observation
+and portraiture of original character, and a peculiar charm of style,
+blending freshness and vivacity of movement with classic delicacy and
+grace. The work soon became naturally and justly popular, having reached
+a second edition shortly after publication: a third edition has recently
+appeared. The "Annals of the Peninsular Campaign" had the merit of clear
+narration, united with much of the same felicity of style; but the size
+of the work excluded that full development and picturesque detail which
+were requisite to give individuality to its pictures. His last work was
+"Men and Manners in America," of which two German and one French
+translations have already appeared; a work eminently characterized by a
+tone of gentlemanly feeling, sagacious observation, just views of
+national character and institutions, and their reciprocal influence, and
+by tolerant criticism; and which, so far from having been superseded by
+recent works of the same class and on the same subject, has only risen
+in public estimation by the comparison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13062 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13062 ***</div>
+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>NO. CCCXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1843. VOL. LIII.</h2>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s1">ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s2">POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.&mdash;NO. V.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s3">REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s4">THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s5">IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s6">CALEB STUKELY. PART XI.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s7">THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART II.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s8">EYRE'S CABUL.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s9">THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s10">DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328-footnotes">[FOOTNOTES]</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h3>EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.</h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page141" id="page141" title="141"></a>
+<a name="bw328s1" id="bw328s1"></a><h2>ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.</h2>
+
+<p>If any doubt could exist as to the nature
+of the loss which the premature
+death of Dr Arnold has inflicted on
+the literature of his country, the perusal
+of the volume before us must be
+sufficient to show how great, how serious,
+nay, all circumstances taken together,
+we had almost said how irreparable,
+it ought to be considered.
+Recently placed in a situation which
+gave his extraordinary faculties as a
+teacher still wider scope than they
+before possessed, at an age when the
+vivacity and energy of a commanding
+intellect were matured, not chilled, by
+constant observation and long experience&mdash;gifted
+with industry to collect,
+with sagacity to appreciate, with
+skill to arrange the materials of history&mdash;master
+of a vivid and attractive
+style for their communication and display&mdash;eminent,
+above all, for a degree
+of candour and sincerity which gave
+additional value to all his other endowments&mdash;what
+but leisure did Dr
+Arnold require to qualify him for a
+place among our most illustrious authors?
+Under his auspices, we might
+not unreasonably have hoped for
+works that would have rivalled those
+of the great continental writers in
+depth and variety of research; in
+which the light of original and contemporaneous
+documents would be
+steadily flung on the still unexplored
+portions of our history; and that
+Oxford would have balanced the fame
+of Schl&ouml;sser and Thierry and Sismondi,
+by the labours of a writer peculiarly,
+and, as this volume proves,
+most affectionately her own.</p>
+
+<p>The first Lecture in the present
+volume is full of striking and original
+remarks, delivered with a delightful
+simplicity; which, since genius has become
+rare among us, has almost disappeared
+from the conversation and
+writings of Englishmen. Open the
+pages of Herodotus, or Xenophon, or
+C&aelig;sar, and how plain, how unpretending
+are the preambles to their immortal
+works&mdash;in what exquisite proportion
+does the edifice arise, without
+apparent effort, without ostentatious
+struggle, without, if the allusion may
+be allowed, the sound of the axe or
+hammer, till &quot;the pile stands fixed
+her stately height&quot; before us&mdash;the just
+admiration of succeeding ages! But
+our modern <i>filosofastri</i> insist upon
+stunning us with the noise of their
+machinery, and blinding us with the
+dust of their operations. They will
+not allow the smallest portion of their
+vulgar labours to escape our notice.
+They drag us through the chaos of
+sand and lime, and stone and bricks,
+which they have accumulated, hoping
+that the magnitude of the preparation
+may atone for the meanness of the performance.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page142" id="page142" title="142"></a>Very different from this
+is the style of Dr Arnold. We will
+endeavour to exhibit a just idea of his
+views, so far as they regard the true
+character of history, the manner in
+which it should be studied, and the
+events by which his theory is illustrated.
+To study history as it should be
+studied, much more to write history
+as it should be written, is a task which
+may dignify the most splendid abilities,
+and occupy the most extended life.</p>
+
+<p>Lucian in one of his admirable
+treatises, ridicules those who imagine
+that any one who chooses may sit
+down and write history as easily as
+he would walk or sleep, or perform
+any other function of nature,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Thought, to the man that never thinks, may seem<br /></span>
+<span>As natural as when asleep to dream.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From the remarks of this greatest
+of all satirists, it is manifest that, in
+his days, history had been employed,
+as it has in ours, for the purposes of
+slander and adulation. He selects
+particularly a writer who compared,
+in his account of the Persian wars,
+the Roman emperor to Achilles, his
+enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian
+had lived in the present day, he would
+have discovered that the race of such
+writers was not extinguished. He
+might have found ample proofs that
+the detestable habit still prevails of
+interweaving the names of our contemporaries
+among the accounts of
+former centuries, and thus corrupting
+the history of past times into a means
+of abuse and flattery for the present.
+This is to degrade history into the
+worst style of a Treasury pamphlet,
+or a daily newspaper. It is a fault almost
+peculiar to this country.</p>
+
+<p>We are told in one of these works,
+for instance, that the &quot;tones of Sir
+W. Follett's voice are silvery&quot;&mdash;a proposition
+that we do not at all intend
+to dispute; nor would it be easy to
+pronounce any panegyric on that
+really great man in which we should
+not zealously concur; but can it be
+necessary to mention this in a history
+of the eighteenth century? Or can
+any thing be more trivial or offensive,
+or totally without the shadow of justification,
+than this forced allusion to
+the &quot;ignorant present time,&quot; in the
+midst of what ought to be an unbiassed
+narrative of events that affected
+former generations? We do not know
+whether the author of this ingenious
+allusion borrowed the idea from the
+advertisements in which our humbler
+artists recommend their productions
+to vulgar notice; or whether it is the
+spontaneous growth of his own happy
+intellect: but plagiarized or original,
+and however adapted it may be to
+the tone and keeping of his work, its
+insertion is totally irreconcilable with
+the qualities that a man should possess
+who means to instruct posterity.
+When gold is extracted from lead, or
+silver from tin, such a writer may become
+an historian. &quot;Forget,&quot; says
+Lucian, &quot;the present, look to future
+ages for your reward; let it be said
+of you that you are high-spirited, full
+of independence, that there is nothing
+about you servile or fulsome.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Modern history is now exclusively
+to be considered. Modern history,
+separated from the history of Greece
+and Rome, and the annals of barbarous
+emigration, by the event which
+above all others has influenced, and
+continues still to influence, after so
+many centuries, the fate of Europe&mdash;the
+fall of the Western Empire&mdash;the
+boundary line which separates modern
+from ancient history, is not ideal and
+capricious, but definite and certain.
+It can neither be advanced nor carried
+back. Modern history displays a
+national life still in existence. It commences
+with that period in which the
+great elements of separate national
+existence now in being&mdash;race, language,
+institutions, and religion&mdash;can
+be traced in simultaneous operation.
+To the influences which pervaded the
+ancient world, another, at first scarcely
+perceptible, for a time almost predominant,
+and even now powerful and
+comprehensive, was annexed. In the
+fourth century of the Christian era, the
+Roman world comprised Christianity,
+Grecian intellect, Roman jurisprudence&mdash;all
+the ingredients, in short,
+of modern history, except the Teutonic
+element. It is the infusion of this
+element which has changed the quality
+of the compound, and leavened the
+whole mass with its peculiarities. To
+this we owe the middle ages, the law
+of inheritance, the spirit of chivalry,
+and the feudal system, than which no
+cause more powerful ever contributed
+to the miseries of mankind. It filled
+Europe not with men but slaves; and
+the tyranny under which the people
+groaned was the more intolerable, as it
+<a class="pagenum" name="page143" id="page143" title="143"></a>was wrought into an artificial method,
+confirmed by law, established by inveterate
+custom, and even supported
+by religion. In vain did the nations
+cast their eyes to Rome, from whom
+they had a right to claim assistance,
+or at least sympathy and consolation.
+The appeal was useless. The living
+waters were tainted in their source.
+Instead of health they spread abroad
+infection&mdash;instead of giving nourishment
+to the poor, they were the narcotics
+which drenched in slumber the
+consciences of the rich. Wretched
+forms, ridiculous legends, the insipid
+rhetoric of the Fathers, were the substitutes
+for all generous learning. The
+nobles enslaved the body; the hierarchy
+put its fetters on the soul. The
+growth of the public mind was checked
+and stunted and the misery of Europe
+was complete. The sufferer was taught
+to expect his reward in another world;
+their oppressor, if his bequests were
+liberal, was sure of obtaining consolation
+in this, and the kingdom of God
+was openly offered to the highest bidder.
+But to the causes which gave
+rise to this state of things, we must
+trace our origin as a nation.</p>
+
+<p>With the Britons whom C&aelig;sar conquered,
+though they occupied the surface
+of our soil, we have, nationally
+speaking, no concern; but when the
+white horse of Hengist, after many a
+long and desperate struggle, floated in
+triumph or in peace from the Tamar
+to the Tweed, our existence as a nation,
+the period to which we may refer
+the origin of English habits, language,
+and institutions, undoubtedly begins.
+So, when the Franks established themselves
+west of the Rhine, the French
+nation may be said to have come into
+being. True, the Saxons yielded to
+the discipline and valour of a foreign
+race; true, the barbarous hordes of
+the Elbe and the Saal were not the
+ancestors, as any one who travels in
+the south of France can hardly fail to
+see, of the majority of the present nation
+of the French: but the Normans
+and Saxons sprang from the same
+stock, and the changes worked by
+Clovis and his warriors were so vast
+and durable, (though, in comparison
+with their conquered vassals, they
+were numerically few,) that with
+the invasion of Hengist in the one
+case, and the battle of Poictiers in the
+other, the modern history of both
+countries may not improperly be said
+to have begun. To the student of
+that history, however, one consideration
+must occur, which imparts to the
+objects of his studies an interest emphatically
+its own. It is this: he has
+strong reason to believe that all the
+elements of society are before him.
+It may indeed be true that Providence
+has reserved some yet unknown tribe,
+wandering on the banks of the Amour
+or of the Amazons, as the instrument
+of accomplishing some mighty purpose&mdash;humanly
+speaking, however,
+such an event is most improbable.
+To adopt such an hypothesis, would
+be in direct opposition to all the analogies
+by which, in the absence of
+clearer or more precise motives, human
+infirmity must be guided. The
+map of the world is spread out before
+us; there are no regions which we
+speak of in the terms of doubt and
+ignorance that the wisest Romans applied
+to the countries beyond the Vistula
+and the Rhine, when in Lord
+Bacon's words &quot;the world was altogether
+home-bred.&quot; When Cicero
+jested with Trebatius on the little importance
+of a Roman jurist among
+hordes of Celtic barbarians, he little
+thought that from that despised country
+would arise a nation, before the
+blaze of whose conquests the splendour
+of Roman Empire would grow
+pale; a nation which would carry
+the art of government and the enjoyment
+of freedom to a perfection, the
+idea of which, had it been presented
+to the illustrious orator, stored as his
+mind was with all the lore of Grecian
+sages, and with whatever knowledge
+the history of his own country
+could supply, would have been
+consigned by him, with the glorious
+visions of his own Academy, to the
+shady spaces of an ideal world. Had
+he, while bewailing the loss of that
+freedom which he would not survive,
+disfigured as it was by popular tumult
+and patrician insolence&mdash;had he
+been told that a figure far more faultless
+was one day to arise amid the unknown
+forests and marshes of Britain,
+and to be protected by the rude hands
+of her barbarous inhabitants till it
+reached the full maturity of immortal
+loveliness&mdash;the eloquence of Cicero
+himself would have been silenced, and,
+whatever might have been the exultation
+of the philosopher, the pride of
+the Roman would have died within
+him. But we can anticipate no similar
+<a class="pagenum" name="page144" id="page144" title="144"></a>revolution. The nations by which
+the world is inhabited are known to
+us; the regions which they occupy are
+limited; there are no fresh combinations
+to count upon, no reserves upon
+which we can depend;&mdash;there is every
+reason to suppose that, in the great
+conflict with physical and moral evil,
+which it is the destiny of man to wage,
+the last battalion is in the field.</p>
+
+<p>The course to be adopted by the student
+of modern history is pointed out in
+the following pages; and the remarks
+of Dr Arnold on this subject are
+distinguished by a degree of good sense
+and discrimination which it is difficult
+to overrate. Vast indeed is the difference
+between ancient and modern annals,
+as far as relates to the demand
+upon the student's time and attention.
+Instead of sailing upon a narrow channel,
+the shores of which are hardly
+ever beyond his view, he launches out
+upon an ocean of immeasurable extent,
+through which the greatest skill
+and most assiduous labour are hardly
+sufficient to conduct him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere c&oelig;lo,<br /></span>
+<span>Nec meminisse vi&aelig;, medi&acirc; Palinurus in und&acirc;.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Instead of a few great writers, the
+student is beset on all sides by writers
+of different sort and degree, from the
+light memorialist to the great historian;
+instead of two countries, two
+hemispheres are candidates for his
+attention; and history assumes a variety
+of garbs, many of which were
+strangers to her during the earlier
+period of her existence. To the careful
+study of many periods of history,
+not extending over any very wide
+portion of time, the labour of a tolerably
+long life would be inadequate.
+The unpublished Despatches of Cardinal
+Granvelle at Besan&ccedil;on, amount
+to sixty volumes. The archives of
+Venice (a mine, by the way, scarcely
+opened) fill a large apartment. For
+printed works it may be enough to
+mention the Benedictine editions and
+Munatoris Annals, historians of the
+dark and middle ages, relating to two
+countries only, and two periods. All
+history, therefore, however insatiable
+may be the intellectual <i>boulimia</i> that
+devours him, can never be a proper object
+of curiosity to any man. It is
+natural enough that the first effect
+produced by this discovery on the
+mind of the youthful student should
+be surprise and mortification; nor is it
+before the conviction that his researches,
+to be valuable, must be limited,
+forces itself upon him, that he concentrates
+to some particular period,
+and perhaps to some exclusive object,
+the powers of his undivided attention.
+When he has thus put an end to his
+desultory enquiries, and selected the
+portion of history which it is his purpose
+to explore, his first object should
+be to avail himself of the information
+which other travellers in the same regions
+have been enabled to collect.
+Their mistakes will teach him caution;
+their wanderings will serve to keep
+him in the right path. Weak and
+feeble as he may be, compared with
+the first adventurers who have visited
+the mighty maze before him, yet he
+has not their difficulties to encounter,
+nor their perils to apprehend. The
+clue is in his hands which may lead
+him through the labyrinth in which
+it has been the lot of so many master-spirits
+to wander&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And find no end, in boundless mazes lost.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it is time to hear Dr Arnold:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;To proceed, therefore, with our supposed
+student's course of reading. Keeping
+the general history which he has been
+reading as his text, and getting from it
+the skeleton, in a manner, of the future
+figure, he must now break forth excursively
+to the right and left, collecting richness
+and fulness of knowledge from the
+most various sources. For example, we
+will suppose that where his popular historian
+has mentioned that an alliance was
+concluded between two powers, or a
+treaty of peace agreed upon, he first of all
+resolves to consult the actual documents
+themselves, as they are to be found in
+some one of the great collections of European
+treaties, or, if they are connected
+with English history, in Rymer's <i>F&oelig;dera</i>.
+By comparing the actual treaty with his
+historian's report of its provisions, we
+get, in the first place, a critical process of
+some value, inasmuch as the historian's
+accuracy is at once tested: but there are
+other purposes answered besides. An
+historian's report of a treaty is almost always
+an abridgement of it; minor articles
+will probably be omitted, and the rest
+condensed, and stripped of all their formal
+language. But our object now being
+to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is
+possible, the very life of the period which
+we are studying, minute particulars help
+<a class="pagenum" name="page145" id="page145" title="145"></a>us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration
+of titles, and the specification of
+towns and districts in their legal style,
+help to realize the time to us, if it be only
+from their very particularity. Every common
+history records the substance of the
+treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the
+succession to the crown of France was
+given to Henry V. But the treaty in
+itself, or the English version of it which
+Henry sent over to England to be proclaimed
+there, gives a far more lively impression
+of the triumphant state of the
+great conqueror, and the utter weakness
+of the poor French king, Charles VI.,
+in the ostentatious care taken to provide
+for the recognition of his formal title during
+his lifetime, while all real power is
+ceded to Henry, and provision is made
+for the perpetual union hereafter of the
+two kingdoms under his sole government.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have named treaties as the first class
+of official instruments to be consulted, because
+the mention of them occurs unavoidably
+in every history. Another class of
+documents, certainly of no less importance,
+yet much less frequently referred to by
+popular historians, consists of statutes, ordinances,
+proclamations, acts, or by whatever
+various names the laws of each particular
+period happen to be designated. <i>That
+the Statute Book has not been more habitually
+referred to by writers on English
+history</i>, has always seemed to me
+a matter of surprise. Legislation has not
+perhaps been so busy in every country as
+it has been with us; yet every where, and
+in every period, it has done something.
+Evils, real or supposed, have always existed,
+which the supreme power in the nation
+has endeavoured to remove by the provisions
+of law. And under the name of
+laws I would include the acts of councils,
+which form an important part of the history
+of European nations during many
+centuries; provincial councils, as you are
+aware, having been held very frequently,
+and their enactments relating to local and
+particular evils, so that they illustrate history
+in a very lively manner. Now, in
+these and all the other laws of any given
+period, we find in the first place, from
+their particularity, a great additional help
+towards becoming familiar with the times
+in which they were passed; we learn the
+names of various officers, courts, and
+processes; and these, when understood,
+(and I suppose always the habit of reading
+nothing without taking pains to understand
+it,) help us, from their very number,
+to realize the state of things then existing;
+a lively notion of any object depending on
+our clearly seeing some of its parts, and
+the more we people it, so to speak, with
+distinct images, the more it comes to
+resemble the crowded world around us.
+But in addition to this benefit, which I
+am disposed to rate in itself very highly,
+every thing of the nature of law has a
+peculiar interest and value, <i>because it is
+the expression of the deliberate mind of
+the supreme government of society</i>; and
+as history, as commonly written, records
+so much of the passionate and unreflecting
+part of human nature, we are bound in
+fairness to acquaint ourselves with its
+calmer and better part also.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The inner life of a nation will be
+determined by its end, that end being
+the security of its highest happiness,
+or, as it is &quot;conceived and expressed
+more piously, a setting forth of God's
+glory by doing his appointed work.&quot;
+The history of a nation's internal life
+is the history of its institutions and its
+laws. Here, then, it is that we shall
+find the noblest lessons of history;
+here it is that we must look for the
+causes, direct and indirect, which have
+modified the characters, and decided
+the fate of nations. To this imperishable
+possession it is that the philosopher
+appeals for the corroboration of
+his theory, as it is to it also that the
+statesman ought to look for the regulation
+of his practice. Religion, property,
+science, commerce, literature,
+whatever can civilize and instruct
+rude mankind, whatever can embellish
+life in its more advanced condition,
+even till it exhibit the wonders of
+which it is now the theatre, may be
+referred to this subject, and are comprised
+under this denomination. The
+importance of history has been the
+theme of many a pen, but we question
+whether it has ever been more beautifully
+described than in the following
+passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Enough has been said, I think, to
+show that history contains no mean treasures;
+that, as being the biography of a
+nation, it partakes of the richness and variety
+of those elements which make up a
+nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness
+in the final cause of all human thought
+and action, God's glory and man's perfection,
+that is the measure of the greatness
+of history. Whatever there is of variety
+and intense interest in human nature, in
+its elevation, whether proud as by nature,
+or sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering,
+whether blessed or unblessed, a
+martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
+reverses, in its varied adventures, in its
+yet more varied powers, its courage and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page146" id="page146" title="146"></a>its patience, its genius and its wisdom,
+its justice and its love, that also is the
+measure of the interest and variety of history.
+The treasures indeed are ample,
+but we may more reasonably fear whether
+we may have strength and skill to win
+them.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In passing we may observe, after
+Dr Arnold, that the most important
+bearing of a particular institution
+upon the character of a nation is not
+always limited to the effect which is
+most obvious; few who have watched
+the proceedings in our courts of justice
+can doubt that, in civil cases, the
+interference of a jury is often an obstacle,
+and sometimes an insurmountable
+obstacle, to the attainment of justice.
+Dr Arnold's remarks on this subject
+are entitled to great attention:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The effect,&quot; he says, &quot;of any particular
+arrangement of the judicial power, is seen
+directly in the greater or less purity with
+which justice is administered; but there is
+a further effect, and one of the highest
+importance, in its furnishing to a greater
+or less portion of the nation one of the
+best means of moral and intellectual culture&mdash;the
+opportunity, namely, of exercising
+the functions of a judge. I mean,
+that to accustom a number of persons to
+the intellectual exercise of attending to,
+and weighing, and comparing evidence, and
+to the moral exercise of being placed in a
+high and responsible situation, invested
+with one of God's own attributes, that of
+judgment, and having to determine with
+authority between truth and falsehood,
+right and wrong, is to furnish them with
+very high means of moral and intellectual
+culture&mdash;in other words, it is providing
+them with one of the highest kinds of
+education. And thus a judicial constitution
+may secure a pure administration of
+justice, and yet fail as an engine of national
+cultivation, where it is vested in the
+hands of a small body of professional men,
+like the old French parliament. While,
+on the other hand, it may communicate
+the judicial office very widely, as by our
+system of juries, and thus may educate, if
+I may so speak, a very large portion of
+the nation, but yet may not succeed in
+obtaining the greatest certainty of just
+legal decisions. I do not mean that our
+jury system does not succeed, but it is
+conceivable that it should not. So, in
+the same way, different arrangements of
+the executive and legislative powers should
+be always regarded in this twofold aspect&mdash;as
+effecting their direct objects, good
+government and good legislation; and as
+educating the nation more or less extensively,
+by affording to a greater or less
+number of persons practical lessons in
+governing and legislating.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>History is an account of the common
+purpose pursued by some one of
+the great families of the human race.
+It is the biography of a nation; as
+the history of a particular sect, or a
+particular body of men, describes the
+particular end which the sect or body
+was instituted to pursue, so history,
+in its more comprehensive sense, describes
+the paramount object which
+the first and sovereign society&mdash;the
+society to which all others are
+necessarily subordinate&mdash;endeavours to attain.
+According to Dr Arnold, a
+nation's life is twofold, external and
+internal. Its external life consists
+principally in wars. &quot;Here history
+has been sufficiently busy. The wars
+of the human race have been recorded
+when every thing else has perished.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold
+justly observes, is calculated to contract
+and enfeeble the understanding.
+It is a pedantic love of detail, with an
+indifference to the result, for which
+alone it can be considered valuable.
+It is the mistake, into which men
+are perpetually falling, of the means
+for the end. There are people to
+whom the tragedies of Sophocles
+are less precious than the Scholiast
+on Lycophron, and who prize the
+speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because
+they may fling light on the dress
+of an Athenian citizen. The same
+tendency discovers itself in other pursuits.
+Oxen are fattened into plethoras
+to encourage agriculture, and men
+of station dress like grooms, and bet
+like blacklegs, to keep up the breed
+of horses. It is true that such evils
+will happen when agriculture is encouraged,
+and a valuable breed of
+horses cherished; but they are the
+consequences, not the cause of such a
+state of things. So the disciples of
+the old philosophers drank hemlock to
+acquire pallid countenances&mdash;but they
+are as far from obtaining the wisdom
+of their masters by this adventitious
+resemblance, as the antiquarian is
+from the historian. To write well
+about the past, we must have a vigorous
+and lively perception of the present.
+This, says Dr Arnold, is the
+merit of Mitford. It is certainly the
+only one he possesses; a person more
+totally unqualified for writing history
+at all&mdash;to say nothing of the history of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page147" id="page147" title="147"></a>Greece&mdash;it is difficult for us, aided as
+our imagination may be by the works
+of our modern writers, to conceive.
+But Raleigh, whom he quotes afterwards,
+is indeed a striking instance of
+that combination of actual experience
+with speculative knowledge which
+all should aim at, but which it seldom
+happens that one man in a generation
+is fortunate enough to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>From the sixteenth century, the
+writers of history begin to assume a
+different character from that of their
+predecessors. During the middle ages,
+the elements of society were fewer and
+less diversified. Before that time the
+people were nothing. Popes, emperors,
+kings, nobles, bishops, knights,
+are the only materials about which
+the writer of history cared to know or
+enquire. Perhaps some exception to
+this rule might be found in the historians
+of the free towns of Italy; but
+they are few and insignificant. After
+that period, not only did the classes
+of society increase, but every class
+was modified by more varieties of
+individual life. Even within the last
+century, the science of political economy
+has given a new colouring to
+the thoughts and actions of large
+communities, as the different opinions held
+by its votaries have multiplied them into
+distinct and various classes. Modern
+historians, therefore, may be
+divided into two classes; the one describing
+a state of society in which the
+elements are few; the other the times
+in which they were more numerous.
+As a specimen of the first order, he
+selects Bede. Bede was born in 674,
+fifty years after the flight of Mahomet
+from Mecca. He died in 755, two or
+three years after the victory of Charles
+Martel over the Saracens. His ecclesiastical
+history, in five books, describes
+the period from Augustine's arrival in
+Kent, 597.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Arnold's dissertation on Bede
+involves him in the discussion of a
+question on which much skill and ability
+have been exercised. We allude
+to the question of miracles. &quot;The
+question,&quot; says he, &quot;in Bede takes
+this form&mdash;What credit is to be attached
+to the frequent stories of miracles
+or wonders which occur in his
+narrative?&quot; He seizes at once upon
+the difficulty, without compromise or
+evasion. He makes a distinction
+between a wonder and a miracle: &quot;to
+say that all recorded wonders are false,
+from those recorded by Herodotus to
+the latest reports of animal magnetism,
+would be a boldness of assertion
+wholly unjustifiable.&quot; At the same
+time he thinks the character of Bede,
+added to the religious difficulty, may
+incline us to limit miracles to the
+earliest times of Christianity, and refuse
+our belief to all which are reported
+by the historians of subsequent
+centuries. He then proceeds to consider
+the questions which suggest
+themselves when we read Matthew
+Paris, or still more, any of the French,
+German, or Italian historians of the
+same period:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The thirteenth century contains in it,
+at its beginning, the most splendid period
+of the Papacy, the time of Innocent the
+Third; its end coincides with that great
+struggle between Boniface the Eighth and
+Philip the Fair, which marks the first
+stage of its decline. It contains the reign
+of Frederick the Second, and his long
+contest with the popes in Italy; the foundation
+of the orders of friars, Dominican
+and Franciscan; the last period of the
+crusades, and the age of the greatest glory
+of the schoolmen. Thus, full of matters of
+interest as it is, it will yet be found that
+all its interest is more or less connected
+with two great questions concerning the
+church; namely, the power of the priesthood
+in matters of government and in
+matters of faith; the merits of the contest
+between the Papacy and the kings of
+Europe; the nature and character of that
+influence over men's minds which affected
+the whole philosophy of the period, the
+whole intellectual condition of the Christian
+world.&quot;&mdash;P. 138.</p></div>
+
+<p>The pretensions and corruptions of
+the Church are undoubtedly the chief
+object to which, at this period, the attention
+of the reader must be attracted.
+&quot;Is the church system of Innocent
+III. in faith or government the
+system of the New Testament?&quot; Is the
+difference between them inconsiderable,
+such as may be accounted for by
+the natural progress of society, or does
+the rent extend to the foundation?
+&quot;The first century,&quot; says Dr Arnold,
+&quot;is to determine our judgment of the
+second and of all subsequent centuries.
+It will not do to assume that the
+judgment must be interpreted by the
+very practices and opinions, the merits
+of which it has to try.&quot; As a specimen
+of the chroniclers, he selects
+Philip de Comines, almost the last
+great writer of his class. In him is
+<a class="pagenum" name="page148" id="page148" title="148"></a>exemplified one of the peculiar distinctions
+of attaching to modern history the
+importance of attending to genealogies.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;For instance, Comines records the marriage
+of Mary, duchess of Burgundy, daughter
+and sole heiress of Charles the Bold, with
+Maximilian, archduke of Austria. This
+marriage, conveying all the dominions of
+Burgundy to Maximilian and his heirs, established
+a great independent sovereign
+on the frontiers of France, giving to him
+on the north, not only the present kingdoms
+of Holland and Belgium, but large
+portions of what is now French territory,
+the old provinces of Artois and French
+Flanders, French Hainault and French
+Luxemburg; while on the east it gave
+him Franche Comt&eacute;, thus yielding him a
+footing within the Jura, on the very banks
+of the Sa&ocirc;ne. Thence ensued in after
+ages, when the Spanish branch of the
+house of Austria had inherited this part
+of its dominions&mdash;the long contests
+which deluged the Netherlands with
+blood, the campaigns of King William
+and Luxembourg, the nine years of efforts,
+no less skilful than valiant, in which
+Marlborough broke his way through the
+fortresses of the iron frontier. Again,
+when Spain became in a manner French
+by the accession of the House of Bourbon,
+the Netherlands reverted once more to
+Austria itself; and from thence the powers
+of Europe advanced, almost in our own
+days, to assail France as a republic; and
+on this ground, on the plains of Fleurus,
+was won the first of those great victories
+which, for nearly twenty years, carried the
+French standards triumphantly over Europe.
+Thus the marriage recorded by
+Comines has been working busily down to
+our very own times: it is only since the
+settlement of 1814, and that more recent
+one of 1830, that the Netherlands have
+ceased to be effected by the union of
+Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian
+of Austria&quot;&mdash;P. 148.</p></div>
+
+<p>Again, in order to understand the
+contest which Philip de Comines records
+between a Frenchman and a
+Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
+must go back to the dark and bloody
+page in the annals of the thirteenth
+century, which relates the extinction
+of the last heir of the great Swabian
+race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of
+Anjou, the fit and unrelenting instrument
+of Papal hatred&mdash;the dreadful
+expiation of that great crime by the
+Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of
+the House of Anjou in Sicily, the
+crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna,
+the new contest occasioned by
+her adoption&mdash;all these events must
+be known to him who would understand
+the expedition of Charles
+VIII. The following passage is an admirable
+description of the reasons which
+lend to the pages of Philip de Comines
+a deep and melancholy interest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The Memoirs of Philip de Comines
+terminate about twenty years before the
+Reformation, six years after the first voyage
+of Columbus. They relate, then, to
+a tranquil period immediately preceding a
+period of extraordinary movement; to the
+last stage of an old state of things, now on
+the point of passing away. Such periods,
+the lull before the burst of the hurricane,
+the almost oppressive stillness which
+announces the eruption, or, to use Campbell's
+beautiful image&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>are always, I think, full of a very deep interest.
+But it is not from the mere force
+of contrast with the times that follow, nor
+yet from the solemnity which all things
+wear when their dissolution is fast approaching&mdash;the
+interest has yet another
+source; our knowledge, namely, that in
+that tranquil period lay the germs of the
+great changes following, taking their shape
+for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly,
+while all wore an outside of unconsciousness.
+We, enlightened by experience,
+are impatient of this deadly slumber;
+we wish in vain that the age could
+have been awakened to a sense of its condition,
+and taught the infinite preciousness
+of the passing hour. And as, when a man
+has been cut off by sudden death, we are
+curious to know whether his previous
+words or behaviour indicated any sense of
+his coming fate, so we examine the records
+of a state of things just expiring, anxious
+to observe whether, in any point, there
+may be discerned an anticipation of the
+great future, or whether all was blindness
+and insensibility. In this respect, Comines'
+Memoirs are striking from their perfect
+unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
+ages had been already sounded, yet Comines
+has no other notions than such as
+they had tended to foster; he describes
+their events, their characters, their relations,
+as if they were to continue for centuries.
+His remarks are such as the
+simplest form of human affairs gives birth
+to; he laments the instability of earthly
+fortune, as Homer notes our common mortality,
+or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue
+between Solon and Cr&oelig;sus, when
+the philosopher assured the king, that to
+be rich was not necessarily to be happy.
+But, resembling Herodotus in his simple
+morality, he is utterly unlike him in another
+point; for whilst Herodotus speaks
+freely and honestly of all men, without respect
+<a class="pagenum" name="page149" id="page149" title="149"></a>of persons, Philip de Comines praises
+his master Louis the Eleventh as one of
+the best of princes, although he witnessed
+not only the crimes of his life, but the miserable
+fears and suspicions of his latter
+end, and has even faithfully recorded them.
+In this respect Philip de Comines is in no
+respect superior to Froissart, with whom
+the crimes committed by his knights and
+great lords never interfere with his general
+eulogies of them: the habit of deference
+and respect was too strong to be
+broken, and the facts which he himself relates
+to their discredit, appear to have
+produced on his mind no impression.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>We now enter upon a period which
+may be called the modern part of modern
+history, the more complicated
+period, in contradistinction to the
+more simple state of things which, up
+to this moment, has occupied the student's
+attention. It is impossible to
+read, without deep regret, the passage
+in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention&mdash;&quot;if
+life and health be spared
+him, to enter into minute details;
+selecting some one country as the principal
+subject of his enquiries, and illustrating
+the lessons of history for the
+most part from its particular experience.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He proceeds, however, to the performance
+of the task immediately before
+him. After stating that the great
+object, the <span lang="el" title="teleiotaton telos">&tau;&epsilon;&lambda;&epsilon;&iota;&omicron;&tau;&alpha;&tau;&omicron;&nu; &tau;&epsilon;&lambda;&omicron;&sigmaf;</span>, of history
+is that which most nearly touches the
+inner life of civilized man, he pauses
+for a while at the threshold before
+he enters into the sanctuary, and undoubtedly
+some external knowledge
+is requisite before we penetrate into
+its recesses: we want some dwelling-place,
+as it were, for the mind, some
+local habitation in which our ideas
+may be arranged, some topics that
+may be firmly grasped by the memory,
+and on which the understanding may
+confidently rest; and thus it is that
+geography, even with a view to other
+purposes, must engross, in the first
+instance, a considerable share of our
+attention. The sense in which Dr
+Arnold understands a knowledge of
+geography, is explained in the following
+luminous and instructive commentary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;I said that geography held out one
+hand to geology and physiology, while she
+held out the other to history. In fact,
+geology and physiology themselves are
+closely connected with history. For instance,
+what lies at the bottom of that
+question which is now being discussed
+every where, the question of the corn-laws,
+but the geological fact that England is
+more richly supplied with coal-mines than
+any other country in the world? what has
+given a peculiar interest to our relations
+with China, but the physiological fact,
+that the tea-plant, which is become so necessary
+to our daily life, has been cultivated
+with equal success in no other climate
+or country? what is it which threatens the
+permanence of the union between the northern
+and southern states of the American
+confederacy, but the physiological fact, that
+the soil and climate of the southern states
+render them essentially agricultural, while
+those of the northern states, combined
+with their geographical advantages as to
+sea-ports, dispose them no less naturally
+to be manufacturing and commercial?
+The whole character of a nation may be
+influenced by its geology and physical geography.
+But for the sake of its mere
+beauty and liveliness, if there were no
+other consideration, it would be worth our
+while to acquire this richer view of geography.
+Conceive only the difference between
+a ground-plan and a picture. The
+mere plan geography of Italy gives us its
+shape, as I have observed, and the position of
+its towns; to these it may add a semicircle
+of mountains round the northern boundary
+to represent the Alps, and another
+long line stretching down the middle of the
+country to represent the Apennines. But
+let us carry on this a little further, and
+give life and meaning and harmony to
+what is at present at once lifeless and confused.
+Observe, in the first place, how the
+Apennine line, beginning from the southern
+extremity of the Alps, runs across
+Italy to the very edge of the Adriatic, and
+thus separates naturally the Italy proper of
+the Romans, from Cisalpine Gaul. Observe
+again, how the Alps, after running
+north and south, where they divide Italy
+from France, turn then away to the eastward,
+running almost parallel to the
+Apennines, till they too touch the head of
+the Adriatic, on the confines of Istria.
+Thus between these two lines of mountains
+there is enclosed one great basin or plain;
+enclosed on three sides by mountains, open
+only on the east to the sea. Observe how
+widely it spreads itself out, and then see
+how well it is watered. One great river
+flows through it in its whole extent, and
+this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
+descending towards it on either side, from
+the Alps on the one side, and from the
+Apennines on the other. Who can wonder
+that this large and rich and well-watered
+plain should be filled with flourishing
+cities, or that it should have been contended
+for so often by successive invaders?
+<a class="pagenum" name="page150" id="page150" title="150"></a>Then descending into Italy proper, we
+find the complexity of its geography quite
+in accordance with its manifold political
+division. It is not one simple central
+ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of
+level country on either side between it and
+the sea, nor yet is it a chain rising immediately
+from the sea on one side, like the
+Andes in South America, and leaving
+room, therefore, on the other side for
+wide plains of table-land, and rivers with
+a sufficient length of course to become at
+last great and navigable. It is a back-bone
+thickly set with spines of unequal length,
+some of them running out at regular distances
+parallel to each other, but others
+twisted so strangely that they often run
+for a long way parallel to the back-bone,
+or main ridge, and interlace with one
+another in a maze almost inextricable.
+And, as if to complete the disorder, in
+those spots where the spines of the Apennines,
+being twisted round, run parallel to
+the sea and to their own central chain,
+and thus leave an interval of plain between
+their bases and the Mediterranean, volcanic
+agency has broken up the space thus
+left with other and distinct groups of hills
+of its own creation, as in the case of Vesuvius,
+and of the Alban hills near Rome.
+Speaking generally then, Italy is made up
+of an infinite multitude of valleys pent in
+between high and steep hills, each forming
+a country to itself, and cut off by natural
+barriers from the others. Its several
+parts are isolated by nature, and no art of
+man can thoroughly unite them. Even
+the various provinces of the same kingdom
+are strangers to each other; the Abruzzi
+are like an unknown world to the inhabitants
+of Naples, insomuch, that when two
+Neapolitan naturalists, not ten years since,
+made an excursion to visit the Majella, one
+of the highest of the central Apennines,
+they found there many medicinal plants
+growing in the greatest profusion, which
+the Neapolitans were regularly in the habit
+of importing from other countries, as
+no one suspected their existence within
+their own kingdom. Hence arises the
+romantic character of Italian scenery: the
+constant combination of a mountain outline
+and all the wild features of a mountain
+country, with the rich vegetation of a
+southern climate in the valleys. Hence
+too the rudeness, the pastoral simplicity,
+and the occasional robber habits, to be
+found in the population; so that to this day
+you may travel in many places for miles
+together in the plains and valleys without
+passing through a single town or village;
+for the towns still cluster on the mountain
+sides, the houses nestling together on some
+scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them
+and sinking down abruptly below them,
+the very 'congesta manu pr&aelig;ruptis oppida
+saxis' of Virgil's description, which he
+even then called 'antique walls,' because
+they had been the strongholds of the prim&aelig;val
+inhabitants of the country, and
+which are still inhabited after a lapse of so
+many centuries, nothing of the stir and
+movement of other parts of Europe having
+penetrated into these lonely valleys, and
+tempted the people to quit their mountain
+fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling
+in the plain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been led on further than I intended,
+but I wished to give an example of
+what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
+of geography, which brings the whole
+character of a country before our eyes,
+and enables us to understand its influence
+upon the social and political condition of
+its inhabitants. And this knowledge, as
+I said before, is very important to enable
+us to follow clearly the external revolutions
+of different nations, which we want to comprehend
+before we penetrate to what has
+been passing within.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This introductory discussion is followed
+by a rapid sketch of the different
+struggles for power and independence
+in Europe during the three last
+centuries. The general tendency of
+this period has been to consolidate
+severed nations into great kingdoms;
+but this tendency has been checked
+when the growth of any single power
+has become excessive, by the combined
+efforts of other European nations.
+Spain, France, England, and Austria,
+all in their turns have excited the
+jealousy of their neighbours, and have
+been attacked by their confederate
+strength. But in 1793 the peace of
+Europe was assailed by an enemy still
+more dangerous and energetic&mdash;still
+more destructive&mdash;we doubt whether
+in the English language a more vivid
+description is to be found of the evil,
+its progress, and its termination, than
+Dr Arnold has given in the following
+passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Ten years afterwards there broke out
+by far the most alarming danger of universal
+dominion, which had ever threatened
+Europe. The most military people in
+Europe became engaged in a war for their
+very existence. Invasion on the frontiers,
+civil war and all imaginable horrors raging
+within, the ordinary relations of life went
+to wreck, and every Frenchman became a
+soldier. It was a multitude numerous
+as the hosts of Persia, but animated by the
+courage and skill and energy of the old
+Romans. One thing alone was wanting,
+that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
+<a class="pagenum" name="page151" id="page151" title="151"></a>wanted, to enable them to conquer the
+world&mdash;a general and a ruler like himself.
+There was wanted a master hand to restore
+and maintain peace at home, and to
+concentrate and direct the immense military
+resources of France against her foreign
+enemies. And such an one appeared in
+Napoleon. Pacifying La Vend&eacute;e, receiving
+back the emigrants, restoring the
+church, remodelling the law, personally
+absolute, yet carefully preserving and
+maintaining all the great points which the
+nation had won at the Revolution, Napoleon
+united in himself, not only the power,
+but the whole will of France; and that
+power and will were guided by a genius
+for war such as Europe had never seen
+since C&aelig;sar. The effect was absolutely
+magical. In November 1799, he was made
+First Consul; he found France humbled
+by defeats, his Italian conquests lost, his
+allies invaded, his own frontier threatened.
+He took the field in May 1800, and in June
+the whole fortune of the war was changed,
+and Austria driven out of Lombardy by the
+victory of Marengo. Still the flood of
+the tide rose higher and higher, and every
+successive wave of its advance swept away
+a kingdom. Earthly state has never
+reached a prouder pinnacle than when
+Napoleon, in June 1812, gathered his army
+at Dresden&mdash;that mighty host, unequalled
+in all time, of 450,000, not men merely,
+but effective soldiers, and there received
+the homage of subject kings. And now,
+what was the principal adversary of this
+tremendous power? by whom was it
+checked, and resisted, and put down? By
+none, and by nothing, but the direct and
+manifest interposition of God. I know of
+no language so well fitted to describe that
+victorious advance to Moscow, and the
+utter humiliation of the retreat, as the
+language of the prophet with respect to
+the advance and subsequent destruction of
+the host of Sennacherib. 'When they
+arose early in the morning, behold they
+were all dead corpses,' applies almost literally
+to that memorable night of frost, in
+which twenty thousand horses perished, and
+the strength of the French army was
+utterly broken. Human instruments, no
+doubt, were employed in the remainder of
+the work; nor would I deny to Germany
+and to Prussia the glories of the year
+1813, nor to England the honour of her
+victories in Spain, or of the crowning victory
+of Waterloo. But at the distance of
+thirty years, those who lived in the time of
+danger and remember its magnitude, and
+now calmly review what there was in human
+strength to avert it, must acknowledge,
+I think, beyond all controversy, that the
+deliverance of Europe from the dominion
+of Napoleon was effected neither by Russia,
+nor by Germany, nor by England, but
+by the hand of God alone.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The question, whether some races
+of men possess an inherent superiority
+over others, is mooted by Dr Arnold,
+in his dissertation on military science.
+Without laying down any universal
+rule, it may be stated that such a
+superiority can be predicated of no
+European nation. Frederick the Great
+defeated the French at Rosbach, as
+easily as Napoleon overcame the Prussians
+at Jena. If Marlborough was
+uniformly successful, William III.
+was always beaten by Luxembourg,
+and the Duke of Cumberland by
+D'Etr&eacute;es and Saxe. It seems, therefore,
+a fair inference, that no civilized
+European nation possesses over its
+neighbours that degree of superiority
+which greater genius in the general,
+or greater discipline in the troops of
+its antagonists, will not be sufficient
+to counteract. The defeat of the
+Vend&eacute;ans in France, by the soldiers
+of the garrison of Mentz; and the
+admirable conduct of our own Sepoys
+under British generals, are, no doubt,
+strong instances to show the prodigious
+importance of systematic discipline.
+Still, we cannot quite coincide
+with Dr Arnold's opinion on this
+subject. We are quite ready to admit&mdash;who,
+indeed, for a moment
+would deny?&mdash;in military as well as
+in all other subjects, the value of professional
+attainments and long experience.
+We cannot, however, consider
+them superior to those great
+qualities of our nature which discipline
+may regulate and embellish, but
+which it can never destroy or supersede.
+As every man is bound to form
+his own opinion on religious matters,
+though he may not be a priest, every
+man is obliged to defend his country
+when invaded, though he may not be
+a soldier. Nor can the miseries which
+such a state of things involves, furnish
+any argument against its necessity.
+All war must be attended with misfortunes,
+which freeze the blood and
+make the soul sick in their contemplation;
+but these very misfortunes
+deter those who wield the reins of
+empire from appealing wantonly to
+its determination. The resistance of
+Saragossa was not the less glorious, it
+does not the less fire the heart of every
+reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
+because it was not conducted
+<a class="pagenum" name="page152" id="page152" title="152"></a>according to the strict forms of military
+tactics, because citizens and even
+women participated in its fame. The
+inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish
+nation for its oppressor&mdash;which wore
+down the French armies, which no
+severities, no violence, no defeat,
+could subdue&mdash;will be, as long as time
+shall last, a terrible lesson to ambitious
+conquerors. They will learn that
+there is in the fury of an insulted nation
+a danger which the most exquisite
+military combinations cannot remove,
+which the most perfectly served artillery
+cannot sweep away, before which
+all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
+lines of fortification in the world are
+useless&mdash;and compared with which the
+science of the commander is pedantry,
+and strategy but a word. They will
+discover that something more than
+mechanical power, however great&mdash;something
+more than the skill of the
+practised officer, or the instinct of well-trained
+soldiers, are requisite for success&mdash;where
+every plain is a Marathon,
+and every valley a Thermopyl&aelig;.</p>
+
+<p>Would to God that the same reproach
+urged against the Spanish nation&mdash;that
+they defended their native
+soil irregularly&mdash;that they fought like
+freemen rather than like soldiers&mdash;that
+they transgressed the rules of war by
+defending one side of a street while
+the artillery of the enemy, with its
+thousand mouths, was pouring death
+upon them from the other&mdash;that they
+struggled too long, that they surrendered
+too late, that they died too
+readily, could have been applied to
+Poland&mdash;one fearful instance of success
+would have been wanting to encourage
+the designs of despotism!</p>
+
+<p>Some of the rights of war are next
+considered&mdash;that of sacking a town
+taken by assault, and of blockading a
+town defended, not by the inhabitants,
+but by a military garrison&mdash;are next
+examined;&mdash;in both these cases the
+penalty falls upon the innocent. The
+Homeric description of a town taken
+by assault, is still applicable to modern
+warfare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p><span lang="el" title="andras men kteinoysi, polin de te pyr amathynei">&alpha;&nu;&delta;&rho;&alpha;&sigmaf; &mu;&epsilon;&nu;
+&kappa;&tau;&epsilon;&iota;&nu;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigma;&iota;, &pi;&omicron;&lambda;&iota;&nu; &delta;&epsilon; &tau;&epsilon; &pi;&upsilon;&rho; &alpha;&mu;&alpha;&theta;&upsilon;&nu;&epsilon;&iota;</span><br />
+<span lang="el" title="tekna de t' alloi agoysi, bathyz&ocirc;noys te gynaikas.">&tau;&epsilon;&kappa;&nu;&alpha; &delta;&epsilon; &tau;' &alpha;&lambda;&lambda;&omicron;&iota;
+&alpha;&gamma;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigma;&iota;, &beta;&alpha;&theta;&upsilon;&zeta;&omega;&nu;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &tau;&epsilon; &gamma;&upsilon;&nu;&alpha;&iota;&kappa;&alpha;&sigmaf;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>The unhappy fate of Genoa is thus
+beautifully related&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Some of you, I doubt not, remember
+Genoa; you have seen that queenly city
+with its streets of palaces, rising tier above
+tier from the water, girdling with the long
+lines of its bright white houses the
+vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of
+which is marked by a huge natural mole of
+rock, crowned by its magnificent lighthouse
+tower. You remember how its
+white houses rose out of a mass of fig and
+olive and orange trees, the glory of its old
+patrician luxury. You may have observed
+the mountains, behind the town, spotted
+at intervals by small circular low towers;
+one of which is distinctly conspicuous
+where the ridge of the hills rises to its
+summit, and hides from view all the country
+behind it. Those towers are the forts
+of the famous lines, which, curiously resembling
+in shape the later Syracusan walls
+enclosing Epipal&aelig;, converge inland from
+the eastern and western extremities of
+the city, looking down&mdash;the western line
+on the valley of the Polcevera, the eastern,
+on that of the Bisagno&mdash;till they meet,
+as I have said, on the summit of the mountains,
+where the hills cease to rise from
+the sea, and become more or less of a
+table land, running off towards the interior,
+at the distance, as well as I remember,
+of between two and three miles from the
+outside of the city. Thus a very large
+open space is enclosed within the lines,
+and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming
+a vast intrenched camp, holding not
+so much a garrison as an army. In the
+autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven
+the French out of Lombardy and Piedmont;
+their last victory of Fossano or
+Genola had won the fortress of Coni or
+Cunco, close under the Alps, and at the
+very extremity of the plain of the Po;
+the French clung to Italy only by their
+hold of the Riviera of Genoa&mdash;the narrow
+strip of coast between the Apennines
+and the sea, which extends from the frontiers
+of France almost to the mouth of
+the Arno. Hither the remains of the
+French force were collected, commanded
+by General Massena; and the point of
+chief importance to his defence was the
+city of Genoa. Napoleon had just returned
+from Egypt, and was become First
+Consul; but he could not be expected to
+take the field till the following spring, and
+till then Massena was hopeless of relief
+from without&mdash;every thing was to depend
+on his own pertinacity. The strength of
+his army made it impossible to force it in
+such a position as Genoa; but its very
+numbers, added to the population of a
+great city, held out to the enemy a hope
+of reducing it by famine; and as Genoa
+derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord
+Keith, the British naval commander-in-chief
+in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance
+of his naval force to the Austrians;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page153" id="page153" title="153"></a>and, by the vigilance of his cruizers, the
+whole coasting trade right and left along
+the Riviera, was effectually cut off. It is
+not at once that the inhabitants of a great
+city, accustomed to the daily sight of well-stored
+shops and an abundant market, begin
+to realize the idea of scarcity; or that
+the wealthy classes of society, who have
+never known any other state than one of
+abundance and luxury, begin seriously to
+conceive of famine. But the shops were
+emptied; and the storehouses began to be
+drawn upon; and no fresh supply, or hope
+of supply, appeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Winter passed away and spring returned,
+so early and so beautiful on that garden-like
+coast, sheltered as it is from the north
+winds by its belts of mountains, and open
+to the full rays of the southern sun. Spring
+returned and clothed the hill-sides within
+the lines with its fresh verdure. But that
+verdure was no longer the mere delight of
+the careless eye of luxury, refreshing the
+citizens by its liveliness and softness, when
+they rode or walked up thither from the city
+to enjoy the surpassing beauty of the prospect.
+The green hill-sides were now visited
+for a very different object; ladies of the
+highest rank might be seen cutting up
+every plant which it was possible to turn to
+food, and bearing home the common weeds
+of our road-sides as a most precious treasure.
+The French general pitied the distresses
+of the people; but the lives and
+strength of his garrison seemed to him more
+important than the lives of the Genoese,
+and such provisions as remained were reserved,
+in the first place, for the French army.
+Scarcity became utter want, and want became
+famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of
+that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest
+tenements of its humblest poor, death was
+busy; not the momentary death of battle or
+massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence,
+but the lingering and most miserable death
+of famine. Infants died before their parents'
+eyes, husbands and wives lay down to
+expire together. A man whom I saw at
+Genoa in 1825, told me, that his father and
+two of his brothers had been starved to
+death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till
+in the month of June, when Napoleon had
+already descended from the Alps into the
+plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable,
+and Massena surrendered. But
+before he did so, twenty thousand innocent
+persons, old and young, women and children,
+had died by the most horrible of deaths
+which humanity can endure. Other horrors
+which occurred besides during this blockade,
+I pass over; the agonizing death of twenty
+thousand innocent and helpless persons requires
+nothing to be added to it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, is it right that such a tragedy as
+this should take place, and that the laws of
+war should be supposed to justify the authors
+of it? Conceive having been an officer
+in Lord Keith's squadron at that time, and
+being employed in stopping the food which
+was being brought for the relief of such misery.
+For the thing was done deliberately;
+the helplessness of the Genoese was known;
+their distress was known; it was known
+that they could not force Massena to surrender;
+it was known that they were dying
+daily by hundreds, yet week after week,
+and month after month, did the British ships
+of war keep their iron watch along all the
+coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any
+article of provision could escape their vigilance.
+One cannot but be thankful that
+Nelson was spared from commanding at this
+horrible blockade of Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, on which side the law of nations
+should throw the guilt of most atrocious
+murder, is of little comparative
+consequence, or whether it should attach
+it to both sides equally; but that the deliberate
+starving to death of twenty thousand
+helpless persons should be regarded
+as a crime in one or both of the parties
+concerned in it, seems to me self-evident.
+The simplest course would seem to be,
+that all non-combatants should be allowed
+to go out of a blockaded town, and that
+the general who should refuse to let them
+pass, should be regarded in the same light
+as one who were to murder his prisoners,
+or who were to be in the habit of butchering
+women and children. For it is not
+true that war only looks to the speediest
+and most effectual way of attaining its
+object; so that, as the letting the inhabitants
+go out would enable the garrison to maintain
+the town longer, the laws of war
+authorize the keeping them in and starving
+them. Poisoning wells might be a
+still quicker method of reducing a place;
+but do the laws of war therefore sanction
+it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to
+be placing the guilt of the individuals concerned
+in the two cases which I am going
+to compare, on an equal footing; it would
+be most unjust to do so&mdash;for in the one
+case they acted, as they supposed, according
+to a law which made what they did
+their duty. But, take the cases themselves,
+and examine them in all their circumstances;
+the degree of suffering inflicted&mdash;the
+innocence and helplessness of the
+sufferers&mdash;the interests at stake&mdash;and the
+possibility of otherwise securing them;
+and if any man can defend the lawfulness
+in the abstract of the starvation of the
+inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also
+to establish the lawfulness of the massacres
+of September.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>We rejoice to find that the great
+authority of Colonel W. Napier&mdash;an
+<a class="pagenum" name="page154" id="page154" title="154"></a>authority of which posterity will know
+the value&mdash;is arrayed on the side of
+those who think that war, the best
+school, as after all it must often be, of
+some of our noblest virtues, need not
+be always the cause of such atrocities.</p>
+
+<p>This enquiry shows us how the
+centre of external movement in Europe
+has varied; but it is not merely
+to the territorial struggle that our
+attention should be confined&mdash;mighty
+principles, Christian truth, civil freedom,
+were often partially at issue on
+one side, or on the other, in the different
+contests which the gold and
+steel of Europe were set in motion to
+determine; hence the necessity of considering
+not only the moral power,
+but the economical and military
+strength of the respective countries.
+It requires no mean share of political
+wisdom to mitigate an encounter with
+the financial difficulties by which
+every contest is beset. The evils of
+the political and social state of France
+were brought to a head by the dilapidation
+of its revenues, and occasioned,
+not the Revolution itself, but the
+disorders by which it was accompanied.
+And more than half of our national
+revenue is appropriated to the payment
+of our own debt; in other words,
+every acre of land, besides the support
+of its owner and the actual demands of
+the State, is encumbered with the support
+of two or three persons who represent
+the creditors of the nation;
+and every man who would have laboured
+twelve hours, had no national
+debt existed, is now obliged to toil
+sixteen for the same remuneration:
+such a state of things may be necessary,
+but it certainly requires investigation.</p>
+
+<p>Other parts of the law of nations,
+the maritime law especially, require
+improvement. Superficial men are
+apt to overlook the transcendent importance
+of error on these subjects
+by which desolation may be spread
+from one quarter of the globe to the
+other. As no man can bear long the
+unanimous disapprobation of his fellows,
+no nation can long set at defiance
+the voice of a civilized world.
+But we return to history in military
+operations. A good map is essential
+to this study. For instance, to understand
+the wars of Frederick the
+Great, it is not enough to know that
+he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen,
+and Cunersdorf&mdash;that he was victorious
+at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf,
+and Prague&mdash;that he was opposed
+by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff&mdash;we
+must also comprehend the
+situation of the Prussian dominions
+with regard to those of the allies&mdash;the
+importance of Saxony as covering
+Prussia on the side of Austria&mdash;the
+importance of Silesia as running into
+the Austrian frontier, and flanking a
+large part of Bohemia, should also
+be considered&mdash;this will alone enable
+us to account for Frederick's attack
+on Saxony, and his pertinacity in
+keeping possession of Silesia; nor
+should it be forgotten, that the military
+positions of one generation are
+not always those of the next, and that
+the military history of one period will
+be almost unintelligible, if judged according
+to the roads and fortresses of
+another. For instance, St Dizier in
+Champagne, which arrested Charles
+the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly
+untenable&mdash;Turin, so celebrated
+for the sieges it has sustained, is an
+open town, while Alexandria is the
+great Piedmontese fortress. The addition
+of Paris to the list of French
+strongholds, is, if really intended, a
+greater change than any that has
+been enumerated. This discussion
+leads to an allusion to mountain warfare,
+which has been termed the poetry
+of the military art, and of which the
+struggle in Switzerland in 1799,
+when the eastern part of that country
+was turned into a vast citadel, defended
+by the French against Suwaroff,
+is a most remarkable instance, as well
+as the most recent. The history by
+General Mathieu Dumas of the campaign
+in 1799 and 1800, is referred
+to as containing a good account and
+explanation of this branch of military
+science.</p>
+
+<p>The internal history of Europe
+during the three hundred and forty
+years which have elapsed since the
+middle ages, is the subject now proposed
+for our consideration. To the
+question&mdash;What was the external object
+of Europe during any part of this
+period? the answer is obvious, that it
+was engaged in resisting the aggression
+of Spain, or France, or Austria.
+But if we carry our view to the moral
+world, do we find any principle equally
+obvious, and a solution as satisfactory?
+By no means. We may, indeed, say,
+with apparent precision, that during
+the earliest part of this epoch, Europe
+<a class="pagenum" name="page155" id="page155" title="155"></a>was divided between the champions
+and antagonists of religion, as, during
+its latter portion, it was between the
+enemies and supporters of political
+reformation. But a deeper analysis
+will show us that these names were
+but the badges of ideas, always complex,
+sometimes contradictory&mdash;the
+war-cry of contending parties, by
+whom the reality was now forgotten,
+or to whom, compared with other
+purposes, it was altogether subordinate.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for instance, the exercise of
+political power. Is a state free in
+proportion to the number of its subjects
+who are admitted to rank among
+its citizens, or to the degree in which
+its recognised citizens are invested
+with political authority? In the latter
+point of view, the government of
+Athens was the freest the world has
+ever seen. In the former it was a
+most exclusive and jealous oligarchy.
+&quot;For a city to be well governed,&quot;
+says Aristotle in his Politics, &quot;those
+who share in its government must be
+free from the care of providing for
+their own support. This,&quot; he adds,
+&quot;is an admitted truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again, the attentive reader can
+hardly fail to see that, in the struggle
+between Pompey and C&aelig;sar, C&aelig;sar
+represented the popular as Pompey
+did the aristocratical party, and that
+Pompey's triumph would have been
+attended, as Cicero clearly saw, by
+the domination of an aristocracy in
+the shape most oppressive and intolerable.
+The government of Rome,
+after several desperate struggles, had
+degenerated into the most corrupt oligarchy,
+in which all the eloquence of
+Cicero was unable to kindle the faintest
+gleam of public virtue. Owing
+to the success of C&aelig;sar, the civilized
+world exchanged the dominion of
+several tyrants for that of one, and
+the opposition to his design was the
+resistance of the few to the many.</p>
+
+<p>Or we may take another view of
+the subject. By freedom do we mean
+the absence of all restraint in private
+life, the non-interference by the state
+in the details of ordinary intercourse?
+According to such a view, the old
+government of Venice and the present
+government of Austria, where debauchery
+is more than tolerated, would
+be freer than the Puritan commonwealths
+in North America, where
+dramatic representations were prohibited
+as impious, and death was the
+legal punishment of fornication.</p>
+
+<p>These are specimens of the difficulties
+by which we are beset, when we
+endeavour to obtain an exact and
+faithful image from the troubled medium
+through which human affairs are
+reflected to us. Dr Arnold dwells on
+this point with his usual felicity of
+language and illustration.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;This inattention to altered circumstances,
+which would make us be Guelfs
+in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries,
+because the Guelf cause had been right in
+the eleventh or twelfth, is a fault of most
+universal application in all political questions,
+and is often most seriously mischievous.
+It is deeply seated in human nature,
+being, in fact, no other than an
+exemplification of the force of habit. It
+is like the case of a settler, landing in
+a country overrun with wood and undrained,
+and visited therefore by excessive
+falls of rain. The evil of wet, and damp,
+and closeness, is besetting him on every
+side; he clears away the woods, and he
+drains his land, and he, by doing so, mends
+both his climate and his own condition.
+Encouraged by his success, he perseveres
+in his system; clearing a country is with
+him synonymous with making it fertile and
+habitable; and he levels, or rather sets fire
+to, his forests without mercy. Meanwhile,
+the tide is turned without his observing
+it; he has already cleared enough, and
+every additional clearance is a mischief;
+damp and wet are no longer the evil most
+to be dreaded, but excessive drought.
+The rains do not fall in sufficient quantity;
+the springs become low, the rivers become
+less and less fitted for navigation. Yet
+habit blinds him for a long while to the
+real state of the case; and he continues
+to encourage a coming mischief in his
+dread of one that is become obsolete. We
+have been long making progress on our
+present tack; yet if we do not go about
+now, we shall run ashore. Consider the
+popular feeling at this moment against
+capital punishment; what is it but continuing
+to burn the woods, when the
+country actually wants shade and moisture?
+Year after year, men talked of the
+severity of the penal code, and struggled
+against it in vain. The feeling became
+stronger and stronger, and at last effected
+all, and more than all, which it had at first
+vainly demanded; yet still, from mere
+habit, it pursues its course, no longer to
+the restraining of legal cruelty, but to the
+injury of innocence and the encouragement
+of crime, and encouraging that worse
+evil&mdash;a sympathy with wickedness justly
+punished rather than with the law, whether
+<a class="pagenum" name="page156" id="page156" title="156"></a>of God or man, unjustly violated. So
+men have continued to cry out against the
+power of the Crown after the Crown had
+been shackled hand and foot; and to
+express the greatest dread of popular
+violence long after that violence was exhausted,
+and the anti-popular party was
+not only rallied, but had turned the tide
+of battle, and was victoriously pressing
+upon its enemy.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The view which Dr Arnold gives
+of the parties in England during the
+sixteenth century&mdash;that great epoch
+of English genius&mdash;is remarkable for
+its candour and moderation. He considers
+the distinctions which then
+prevailed in England as political rather
+than religious, &quot;inasmuch as
+they disputed about points of church
+government, without any reference to
+a supposed priesthood; and because
+even those who maintained that one
+or another form was to be preferred,
+because it was of divine appointment,
+were influenced in their interpretation
+of the doubtful language of the Scriptures
+by their own strong persuasion
+of what that language could not but
+mean to say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he then concludes by the unanswerable
+remark, that in England,
+according to the theory of the constitution
+during the sixteenth century,
+church and state were one. The proofs
+of this proposition are innumerable&mdash;not
+merely the act by which the supremacy
+was conferred on Henry VIII.&mdash;not
+merely the powers, almost unlimited,
+in matters ecclesiastical, delegated
+to the king's vicegerent, that
+vicegerent being a layman&mdash;not merely
+the communion established by the sole
+authority of Edward VI.&mdash;without the
+least participation in it by any bishop
+or clergyman; but the still more conclusive
+argument furnished by the
+fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline,
+or ritual of our church, was
+established except by the power of
+Parliament, and the power of Parliament
+alone&mdash;nay, more, that they
+were established in direct defiance of
+the implacable opposition of the bishops,
+by whom, being then Roman
+Catholics, the English Church, on the
+accession of Elizabeth, was represented&mdash;to
+which the omission of the
+names of the Lords Spiritual in the
+Act of Uniformity, which is said to be
+enacted by the &quot;Queen's Highness,&quot;
+with the assent of the Lords and Commons
+in Parliament assembled, is a
+testimony, at once unanswerable and
+unprecedented. We have dwelt with
+the more anxiety on this part of Dr
+Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete
+answer to the absurd opinions
+concerning the English Church, which
+it has been of late the object of a few
+bigots, unconsciously acting as the
+tools of artful and ambitious men, to
+propagate, and which would lead, by
+a direct and logical process, to the
+complete overthrow of Protestant faith
+and worship. Such, then, being the
+state of things &quot;recognized on all
+hands, church government was no
+light matter, but one which essentially
+involved in it the government of the
+state; and the disputing the Queen's
+supremacy, was equivalent to depriving
+her of one of the most important
+portions of her sovereignty, and committing
+half of the government of the
+nation to other hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the accession of Henry VIII.,
+the most profound tranquillity prevailed
+over England. The last embers
+of those factions by which, during his
+father's reign, the peace of the nation
+had been disturbed rather than endangered,
+were quenched by the vigilance
+and severity of that able monarch;
+during the wars of the Roses, the
+noblest blood in England had been
+poured out on the field or on the
+scaffold, and the wealth of the most
+opulent proprietors had been drained
+by confiscation. The parties of York
+and Lancaster were no more&mdash;the
+Episcopal and Puritan factions were
+not yet in being&mdash;every day diminished
+the influence of the nobles&mdash;the
+strength of the Commons was in its
+infancy&mdash;the Crown alone remained,
+strong in its own prerogative, stronger
+still in the want of all competitors.
+Crime after crime was committed by the
+savage tyrant who inherited it; he was
+ostentatious&mdash;the treasures of the nation
+were lavished at his feet; he was
+vindictive&mdash;the blood of the wise, the
+noble, and the beautiful, was shed, like
+water, to gratify his resentment; he
+was rapacious&mdash;the accumulations of
+ancient piety were surrendered to glut
+his avarice; he was arbitrary&mdash;and his
+proclamations were made equivalent
+to acts of Parliament; he was fickle&mdash;and
+the religion of the nation was
+changed to gratify his lust. To all
+this the English people submitted, as
+to some divine infliction, in silence and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page157" id="page157" title="157"></a>consternation&mdash;the purses, lives, liberties,
+and consciences of his people
+were, for a time, at his disposal. During
+the times of his son and his eldest
+daughter, the general aspect of affairs
+was the same. But, though the hurricane
+of royal caprice and bigotry
+swept over the land, seemingly without
+resistance, the sublime truths which
+were the daily subject of controversy,
+and the solid studies with which the
+age was conversant, penetrated into
+every corner of the land, and were
+incorporated with the very being of
+the nation. Then, as the mist of
+doubt and persecution which had covered
+Mary's throne cleared away, the
+intellect of England, in all its health,
+and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed
+in the men and women of the
+Elizabethan age:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;To say,&quot; observes Dr Arnold, &quot;that
+the Puritans were wanting in humility
+because they did not acquiesce in the state
+of things which they found around them,
+is a mere extravagance, arising out of a
+total misapprehension of the nature of
+humility, and of the merits of the feeling
+of veneration. All earnestness and depth
+of character is incompatible with such a
+notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated
+with some great truth, and compelled,
+as it were, to obey it, cannot listen
+to every one who may be indifferent to it,
+or opposed to it. There is a voice to
+which he already owes obedience, which
+he serves with the humblest devotion,
+which he worships with the most intense
+veneration. It is not that such feelings
+are dead in him, but that he has bestowed
+them on one object, and they are claimed
+for another. To which they are most due
+is a question of justice; he may be wrong
+in his decision, and his worship may be
+idolatrous; but so also may be the worship
+which his opponents call upon him to
+render. If, indeed, it can be shown that
+a man admires and reverences nothing, he
+may be justly taxed with want of humility;
+but this is at variance with the very notion
+of an earnest character; for its earnestness
+consists in its devotion to some one
+object, as opposed to a proud or contemptuous
+indifference. But if it be meant that
+reverence in itself is good, so that the more
+objects of veneration we have the better is
+our character, this is to confound the
+essential difference between veneration and
+love. The excellence of love is its universality;
+we are told that even the highest
+object of all cannot be loved if inferior
+objects are hated.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Opinions, in the meanwhile, not
+very favourable to established authority
+in the state, and marked by a rooted
+antipathy to ecclesiastical pretensions,
+were rapidly gaining proselytes in
+the nation, and even at the court.
+But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth,
+and, still more, the great veneration
+and esteem for that magnanimous
+princess, which were for many years
+the ruling principle&mdash;we might almost
+say, the darling passion&mdash;of Englishmen,
+enabled her to keep at bay the
+dangerous animosities which her miserable
+successor had neither dexterity
+to conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In
+his time the cravings, moral and intellectual,
+of the English nation discovered
+themselves in forms not to be
+mistaken&mdash;some more, some less formidable
+to established government;
+but all announcing that the time was
+come when concession to them was
+inevitable. No matter whether it
+was the Puritan who complained of
+the rags of popery, or the judge who
+questioned the prerogative of the sovereign,
+or the patriot who bewailed the
+profligate expenditure of James's polluted
+court, or the pamphleteer whom
+one of our dramatists has described so
+admirably, or the hoarse murmur of
+the crowd execrating the pusillanimous
+murder of Raleigh&mdash;whosesoever the
+voice might be, whatever shape it
+might assume, petition, controversy,
+remonstrance, address, impeachment,
+libel, menace, insurrection, the language
+it spoke was uniform and unequivocal;
+it demanded for the people
+a share in the administration of their
+government, civil and ecclesiastical&mdash;it
+expressed their determination to
+make the House of Commons a reality.</p>
+
+<p>The observations that follow are
+fraught with the most profound wisdom,
+and afford an admirable exemplification
+of the manner in which
+history should be read by those who
+wish to find in it something more than
+a mere register of facts and anecdotes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Under these circumstances there were
+now working together in the same party
+many principles which, as we have seen, are
+sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance
+the popular principle, that the influence
+of many should not be overborne
+by that of one, was working side by side
+with the principle of movement, or the
+desire of carrying on the work of the Reformation
+to the furthest possible point,
+and not only the desire of completing the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page158" id="page158" title="158"></a>Reformation, but that of shaking off the
+manifold evils of the existing state of
+things, both political and moral. Yet it is
+remarkable that the spirit of intellectual
+movement stood as it were hesitating
+which party it ought to join: and as the
+contest went on, it seemed rather to incline
+to that party which was most opposed
+to the political movement. This
+is a point in the state of English party in
+the seventeenth century which is well
+worth noticing, and we must endeavour
+to comprehend it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We might think, <i>a priori</i>, that the spirit
+of political, and that of intellectual,
+and that of religious movement, would go
+on together, each favouring and encouraging
+the other. But the Spirit of intellectual
+movement differs from the other
+two in this, that it is comparatively one with
+which the mass of mankind have little sympathy.
+Political benefits all men can appreciate;
+and all good men, and a great
+many more than we might well dare to
+call good, can appreciate also the value,
+not of all, but of some religious truth
+which to them may seem all: the way to
+obtain God's favour and to worship Him
+aright, is a thing which great bodies of
+men can value, and be moved to the most
+determined efforts if they fancy that they
+are hindered from attaining to it. But
+intellectual movement in itself is a thing
+which few care for. Political truth may
+be dear to them, so far as it effects their
+common well-being; and religious truth
+so far as they may think it their duty to
+learn it; but truth abstractedly, and because
+it is truth, which is the object, I suppose,
+of the pure intellect, is to the mass
+of mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the
+workings of the intellect come even to be
+regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we
+have got, we say, what we want, and we
+are well contented with it; why should we
+be kept in perpetual restlessness, because
+you are searching after some new truths
+which, when found, will compel us to derange
+the state of our minds in order to
+make room for them. Thus the democracy
+of Athens was afraid of and hated
+Socrates; and the poet who satirized
+Cleon, knew that Cleon's partizans, no less
+than his own aristocratical friends, would
+sympathize with his satire when directed
+against the philosophers. But if this hold
+in political matters, much more does it
+hold religiously. The two great parties
+of the Christian world have each their own
+standard of truth, by which they try all
+things: Scripture on the one hand, the
+voice of the church on the other. To
+both, therefore, the pure intellectual
+movement is not only unwelcome, but they
+dislike it. It will question what they will
+not allow to be questioned; it may arrive
+at conclusions which they would regard as
+impious. And, therefore, in an age of
+religious movement particularly, the spirit
+of intellectual movement soon finds
+itself proscribed rather than countenanced.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In the extract which follows, the
+pure and tender morality of the sentiment
+vies with the atmosphere of fine
+writing that invests it. The passage
+is one which Plato might have
+envied, and which we should imagine
+the most hardened and successful of
+our modern apostates cannot read
+without some feeling like contrition
+and remorse. Fortunate indeed were
+the youth trained to virtue by such a
+monitor, and still more fortunate the
+country where such a duty was confided
+to such a man:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;I have tried to analyze the popular
+party: I must now endeavour to do the
+same with the party opposed to it. Of
+course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly
+at different times; when it is
+in the ascendant, its vilest elements are
+sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,&mdash;just
+men, wise men, noble-minded men,&mdash;then
+refuse to take part with it. But
+when it is humbled, and the opposite side
+begins to imitate its practices, then again
+many of the best and noblest spirits return
+to it, and share its defeat though they
+abhorred its victory. We must distinguish,
+therefore, very widely, between the
+anti-popular party in 1640, before the
+Long Parliament met, and the same party
+a few years, or even a few months, afterwards.
+Now, taking the best specimens
+of this party in its best state, we can
+scarcely admire them too highly. A man
+who leaves the popular cause when it is
+triumphant, and joins the party opposed
+to it, without really changing his principles
+and becoming a renegade, is one of
+the noblest characters in history. He
+may not have the clearest judgment, or
+the firmest wisdom; he may have been
+mistaken, but, as far as he is concerned
+personally, we cannot but admire him.
+But such a man changes his party not to
+conquer but to die. He does not allow
+the caresses of his new friends to make
+him forget that he is a sojourner with
+them, and not a citizen: his old friends
+may have used him ill, they may be dealing
+unjustly and cruelly: still their faults,
+though they may have driven him into
+exile, cannot banish from his mind the
+consciousness that with them is his true
+home: that their cause is habitually just
+and habitually the weaker, although now
+<a class="pagenum" name="page159" id="page159" title="159"></a>bewildered and led astray by an unwonted
+gleam of success. He protests so
+strongly against their evil that he chooses
+to die by their hands rather than in their
+company; but die he must, for there is no
+place left on earth where his sympathies
+can breathe freely; he is obliged to leave
+the country of his affections, and life elsewhere
+is intolerable. This man is no renegade,
+no apostate, but the purest of
+martyrs: for what testimony to truth can
+be so pure as that which is given uncheered
+by any sympathy; given not
+against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing
+enemies. And such a martyr
+was Falkland!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Others who fall off from a popular party
+in its triumph, are of a different character;
+ambitious men, who think that
+they become necessary to their opponents
+and who crave the glory of being able to
+undo their own work as easily as they
+had done it: passionate men, who, quarrelling
+with their old associates on some
+personal question, join the adversary in
+search of revenge; vain men, who think
+their place unequal to their merits, and
+hope to gain a higher on the opposite side:
+timid men, who are frightened as it were
+at the noise of their own guns, and the
+stir of actual battle&mdash;who had liked to
+dally with popular principles in the parade
+service of debating or writing in quiet
+times, but who shrink alarmed when both
+sides are become thoroughly in earnest:
+and again, quiet and honest men, who
+never having fully comprehended the general
+principles at issue, and judging only
+by what they see before them, are shocked
+at the violence of their party, and think
+that the opposite party is now become innocent
+and just, because it is now suffering
+wrong rather than doing it. Lastly,
+men who rightly understand that good
+government is the result of popular and
+anti-popular principles blended together,
+rather than of the mere ascendancy of
+either; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent
+either from going too far, and to
+throw their weight into the lighter scale:
+wise men and most useful, up to the moment
+when the two parties are engaged
+in actual civil war, and the question is&mdash;which
+shall conquer? For no man can
+pretend to limit the success of a party,
+when the sword is the arbitrator: he who
+wins in that game does not win by halves:
+and therefore the only question then is,
+which party is on the whole the best, or
+rather perhaps the least evil; for as one
+must crush the other, it is at least desirable
+that the party so crushed should be
+the worse.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr Arnold&mdash;rightly, we hope&mdash;assumes,
+that in lectures addressed
+to Englishmen and Protestants, it is
+unnecessary to vindicate the principles
+of the Revolution; it would, indeed,
+be an affront to any class of
+educated Protestant freemen, to argue
+that our present constitution was
+better than a feudal monarchy, or the
+religion of Tillotson superior to that
+of Laud&mdash;in his own words, &quot;whether
+the doctrine and discipline of our Protestant
+Church of England, be not
+better and truer than that of Rome.&quot;
+He therefore supposes the Revolution
+complete, the Bill of Rights and the
+Toleration Act already passed, the
+authority of King William recognized
+in England and in Scotland, while in
+Ireland the party of King James was
+still predominant. He then bids us
+consider the character and object of
+the parties by which Great Britain
+was then divided; on the side of the
+Revolution were enlisted the great
+families of our aristocracy, and the
+bulk of the middle classes. The faction
+of James included the great mass
+of country gentlemen, the lower orders,
+and, (after the first dread of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed
+away,) except in a very few instances,
+the parochial and teaching clergy;
+civil and religious liberty was the
+motto of one party&mdash;hereditary right
+and passive obedience, of the other.
+As the Revolution had been bloodless,
+it might have been supposed that its
+reward would have been secure, and
+that our great deliverer would have
+been allowed to pursue his schemes
+for the liberty of Europe, if not without
+opposition, at least without hostility.
+But the old Royalist party had
+been surprised and confounded, not
+broken or altogether overcome. They
+rallied&mdash;some from pure, others from
+selfish and sordid motives&mdash;under the
+banner to which they had been so
+long accustomed; and, though ultimately
+baffled, they were able to place
+in jeopardy, and in some measure to
+fling away the advantages which the
+blood and treasure of England had
+been prodigally lavished to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>The conquest of Ireland was followed
+by that terrible code against
+the Catholics, the last remnant of
+which is now obliterated from our
+statute-book. It is singular that this
+savage proscription should have been
+the work of the party at whose head
+stood the champion of toleration.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page160" id="page160" title="160"></a>The account which Mr Burke has
+given of it, and for the accuracy of
+which he appeals to Bishop Burnet,
+does not entirely coincide with the
+view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke
+says&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;A party in this nation, enemies to the
+system of the Revolution, were in opposition
+to the government of King William.
+They knew that our glorious deliverer
+was an enemy to all persecution. They
+knew that he came to free us from slavery
+and Popery, out of a country where a
+third of the people are contented Catholics,
+under a Protestant government. He
+came, with a part of his army composed of
+those very Catholics, to overset the power
+of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of
+a tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty
+served in every way, and by all persons,
+by a manly adherence to its own principles.
+Whilst freedom is true to itself,
+every thing becomes subject to it, and its
+very adversaries are an instrument in its
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The party I speak of (like some
+amongst us who would disparage the best
+friends of their country) resolved to
+make the King either violate his principles
+of toleration, or incur the odium of protecting
+Papists. They, therefore, brought
+in this bill, and made it purposely wicked
+and absurd, that it might be rejected.
+The then court-party discovering their
+game, turned the tables on them, and returned
+their bill to them stuffed with still
+greater absurdities, that its loss might lie
+upon its original authors. They, finding
+their own ball thrown back to them, kicked
+it back again to their adversaries.
+And thus this act, loaded with the double
+injustice of two parties, neither of whom
+intended to pass what they hoped the
+other would be persuaded to reject, went
+through the legislature, contrary to the
+real wish of all parts of it, and of all
+the parties that composed it. In this manner
+these insolent and profligate factions, as if
+they were playing with balls and counters,
+made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties
+of their fellow-creatures. Other acts
+of persecution have been acts of malice.
+This was a subversion of justice from wantonness.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Whether Dr Arnold's theory be
+applicable or not to this particular
+case, it furnishes but too just a solution
+of Irish misgovernment in general.
+It is, that excessive severity
+toward conquered rebels, is by no
+means inconsistent with the principles
+of free government, or even
+with the triumph of a democracy.
+The truth of this fact is extorted from
+us by all history, and may be accounted
+for first, by the circumstance, that
+large bodies of men are less affected
+than individuals, by the feelings of
+shame and a sense of responsibility;
+and, secondly, that conduct the most
+selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion
+of which would be enough to
+brand an individual with everlasting
+infamy, assumes, when adopted by
+popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike
+wisdom and patriotic inflexibility.
+The main cause of the difference
+with which the lower orders in
+France and England regarded the
+Revolution in their respective countries,
+is to be found in the different
+nature of the evils which they were
+intended to remove. The English
+Revolution was merely political&mdash;the
+French was social also; the benefits of
+the Bill of Rights, great and inestimable
+as they were, were such as demanded
+some knowledge and reflection to appreciate&mdash;they
+did not come home
+directly to the business and bosom of
+the peasant; it was only in rare and
+great emergencies that he could become
+sensible of the rights they gave,
+or of the means of oppression they
+took away: while the time-honoured
+dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells
+were menaced and assailed, nothing
+but the most senseless tyranny
+could render the cottage insecure;
+but the abolition of the seignorial
+rights in France, free communication
+between her provinces, equal taxation,
+impartial justice&mdash;these were blessings
+which it required no economist to
+illustrate, and no philosopher to explain.
+Every labourer in France,
+whose sweat had flowed for the benefit
+of others, whose goods had been
+seized by the exactors of the Taille
+and the Gabelle,<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1" href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> the fruits of whose
+soil had been wasted because he was
+<a class="pagenum" name="page161" id="page161" title="161"></a>not allowed to sell them at the neighbouring
+market, whose domestic happiness
+had been polluted, or whose
+self-respect had been lowered by injuries
+and insults, all retribution for
+which was hopeless, might well be
+expected to value these advantages
+more than life itself. But when the
+principles of the Revolution were
+triumphant, and the House of Brunswick
+finally seated on the throne of
+this country, it remains to be seen
+what were, during the eighteenth century,
+the fruits of this great and lasting
+victory. The answer is a melancholy
+one. Content with what had
+been achieved, the nation seems at
+once to have abandoned all idea of
+any further moral or intellectual progress.
+In private life the grossest
+ignorance and debauchery were written
+upon our social habits, in the
+broadest and most legible characters.
+In public life, we see chicanery in the
+law, apathy in the Church, corruption
+in Parliament, brutality on the seat of
+justice; trade burdened with a great
+variety of capricious restrictions; the
+punishment of death multiplied with
+the most shocking indifference; the
+state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment&mdash;which
+might be, and in
+those days often was, the lot of the
+most innocent of mankind&mdash;became in
+itself a tremendous punishment; the
+press virtually shackled; education
+every where wanted, and no where to
+be found.</p>
+
+<p>The laws that were passed resemble
+the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and
+even vindictive oligarchy, rather than
+institutions adopted for the common
+welfare, by the representatives of a
+free people. Turn to any of the works
+which describe the manners of the
+age, from the works of Richardson or
+Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill
+and the melancholy remonstrances of
+Cowper, and you are struck with the
+delineation of a state and manners, and
+a tone of feeling which, in the present
+day, appears scarcely credible.
+&quot;'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten
+me with the law?&quot; says Lovelace to
+the victim of his calculating and sordid
+violence. Throughout the volumes
+of these great writers, the features
+perpetually recur of insolence, corruption,
+violence, and debauchery in the
+one class, and of servility and cunning
+in the other. It is impossible for the
+worst quality of an aristocracy&mdash;nominally,
+to be sure, subject to the restraint
+of the law, but practically, almost
+wholly exempt from its operation&mdash;to
+be more clearly and more
+fearfully represented. The South Sea
+scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the
+disgraceful expeditions on the coast of
+France; the conduct of Lord George
+Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt
+on Carthagena, the loss of Minorca,
+the convention of Closterseven,
+the insecurity of the high-roads, nay,
+of the public streets in the metropolis
+itself, all serve to show the deplorable
+condition into which the nation was
+fast sinking, abroad and at home, when
+the &quot;Great Commoner&quot; once more
+aroused its energies, concentrated its
+strength, and carried it to a higher
+pinnacle of glory than it has ever been
+the lot even of Great Britain to attain.
+Yet this effect was transient&mdash;the progress
+of corruption was checked, but
+the disease still lurked in the heart,
+and tainted the life-blood of the
+community. The orgies of Medmenham
+Abbey, the triumphs of Wilkes, and
+the loss of America, bear fatal testimony
+to the want of decency and disregard
+of merit in private as well as
+public life which infected Great Britain,
+polluting the sources of her domestic
+virtues, and bringing disgrace
+upon her arms and councils during
+the greater part of the eighteenth century.
+It is with a masterly review of
+this period of our history that Dr Arnold
+closes his analysis of the three last
+centuries. His remaining lecture is
+dedicated to the examination of historical
+evidence&mdash;a subject on which it is
+not our present intention to offer any
+commentary.</p>
+
+<p>To trace effects to their causes, is
+the object of all science; and by this
+object, as it is accomplished or incomplete,
+the progress of any particular
+science must be determined. The order
+of the moral is in reality as immutable
+as the laws of the physical world;
+and human actions are linked to their
+consequences by a necessity as inexorable
+<a class="pagenum" name="page162" id="page162" title="162"></a>as that which controls the
+growth of plants or the motion of the
+earth, though the connexion between
+cause and effect is not equally discernible.
+The depression of the nobles
+and the rise of the commons in England,
+after the statutes of alienation,
+were the result of causes as infallible
+in their operation as those which regulate
+the seasons and the tides. Repeated
+experiments have proved beyond
+dispute, that gold is heavier than
+iron. Is the superior value of gold to
+iron a fact more questionable? Yet is
+value a quality purely moral, and absolutely
+dependent on the will of man.
+The events of to-day are bound to
+those of yesterday, and those of to-morrow
+will be bound to those of to-day,
+no less certainly than the harvest
+of the present year springs from the
+grain which is the produce of former
+harvests. When by a severe and diligent
+analysis we have ascertained all
+the ingredients of any phenomenon,
+and have separated it from all that is
+foreign and adventitious, we know its
+true nature, and may deduce a general
+law from our experiment; for a general
+law is nothing more than an expression
+of the effect produced by the
+same cause operating under the same
+circumstances. In the reign of Louis
+XV., a Montmorency was convicted
+of an atrocious murder. He was punished
+by a short imprisonment in the
+Bastile. His servant and accomplice
+was, for the same offence at the same
+time, broken alive upon the wheel.
+Is the proposition, that the angles
+of a triangle are equal to two right
+angles, more certain than the ruin of a
+system under which such a state of
+things was tolerated? How, then, does
+it come to pass, that the same people
+who cling to one set of truths reject
+the other with obstinate incredulity?
+Cicero shall account for it:&mdash;&quot;Sensus
+nostros non parens, non nutrix,
+non poeta, non scena depravat; animis
+omnes tendentur insidi&aelig;.&quot; The discoveries
+of physical science, in the
+present day at least, allow little scope
+to prejudice and inclination. Whig
+and Tory, Radical and Conservative,
+agree, that fire will burn and water
+suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so far
+as we know, has ventured to call in
+question the truths established by Cuvier
+and La Place. But every proposition
+in moral or political science enlists
+a host of feelings in zealous support
+or implacable hostility; and the
+same system, according to the creed
+and prepossessions of the speaker, is
+put forward as self-evident, or stigmatized
+as chimerical. One set of people
+throw corn into the river and burn
+mills, in order to cheapen bread&mdash;another
+vote that sixteen shillings are
+equal to twenty-one, in order to support
+public credit&mdash;proceedings in no
+degree more reasonable than a denial
+that two and two make four, or using
+gunpowder instead of water to stop a
+conflagration. Again, in physical
+science, the chain which binds the
+cause to its effect is short, simple, and
+passes through no region of vapour
+and obscurity; in moral phenomena,
+it is long hidden and intertwined with
+the links of ten thousand other chains,
+which ramify and cross each other in
+a confusion which it requires no common
+patience and sagacity to unravel.
+Therefore it is that the lessons of history,
+dearly as they have been purchased,
+are forgotten and thrown away&mdash;therefore
+it is that nations sow in
+folly and reap in affliction&mdash;that
+thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed,
+and commerce fettered by
+vexatious restrictions, by those who
+live in one century, without enabling
+their descendants to become wiser or
+richer in the next. The death of
+Charles I. did not prevent the exile of
+James II., and, in spite of the disasters
+of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted
+fortune too often and too long. It
+is not, then, by the mere knowledge of
+separate facts that history can contribute
+to our improvement or our happiness;
+it would then exchange the
+character of philosophy treated by
+examples, for that of sophistry misleading
+by empiricism. The more systematic
+the view of human events
+which it enables us to gain, the more
+nearly does it approach its real office,
+and entitle itself to the splendid panegyric
+of the Roman statesman&mdash;&quot;Historia,
+testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita
+memori&aelig;, magistra vit&aelig;, nuntia vetustatis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But while we insist upon the certainty
+of those truths which a calm
+examination of history confirms, and
+the sure operation of those general
+laws by which Providence in its wisdom
+has ordained that the affairs of
+this lower world shall be controlled&mdash;let
+<a class="pagenum" name="page163" id="page163" title="163"></a>it not be supposed that we for a
+moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes
+took such pains to inculcate
+upon his countrymen, that fortune
+in human affairs is for a time omnipotent.
+That fortune, which &quot;erring
+men call chance,&quot; is the name which
+finite beings must apply to those secret
+and unknown causes which no human
+sagacity can penetrate or comprehend.
+What depends upon a few persons,
+observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed
+to chance; what arises from a great
+number, may often be accounted for
+by known and determinate causes;
+and he illustrates this position by the
+instance of a loaded die, the bias of
+which, however it may for a short
+time escape detection, will certainly
+in a great number of instances become
+predominant. The issue of a battle
+may be decided by a sunbeam or a
+cloud of dust. Had an heir been born
+to Charles II. of Spain&mdash;had the
+youthful son of Monsieur De Bouill&eacute;
+not fallen asleep when Louis XVI.
+entered Varennes&mdash;had Napoleon, on
+his return from Egypt, been stopped
+by an English cruizer&mdash;how different
+would have been the face of Europe.
+The <i>poco di piu</i> and <i>poco di meno</i>
+has, in such contingencies, an unbounded
+influence. The trade-winds
+are steady enough to furnish grounds
+for the most accurate calculation; but
+will any man in our climate venture
+to predict from what quarter, on any
+particular day, the wind may chance
+to blow?</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, in forming our judgment
+of human affairs, we must apply a
+&quot;Lesbian rule,&quot; instead of one that is
+inflexible. Here it is that the line is
+drawn between science, and the wisdom
+which has for its object the administration
+of human affairs. The
+masters of science explore a multitude
+of phenomena to ascertain a single
+cause; the statesman and legislator,
+engaged in pursuits &quot;hardliest reduced
+to axiom,&quot; examine a multitude
+of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon.
+The investigations, however,
+to which such questions lead, are singularly
+difficult, as they require an
+accurate analysis of the most complicated
+class of facts which can possibly
+engross our attention, and to the complete
+examination of which the faculties
+of any one man must be inadequate.
+The finest specimens of such
+enquiries which we possess are the
+works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu.
+The latter, indeed, may be
+called a great historian. He sought
+in every quarter for his account of
+those fundamental principles which
+are common to all governments, as
+well as of those peculiarities by which
+they are distinguished one from
+another. The analogy which reaches
+from the first dim gleam of civility
+to the last and consummate result of
+policy and intelligence, from the law
+of the Salian Franks to the Code
+Napoleon, it was reserved for him to
+discover and explain. He saw that,
+though the shape into which the expression
+of human thought and will
+was moulded as the family became a
+tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be
+fantastic and even monstrous&mdash;that
+the staple from which it unrolled itself
+must be the same. Treading in
+the steps of Vico, he more than realized
+his master's project, and in his
+immortal work (which, with all its faults,
+is a magnificent, and as yet unrivalled,
+trophy of his genius, and will serve as
+a landmark to future enquirers when
+its puny critics are not known enough
+to be despised) he has extracted from
+a chaos of casual observations, detached
+hints&mdash;from the principles concealed
+in the intricate system of Roman
+jurisprudence, or exposed in the
+rules which barely held together the
+barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany&mdash;from
+the manners of the polished
+Athenian, and from the usages
+of the wandering Tartar&mdash;from the
+rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions
+of refined society&mdash;a digest
+of luminous and coherent evidence,
+by which the condition of man, in the
+different stages of his social progress,
+is exemplified and ascertained. The
+loss of the History of Louis XI.&mdash;a
+work which he had projected, and of
+which he had traced the outline&mdash;is
+a disappointment which the reader of
+modern history can never enough deplore.</p>
+
+<p>The province of science lies in
+truths that are universal and immutable;
+that of prudence in second
+causes that are transient and subordinate.
+What is universally true is
+alone necessarily true&mdash;the knowledge
+that rests in particulars must be accidental.
+The theorist disdains experience&mdash;the
+empiric rejects principle.
+The one is the pedant who read Hannibal
+a lecture on the art of war; the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page164" id="page164" title="164"></a>other is the carrier who knows the
+road between London and York better
+than Humboldt, but a new road is
+prescribed to him and his knowledge
+becomes useless. This is the state of
+mind La Fontaine has described so
+perfectly in his story of the &quot;Cierge.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie<br /></span>
+<span>Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la m&ecirc;me envie;<br /></span>
+<span>Et nouvel Emp&eacute;docle, aux flammes condamn&eacute;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Par sa pure et propre folie,<br /></span>
+<span>Il se lan&ccedil;a d&eacute;dans&mdash;ce f&ucirc;t mal raisonn&eacute;,<br /></span>
+<span>Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The mere chemist or mathematician
+will apply his truths improperly; the
+man of detail, the mere empiric, will
+deal skilfully with particulars, while
+to all general truths he is insensible.
+The wise man, the philosopher in action,
+will use the one as a stepping-stone
+to the other, and acquire a vantage-ground
+from whence he will
+command the realms of practice and
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>History teems with instances that&mdash;although
+the general course of the
+human mind is marked out, and each
+succeeding phasis in which it exhibits
+itself appears inevitable&mdash;the human
+race cannot be considered, as Vico
+and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to
+look upon it, as a mass without intelligence,
+traversing its orbit according
+to laws which it has no power to modify
+or control. On such an hypothesis,
+Wisdom and Folly, Justice
+and Injustice, would be the same,
+followed by the same consequences
+and subject to the same destiny&mdash;no
+certain laws establishing invariable
+grounds of hope and fear, would keep
+the actions of men in a certain course,
+or direct them to a certain end; the
+feelings, faculties, and instincts of man
+would be useless in a world where the
+wise was always as the foolish, the
+just as the unjust, where calculation
+was impossible, and experience of no
+avail.</p>
+
+<p>Man is no doubt the instrument, but
+the unconscious instrument, of Providence;
+and for the end they propose to
+themselves, though not for the result
+which they attain, nations as well as
+individuals are responsible. Otherwise,
+why should we read or speak of
+history? it would be the feverish
+dream of a distempered imagination,
+full of incoherent ravings, a disordered
+chaos of antagonist illusions&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>&mdash;&mdash;&quot;A tale<br /></span>
+<span>Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,<br /></span>
+<span>Signifying nothing.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But on the contrary, it is in history
+that the lessons of morality are
+delivered with most effect. The priest
+may provoke our suspicion&mdash;the moralist
+may fail to work in us any practical
+conviction; but the lessons of
+history are not such as vanish in the
+fumes of unprofitable speculation, or
+which it is possible for us to mistrust,
+or to deride. Obscure as the dispensations
+of Providence often are, it
+sometimes, to use Lord Bacon's language&mdash;&quot;pleases
+God, for the confutation
+of such as are without God
+in the world, to write them in such
+text and capital letters that he who
+runneth by may read it&mdash;that is, mere
+sensual persons which hasten by God's
+judgments, and never tend or fix their
+cogitations upon them, are nevertheless
+in their passage and race urged to
+discern it.&quot; In all historical writers,
+philosophical or trivial, sacred or profane,
+from the meagre accounts of the
+monkish chronicler, no less than from
+the pages stamped with all the indignant
+energy of Tacitus, gleams forth
+the light which, amid surrounding
+gloom and injustice, amid the apparent
+triumph of evil, discovers the
+influence of that power which the
+heathens personified as Nemesis. Her
+tread, indeed, is often noiseless&mdash;her
+form may be long invisible&mdash;but the
+moment at length arrives when the
+measure of forbearance is complete;
+the echoes of her step vibrate upon
+the ear, her form bursts upon the eye,
+and her victim&mdash;be it a savage tyrant,
+or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical
+church, or a corrupt nation&mdash;perishes.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>&quot;Come quei che va di notte,<br /></span>
+<span>Che porta il lume dietro, <i>e a se non giova,</i><br /></span>
+<span><i>Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte</i>.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And as in daily life we rejoice to
+trace means directed to an end, and
+proofs of sagacity and instinct even
+among the lower tribes of animated
+nature, with how much greater delight
+do we seize the proofs vouchsafed
+to us in history of that eternal
+law, by which the affairs of the universe
+are governed? How much more
+do we rejoice to find that the order to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page165" id="page165" title="165"></a>which physical nature owes its existence
+and perpetuity, does not stop at
+the threshold of national life&mdash;that the
+moral world is not <i>fatherless</i>, and that
+man, formed to look before and after,
+is not abandoned to confusion and
+insecurity?</p>
+
+<p>Fertile and comprehensive indeed
+is the domain of history, comprising
+the whole region of probabilities
+within its jurisdiction&mdash;all the various
+shapes into which man has been cast&mdash;all
+the different scenes in which he
+has been called upon to act or suffer;
+his power and his weakness, his folly
+and his wisdom, his virtues in their
+meridian height, his vices in the
+lowest abyss of their degradation, are
+displayed before us, in their struggles,
+vicissitudes, and infinitely diversified
+combinations: an inheritance beyond
+all price&mdash;a vast repository of
+fruitful and immortal truths. There
+is nothing so mean or so dignified;
+nothing so obscure or so glorious;
+no question so abstruse, no problem
+so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no
+situation so critical, of which we may
+not demand from history an account
+and elucidation. Here we find all that
+the toil, and virtues, and sufferings,
+and genius, and experience, of our
+species have laboured for successive
+generations to accumulate and preserve.
+The fruit of their blood, of
+their labour, of their doubts, and their
+struggles, is before us&mdash;a treasure that
+no malignity can corrupt, or violence
+take away. And above all, it is here
+that, when tormented by doubt, or
+startled by anomalies, stung by disappointment,
+or exasperated by injustice,
+we may look for consolation and
+encouragement. As we see the same
+events, that to those who witnessed
+them must have appeared isolated
+and capricious, tending to one great
+end, and accomplishing one specific
+purpose, we may learn to infer that
+those which appear to us most extraordinary,
+are alike subservient to a
+wise and benevolent dispensation.
+Poetry, the greatest of all critics has
+told us, has this advantage over history,
+that the lessons which it furnishes
+are not mixed and confined to
+particular cases, but pure and universal.
+Studied, however, in this spirit,
+history, while it improves the reason,
+may satisfy the heart, enabling us to
+await with patience the lesson of the
+great instructor, Time, and to employ
+the mighty elements it places within
+our reach, to the only legitimate purpose
+of all knowledge&mdash;&quot;The advancement
+of God's glory, and the
+relief of man's estate.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page166" id="page166" title="166"></a>
+<a name="bw328s2" id="bw328s2"></a><h2>POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.</h2>
+
+<h3>No. V.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE VICTORY FEAST.</h3>
+
+<p>[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which
+Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender philosophy
+which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the heroes
+introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where reminded of
+Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, <i>there is an under current
+of sentiment</i> which betrays the thoughtful <i>Northern</i> minstrel. This detracts
+from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation, but constitutes its very
+charm as an original composition. Its inspiration rises from a source purely
+Hellenic, but the streamlets it receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to
+change the metaphor) it has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the
+toning down of the colours betrays the German.]</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The stately walls of Troy had sunken,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;<br /></span>
+<span>The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Richly laden with the spoil,<br /></span>
+<span>Are on their lofty barks reclin'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Along the Hellespontine strand;<br /></span>
+<span>A gleesome freight the favouring wind<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Shall bear to Greece's glorious land;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And gleesome sounds the chaunted strain,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>As towards the household altars, now,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Each bark inclines the painted prow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>For Home shall smile again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And there the Trojan women, weeping,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Sit ranged in many a length'ning row;<br /></span>
+<span>Their heedless locks, dishevell'd, sweeping<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.<br /></span>
+<span>No festive sounds that peal along,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><i>Their</i> mournful dirge can overwhelm;<br /></span>
+<span>Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Commingled, wails the ruin'd realm.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;Farewell, beloved shores!&quot; it said,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>&quot;From home afar behold us torn,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>By foreign lords as captives borne&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Ah, happy are the Dead!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And Calchas, while the altars blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Invokes the high gods to their feast!<br /></span>
+<span>On Pallas, mighty or to raise<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Him, who wreathes around the land<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The girdle of his watery world,<br /></span>
+<span>And Zeus, from whose almighty hand<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The terror and the bolt are hurl'd.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Success at last awards the crown&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The long and weary war is past;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Time's destined circle ends at last&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And fall'n the Mighty Town!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The Son of Atreus, king of men,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The muster of the hosts survey'd,<br /></span>
+<span>How dwindled from the thousands, when<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Along Scamander first array'd!<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page167" id="page167" title="167"></a>With sorrow and the cloudy thought,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Great King's stately look grew dim&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>How few to Greece return with him!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Still let the song to gladness call,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>For those who yet their home shall greet!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>For them the blooming life is sweet:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Return is not for all!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Nor all who reach their native land<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>May long the joy of welcome feel&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Beside the household gods may stand<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Grim Murther with awaiting steel;<br /></span>
+<span>And they who 'scape the foe, may die<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Beneath the foul familiar glaive.<br /></span>
+<span>Thus He<a id="footnotetag2" name="footnotetag2" href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> to whose prophetic eye<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Her light the wise Minerva gave:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;Ah! blest whose hearth, to memory true,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The goddess keeps unstain'd and pure&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>For woman's guile is deep and sure,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And Falsehood loves the New!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By the best blood of Greece recaptured;<br /></span>
+<span>Round that fair form his glowing arms&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>(A second bridal)&mdash;wreathe enraptured.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Woe waits the work of evil birth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Revenge to deeds unblest is given!<br /></span>
+<span>For watchful o'er the things of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The eternal Council-Halls of Heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Yes, ill shall ever ill repay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Jove to the impious hands that stain<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Altar of Man's Hearth, again<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The doomer's doom shall weigh!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Well they, reserved for joy to day,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Cried out O&iuml;leus' valiant son,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;May laud the favouring gods who sway<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Our earth, their easy thrones upon;<br /></span>
+<span>Without a choice they mete our doom,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Our woe or welfare Hazard gives&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Patroclus slumbers in the tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And all unharm'd Thersites lives.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>While luck and life to every one<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Blind Fate dispenses, well may they<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Enjoy the life and luck to day<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By whom the prize is won!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Yes, war will still devour the best!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Brother, remember'd in this hour!<br /></span>
+<span>His shade should be in feasts a guest,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whose form was in the strife a tower!<br /></span>
+<span>What time our ships the Trojan fired,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Thine arm to Greece the safety gave&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The prize to which thy soul aspired,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The crafty wrested from the brave.<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3" href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a><br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page168" id="page168" title="168"></a>Peace to thine ever-holy rest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Not thine to fall before the foe!<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Ajax alone laid Ajax low:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Ah&mdash;wrath destroys the best!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>To his dead sire&mdash;(the Dorian king)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The bright-hair'd Pyrrhus<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4" href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> pours the wine:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Of every lot that life can bring,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>My soul, great Father, prizes thine.<br /></span>
+<span>Whate'er the goods of earth, of all,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The highest and the holiest&mdash;FAME!<br /></span>
+<span>For when the Form in dust shall fall,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>O'er dust triumphant lives the Name!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Brave Man, thy light of glory never<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Shall fade, while song to man shall last;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Living, soon from earth are pass'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>'THE DEAD&mdash;ENDURE FOR EVER!'&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;While silent in their grief and shame,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The conquer'd hear the conqueror's praise,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Quoth Tydeus' son, &quot;let Hector's fame,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>In me, his foe, its witness raise!<br /></span>
+<span>Who, battling for the altar-hearth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A brave defender, bravely fell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>It takes not from the victor's worth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>If honour with the vanquish'd dwell.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Who falleth for the altar-hearth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>A rock and a defence laid low,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Shall leave behind him, in the foe,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The lips that speak his worth!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Lo, Nestor now, whose stately age<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Through threefold lives of mortals lives!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The laurel'd bowl, the kingly sage<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To Hector's tearful mother gives.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Drink&mdash;in the draught new strength is glowing,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The grief it bathes forgets the smart!<br /></span>
+<span>O Bacchus! wond'rous boons bestowing,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Oh how thy balsam heals the heart!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Drink&mdash;in the draught new vigour gloweth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The grief it bathes forgets the smart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And balsam to the breaking heart,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The healing god bestoweth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;As Niobe, when weeping mute,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To angry gods the scorn and prey,<br /></span>
+<span>But tasted of the charmed fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And cast despair itself away;<br /></span>
+<span>So, while unto thy lips, its shore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>This stream of life enchanted flows,<br /></span>
+<span>Remember'd grief, that stung before,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Sinks down to Leth&egrave;'s calm repose.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>So, while unto thy lips, its shore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The stream of life enchanted flows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Drown'd deep in Leth&egrave;'s calm repose,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The grief that stung before!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page169" id="page169" title="169"></a>Seized by the god&mdash;behold the dark<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And dreaming Prophetess<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5" href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> arise!<br /></span>
+<span>She gazes from the lofty bark,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Where Home's dim vapour wraps the skies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;A vapour, all of human birth!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As mists ascending, seen and gone,<br /></span>
+<span>So fade earth's great ones from the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And leave the changeless gods alone!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Behind the steed that skirs away,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Or on the galley's deck&mdash;sits Care!<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>To-morrow comes&mdash;and Life is where?<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>At least&mdash;we'll live to-day!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG.&mdash;A BALLAD.</h3>
+
+<p>[Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet grander
+one of the &quot;Fight with the Dragon&quot;) amongst those designed to depict and
+exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in &AElig;gidius Tschudi&mdash;a
+Swiss chronicler&mdash;and Schiller (who, as Hinrichs suggests,) probably met
+with it in the researches connected with the compositions of his drama, &quot;William
+Tell,&quot; appears to have adhered, with much fidelity, to the original narrative.]</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>At Aachen, in imperial state,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>In that time-hallow'd hall renown'd,<br /></span>
+<span>At solemn feast King Rudolf sate,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The day that saw the hero crown'd!<br /></span>
+<span>Bohemia and thy Palgrave, Rhine,<br /></span>
+<span>Give this the feast, and that the wine;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Arch Electoral Seven,<br /></span>
+<span>Like choral stars around the sun,<br /></span>
+<span>Gird him whose hand a world has won,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The anointed choice of Heaven.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>In galleries raised above the pomp,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Press'd crowd on crowd, their panting way;<br /></span>
+<span>And with the joy-resounding tromp,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Rang out the million's loud hurra!<br /></span>
+<span>For closed at last the age of slaughter,<br /></span>
+<span>When human blood was pour'd as water&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>LAW dawns upon the world!<a id="footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6" href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a><br /></span>
+<span>Sharp Force no more shall right the wrong,<br /></span>
+<span>And grind the weak to crown the strong&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>War's carnage-flag is furl'd!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>In Rudolf's hand the goblet shines&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And gaily round the board look'd he;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;And proud the feast, and bright the wines,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>My kingly heart feels glad to me!<br /></span>
+<span>Yet where the lord of sweet desire,<br /></span>
+<span>Who moves the heart beneath the lyre,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And dulcet Sound Divine?<br /></span>
+<span>Dear from my youth the craft of song,<br /></span>
+<span>And what as knight I loved so long,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>As Kaisar, still be mine.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page170" id="page170" title="170"></a>Lo, from the circle bending there,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>With sweeping robe the Bard appears,<br /></span>
+<span>As silver, white his gleaming hair,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Bleach'd by the many winds of years:<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;And music sleeps in golden strings&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The minstrel's hire, the LOVE he sings;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Well known to him the ALL<br /></span>
+<span>High thoughts and ardent souls desire!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>What would the Kaisar from the lyre<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Amidst the banquet-hall?&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The Great One smiled&mdash;&quot;Not mine the sway&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The minstrel owns a loftier power&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A mightier king inspires the lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Its hest&mdash;THE IMPULSE OF THE HOUR!<br /></span>
+<span>As through wide air the tempests sweep,<br /></span>
+<span>As gush the springs from mystic deep,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Or lone untrodden glen;<br /></span>
+<span>So from dark hidden fount within,<br /></span>
+<span>Comes SONG, its own wild world to win<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Amidst the souls of men!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And loud the music swept the ear:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Forth to the chase a Hero rode,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To hunt the bounding chamois-deer:<br /></span>
+<span>With shaft and horn the squire behind:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Through greensward meads the riders wind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>A small sweet bell they hear.<br /></span>
+<span>Lo, with the HOST, a holy man,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Before him strides the sacristan,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And the bell sounds near and near.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The noble hunter down-inclined<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His reverent head and soften'd eye,<br /></span>
+<span>And honour'd with a Christian's mind<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Christ who loves humility!<br /></span>
+<span>Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves<br /></span>
+<span>A brook&mdash;the rains had fed the waves,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And torrents from the hill.<br /></span>
+<span>His sandal shoon the priest unbound,<br /></span>
+<span>And laid the Host upon the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And near'd the swollen rill!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;What wouldst thou, priest?&quot; the Count began,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As, marvelling much, he halted there.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Sir Count, I seek a dying man,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Sore hungering for the heavenly fare.<br /></span>
+<span>The bridge that once its safety gave,<br /></span>
+<span>Rent by the anger of the wave,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Drifts down the tide below.<br /></span>
+<span>Yet barefoot now, I will not fear<br /></span>
+<span>(The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Through the wild wave to go!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>He gave that priest the knightly steed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,<br /></span>
+<span>That he might serve the sick man's need,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.<br /></span>
+<span>He took the horse the squire bestrode;<br /></span>
+<span>On to the chase the hunter rode,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>On to the sick the priest!<br /></span>
+<span>And when the morrow's sun was red,<br /></span>
+<span>The servant of the Saviour led<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Back to its lord the beast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page171" id="page171" title="171"></a>&quot;Now Heaven forefend,&quot; the hero cried,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;That e'er to chase or battle more<br /></span>
+<span>These limbs the sacred steed bestride,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That once my Maker's image bore!<br /></span>
+<span>But not for sale or barter given;<br /></span>
+<span>Henceforth its Master is the Heaven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>My tribute to that King,<br /></span>
+<span>From whom I hold as fiefs, since birth,<br /></span>
+<span>Honour, renown, the goods of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Life, and each living thing.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;So may the God who faileth never<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To hear the weak and guide the dim,<br /></span>
+<span>To thee give honour here and ever,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As thou hast duly honour'd Him!<br /></span>
+<span>Far-famed ev'n now through Switzerland<br /></span>
+<span>Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And fair from thine embrace<br /></span>
+<span>Six daughters bloom&mdash;six crowns to bring&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Blest as the Daughters of a KING&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Mothers of a RACE!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The mighty Kaisar heard amazed;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His heart was in the days of old:<br /></span>
+<span>Into the minstrel's eyes he gazed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That tale the Kaisar's own had told.<br /></span>
+<span>Yes, in the bard, the priest he knew,<br /></span>
+<span>And in the purple veil'd from view<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The gush of holy tears.<br /></span>
+<span>A thrill through that vast audience ran,<br /></span>
+<span>And every heart the godlike man,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Revering God, reveres!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE WORDS OF ERROR.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Three errors there are, that for ever are found<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best;<br /></span>
+<span>But empty their meaning and hollow their sound&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.<br /></span>
+<span>The fruits of existence escape from the clasp<br /></span>
+<span>Of the seeker who strives but these shadows to grasp&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So long as Man dreams of some Age in <i>this</i> life<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>When the Right and the Good will all evil subdue;<br /></span>
+<span>For the Right and the Good lead us ever to strife,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And wherever they lead us, the Fiend will pursue.<br /></span>
+<span>And (till from the earth borne, and stifled at length)<br /></span>
+<span>The earth that he touches still gifts him with strength!<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7" href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;<br /></span>
+<span>For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And Virtue possesses no title to earth!<br /></span>
+<span>That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,<br /></span>
+<span>Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page172" id="page172" title="172"></a>So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;<br /></span>
+<span>The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And all we can learn is&mdash;to guess and divine!<br /></span>
+<span>Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?<br /></span>
+<span>The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>O, Noble Soul! fly from delusions like these,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>More heavenly belief be it thine to adore;<br /></span>
+<span>Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore!<br /></span>
+<span>Not <i>without</i> thee the streams&mdash;there the Dull seek them;&mdash;No!<br /></span>
+<span>Look <i>within</i> thee&mdash;behold both the fount and the flow!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE WORDS OF BELIEF.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Three Words will I name thee&mdash;around and about,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;<br /></span>
+<span>But they had not their birth in the being without,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!<br /></span>
+<span>And all worth in the man shall for ever be o'er<br /></span>
+<span>When in those Three Words he believes no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Man is made FREE!&mdash;Man, by birthright, is free,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.<br /></span>
+<span>Whatever the shout of the rabble may be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain,<br /></span>
+<span>For the Man made a Freeman grows safe in his gain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And VIRTUE is more than a shade or a sound,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And Man may her voice, in this being, obey;<br /></span>
+<span>And though ever he slip on the stony ground,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Yet ever again to the godlike way.<br /></span>
+<span>Though <i>her</i> wisdom <i>our</i> wisdom may not perceive,<br /></span>
+<span>Yet the childlike spirit can still believe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And a GOD there is!&mdash;over Space, over Time,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>While the Human Will rocks, like a reed, to and fro,<br /></span>
+<span>Lives the Will of the Holy&mdash;A Purpose Sublime,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A Thought woven over creation below;<br /></span>
+<span>Changing and shifting the All we inherit,<br /></span>
+<span>But changeless through all One Immutable Spirit!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Hold fast the Three Words of Belief&mdash;though about<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>From the lip to the lip, full of meaning they flee;<br /></span>
+<span>Yet they take not their birth from the being without&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>But a voice from within must their oracle be;<br /></span>
+<span>And never all worth in the Man can be o'er,<br /></span>
+<span>Till in those Three Words he believes no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE MIGHT OF SONG.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>A rain-flood from the mountain-riven,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>It leaps, in thunder, forth to Day,<br /></span>
+<span>Before its rush the crags are driven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The oaks uprooted, whirl'd away&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Aw'd, yet in awe all wildly glad'ning,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page173" id="page173" title="173"></a>The startled wanderer halts below;<br /></span>
+<span>He hears the rock-born waters mad'ning,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Nor wits the source from whence they go,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So, from their high, mysterious Founts along,<br /></span>
+<span>Stream on the silenc'd world the Waves of Song!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Knit with the threads of life, for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By those dread Powers that weave the woof,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Whose art the singer's spell can sever?<br /></span>
+<span class='i1'>Whose breast has mail to music proof?<br /></span>
+<span>Lo, to the Bard, a wand of wonder<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Herald<a id="footnotetag8" name="footnotetag8" href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> of the Gods has given:<br /></span>
+<span>He sinks the soul the death-realm under,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Or lifts it breathless up to heaven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion<br /></span>
+<span>Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>As, when the halls of Mirth are crowded,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Portentous, on the wanton scene&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Some Fate, before from wisdom shrouded,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Awakes and awes the souls of Men&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Before that Stranger from ANOTHER,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Behold how THIS world's great ones bow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mean joys their idle clamour smother,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The mask is vanish'd from the brow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And from Truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurl'd,<br /></span>
+<span>Fly all the craven Falsehoods of the World!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So, rapt from every care and folly,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>When spreads abroad the lofty lay,<br /></span>
+<span>The Human kindles to the Holy,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And into Spirit soars the Clay!<br /></span>
+<span>One with the Gods the Bard: before him<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>All things unclean and earthly fly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Hush'd are all meaner powers, and o'er him<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The dark fate swoops unharming by;<br /></span>
+<span>And while the Soother's magic measures flow,<br /></span>
+<span>Smooth'd every wrinkle on the brows of Woe!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Even as a child that, after pining<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>For the sweet absent mother&mdash;hears<br /></span>
+<span>Her voice&mdash;and, round her neck entwining<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Young arms, vents all his soul in tears;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So, by harsh custom far estranged,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Along the glad and guileless track,<br /></span>
+<span>To childhood's happy home, unchanged,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The swift song wafts the wanderer back&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Snatch'd from the coldness of unloving Art<br /></span>
+<span>To Nature's mother arms&mdash;to Nature's glowing heart!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>HONOUR TO WOMAN.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Honour to Woman! To her it is given<br /></span>
+<span>To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>In the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,<br /></span>
+<span>She tends on each altar that's hallow'd to Feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And keeps ever-living the fire!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page174" id="page174" title="174"></a>From the bounds of Truth careering,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>With each hasty impulse veering,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Down to Passion's troubled deeps.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And his heart, contented never,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Greeds to grapple with the Far,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Chasing his own dream for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>On through many a distant Star!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But Woman with looks that can charm and enchain,<br /></span>
+<span>Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By the spell of her presence beguil'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>In the home of the Mother her modest abode,<br /></span>
+<span>And modest the manners by Nature bestow'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>On Nature's most exquisite child!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'>Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Foe to foe, the angry strife;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Man the Wild One, never resting,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Roams along the troubled life;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>What he planneth, still pursuing;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Vainly as the Hydra bleeds,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Crest the sever'd crest renewing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Wish to wither'd wish succeeds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But Woman at peace with all being, reposes,<br /></span>
+<span>And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whose sweets to her culture belong.<br /></span>
+<span>Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er<br /></span>
+<span>The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And the infinite Circle of Song.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'>Strong, and proud, and self-depending,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Man's cold bosom beats alone;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Heart with heart divinely blending,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>In the love that Gods have known,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Souls' sweet interchange of feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Melting tears&mdash;he never knows,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Each hard sense the hard one steeling,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Arms against a world of foes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever<br /></span>
+<span>If woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;<br /></span>
+<span>Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,<br /></span>
+<span>How quiver the chords&mdash;how thy bosom is heaving&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>How trembles thy glance through the tear!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'>Man's dominion, war and labour;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Might to right the Statute gave;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Where the Mede reign'd&mdash;see the Slave!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Peace and Meekness grimly routing,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Prowls the War-lust, rude and wild;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Where the vanish'd Graces smil'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Of the Senses she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>She lulls, as she looks from above,<br /></span>
+<span>The Discord whose Hell for its victims is gaping,<br /></span>
+<span>And blending awhile the for-ever escaping,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whispers Hate to the Image of Love!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="page175" id="page175" title="175"></a>
+<h3>THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Who comes?&mdash;why rushes fast and loud,<br /></span>
+<span>Through lane and street the hurtling crowd,<br /></span>
+<span>Is Rhodes on fire?&mdash;Hurrah!&mdash;along<br /></span>
+<span>Faster and fast storms the throng!<br /></span>
+<span>High towers a shape in knightly garb&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Behold the Rider and the Barb!<br /></span>
+<span>Behind is dragg'd a wondrous load;<br /></span>
+<span>Beneath what monster groans the road?<br /></span>
+<span>The horrid jaws&mdash;the Crocodile,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The shape the mightier Dragon, shows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>From Man to Monster all the while&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The alternate wonder glancing goes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Shout thousands, with a single voice,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Behold the Dragon, and rejoice,<br /></span>
+<span>Safe roves the herd, and safe the swain!<br /></span>
+<span>Lo!&mdash;there the Slayer&mdash;here the Slain!<br /></span>
+<span>Full many a breast, a gallant life,<br /></span>
+<span>Has waged against the ghastly strife,<br /></span>
+<span>And ne'er return'd to mortal sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Hurrah, then, for the Hero Knight!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>So to the Cloister, where the vow'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And peerless Brethren of St John<br /></span>
+<span>In conclave sit&mdash;that sea-like crowd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Wave upon wave, goes thundering on.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>High o'er the rest, the chief is seen&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>There wends the Knight with modest mien;<br /></span>
+<span>Pours through the galleries raised for all<br /></span>
+<span>Above that Hero-council Hall,<br /></span>
+<span>The crowd&mdash;And thus the Victor One:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Prince&mdash;the knight's duty I have done.<br /></span>
+<span>The Dragon that devour'd the land<br /></span>
+<span>Lies slain beneath thy servant's hand;<br /></span>
+<span>Free, o'er the pasture, rove the flocks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And free the idler's steps may stray&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And freely o'er the lonely rocks,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The holier pilgrim wends his way!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>A lofty look the Master gave,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Certes,&quot; he said; &quot;thy deed is brave;<br /></span>
+<span>Dread was the danger, dread the fight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Bold deeds bring fame to vulgar knight;<br /></span>
+<span>But say, what sways with holier laws<br /></span>
+<span>The knight who sees in Christ his cause,<br /></span>
+<span>And wears the cross?&quot;&mdash;Then every cheek<br /></span>
+<span>Grew pale to hear the Master speak;<br /></span>
+<span>But nobler was the blush that spread<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His face&mdash;the Victor's of the day&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>As bending lowly&mdash;&quot;Prince,&quot; he said;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;His noblest duty&mdash;TO OBEY!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And yet that duty, son,&quot; replied<br /></span>
+<span>The chief, &quot;methinks thou hast denied;<br /></span>
+<span>And dared thy sacred sword to wield<br /></span>
+<span>For fame in a forbidden field.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Master, thy judgment, howsoe'er<br /></span>
+<span>It lean, till all is told, forbear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page176" id="page176" title="176"></a>Thy law in spirit and in will,<br /></span>
+<span>I had no thought but to fulfil.<br /></span>
+<span>Not rash, as some, did I depart<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A Christian's blood in vain to shed;<br /></span>
+<span>But hoped by skill, and strove by art,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To make my life avenge the dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Five of our Order, in renown<br /></span>
+<span>The war-gems of our saintly crown,<br /></span>
+<span>The martyr's glory bought with life;<br /></span>
+<span>'Twas then thy law forbade the strife.<br /></span>
+<span>Yet in my heart there gnaw'd, like fire,<br /></span>
+<span>Proud sorrow, fed with stern desire:<br /></span>
+<span>In the still visions of the night,<br /></span>
+<span>Panting, I fought the fancied fight;<br /></span>
+<span>And when the morrow glimmering came,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>With tales of ravage freshly done,<br /></span>
+<span>The dream remember'd, turn'd to shame,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That night should dare what day should shun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And thus my fiery musings ran&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>'What youth has learn'd should nerve the man;<br /></span>
+<span>How lived the great in days of old,<br /></span>
+<span>Whose Fame to time by bards is told&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Who, heathens though they were, became<br /></span>
+<span>As gods&mdash;upborne to heaven by fame?<br /></span>
+<span>How proved they best the hero's worth?<br /></span>
+<span>They chased the monster from the earth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>They sought the lion in his den&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>They pierced the Cretan's deadly maze&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Their noble blood gave humble men<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Their happy birthright&mdash;peaceful days.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;'What! sacred, but against the horde<br /></span>
+<span>Of Mahound, is the Christian's sword?<br /></span>
+<span>All strife, save one, should he forbear?<br /></span>
+<span>No! earth itself the Christian's care&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>From every ill and every harm,<br /></span>
+<span>Man's shield should be the Christian's arm.<br /></span>
+<span>Yet art o'er strength will oft prevail,<br /></span>
+<span>And mind must aid where heart may fail!'<br /></span>
+<span>Thus musing, oft I roam'd alone,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Where wont the Hell-born Beast to lie;<br /></span>
+<span>Till sudden light upon me shone,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And on my hope broke victory!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Then, Prince, I sought thee with the prayer<br /></span>
+<span>To breathe once more my native air;<br /></span>
+<span>The license given&mdash;the ocean past&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I reach'd the shores of home at last.<br /></span>
+<span>Scarce hail'd the old beloved land,<br /></span>
+<span>Than huge, beneath the artist's hand,<br /></span>
+<span>To every hideous feature true,<br /></span>
+<span>The Dragon's monster-model grew.<br /></span>
+<span>The dwarf'd, deformed limbs upbore<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The lengthen'd body's ponderous load;<br /></span>
+<span>The scales the impervious surface wore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Like links of burnish'd harness, glow'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Life-like, the huge neck seem'd to swell,<br /></span>
+<span>And widely, as some porch to hell<br /></span>
+<span>You might the horrent jaws survey,<br /></span>
+<span>Griesly, and greeding for their prey.<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page177" id="page177" title="177"></a>Grim fangs an added terror gave,<br /></span>
+<span>Like crags that whiten through a cave.<br /></span>
+<span>The very tongue a sword in seeming&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The deep-sunk eyes in sparkles gleaming.<br /></span>
+<span>Where the vast body ends, succeed<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The serpent spires around it roll'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Woe&mdash;woe to rider, woe to steed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whom coils as fearful e'er enfold!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;All to the awful life was done&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The very hue, so ghastly, won&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The grey, dull tint:&mdash;the labour ceased,<br /></span>
+<span>It stood&mdash;half reptile and half beast!<br /></span>
+<span>And now began the mimic chase;<br /></span>
+<span>Two dogs I sought, of noblest race,<br /></span>
+<span>Fierce, nimble, fleet, and wont to scorn<br /></span>
+<span>The wild bull's wrath and levell'd horn;<br /></span>
+<span>These, docile to my cheering cry,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I train'd to bound, and rend, and spring,<br /></span>
+<span>Now round the Monster-shape to fly,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Now to the Monster-shape to cling!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And where their gripe the best assails,<br /></span>
+<span>The belly left unsheath'd in scales,<br /></span>
+<span>I taught the dexterous hounds to hang<br /></span>
+<span>And find the spot to fix the fang;<br /></span>
+<span>Whilst I, with lance and mail&egrave;d garb,<br /></span>
+<span>Launch'd on the beast mine Arab barb.<br /></span>
+<span>From purest race that Arab came,<br /></span>
+<span>And steeds, like men, are fired by fame.<br /></span>
+<span>Beneath the spur he chafes to rage;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Onwards we ride in full career&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I seem, in truth, the war to wage&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The monster reels beneath my spear!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Albeit, when first the <i>destrier</i><a id="footnotetag9" name="footnotetag9" href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> eyed<br /></span>
+<span>The laidly thing, it swerved aside,<br /></span>
+<span>Snorted and rear'd&mdash;and even they,<br /></span>
+<span>The fierce hounds, shrank with startled bay;<br /></span>
+<span>I ceased not, till, by custom bold,<br /></span>
+<span>After three tedious moons were told,<br /></span>
+<span>Both barb and hounds were train'd&mdash;nay, more,<br /></span>
+<span>Fierce for the fight&mdash;then left the shore!<br /></span>
+<span>Three days have fleeted since I prest<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>(Return'd at length) this welcome soil,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor once would lay my limbs to rest,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Till wrought the glorious crowning toil.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;For much it moved my soul to know<br /></span>
+<span>The unslack'ning curse of that grim foe.<br /></span>
+<span>Fresh rent, mens' bones lay bleach'd and bare<br /></span>
+<span>Around the hell-worm's swampy lair;<br /></span>
+<span>And pity nerved me into steel:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Advice?&mdash;I had a heart to feel,<br /></span>
+<span>And strength to dare! So, to the deed.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I call'd my squires&mdash;bestrode my steed,<br /></span>
+<span>And with my stalwart hounds, and by<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Lone secret paths, we gaily go<br /></span>
+<span>Unseen&mdash;at least by human eye&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Against a worse than human foe!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page178" id="page178" title="178"></a>&quot;Thou know'st the sharp rock&mdash;steep and hoar?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The abyss?&mdash;the chapel glimmering o'er?<br /></span>
+<span>Built by the Fearless Master's hand,<br /></span>
+<span>The fane looks down on all the land.<br /></span>
+<span>Humble and mean that house of prayer&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Yet God hath shrined a wonder there:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mother and Child, to whom of old<br /></span>
+<span>The Three Kings knelt with gifts, behold!<br /></span>
+<span>By three times thirty steps, the shrine<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The pilgrim gains&mdash;and faint, and dim,<br /></span>
+<span>And dizzy with the height, divine<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Strength on the sudden springs to him!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Yawns wide within that holy steep<br /></span>
+<span>A mighty cavern dark and deep&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>By blessed sunbeam never lit&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Rank f&oelig;tid swamps engirdle it;<br /></span>
+<span>And there by night, and there by day,<br /></span>
+<span>Ever at watch, the fiend-worm lay,<br /></span>
+<span>Holding the Hell of its abode<br /></span>
+<span>Fast by the hallow'd House of God.<br /></span>
+<span>And when the pilgrim gladly ween'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His feet had found the healing way,<br /></span>
+<span>Forth from its ambush rush'd the fiend,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And down to darkness dragg'd the prey.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;With solemn soul, that solemn height<br /></span>
+<span>I clomb, ere yet I sought the fight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Kneeling before the cross within,<br /></span>
+<span>My heart, confessing, clear'd its sin.<br /></span>
+<span>Then, as befits the Christian knight,<br /></span>
+<span>I donn'd the spotless surplice white,<br /></span>
+<span>And, by the altar, grasp'd the spear:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So down I strode with conscience clear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Bade my leal squires afar the deed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By death or conquest crown'd, await&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Leapt lightly on my lithesome steed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And gave to God his soldier's fate!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Before me wide the marshes lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Started the hounds with sudden bay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Aghast the swerving charger slanting<br /></span>
+<span>Snorted&mdash;then stood abrupt and panting&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>For curling there, in coil&egrave;d fold,<br /></span>
+<span>The Unutterable Beast behold!<br /></span>
+<span>Lazily basking in the sun.<br /></span>
+<span>Forth sprang the dogs. The fight's begun!<br /></span>
+<span>But lo! the hounds in cowering fly<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Before the mighty poison-breath&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A yell, most like the jackall's cry,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Howl'd, mingling with that wind of death!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;No halt&mdash;I gave one cheering sound;<br /></span>
+<span>Lustily springs each dauntless hound&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Swift as the dauntless hounds advance,<br /></span>
+<span>Whirringly skirrs my stalwart lance&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Whirringly skirrs; and from the scale<br /></span>
+<span>Bounds, as a reed aslant the mail.<br /></span>
+<span>Onward&mdash;but no!&mdash;the craven steed<br /></span>
+<span>Shrinks from his lord in that dread need&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page179" id="page179" title="179"></a>Smitten and scared before that eye<br /></span>
+<span>Of basilisk horror, and that blast<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Of death, it only seeks to fly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And half the mighty hope is past!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;A moment, and to earth I leapt;<br /></span>
+<span>Swift from its sheath the falchion swept;<br /></span>
+<span>Swift on that rock-like mail it plied&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The rock-like mail the sword defied:<br /></span>
+<span>The monster lash'd its mighty coil&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Down hurl'd&mdash;behold me on the soil!<br /></span>
+<span>Behold the hell-jaws gaping wide&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>When lo! they bound&mdash;the flesh is found;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Upon the scaleless parts they spring!<br /></span>
+<span>Springs either hound;&mdash;the flesh is found&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>It roars; the blood-dogs cleave and cling!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;No time to foil its fast'ning foes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Light, as it writhed, I sprang, and rose;<br /></span>
+<span>The all-unguarded place explored,<br /></span>
+<span>Up to the hilt I plunged the sword&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Buried one instant in the blood&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The next, upsprang the bubbling flood!<br /></span>
+<span>The next, one Vastness spread the plain&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Crush'd down&mdash;the victor with the slain;<br /></span>
+<span>And all was dark&mdash;and on the ground<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>My life, suspended, lost the sun,<br /></span>
+<span>Till waking&mdash;lo my squires around&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And the dead foe!&mdash;my tale is done.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Then burst, as from a common breast,<br /></span>
+<span>The eager laud so long supprest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A thousand voices, choral-blending,<br /></span>
+<span>Up to the vaulted dome ascending&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>From groined roof and banner'd wall,<br /></span>
+<span>Invisible echoes answering all&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The very Brethren, grave and high,<br /></span>
+<span>Forget their state, and join the cry.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;With laurel wreaths his brows be crown'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Let throng to throng his triumph tell;<br /></span>
+<span>Hail him all Rhodes!&quot;&mdash;the Master frown'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And raised his hand&mdash;and silence fell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Well,&quot; said that solemn voice, &quot;thy hand<br /></span>
+<span>From the wild-beast hath freed the land.<br /></span>
+<span>An idol to the People be!<br /></span>
+<span>A foe our Order frowns on thee!<br /></span>
+<span>For in thy heart, superb and vain,<br /></span>
+<span>A hell-worm laidlier than the slain,<br /></span>
+<span>To discord which engenders death,<br /></span>
+<span>Poisons each thought with baleful breath!<br /></span>
+<span>That hell-worm is the stubborn Will&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Oh! What were man and nations worth<br /></span>
+<span>If each his own desire fulfil,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And law be banish'd from the earth?<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;<i>Valour</i> the Heathen gives to story&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><i>Obedience</i> is the Christian's glory;<br /></span>
+<span>And on that soil our Saviour-God<br /></span>
+<span>As the meek low-born mortal trod.<br /></span>
+<span>We the Apostle-knights were sworn<br /></span>
+<span>To laws thy daring laughs to scorn&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page180" id="page180" title="180"></a>Not <i>fame</i>, but <i>duty</i> to fulfil&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Our noblest offering&mdash;man's wild will.<br /></span>
+<span>Vain-glory doth thy soul betray&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Begone&mdash;thy conquest is thy loss:<br /></span>
+<span>No breast too haughty to obey,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Is worthy of the Christian's cross!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>From their cold awe the crowds awaken,<br /></span>
+<span>As with some storm the halls are shaken;<br /></span>
+<span>The noble brethren plead for grace&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mute stands the doom'd, with downward face;<br /></span>
+<span>And mutely loosen'd from its band<br /></span>
+<span>The badge, and kiss'd the Master's hand,<br /></span>
+<span>And meekly turn'd him to depart:<br /></span>
+<span>A moist eye follow'd, &quot;To my heart<br /></span>
+<span>Come back, my son!&quot;&mdash;the Master cries:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;Thy grace a harder fight obtains;<br /></span>
+<span>When Valour risks the Christian's prize,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Lo, how Humility regains!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>[In the ballad just presented to the reader, Schiller designed, as he wrote
+to Goethe, to depict the old Christian chivalry&mdash;half-knightly, half-monastic.
+The attempt is strikingly successful; and, even in so humble a translation,
+the unadorned simplicity and earnest vigour of a great poet, enamoured of his
+subject, may be sufficiently visible to a discerning critic. &quot;The Fight of the
+Dragon&quot; appears to us the most spirited and nervous of all Schiller's ballads,
+with the single exception of &quot;The Diver;&quot; and if its interest is less intense
+than that of the matchless &quot;Diver,&quot; and its descriptions less poetically striking
+and effective, its interior meaning or philosophical conception is at once
+more profound and more elevated. The main distinction, indeed, between the
+ancient ballad and the modern, as revived and recreated by Goethe and
+Schiller, is, that the former is a simple narrative, and the latter a narrative
+which conveys some intellectual idea&mdash;some dim, but important truth. The one
+has but the good faith of the minstrel, the other the high wisdom of the poet.
+In &quot;The Fight of the Dragon,&quot; is expressed the moral of that humility which
+consists in self-conquest&mdash;even merit may lead to vain-glory&mdash;and, after vanquishing
+the fiercest enemies without, Man has still to contend with his worst
+foe,&mdash;the pride or disobedience of his own heart. &quot;Every one,&quot; as a recent
+and acute, but somewhat over-refining critic has remarked, &quot;has more or
+less&mdash;his own 'fight with the Dragon,'&mdash;his own double victory (without and
+within) to achieve.&quot; The origin of this poem is to be found in the Annals of
+the Order of Malta&mdash;and the details may be seen in Vertot's History. The
+date assigned to the conquest of the Dragon is 1342. Helion de Villeneuve
+was the name of the Grand Master&mdash;that of the Knight, Dieu-Donn&eacute; de
+Gozon. Thevenot declares, that the head of the monster, (to whatever species
+it really belonged,) or its effigies, was still placed over one of the gates of the
+city in his time.]</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page181" id="page181" title="181"></a>
+<a name="bw328s3" id="bw328s3"></a><h2>REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.</h2>
+
+<p>Having shown that the standard of
+Taste is in the Truth of Nature, and
+that this truth is in the mind, Sir Joshua,
+in the Eighth Discourse, proceeds
+to a further development of the
+principles of art. These principles,
+whether poetry or painting, have their
+foundation in the mind; which by
+its sensitive faculties and intellectual
+requirements, remodels all that it receives
+from the external world, vivifying
+and characterizing all with itself,
+and thus bringing forth into light the
+more beautiful but latent creations of
+nature. The &quot;activity and restlessness&quot;
+of the mind seek satisfaction
+from curiosity, novelty, variety, and
+contrast. Curiosity, &quot;the anxiety
+for the future, the keeping the event
+suspended,&quot; he considers to be exclusively
+the province of poetry, and
+that &quot;the painter's art is more confined,
+and has nothing that corresponds
+with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this
+power and advantage of leading the
+mind on, till attention is totally engaged.
+What is done by painting
+must be done at one blow; curiosity
+has received at once all the satisfaction
+it can have.&quot; Novelty, variety, and
+contrast, however, belong to the painter.
+That poetry has this power, and
+operates by more extensively raising
+our curiosity, cannot be denied; but
+we hesitate in altogether excluding
+this power from painting. A momentary
+action may be so represented,
+as to elicit a desire for, and even an
+intimation of its event. It is true
+<i>that</i> curiosity cannot be satisfied, but
+it works and conjectures; and we suspect
+there is something of it in most
+good pictures. Take such a subject
+as the &quot;Judgment of Solomon:&quot; is
+not the &quot;event suspended,&quot; and a
+breathless anxiety portrayed in the
+characters, and freely acknowledged
+by the sympathy of the spectator? Is
+there no mark of this &quot;curiosity&quot; in
+the &quot;Cartoon of Pisa?&quot; The trumpet
+has sounded, the soldiers are some
+half-dressed, some out of the water,
+others bathing; one is anxiously looking
+for the rising of his companion,
+who has just plunged in, and we see
+but his hands above the water; the
+very range of rocks, behind which the
+danger is shown to come, tends to excite
+our curiosity; we form conjectures
+of the enemy, their number,
+nearness of approach, and from among
+the manly warriors before us form episodes
+of heroism in the great intimated
+epic: and have we not seen pictures
+by Rembrandt, where &quot;curiosity&quot;
+delights to search unsatisfied and
+unsatiated into the mysteries of colour
+and chiaro-scuro, receding further as
+we look into an atmosphere pregnant
+with all uncertain things? We think
+we have not mistaken the President's
+meaning. Mr Burnet appears to agree
+with us: though he makes no remark
+upon the power of raising curiosity,
+yet it surely is raised in the very picture
+to which we presume he alludes,
+Raffaelle's &quot;Death of Ananias;&quot; the
+event, in Sapphira, is intimated and suspended.
+&quot;Though,&quot; says Mr Burnet,
+&quot;the painter has but one page to
+represent his story, he generally
+chooses that part which combines the
+most illustrative incidents with the
+most effective denouement of the
+event. In Raffaelle we often find not
+only those circumstances which precede
+it, <i>but its effects upon the</i> personages
+introduced after the catastrophe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, a natural indolence
+of our disposition, which seeks
+pleasure in repose, and the resting in
+old habits, which must not be too violently
+opposed by &quot;variety,&quot; &quot;reanimating
+the attention, which is apt to
+languish under a continual sameness;&quot;
+nor by &quot;novelty,&quot; making &quot;more
+forcible impression on the mind than
+can be made by the representation of
+what we have often seen before;&quot; nor
+by &quot;contrasts,&quot; that &quot;rouse the power
+of comparison by opposition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The mind, then, though an active
+principle, having likewise a disposition
+to indolence, (might we have said repose?)
+limits the quantity of variety,
+novelty, and contrast which it will
+bear;&mdash;these are, therefore, liable to
+excesses. Hence arise certain rules
+of art, that in a composition objects
+must not be too scattered and divided
+into many equal parts, that perplex
+and fatigue the eye, at a loss where to
+find the principal action. Nor must
+there be that &quot;absolute unity,&quot;
+&quot;which, consisting of one group or
+mass of light only, would be as defective
+as an heroic poem without episode,
+or any collateral incidents to
+recreate the mind with that variety
+which it always requires.&quot; Sir Joshua
+<a class="pagenum" name="page182" id="page182" title="182"></a>instances Rembrandt and Poussin, the
+former as having the defect of &quot;absolute
+unity,&quot; the latter the defect of the
+dispersion and scattering his figures
+without attention to their grouping.
+Hence there must be &quot;the same just
+moderation observed in regard to ornaments;&quot;
+for a certain repose must
+never be destroyed. Ornament in
+profusion, whether of objects or
+colours, does destroy it; and, &quot;on
+the other hand, a work without ornament,
+instead of simplicity, to which it
+makes pretensions, has rather the appearance
+of poverty.&quot; &quot;We may be
+sure of this truth, that the most ornamental
+style requires repose to set off
+even its ornaments to advantage.&quot; He
+instances, in the dialogue between
+Duncan and Banquo, Shakspeare's
+purpose of repose&mdash;the mention of the
+martlets' nests, and that &quot;where those
+birds most breed and haunt, the air is
+delicate;&quot; and the practice of Homer,
+&quot;who, from the midst of battles and
+horrors, relieves and refreshes the
+mind of the reader, by introducing
+some quiet rural image, or picture of
+familiar domestic life. The writers
+of every age and country, where taste
+has begun to decline, paint and adorn
+every object they touch; are always
+on the stretch; never deviate or sink
+a moment from the pompous and the
+brilliant.&quot;<a id="footnotetag10" name="footnotetag10" href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Novelty, Variety, and Contrast are
+required in Art, because they are the
+natural springs that move the mind to
+attention from its indolent quiescence;
+but having moved, their duty is performed&mdash;the
+mind of itself will do the
+rest; they must not act prominent
+parts. In every work there must be a
+simplicity which binds the whole together,
+as a whole; and whatever comes
+not within that girdle of the graces,
+is worse than superfluous&mdash;it draws
+off and distracts the attention which
+should be concentrated. Besides that
+simplicity which we have spoken of&mdash;and
+we have used the word in its
+technical sense, as that which keeps
+together and makes one thing of many
+parts&mdash;there is a simplicity which is
+best known by its opposite, affectation;
+upon this Sir Joshua enlarges.
+&quot;Simplicity, being a negative virtue,
+cannot be described or defined.&quot; But
+it is possible, even in avoiding affectation,
+to convert simplicity into the
+very thing we strive to avoid. N.
+Poussin&mdash;whom, with regard to this
+virtue, he contrasts with others of the
+French school&mdash;Sir Joshua considers,
+in his abhorrence of the affectation
+of his countrymen, somewhat to approach
+it, by &quot;what in writing
+would be called pedantry.&quot; Du Piles
+is justly censured for his recipe of
+grace and dignity. &quot;If,&quot; says he,
+&quot;you draw persons of high character
+and dignity, they ought to be drawn
+in such an attitude that the portraits
+must seem to speak to us of themselves,
+and as it were to say to us,
+'Stop, take notice of me&mdash;I am the
+invincible king, surrounded by majesty.'
+'I am the valiant commander
+who struck terror every where,' 'I
+am that great minister, who knew all
+the springs of politics.' 'I am that
+magistrate of consummate wisdom
+and probity.'&quot; This is indeed affectation,
+and a very vulgar notion of
+greatness. We are reminded of Partridge,
+and his admiration of the overacting
+king. All the characters in
+thus seeming to say, would be little
+<a class="pagenum" name="page183" id="page183" title="183"></a>indeed. Not so Raffaelle and Titian
+understood grace and dignity. Simplicity
+he holds to be &quot;our barrier
+against that great enemy to truth and
+nature, affectation, which is ever
+clinging to the pencil, and ready to
+drop and poison every thing it touches.&quot;
+Yet that, &quot;when so very inartificial
+as to seem to evade the difficulties
+of art, is a very suspicious virtue.&quot;
+Sir Joshua dwells much upon this,
+because he thinks there is a perpetual
+tendency in young artists to run into
+affectation, and that from the very
+terms of the precepts offered them.
+&quot;When a young artist is first told
+that his composition and his attitudes
+must be contrasted; that he must turn
+the head contrary to the position of
+the body, in order to produce grace
+and animation; that his outline must
+be undulating and swelling, to give
+grandeur; and that the eye must be
+gratified with a variety of colours;
+when he is told this with certain animating
+words of spirit, dignity, energy,
+greatness of style, and brilliancy of
+tints, he becomes suddenly vain of his
+newly-acquired knowledge, and never
+thinks he can carry those rules too
+far. It is then that the aid of simplicity
+ought to be called in to correct
+the exuberance of youthful ardour.&quot;
+We may add that hereby, too, is shown
+the danger of particular and practical
+rules; very few of the kind are to be
+found in the &quot;Discourses.&quot; Indeed
+the President points out, by examples
+from Raffaelle, the good effect of setting
+aside these academical rules. We
+suspect that they are never less wanted
+than when they give direction to attitudes
+and forms of action. He admits
+that, in order &quot;to excite attention to
+the more manly, noble, and dignified
+manner,&quot; he had perhaps left &quot;an
+impression too contemptuous of the
+ornamental parts of our art.&quot; He
+had, to use his own expression, bent
+the bow the contrary way to make it
+straight. &quot;For this purpose, then,
+and to correct excess or neglect of
+any kind, we may here add, that it is
+not enough that a work be learned&mdash;it
+must be pleasing.&quot; Pretty much
+as Horace had said of poetry,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, <i>dulcia</i> sunto.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To which maxim the Latin poet has
+unconsciously given the grace of
+rhyme&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He again shows the danger of
+particular practical rules.&mdash;&quot;It is
+given as a rule by Fresnoy, that
+'<i>the principal figure of a subject must
+appear in the midst of the picture,
+under the principal light, to distinguish
+it from the rest.</i>' A painter who should
+think himself obliged strictly to follow
+this rule, would encumber himself
+with needless difficulties; he would
+be confined to great uniformity of
+composition, and be deprived of many
+beauties which are incompatible with
+its observance. The meaning of this
+rule extends, or ought to extend, no
+further than this: that the principal
+figure should be immediately distinguished
+at the first glance of the eye;
+but there is no necessity that the principal
+light should fall on the principal
+<a class="pagenum" name="page184" id="page184" title="184"></a>figure, or that the principal figure
+should be in the middle of the picture.&quot;
+He might have added that it is the
+very place where generally it ought
+not to be. Many examples are given;
+we could have wished he had given a
+plate from any one in preference to
+that from Le Brun. Felebein, in praising
+this picture, according to preconceived
+recipe, gives Alexander,
+who is in shade, the principal light.
+&quot;Another instance occurs to me
+where equal liberty may be taken in
+regard to the management of light.
+Though the general practice is to
+make a large mass about the middle
+of the picture surrounded by shadow,
+the reverse may be practised, and
+<i>the spirit of the rule be preserved</i>.&quot;
+We have marked in italics the latter
+part of the sentence, because it shows
+that the rule itself must be ill-defined
+or too particular. Indeed, we receive
+with caution all such rules as belong
+to the practical and mechanical of the
+art. He instances Paul Veronese.
+&quot;In the great composition of Paul
+Veronese, the 'Marriage of Cana,' the
+figures are for the most part in half
+shadow. The great light is in the
+sky; and indeed the general effect of
+this picture, which is so striking, is
+no more than what we often see in
+landscapes, in small pictures of fairs
+and country feasts: but those principles
+of light and shadow, being
+transferred to a large scale, to a space
+containing near a hundred figures as
+large as life, and conducted, to all
+appearance, with as much facility, and
+with attention as steadily fixed upon
+<i>the whole together</i>, as if it were a small
+picture immediately under the eye, the
+work justly excites our admiration,
+the difficulty being increased as the
+extent is enlarged.&quot; We suspect that
+<i>the rule</i>, when it attempts to direct
+beyond the words Sir Joshua has
+marked in italics, refutes itself, and
+shackles the student. Infinite must be
+the modes of composition, and as infinite
+the modes of treating them in
+light and shadow and colour. &quot;Whatever
+mode of composition is adopted,
+every variety and license is allowable.&quot;
+All that is absolutely necessary is,
+that there be no confusion or distraction,
+no conflicting masses&mdash;in fact, that
+the picture tell its tale at once and
+effectually. A very good plate is
+given by Mr Burnet of the &quot;Marriage
+of Cana,&quot; by Paul Veronese. Sir
+Joshua avoids entering upon rules
+that belong to &quot;the detail of the
+art.&quot; He meets with combatants, as
+might have been expected, where he
+is thus particular. We will extract
+the passage which has been controverted,
+and to oppose the doctrine of
+which, Gainsborough painted his celebrated
+&quot;Blue Boy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Though it is not my <i>business</i> to
+enter into the detail of our art, yet I
+must take this opportunity of mentioning
+one of the means of producing
+that great effect which we observe in
+the works of the Venetian painters, as
+I think it is not generally known or
+observed, that the masses of light in
+a picture be always of a warm mellow
+colour, yellow red or yellowish white;
+and that the blue, the grey, or the
+green colours be kept almost entirely
+out of these masses, and be used only
+to support and set off these warm
+colours; and for this purpose a small
+proportion of cold colours will be sufficient.
+Let this conduct be reversed;
+let the light be cold, and the surrounding
+colours warm, as we often see in
+the works of the Roman and Florentine
+painters, and it will be out of the
+power of art, even in the hands of
+Rubens or Titian, to make a picture
+splendid and harmonious.&quot; Le Brun
+and Carlo Maratti are censured as
+being &quot;deficient in this management of
+colours.&quot; The &quot;Bacchus and Ariadne,&quot;
+now in our National Gallery, has ever
+been celebrated for its harmony of
+colour. Sir Joshua supports his theory
+or rule by the example of this
+picture: the red of Ariadne's scarf,
+which, according to critics, was purposely
+given to relieve the figure from
+the sea, has a better object. &quot;The
+figure of Ariadne is separated from
+the great group, and is dressed in
+blue, which, added to the colour of the
+sea, makes that quantity of cold
+colour which Titian thought necessary
+for the support and brilliancy of
+the great group; which group is composed,
+with very little exception, entirely
+of mellow colours. But as the
+picture in this case would be divided
+into two distinct parts, one half cold
+and the other warm, it was necessary
+to carry some of the mellow colours
+of the great group into the cold part
+of the picture, and a part of the cold
+into the great group; accordingly
+Titian gave Ariadne a red scarf, and
+to one of the Bacchantes a little blue
+<a class="pagenum" name="page185" id="page185" title="185"></a>drapery.&quot; As there is no picture
+more splendid, it is well to weigh and
+consider again and again remarks
+upon the cause of the brilliancy, given
+by such an authority as Sir Joshua
+Reynolds. With regard to his rule,
+even among artists, &quot;adhuc sub
+judice lis est.&quot; He combats the common
+notion of relief, as belonging
+only to the infancy of the art, and
+shows the advance made by Coreggio
+and Rembrandt; though the first
+manner of Coreggio, as well as of Leonardo
+da Vinci and Georgione, was dry
+and hard. &quot;But these three were
+among the first who began to correct
+themselves in dryness of style, by no
+longer considering relief as a principal
+object. As these two qualities, relief
+and fulness of effect, can hardly exist
+together, it is not very difficult to determine
+to which we ought to give
+the preference.&quot; &quot;Those painters
+who have best understood the art of
+producing a good effect, have adopted
+one principle that seems perfectly conformable
+to reason&mdash;that a part may
+be sacrificed for the good of the whole.
+Thus, whether the masses consist of
+light or shadow, it is necessary that
+they should be compact, and of a
+pleasing shape; to this end some parts
+may be made darker and some lighter,
+and reflections stronger than nature
+would warrant.&quot; He instances a
+&quot;Moonlight&quot; by Rubens, now, we
+believe, in the possession of Mr Rogers,
+in which Rubens had given more
+light and more glowing colours than
+we recognize in nature,&mdash;&quot;it might
+easily be mistaken, if he had not likewise
+added stars, for a fainter setting
+sun.&quot; We stop not to enquire if that
+harmony so praised, might not have
+been preserved had the resemblance
+to nature been closer. Brilliancy is
+produced. The fact is, the <i>practice</i> of
+art is a system of compensation. We
+cannot exactly in all cases represent
+nature,&mdash;we have not the means, but
+our means will achieve what, though
+<i>particularly</i> unlike, may, by itself or in
+opposition, produce similar effects.
+Nature does not present a varnished
+polished surface, nor that very transparency
+that our colours can give;
+but it is found that this transparency,
+in all its degrees, in conjunction
+and in opposition to opaque
+body of colour, represents the force
+of light and shade of nature, which is
+the principal object to attain. <i>The</i>
+richness of nature is not the exact
+richness of the palette. The painter's
+success is in the means of compensation.</p>
+
+<p>This Discourse concludes with observations
+on the Prize pictures. The
+subject seems to have been the Sacrifice
+of Iphigenia. All had copied
+the invention of Timanthes, in hiding
+the face of Agamemnon. Sir Joshua
+seems to agree with Mr Falconet,
+in a note in his translation of
+Pliny, who would condemn the painter,
+but that he copied the idea from
+the authority of Euripides; Sir Joshua
+considers it at best a trick, that
+can only with success be practised
+once. Mr Fuseli criticises the passage,
+and assumes that the painter
+had better reason than that given by
+Mr Falconet. Mr Burnet has added
+but two or three notes to this Discourse&mdash;they
+are unimportant, with
+the exception of the last, wherein he
+combats Sir Joshua's theory of the
+cold and warm colours. He candidly
+prints an extract of a letter from Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, who differs with
+him. It is so elegantly written that
+we quote the passage. Sir Thomas
+says,&mdash;&quot;Agreeing with you in so
+many points, I will venture to differ
+from you in your question with Sir
+Joshua. Infinitely various as nature
+is, there are still two or three truths
+that limit her variety, or, rather, that
+limit art in the imitation of her. I
+should instance for one the ascendency
+of white objects, which can never
+be departed from with impunity, and
+again, the union of colour with light.
+Masterly as the execution of that picture
+is (viz. the Boy in a blue dress,)
+I always feel a never-changing impression
+on my eye, that the &quot;Blue
+Boy&quot; of Gainsborough is a difficulty
+boldly combated, not conquered. The
+light blue drapery of the Virgin in the
+centre of the &quot;Notte&quot; is another instance;
+a check to the harmony of
+the celestial radiance round it.&quot; &quot;Opposed
+to Sir Thomas's opinion,&quot; says
+Mr Burnet, &quot;I might quote that of Sir
+David Wilkie, often expressed, and
+carried out in his picture of the 'Chelsea
+Pensioners' and other works.&quot;
+It strikes us, from our recollection of
+the &quot;Chelsea Pensioners,&quot; that it is
+not at all a case in point; the blue
+there not being light but dark, and
+serving as dark, forcibly contrasting
+with warmer light in sky and other
+objects; the <i>colour</i> of blue is scarcely
+given, and is too dark to be allowed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page186" id="page186" title="186"></a>to enter into the question. He adds,
+&quot;A very simple method may be
+adopted to enable the student to perceive
+where the warm and red colours
+are placed by the great colourists, by
+his making a sketch of light and shade
+of the picture, and then touching in
+the warm colours with red chalk; or
+by looking on his palette at twilight,
+he will see what colours absorb the
+light, and those that give it out, and
+thus select for his shadows, colours
+that have the property of giving depth
+and richness.&quot; Unless the pictures
+are intended to be seen at twilight,
+we do not see how this can bear upon
+the question; if it does, we would
+notice what we have often observed,
+that at twilight blue almost entirely
+disappears, to such a degree that in
+a landscape where the blue has even
+been deep, and the sky by no means
+the lightest part of the picture, at
+twilight the whole landscape comes
+out too hard upon the sky, which with
+its colour has lost its tone, and become,
+with relation to the rest, by far
+too light. It is said that of all the
+pictures in the National Gallery,
+when seen at twilight, the Coreggios
+retire last&mdash;we speak of the two, the
+&quot;Ecce Homo&quot; and the &quot;Venus,
+Mercury, and Cupid.&quot; In these there
+is no blue but in the drapery of the
+fainting mother, and that is so dark
+as to serve for black or mere shadow;
+the lighter blue close upon the neck
+is too small to affect the power of the
+picture. It certainly is a fact, that
+blue fades more than any colour at
+twilight, and, relatively speaking,
+leaves the image that contains it
+lighter. We should almost be inclined
+to ask the question, though with
+great deference to authority, is blue,
+when very light, necessarily cold; and
+if so, has it not an activity which, being
+the great quality of light, assimilates
+it with light, and thus takes
+in to itself the surrounding &quot;radiance?&quot;
+A very little positive warm colour,
+as it were set in blue, from whatever
+cause, gives it a surprising glow.
+We desire to see the theory of colours
+treated, not with regard to their corresponding
+harmony in their power
+one upon the other, nor in their light
+and shadow, but, if we may so express
+it, in their sentimentality&mdash;the effect
+they are capable of in moving the
+passions. We alluded to this in our
+last paper, and the more we consider
+the subject, the more we convinced
+that it is worth deeper investigation.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The NINTH DISCOURSE is short, and
+general in its character; it was delivered
+at the opening of the Royal
+Academy in Somerset Place, October
+16, 1780. It is an elegant address;
+raises the aim of the artist; and gives
+a summary of the origin of arts and
+their use. &quot;Let us for a moment
+take a short survey of the progress of
+the mind towards what is, or ought to
+be, its true object of attention. Man
+in his lowest state has no pleasures
+but those of sense, and no wants but
+those of appetite; afterwards, when
+society is divided into different ranks,
+and some are appointed to labour for
+the support of others, those whom
+their superiority sets free from labour
+begin to look for intellectual entertainments.
+Thus, while the shepherds
+were attending their flocks,
+their masters made the first astronomical
+observations; so music is said
+to have had its origin from a man at
+leisure listening to the strokes of a
+hammer. As the senses in the lowest
+state of nature are necessary to direct
+us to our support, when that support
+is once secure, there is danger in following
+them further; to him who has
+no rule of action but the gratification
+of the senses, plenty is always dangerous.
+It is therefore necessary to
+the happiness of individuals, and still
+more necessary to the security of society,
+that the mind should be elevated
+to the idea of general beauty, and the
+contemplation of general truth; by
+this pursuit the mind is always carried
+forward in search of something more
+excellent than it finds, and obtains its
+proper superiority over the common
+sense of life, by learning to feel itself
+capable of higher aims and nobler
+enjoyments.&quot; This is well said.
+Again.&mdash;&quot;Our art, like all arts which
+address the imagination, is applied to
+a somewhat lower faculty of the mind,
+which approaches nearer to sensuality,
+but through sense and fancy
+it must make its way to reason. For
+such is the progress of thought, that
+we perceive by sense, we combine by
+fancy, and distinguish by reason; and
+without carrying our art out of its
+natural and true character, the more
+we purify it from every thing that is
+gross in sense, in that proportion we
+<a class="pagenum" name="page187" id="page187" title="187"></a>advance its use and dignity, and in
+proportion as we lower it to mere sensuality,
+we pervert its nature, and degrade
+it from the rank of a liberal
+art; and this is what every artist
+ought well to remember. Let him
+remember, also, that he deserves just
+so much encouragement in the state
+as he makes himself a member of it
+virtuously useful, and contributes in
+his sphere to the general purpose and
+perfection of society.&quot; Sir Joshua
+has been blamed by those who have
+taken lower views of art, in that he has
+exclusively treated of the Great Style,
+which neither he nor the academicians
+of his day practised; but he
+would have been unworthy the presidential
+chair had he taken any other
+line. His was a noble effort, to assume
+for art the highest position, to
+dignify it in its aim, and thus to honour
+and improve first his country,
+then all human kind. We rise from
+such passages as these elevated above
+all that is little. Those only can feel
+depressed who would find excuses for
+the lowness of their pursuits.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The TENTH DISCOURSE.&mdash;Sir Joshua
+here treats of Sculpture, a less
+extensive field than Painting. The
+leading principles of both are the
+same; he considers wherein they
+agree, and wherein they differ. Sculpture
+cannot, &quot;with propriety and best
+effect, be applied to many subjects.&quot;
+Its object is &quot;form and character.&quot;
+It has &quot;one style only,&quot;&mdash;that one
+style has relation only to one style of
+painting, the Great Style, but that so
+close as to differ only as operating
+upon different materials. He blames
+the sculptors of the last age, who
+thought they were improving by borrowing
+from the ornamental, incompatible
+with its essential character.
+Contrasts, and the littlenesses of picturesque
+effects, are injurious to the
+formality its austere character requires.
+As in painting, so more particularly
+in sculpture, that imitation
+of nature which we call illusion, is in
+no respect its excellence, nor indeed its
+aim. Were it so, the Venus di Medici
+would be improved by colour. It
+contemplates a higher, a more perfect
+beauty, more an intellectual than sensual
+enjoyment. The boundaries of
+the art have been long fixed. To
+convey &quot;sentiment and character, as
+exhibited by attitude, and expression
+of the passions,&quot; is not within its province.
+Beauty of form alone, the
+object of sculpture, &quot;makes of itself
+a great work.&quot; In proof of which
+are the designs of Michael Angelo in
+both arts. As a stronger instance:&mdash;
+&quot;What artist,&quot; says he, &quot;ever looked
+at the Torso without feeling a warmth
+of enthusiasm as from the highest
+efforts of poetry? From whence does
+this proceed? What is there in this
+fragment that produces this effect, but
+the perfection of this science of abstract
+form?&quot; Mr Burnet has given
+a plate of the Torso. The expectation
+of deception, of which few divest
+themselves, is an impediment to the
+judgment, consequently to the enjoyment
+of sculpture. &quot;Its essence is
+correctness.&quot; It fully accomplishes
+its purpose when it adds the &quot;ornament
+of grace, dignity of character,
+and appropriated expression, as in the
+Apollo, the Venus, the Laocoon, the
+Moses of Michael Angelo, and many
+others.&quot; Sir Joshua uses expression
+as will be afterwards seen, in a very
+limited sense. It is necessary to lay
+down perfect correctness as its essential
+character; because, as in the case
+of the Apollo, many have asserted the
+beauty to arise from a certain incorrectness
+in anatomy and proportion.
+He denies that there is this incorrectness,
+and asserts that there never ought
+to be; and that even in painting these
+are not the beauties, but defects, in
+the works of Coreggio and Parmegiano.
+&quot;A supposition of such a
+monster as Grace begot by Deformity,
+is poison to the mind of a young artist.&quot;
+The Apollo and the Discobolus
+are engaged in the same purpose&mdash;the
+one watching the effect of his arrow,
+the other of his discus. &quot;The graceful,
+negligent, though animated air of
+the one, and the vulgar eagerness of the
+other, furnish a signal instance of the
+skill of the ancient sculptors in their nice
+discrimination of character. They are
+both equally true to nature, and equally
+admirable.&quot; Grace, character, and
+expression, are rather in form and
+attitude than in features; the general
+figure more presents itself; &quot;it is
+there we must principally look for
+expression or character; <i>patuit in corpore
+vultus</i>.&quot; The expression in the
+countenances of the Laocoon and his
+two sons, though greater than in any
+other antique statues, is of pain only;
+and that is more expressed &quot;by the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page188" id="page188" title="188"></a>writhing and contortion of the body
+than by the features.&quot; The ancient
+sculptors paid but little regard to features
+for their expression, their object
+being solely beauty of form. &quot;Take
+away from Apollo his lyre, from Bacchus
+his thyrsus and vine-leaves, and
+from Meleager the boar's head, and
+there will remain little or no difference
+in their characters.&quot; John di Bologna,
+he tells us, after he had finished a
+group, called his friends together to
+tell him what name to give it: they
+called it the &quot;Rape of the Sabines.&quot;
+A similar anecdote is told of Sir
+Joshua himself, that he had painted
+the head of the old man who attended
+him in his studio. Some one observed
+that it would make a Ugolino. The
+sons were added, and it became the
+well-known historical picture from
+Dante. He comments upon the ineffectual
+attempts of modern sculptors
+to detach drapery from the figure, to
+give it the appearance of flying in the
+air; to make different plans on the
+same bas-relievos; to represent the
+effects of perspective; to clothe in a
+modern dress. For the first attempt
+he reprehends Bernini, who, from
+want of a right conception of the
+province of sculpture, never fulfilled
+the promise given in his early work of
+Apollo and Daphne. He was ever
+attempting to make drapery flutter in
+the air, which the very massiveness of
+the material, stone, should seem to
+forbid. Sir Joshua does not notice
+the very high authority for such an
+attempt&mdash;though it must be confessed
+the material was not stone, still it was
+sculpture, and multitudinous are the
+graces of ornament, and most minutely
+described&mdash;the shield of Hercules,
+by Hesiod; even the noise of the
+furies' wings is affected. The drapery
+of the Apollo he considers to have
+been intended more for support than
+ornament; but the mantle from the
+arm he thinks &quot;answers a much
+higher purpose, by preventing that
+dryness of effect which would inevitably
+attend a naked arm, extended
+almost at full length; to which we
+may add, the disagreeable effect which
+would proceed from the body and arm
+making a right angle.&quot; He conjectures
+that Carlo Maratti, in his love
+for drapery, must have influenced the
+sculptors of the Apostles in the church
+of St John Lateran. &quot;The weight
+and solidity of stone was not to be
+overcome.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To place figures on different plans
+is absurd, because they must still appear
+all equally near the eye; the
+sculptor has not adequate means of
+throwing them back; and, besides,
+the thus cutting up into minute parts,
+destroys grandeur. &quot;Perhaps the only
+circumstance in which the modern
+have excelled the ancient sculptors,
+is the management of a single group
+in basso-relievo.&quot; This, he thinks,
+may have been suggested by the practice
+of modern painters. The attempt
+at perspective must, for the same reason,
+be absurd; the sculptor has not
+the means for this &quot;humble ambition.&quot;
+The ancients represented only the
+elevation of whatever architecture
+they introduced into their bas-reliefs,
+&quot;which is composed of little more
+than horizontal and perpendicular
+lines.&quot; Upon the attempt at modern
+dress in sculpture, he is severe in his
+censure. &quot;Working in stone is a
+very serious business, and it seems to
+be scarce worth while to employ such
+durable materials in conveying to
+posterity a fashion, of which the
+longest existence scarcely exceeds a
+year;&quot; and which, he might have
+added, the succeeding year makes
+ridiculous. We not only change our
+dresses, but laugh at the sight of
+those we have discarded. The gravity
+of sculpture should not be subject to
+contempt. &quot;The uniformity and
+simplicity of the materials on which
+the sculptor labours, (which are only
+white marble,) prescribe bounds to
+his art, and teach him to confine himself
+to proportionable simplicity of
+design.&quot; Mr Burnet has not given
+a better note than that upon Sir Joshua's
+remark, that sculpture has but
+one style. He shows how strongly
+the ancient sculptors marked those
+points wherein the human figure differs
+from that of other animals. &quot;Let
+us take, for example, the human foot;
+on examining, in the first instance,
+those of many animals, we perceive
+the toes either very long or very short
+in proportion; of an equal size nearly,
+and the claws often long and hooked
+inwards: now, in rude sculpture, and
+even in some of the best of the Egyptians,
+we find little attempt at giving
+a character of decided variation;
+but, on the contrary, we see
+<a class="pagenum" name="page189" id="page189" title="189"></a>the foot split up with toes of an
+equal length and thickness; while, in
+Greek sculpture, these points characteristic
+of man are increased, that the
+affinity to animals may be diminished.
+In the Greek marbles, the great toe
+is large and apart from the others,
+where the strap of the sandal came;
+while the others gradually diminish
+and sweep round to the outside of the
+foot, with the greatest regularity of
+curve; the nails are short, and the toes
+broad at the points, indicative of pressure
+on the ground.&quot; Rigidity he considers
+to have been the character of
+the first epochs, changing ultimately as
+in the Elgin marbles, &quot;from the hard
+characteristics of stone to the vivified
+character of flesh.&quot; He thinks Reynolds
+&quot;would have acknowledged the
+supremacy of beautiful nature, uncontrolled
+by the severe line of mathematical
+exactness,&quot; had he lived to see
+the Elgin marbles. &quot;The outline of
+life, which changes under every respiration,
+seems to have undulated under
+the plastic mould of Phidias.&quot; This
+is well expressed. He justly animadverts
+upon the silly fashion of the day,
+in lauding the vulgar imitation of the
+worsted stockings by Thom. The
+subjects chosen were most unfit for
+sculpture,&mdash;their only immortality
+must be in Burns. We do not understand
+his extreme admiration of Wilkie;
+in a note on parallel perspective
+in sculpture, he adduces Raffaelle as
+an example of the practice, and closes
+by comparing him with Sir David
+Wilkie,&mdash;&quot;known by the appellation
+of the Raffaelle of familiar life,&quot;&mdash;men
+perfect antipodes to each other!
+There is a proper eulogy on Chantrey,
+particularly for his busts, in which he
+commonly represented the eye. We
+are most anxious for the arrival of the
+ancient sculpture from Lycia, collected
+and packed for Government by
+the indefatigable and able traveller,
+Mr Fellowes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The ELEVENTH DISCOURSE is upon
+Genius, the particular genius of the
+painter in his power of seizing and
+representing nature, or his subject as
+a whole. He calls it the &quot;genius of
+mechanical performance.&quot; This, with
+little difference, is enforcing what has
+been laid down in former Discourses.
+Indeed, as far as precepts may be
+required, Sir Joshua had already
+performed his task; hence, there is
+necessary repetition. Yet all is said
+well, and conviction perpetuates the
+impressions previously made. Character
+is something independent of minute
+detail; genius alone knows what
+constitutes this character, and practically
+to represent it, is to be a painter
+of genius. Though it be true that he
+&quot;who does not at all express particulars
+expresses nothing; yet it is certain
+that a nice discrimination of minute
+circumstances, and a punctilious
+delineation of them, whatever excellence
+it may have, (and I do not mean
+to detract from it,) never did confer
+on the artist the character of genius.&quot;
+The impression left upon the mind is
+not of particulars, when it would seem
+to be so; such particulars are taken
+out of the subject, and are each a
+whole of themselves. Practically
+speaking, as we before observed, genius
+will be exerted in ascertaining
+how to paint the &quot;<i>nothing</i>&quot; in every
+picture, to satisfy with regard to detail,
+that neither its absence nor its
+presence shall be noticeable.</p>
+
+<p>Our pleasure is not in minute imitation;
+for, in fact, that is not true imitation,
+for it forces upon our notice
+that which naturally we do not see.
+We are not pleased with wax-work,
+which may be nearer reality; &quot;we
+are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing
+ends accomplished by seemingly inadequate
+means.&quot; If this be sound,
+we ought to be sensible of the inadequacy
+of the means, which sets aside
+at once the common notion that art is
+illusion. &quot;The properties of all objects,
+as far as the painter is concerned
+with them, are outline or drawing,
+the colour, and the light and shade.
+The drawing gives the form, the colour
+its visible quality, and the light
+and shade its solidity:&quot; in every one
+of these the habit of seeing as a whole
+must be acquired. From this habit
+arises the power of imitating by
+&quot;dexterous methods.&quot; He proceeds
+to show that the fame of the greatest
+painters does not rest upon their high
+finish. Raffaelle and Titian, one in
+drawing the other in colour, by no
+means finished highly; but acquired
+by their genius an expressive execution.
+Most of his subsequent remarks
+are upon practice in execution and
+colour, in contradistinction to elaborate
+finish. Vasari calls Titian, &quot;giudicioso,
+bello, e stupendo,&quot; with regard
+to this power. He generalized by
+<a class="pagenum" name="page190" id="page190" title="190"></a>colour, and by execution. &quot;In his
+colouring, he was large and general.&quot;
+By these epithets, we think Sir Joshua
+has admitted that the great style comprehends
+colouring. &quot;Whether it
+is the human figure, an animal, or
+even inanimate objects, there is nothing,
+however unpromising in appearance,
+but may be raised into dignity,
+convey sentiment, and produce emotion,
+in the hands of a painter of
+genius.&quot; He condemns that high
+finish which softens off. &quot;This extreme
+softening, instead of producing
+the effect of softness, gives the appearance
+of ivory, or some other hard
+substance, highly polished. The value
+set upon drawings, such as of Coreggio
+and Parmegiano, which are
+but slight, show how much satisfaction
+can be given without high finishing,
+or minute attention to particulars.
+&quot;I wish you to bear in mind, that
+when I speak of a whole, I do not
+mean simply <i>a whole</i> as belonging to
+composition, but <i>a whole</i> with respect
+to the general style of colouring; <i>a
+whole</i> with regard to light and shade;
+and <i>a whole</i> of every thing which may
+separately become the main object of
+a painter. He speaks of a landscape
+painter in Rome, who endeavoured to
+represent every individual leaf upon a
+tree; a few happy touches would have
+given a more true resemblance. There
+is always a largeness and a freedom
+in happy execution, that finish can
+never attain. Sir Joshua says above,
+that even &quot;unpromising&quot; subjects
+may be thus treated. There is a
+painter commonly thought to have
+finished highly, by those who do not
+look into his manner, whose dexterous,
+happy execution was perhaps never surpassed;
+the consequence is, that there
+is &quot;a largeness,&quot; in all his pictures.
+We mean Teniers. The effect of the
+elaborate work that has been added to
+his class of subjects, is to make them
+heavy and fatiguing to the eye. He
+praises Titian for the same large manner
+which he had given to his history
+and portraits, applied to his landscapes,
+and instances the back-ground
+to the &quot;Peter Martyr.&quot; He recommends
+the same practice in portrait
+painting&mdash;the first thing to be attained,
+is largeness and general effect.
+The following puts the truth clearly.
+&quot;Perhaps nothing that we can say
+will so clearly show the advantage
+and excellence of this faculty, as that
+it confers the character of genius on
+works that pretend to no other merit,
+in which is neither expression, character,
+nor dignity, and where none
+are interested in the subject. We
+cannot refuse the character of genius
+to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese,
+without opposing the general sense of
+mankind, (great authorities have called
+it the triumph of painting,) or to
+the Altar of St Augustine at Antwerp,
+by Rubens, which equally deserves
+that title, and for the same reason.
+Neither of these pictures have
+any interesting story to support them.
+That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation
+of a great concourse of
+people at a dinner; and the subject of
+Rubens, if it may be called a subject
+where nothing is doing, is an assembly
+of various saints that lived in different
+ages. The whole excellence
+of those pictures consists in mechanical
+dexterity, working, however, under
+the influence of that comprehensive
+faculty which I have so often
+mentioned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The power of <i>a whole</i> is exemplified
+by the anecdote of a child going
+through a gallery of old portraits.
+She paid very little attention to the
+finishing, or naturalness of drapery,
+but put herself at once to mimic the
+awkward attitudes. &quot;The censure of
+nature uninformed, fastened upon the
+greatest fault that could be in a picture,
+because it related to the character
+and management of the whole.&quot;
+What he would condemn is that substitute
+for deep and proper study,
+which is to enable the painter to conceive
+and execute every subject as a
+whole, and a finish which Cowley
+calls &quot;laborious effects of idleness.&quot;
+He concludes this Discourse with some
+hints on method of study. Many go
+to Italy to copy pictures, and derive
+little advantage. &quot;The great business
+of study is, to form a mind adapted
+and adequate to all times and
+all occasions, to which all nature is
+then laid open, and which may be
+said to possess the key of her inexhaustible
+riches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of
+the Monk flying from the scene of
+murder, in Titian's &quot;Peter Martyr,&quot;
+showing how that great painter could
+occasionally adopt the style of Michael
+Angelo in his forms. In the
+same note he observes, that Sir Joshua
+had forgotten the detail of this picture,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page191" id="page191" title="191"></a>which detail is noticed and
+praised by Algarotti, for its minute
+discrimination of leaves and plants,
+&quot;even to excite the admiration of a
+botanist.&quot;&mdash;Sir Joshua said they were
+not there. Mr Burnet examined the
+picture at Paris, and found, indeed,
+the detail, but adds, that &quot;they are
+made out with the same hue as the
+general tint of the ground, which is a
+dull brown,&quot; an exemplification of the
+rule, &quot;Ars est celare artem.&quot; Mr
+Burnet remarks, that there is the
+same minute detail in Titian's &quot;Bacchus
+and Ariadne.&quot;&mdash;He is right&mdash;we
+have noticed it, and suspected that it
+had lost the glazing which had subdued
+it. As it is, however, it is not
+important. Mr Burnet is fearful lest
+the authority of Sir Joshua should induce
+a habit of generalizing too much.
+He expresses this fear in another note.
+He says, &quot;the great eagerness to acquire
+what the poet calls</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>'That voluntary style,<br /></span>
+<span>Which careless plays, and seems to mock at toil,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and which Reynolds describes as so
+captivating, has led many a student to
+commence his career at the wrong
+end. They ought to remember, that
+even Rubens founded this excellence
+upon years of laborious and careful
+study. His picture of himself and
+his first wife, though the size of life,
+exhibits all the detail and finish of
+Holbein.&quot; Sir Joshua nowhere recommends
+<i>careless</i> style; on the contrary,
+he every where urges the student
+to laborious toil, in order that he
+may acquire that facility which Sir
+Joshua so justly calls captivating, and
+which afterwards Rubens himself did
+acquire, by studying it in the works
+of Titian and Paul Veronese; and singularly,
+in contradiction to his fears
+and all he would imply, Mr Burnet
+terminates his passage thus:&mdash;&quot;Nor
+did he (Rubens) quit the dry manner
+of Otho Venius, till a contemplation
+of the works of Titian and Paul Veronese
+enabled him to display with
+rapidity those materials which industry
+had collected.&quot; It is strange to
+argue upon the abuse of a precept, by
+taking it at the wrong end.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The TWELFTH DISCOURSE recurs
+likewise to much that had been before
+laid down. It treats of methods of
+study, upon which he had been consulted
+by artists about to visit Italy.
+Particular methods of study he considers
+of little consequence; study
+must not be shackled by too much
+method. If the painter loves his art,
+he will not require prescribed tasks;&mdash;to
+go about which sluggishly, which
+he will do if he have another impulse,
+can be of little advantage. Hence
+would follow, as he admirably expresses
+it, &quot;a reluctant understanding,&quot;
+and a &quot;servile hand.&quot; He supposes,
+however, the student to be
+somewhat advanced. The boy, like
+other school-boys, must be under restraint,
+and learn the &quot;Grammar and
+Rudiments&quot; laboriously. It is not
+such who travel for knowledge. The
+student, he thinks, may be pretty
+much left to himself; if he undertake
+things above his strength, it is better
+he should run the risk of discouragement
+thereby, than acquire &quot;a slow
+proficiency&quot; by &quot;too easy tasks.&quot;
+He has little confidence in the efficacy
+of method, &quot;in acquiring excellence
+in any art whatever.&quot; Methodical
+studies, with all their apparatus, enquiry,
+and mechanical labour, tend
+too often but &quot;to evade and shuffle
+off real labour&mdash;the real labour of
+thinking.&quot; He has ever avoided giving
+particular directions. He has
+found students who have imagined
+they could make &quot;prodigious progress
+under some particular eminent
+master.&quot; Such would lean on any but
+themselves. &quot;After the Rudiments
+are past, very little of our art can be
+taught by others.&quot; A student ought
+to have a just and manly confidence
+in himself, &quot;or rather in the persevering
+industry which he is resolved
+to possess.&quot; Raffaelle had done nothing,
+and was quite young, when fixed
+upon to adorn the Vatican with his
+works; he had even to direct the best
+artists of his age. He had a meek and
+gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent
+with that manly confidence that
+insured him success&mdash;a confidence in
+himself arising from a consciousness of
+power, and a determination to exert it.
+The result is &quot;in perpetuum.&quot;&mdash;There
+are, however, artists who have too
+much self-confidence, that is ill-founded
+confidence, founded rather upon a
+certain dexterity than upon a habit of
+thought; they are like the improvisatori
+in poetry; and most commonly, as
+Metastasio acknowledged of himself,
+had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit
+<a class="pagenum" name="page192" id="page192" title="192"></a>of thinking with selection. To be able
+to draw and to design with rapidity,
+is, indeed, to be master of the grammar
+of art; but in the completion, and
+in the final settlement of the design,
+the portfolio must again and again
+have been turned over, and the nicest
+judgment exercised. This judgment
+is the result of deep study and intenseness
+of thought&mdash;thought not
+only upon the artist's own inventions,
+but those of others. Luca Giordano
+and La Fage are brought as examples
+of great dexterity and readiness of invention&mdash;but
+of little selection; for
+they borrowed very little from others:
+and still less will any artist, that can
+distinguish between excellence and
+insipidity, ever borrow from them.
+Raffaelle, who had no lack of invention,
+took the greatest pains to select;
+and when designing &quot;his greatest as
+well as latest works, the Cartoons,&quot;
+he had before him studies he had made
+from Masaccio. He borrowed from
+him &quot;two noble figures of St Paul.&quot;
+The only alteration he made was in
+the showing both hands, which he
+thought in a principal figure should
+never be omitted. Masaccio's work
+was well known; Raffaelle was not
+ashamed to have borrowed. &quot;Such
+men, surely, need not be ashamed of
+that friendly intercourse which ought
+to exist among artists, of receiving from
+the dead, and giving to the living, and
+perhaps to those who are yet unborn.
+The daily food and nourishment of
+the mind of an artist is found in the
+great works of his predecessors. 'Serpens
+nisi serpentem comederit, non
+fit draco.'&quot; The fact is, the most self-sufficient
+of men are greater borrowers
+than they will admit, or perhaps know;
+their very novelties, if they have any,
+commence upon the thoughts of others,
+which are laid down as a foundation in
+their own minds. The common sense,
+which is called &quot;common property,&quot;
+is that stock which all that have gone
+before us have left behind them; and
+we are but admitted to the heirship of
+what they have acquired. Masaccio
+Sir Joshua considers to have been
+&quot;one of the great fathers of modern
+art.&quot; He was the first who gave largeness,
+and &quot;discovered the path that
+leads to every excellence to which the
+art afterwards arrived.&quot; It is enough to
+say of him, that Michael Angelo, Leonardo
+da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle,
+Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto,
+Il Rosso, and Pierino del Vaga, formed
+their taste by studying his works.
+&quot;An artist-like mind&quot; is best formed
+by studying the works of great artists.
+It is a good practice to consider figures
+in works of great masters as statues
+which we may take in any view. This did
+Raffaelle, in his &quot;Sergius Paulus,&quot; from
+Masaccio. Lest there should be any misunderstanding
+of this sort of borrowing,
+which he justifies, he again refers
+to the practice of Raffaelle in this his
+borrowing from Masaccio. The two
+figures of St Paul, he doubted if Raffaelle
+could have improved; but &quot;he
+had the address to change in some
+measure without diminishing the grandeur
+of their character.&quot; For a serene
+composed dignity, he has given
+animation suited to their employment.
+&quot;In the same manner, he has given
+more animation to the figure of Sergius
+Paulus, and to that which is introduced
+in the picture of Paul preaching,
+of which little more than hints
+are given by Masaccio, which Raffaelle
+has finished. The closing the eyes of
+this figure, which in Masaccio might
+be easily mistaken for sleeping, is not
+in the least ambiguous in the Cartoon.
+His eyes, indeed are closed, but they
+are closed with such vehemence, that
+the agitation of a mind <i>perplexed in
+the extreme</i> is seen at the first glance;
+but what is most extraordinary, and I
+think particularly to be admired, is,
+that the same idea is continued through
+the whole figure, even to the drapery,
+which is so closely muffled about him,
+that even his hands are not seen: By
+this happy correspondence between
+the expression of the countenance and
+the disposition of the parts, the figure
+appears to think from head to foot.
+Men of superior talents alone are capable
+of thus using and adapting other
+men's minds to their own purposes,
+or are able to make out and finish
+what was only in the original a hint or
+imperfect conception. A readiness in
+taking such hints, which escape the
+dull and ignorant, makes, in my opinion,
+no inconsiderable part of that
+faculty of mind which is called genius.&quot;
+He urges the student not even
+to think himself qualified to invent,
+till he is well acquainted with the
+stores of invention the world possesses;
+and insists that, without such study,
+he will not have learned to select from
+nature. He has more than once enforced
+this doctrine, because it is new.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page193" id="page193" title="193"></a>He recommends, even in borrowing,
+however, an immediate recurrence to
+the model, that every thing may be
+finished from nature. Hence he proceeds
+to give some directions for
+placing the model and the drapery&mdash;first
+to impress upon the model the
+purpose of the attitude required&mdash;next,
+to be careful not to alter drapery
+with the hand, rather trusting, if
+defective, to a new cast. There is
+much in being in the way of accident.
+To obtain the freedom of accident
+Rembrandt put on his colours with his
+palette-knife; a very common practice
+at the present day. &quot;Works produced
+in an accidental manner will
+have the same free unrestrained air as
+the works of nature, whose particular
+combinations seem to depend upon
+accident.&quot; He concludes this Discourse
+by more strenuously insisting
+upon the necessity of ever having nature
+in view&mdash;and warns students by
+the example of Boucher, Director of
+the French Academy, whom he saw
+working upon a large picture, &quot;without
+drawings or models of any kind.&quot;
+He had left off the use of models many
+years. Though a man of ability, his
+pictures showed the mischief of his
+practice. Mr Burnet's notes to this
+Discourse add little to the material of
+criticism; they do but reiterate in substance
+what Sir Joshua had himself
+sufficiently repeated. His object seems
+rather to seize an opportunity of expressing
+his admiration of Wilkie,
+whom he adduces as a parallel example
+with Raffaelle of successful
+borrowing. It appears from the account
+given of Wilkie's process, that
+he carried the practice much beyond
+Raffaelle. We cannot conceive any
+thing <i>very</i> good coming from so very
+methodical a manner of setting to work.
+Would not the fire of genius be extinguished
+by the coolness of the process?
+&quot;When he had fixed upon his
+subject, he thought upon <i>all</i> pictures of
+that class already in existence.&quot; The
+after process was most elaborate.
+Now, this we should think a practice
+quite contrary to Raffaelle's, who more
+probably trusted to his own conception
+for the character of his picture as a
+whole, and whose borrowing was more
+of single figures; but, if of the whole
+manner of treating his subject, it is
+not likely that he would have thought
+of more than one work for his imitation.
+The fact is, Sir David Wilkie's
+pictures show that he did carry this
+practice too far&mdash;for there is scarcely
+a picture of his that does not show
+patches of imitations, that are not always
+congruous with each other; there
+is too often in one piece, a bit of Rembrandt,
+a bit of Velasquez, a bit of
+Ostade, or others. The most perfect,
+as a whole, is his &quot;Chelsea Pensioners.&quot;
+We do not quite understand
+the brew of study fermenting an accumulation
+of knowledge, and imagination
+exalting it. &quot;An accumulation
+of knowledge impregnated his mind,
+fermented by study, and exalted by
+imagination;&quot; this is very ambitious,
+but not very intelligible. He speaks of
+Wilkie attracting the attention of admirers
+and detractors. It is very absurd
+to consider criticism that is not
+always favourable, detraction. The
+following passage is well put. &quot;We
+constantly hear the ignorant advising
+a student to study the great book of
+nature, without being biassed by what
+has been done by other painters; it is
+as absurd as if they would recommend
+a youth to learn astronomy by lying
+in the fields, and looking on the stars,
+without reference to the works of Kepler,
+Tycho Brahe, or of Newton.&quot;
+There is indeed a world of cant in the
+present day, that a man must do all
+to his own unprejudiced reason, contemning
+all that has been done before
+him. We have just now been looking at
+a pamphlet on Materialism (a pamphlet
+of most ambitious verbiage,) in which,
+with reference to all former education,
+we are &quot;the slaves of prejudice;&quot; yet
+the author modestly requires that
+minds&mdash;we beg his pardon, we have <i>no
+minds</i>&mdash;intellects must be <i>trained</i> to his
+mode of thinking, ere they can arrive at
+the truth and the perfection of human
+nature. If this training is prejudice in
+one set of teachers, may it not be in another?
+We continually hear artists recommend
+nature without &quot;a prejudice
+in favour of old masters.&quot; Such artists
+are not likely to eclipse the fame of those
+great men, the study of whose works
+has so long <i>prejudiced</i> the world.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows
+that art is not imitation, but is under
+the influence and direction of the imagination,
+and in what manner poetry,
+painting, acting, gardening, and architecture,
+depart from nature. However
+good it is to study the beauties of
+artists, this is only to know art through
+<a class="pagenum" name="page194" id="page194" title="194"></a>them. The principles of painting
+remain to be compared with those
+of other arts, all of them with human
+nature. All arts address themselves
+only to two faculties of the
+mind, its imagination and its sensibility.
+We have feeling, and an instantaneous
+judgment, the result of the
+experience of life, and reasonings
+which we cannot trace. It is safer to
+trust to this feeling and judgment,
+than endeavour to control and direct
+art upon a supposition of what ought
+in reason to be the end or means. We
+should, therefore, most carefully store
+first impressions. They are true,
+though we know not the process by
+which the first conviction is formed.
+Partial and after reasoning often
+serves to destroy that character, the
+truth of which came upon us as with
+an instinctive knowledge. We often
+reason ourselves into narrow and partial
+theories, not aware that &quot;<i>real</i>
+principles of <i>sound reason</i>, and of so
+much more weight and importance,
+are involved, and as it were lie hid,
+under the appearance of a sort of vulgar
+sentiment. Reason, without doubt,
+must ultimately determine every thing;
+at this minute it is required to inform
+us when that very reason is to give
+way to feeling.&quot; Sir Joshua again
+refers to the mistaken views of art,
+and taken too by not the poorest
+minds, &quot;that it entirely or mainly depends
+on imitation.&quot; Plato, even in
+this respect, misleads by a partial
+theory. It is with &quot;such a false view
+that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to
+distinguish even Raffaelle himself,
+whom our enthusiasm honours with
+the name divine. The same sentiment
+is adopted by Pope in his epitaph
+on Sir Godfrey Kneller; and he
+turns the panegyric solely on imitation
+as it is a sort of deception.&quot; It
+is, undoubtedly, most important that
+the world should be taught to honour
+art for its highest qualities; until this
+is done, the profession will be a degradation.
+So far from painting being
+imitation, he proceeds to show
+that &quot;it is, and ought to be, in many
+points of view, and strictly speaking,
+no imitation at all of external nature.&quot;
+Civilization is not the gross state of
+nature; imagination is the result of
+cultivation, of civilization; it is to
+this state of nature art must be more
+closely allied. We must not appeal
+for judgment upon art to those who
+have not acquired the faculty to admire.
+The lowest style of all arts
+please the uncultivated. But, to speak
+of the unnaturalness of art&mdash;let it be
+illustrated by poetry, which speaks
+in language highly artificial, and &quot;a
+construction of measured words, such
+as never is nor ever was used by man.&quot;
+Now, as there is in the human mind
+&quot;a sense of congruity, coherence, and
+consistency,&quot; which must be gratified;
+so, having once assumed a language
+and style not adopted in common discourse,
+&quot;it is required that the sentiments
+also should be in the same proportion
+raised above common nature.&quot;
+There must be an agreement of all
+the parts with the whole. He recognizes
+the chorus of the ancient drama,
+and the recitative of the Italian opera
+as natural, under this view. &quot;And
+though the most violent passions, the
+highest distress, even death itself, are
+expressed in singing or recitative,
+I would not admit as sound criticism
+the condemnation of such exhibitions
+on account of their being unnatural.&quot;
+&quot;Shall reason stand in the way, and
+tell us that we ought not to like what
+we know we do like, and prevent us
+from feeling the full effect of this
+complicated exertion of art? It appears
+to us that imagination is that
+gift to man, to be attained by cultivation,
+that enables him to rise above
+and out of his apparent nature; it is
+the source of every thing good and
+great, we had almost said of every
+virtue. The parent of all arts, it is
+of a higher devotion; it builds and
+adorns temples more worthy of the
+great Maker of all, and praises Him
+in sounds too noble for the common
+intercourse and business of life, which
+demand of the most cultivated that
+they put themselves upon a lower
+level than they are capable of assuming.
+So far, therefore, is a servile
+imitation from being necessary, that
+whatever is familiar, or in any way
+reminds us of what we see and hear
+every day, perhaps does not belong to
+the higher provinces of art, either in
+poetry or painting. The mind is to
+be transported, as Shakspeare expresses
+it, <i>beyond the ignorant present</i>,
+to ages past. Another and a higher
+order of beings is supposed, and to
+those beings every thing which is introduced
+into the work must correspond.&quot;
+He speaks of a picture by
+Jan Steen, the &quot;Sacrifice of Iphigenia,&quot;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page195" id="page195" title="195"></a>wherein the common nature, with the
+silks and velvets, would make one
+think the painter had intended to burlesque
+his subject. &quot;Ill taught reason&quot;
+would lead us to prefer a portrait
+by Denner to one by Titian or
+Vandyke. There is an eloquent passage,
+showing that landscape painting
+should in like manner appeal to
+the imagination; we are only surprised
+that the author of this description
+should have omitted, throughout
+these Discourses, the greatest of all
+landscape painters, whose excellence
+he should seem to refer to by his language.
+&quot;Like the poet, he makes
+the elements sympathize with his subject,
+whether the clouds roll in volumes,
+like those of Titian or Salvator
+Rosa&mdash;or, like those of Claude, are
+gilded with the setting sun; whether
+the mountains have hidden and bold
+projections, or are gently sloped;
+whether the branches of his trees
+shoot out abruptly in right angles
+from their trunks, or follow each
+other with only a gentle inclination.
+All these circumstances contribute
+to the general character of the work,
+whether it be of the elegant or of the
+more sublime kind. If we add to this
+the powerful materials of lightness
+and darkness, over which the artist
+has complete dominion, to vary and
+dispose them as he pleases&mdash;to diminish
+or increase them, as will best
+suit his purpose, and correspond to
+the general idea of his work; a landscape,
+thus conducted, under the influence
+of a poetical mind, will have
+the same superiority over the more ordinary
+and common views, as Milton's
+&quot;Allegro&quot; and &quot;Penseroso&quot; have over
+a cold prosaic narration or description;
+and such a picture would make
+a more forcible impression on the
+mind than the real scenes, were they
+presented before us.&quot; We have
+quoted the above passage, because it
+is wanted&mdash;we are making great mistakes
+in that delightful, and (may we
+not say?) that high branch of art. He
+pursues the same argument with regard
+to acting, and condemns the
+<i>ignorant</i> praise bestowed by Fielding
+on Garrick. Not an idea of deception
+enters the mind of actor or author.
+On the stage, even the expression
+of strong passion must be without
+the natural distortion and screaming
+voice. Transfer, he observes, acting
+to a private room, and it would be
+ridiculous. &quot;Quid enim deformius,
+quum scenam in vitam transferre?&quot;
+Yet he gives here a caution, &quot;that
+no art can be grafted with success on
+another art.&quot; &quot;If a painter should
+endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp
+and parade of dress and attitude, instead
+of that simplicity which is not a
+greater beauty in life than it is in
+painting, we should condemn such
+pictures, as painted in the meanest
+style.&quot; What will our academician,
+Mr Maclise, say of this remark? He
+then adduces gardening in support of
+his theory,&mdash;&quot;nature to advantage
+dressed,&quot; &quot;beautiful and commodious
+for the recreation of man.&quot;
+We cannot, however, go with Sir
+Joshua, who adds, that &quot;so dressed,
+it is no longer a subject for the
+pencil of a landscape painter, as all
+landscape painters know.&quot; It is certainly
+unlike the great landscape he
+has described, but not very unlike
+Claude's, nor out of the way of his
+pencil. We have in our mind's eye
+a garden scene by Vander Heyden,
+most delightful, most elegant. It is
+some royal garden, with its proper
+architecture, the arch, the steps, and
+balustrades, and marble walks. The
+queen of the artificial paradise is entering,
+and in the shade with her attendants,
+but she will soon place her
+foot upon the prepared sunshine.
+Courtiers are here and there walking
+about, or leaning over the balustrades.
+All is elegance&mdash;a scene prepared for
+the recreation of pure and cultivated
+beings. We cannot say the picture
+is not landscape. We are sure it
+gave us ten times more pleasure than
+ever we felt from any of our landscape
+views, with which modern landscape
+painting has covered the walls
+of our exhibitions, and brought into
+disrepute our &quot;annuals.&quot; He proceeds
+to architecture, and praises Vanburgh
+for his poetical imagination; though
+he, with Perrault, was a mark for the
+wits of the day.<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11" href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Sir Joshua points to
+the fa&ccedil;ade of the Louvre, Blenheim,
+and Castle Howard, as &quot;the fairest
+ornaments.&quot; He finishes this admirable
+<a class="pagenum" name="page196" id="page196" title="196"></a>discourse with the following eloquent
+passage:&mdash;&quot;It is allowed on all
+hands, that facts and events, however
+they may bind the historian, have no
+dominion over the poet or the painter.
+With us history is made to bend and
+conform to this great idea of art. And
+why? Because these arts, in their
+highest province, are not addressed
+to the gross senses; but to the desires
+of the mind, to that spark of divinity
+which we have within, impatient of
+being circumscribed and pent up by
+the world which is about us. Just so
+much as our art has of this, just so
+much of dignity, I had almost said
+of divinity, it exhibits; and those of
+our artists who possessed this mark of
+distinction in the highest degree, acquired
+from thence the glorious appellation
+of divine.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse
+are not important to art. There is
+an amusing one on acting, that discusses
+the question of naturalness on the stage,
+and with some pleasant anecdotes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is
+chiefly occupied with the character of
+Gainsborough, and landscape painting.
+It has brought about him, and
+his name, a hornet's nest of critics, in
+consequence of some remarks upon a
+picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough
+and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some
+degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has
+been said that Wilson and Gainsborough
+never liked each other. It is a
+well-known anecdote that Sir Joshua,
+at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough,
+adding &quot;the greatest landscape
+painter of the age,&quot; to which
+Wilson, at whom the words were supposed
+to be aimed, dryly added, &quot;and
+the greatest portrait painter too.&quot;
+We can, especially under circumstances,
+for there had been a coolness
+between the President and Gainsborough,
+pardon the too favourable
+view taken of Gainsborough's landscape
+pictures. He was unquestionably
+much greater as a portrait painter.
+The following account of the interview
+with Gainsborough upon his
+death-bed, is touching, and speaks
+well of both:&mdash;&quot;A few days before
+he died he wrote me a letter, to express
+his acknowledgments for the
+good opinion I entertained of his abilities,
+and the manner in which (he
+had been informed) I always spoke of
+him; and desired that he might see
+me once before he died. I am aware
+how flattering it is to myself to be
+thus connected with the dying testimony
+which this excellent painter
+bore to his art. But I cannot prevail
+upon myself to suppress that I was
+not connected with him by any habits
+of familiarity. If any little jealousies
+had subsisted between us, they were
+forgotten in these moments of sincerity;
+and he turned towards me as
+one who was engrossed by the same
+pursuits, and who deserved his good
+opinion by being sensible of his excellence.
+Without entering into a
+detail of what passed at this last interview,
+the impression of it upon my
+mind was, that his regret at losing
+life was principally the regret of
+leaving his art; and more especially as
+he now began, he said, to see what
+his deficiencies were; which, he said,
+he flattered himself in his last works
+were in some measure supplied.&quot;
+When the Discourse was delivered,
+Raffaelle Mengs and Pompeo Batoni
+were great names. Sir Joshua
+foretells their fall from that high estimation.
+Andrea Sacchi, and &quot;<i>perhaps</i>&quot;
+Carlo Maratti, he considers the
+&quot;ultimi Romanorum.&quot; He prefers
+&quot;the humble attempts of Gainsborough
+to the works of those regular
+graduates in the great historical style.&quot;
+He gives some account of the &quot;customs
+and habits of this extraordinary man.&quot;
+Gainsborough's love for his art was
+remarkable. He was ever remarking
+to those about him any peculiarity of
+countenance, accidental combination
+of figures, effects of light and shade,
+in skies, in streets, and in company.
+If he met a character he liked, he
+would send him home to his house.
+He brought into his painting-room
+stumps of trees, weeds, &amp;c. He
+even formed models of landscapes on
+his table, composed of broken stones,
+dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass,
+which, magnified, became rocks,
+trees, and water. Most of this is the
+common routine of every artist's life;
+the modelling his landscapes in the
+manner mentioned, Sir Joshua himself
+seems to speak doubtingly about.
+It in fact shows, that in Gainsborough
+there was a poverty of invention; his
+scenes are of the commonest kind,
+such as few would stop to admire in
+nature; and, when we consider the
+wonderful variety that nature did present
+to him, it is strange that his
+<a class="pagenum" name="page197" id="page197" title="197"></a>sketches and compositions should
+have been so devoid of beauty. He
+was in the habit of painting by night,
+a practice which Reynolds recommends,
+and thought it must have been
+the practice of Titian and Coreggio.
+He might have mentioned the portrait
+of Michael Angelo with the candle in
+his cap and a mallet in his hand.
+Gainsborough was ambitious of attaining
+excellence, regardless of riches.
+The style chosen by Gainsborough
+did not require that he should go out
+of his own country. No argument is to
+be drawn from thence, that travelling
+is not desirable for those who choose
+other walks of art&mdash;knowing that
+&quot;the language of the art must be
+learned somewhere,&quot; he applied himself
+to the Flemish school, and certainly
+with advantage, and occasionally
+made copies from Rubens, Teniers,
+and Vandyke. Granting him as
+a painter great merit, Sir Joshua
+doubts whether he excelled most in
+portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures.
+Few now will doubt upon the
+subject&mdash;next to Sir Joshua, he was
+the greatest portrait painter we have
+had, so as to be justly entitled to the
+fame of being one of the founders of
+the English School. He did not attempt
+historical painting; and here
+Sir Joshua contrasts him with Hogarth;
+who did so injudiciously. It
+is strange that Sir Joshua should have
+characterised Hogarth as having given
+his attention to &quot;the Ridicule of Life.&quot;
+We could never see any thing
+ridiculous in his deep tragedies.
+Gainsborough is praised in that he
+never introduced &quot;mythological
+learning&quot; into his pictures. &quot;Our
+late ingenious academician, Wilson,
+has, I fear, been guilty, like many
+of his predecessors, of introducing
+gods and goddesses, ideal beings, into
+scenes which were by no means prepared
+to receive such personages. His
+landscapes were in reality too near
+common nature to admit supernatural
+objects. In consequence of this mistake,
+in a very admirable picture of
+a storm, which I have seen of his
+hand, many figures are introduced
+in the foreground, some in apparent
+distress, and some struck dead, as a
+spectator would naturally suppose, by
+lightning: had not the painter injudiciously,
+(as I think,) rather chosen
+that their death should be imputed
+to a little Apollo, who appears in the
+sky with his bent bow, and that those
+figures should be considered as the
+children of Niobe.&quot; This is the passage
+that gave so much offence; foolish
+admirers will fly into flame at the
+slightest spark&mdash;the question should
+have been, is the criticism just, not
+whether Sir Joshua had been guilty
+of the same error&mdash;but we like critics,
+the only true critics, who give their
+reason: and so did Sir Joshua. &quot;To
+manage a subject of this kind a peculiar
+style of art is required; and it
+can only be done without impropriety,
+or even without ridicule, when we
+adopt the character of the landscape,
+and that too in all its parts, to the
+historical or poetical representation.
+This is a very difficult adventure, and
+requires a mind thrown back two
+thousand years, like that of Nicolo
+Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture
+alluded to, the first idea that presents
+itself is that of wonder, at seeing a
+figure in so uncommon a situation as
+that in which Apollo is placed: for
+the clouds on which he kneels have
+not the appearance of being able to
+support him&mdash;they have neither the
+substance nor the form fit for the receptacle
+of a human figure, and they
+do not possess, in any respect, that
+romantic character which is appropriated
+to such an object, and which
+alone can harmonize with poetical
+stories.&quot; We presume Reynolds alludes
+to the best of the two Niobes
+by Wilson&mdash;that in the National Gallery.
+The other is villanously faulty
+as a composition, where loaf is piled
+upon loaf for rock and castle, and the
+tree is common and hedge-grown, for
+the purpose of making gates; but the
+other would have been a fine picture,
+not of the historical class&mdash;the parts are
+all common, the little blown about
+underwood is totally deficient in all
+form and character&mdash;rocks and trees,
+and they do not, as in a former discourse&mdash;Reynolds
+had laid down that
+they should&mdash;sympathize with the subject;
+then, as to the substance of the
+cloud, he is right&mdash;it is not voluminous,
+it is mere vapour. In the received
+adoption of clouds as supporting
+figures, they are, at least, pillowy,
+capacious, and round&mdash;here it is quite
+otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well
+call it a little Apollo, with that immense
+cloud above him, which is in
+fact too much a portrait of a cloud,
+too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject
+<a class="pagenum" name="page198" id="page198" title="198"></a>where the sky is not to be all in
+all. We do not say it is not fine and
+grand, and what you please; but it is
+not subordinate, it casts its lightning
+as from its own natural power, there
+was no need of a god's assistance.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the action does not take place
+in a &quot;prepared&quot; landscape. There
+is nothing to take us back to a
+fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust
+to Wilson's merits, for he calls it,
+notwithstanding this defect, &quot;a
+very admirable picture;&quot; which
+picture will, we suspect, in a few
+years lose its principal charm, if it
+has not lost it; the colour is sadly
+changing, there is now little aerial in
+the sky. It is said of Wilson, that he
+ridiculed the experiments of Sir
+Joshua, and spoke of using nothing
+but &quot;honest linseed&quot;&mdash;to which,
+however, he added varnishes and wax,
+as will easily be seen in those pictures
+of his which have so cracked&mdash;and
+now lose their colour. &quot;Honest&quot;
+linseed appears to have played
+him a sad trick, or he to have played
+a trick upon honest linseed. Sir
+Joshua, however, to his just criticism,
+adds the best precept, example&mdash;and
+instances two pictures, historical
+landscape, &quot;Jacob's Dream&quot;&mdash;which
+was exhibited a year or two ago in
+the Institution, Pall-Mall&mdash;by Salvator
+Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian
+Bourdon, &quot;The Return of the
+Ark from Captivity,&quot; now in the National
+Gallery. The latter picture, as
+a composition, is not perhaps good&mdash;it
+is cut up into too many parts, and
+those parts are not sufficiently poetical;
+in its hue, it may be appropriate.
+The other, &quot;Jacob's Dream&quot; is one
+of the finest by the master&mdash;there is
+an extraordinary boldness in the
+clouds, an uncommon grandeur,
+strongly marked, sentient of angelic
+visitants. This picture has been recently
+wretchedly engraved in mezzotinto;
+all that is in the picture firm
+and hard, is in the print soft, fuzzy,
+and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats
+very tenderly the mistaken manner of
+Gainsborough in his late pictures, the
+&quot;odd scratches and marks.&quot; &quot;This
+chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance,
+by a kind of magic at a
+certain distance, assumes form, and
+all their parts seem to drop into their
+places, so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence,
+under the appearance of chance
+and heavy negligence.&quot; The <i>heavy</i>
+negligence happily describes the fault
+of the manner. It is horribly manifest
+in that magnitude of vulgarity
+for landscape, the &quot;Market Cart&quot; in
+our National Gallery, and purchased at
+we know not what vast sum, and presented
+by the governors of the institution
+to the nation. We have a very
+high opinion of the genius of Gainsborough;
+but we do not see it in his
+landscapes, with very few exceptions.
+His portraits have an air of truth
+never exceeded, and that set off with
+great power and artistical skill; and
+his rustic children are admirable. He
+stands alone, and never has had a
+successful imitator. The mock sentimentality,
+the affected refinement,
+which has been added to his simple
+style by other artists, is disgusting in
+the extreme. Gainsborough certainly
+studied colour with great success.
+He is both praised and blamed for a
+lightness of manner and effect possessed
+&quot;to an unexampled degree of
+excellence;&quot; but &quot;the sacrifice which
+he made, to this ornament of our art,
+was too great.&quot; We confess we do not
+understand Sir Joshua, nor can we
+reconcile &quot;the <i>heavy</i> negligence&quot; with
+this &quot;lightness of manner.&quot; Mr Burnet,
+in one of his notes, compares
+Wilson with Gainsborough; he appears
+to give the preference to
+Wilson&mdash;why does he not compare
+Gainsborough with Sir Joshua himself?
+the rivalry should have been
+in portrait. There is a long
+note upon Sir Joshua's remarks
+upon Wilson's &quot;Niobe.&quot; We are not
+surprised at Cunningham's &quot;Castigation.&quot;
+He did not like Sir Joshua,
+and could not understand nor value
+his character. This is evident in his
+Life of the President. Cunningham
+must have had but an ill-educated
+classic eye when he asserted so grandiloquently,&mdash;&quot;He
+rose at once from
+the tame insipidity of common scenery
+into natural grandeur and magnificence;
+his streams seem all abodes
+for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts
+for the muses, and his temples worthy
+of gods,&quot;&mdash;a passage, we think, most
+worthy the monosyllable commonly
+used upon such occasions by the
+manly and simple-minded Mr Burchell.
+That Sir Joshua occasionally
+transgressed in his wanderings into
+<a class="pagenum" name="page199" id="page199" title="199"></a>mythology, it would be difficult to
+deny; nor was it his only transgression
+from his legitimate ground, as
+may be seen in his &quot;Holy Family&quot;
+in the National Gallery. But we
+doubt if the critique upon his &quot;Mrs
+Siddons&quot; is quite fair. The chair
+and the footstool may not be on the
+cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour
+reconciling the bodily presence of the
+muse with the demon and fatal ministers
+of the drama that attend her.
+Though Sir Joshua's words are here
+brought against him, it is without attention
+to their application in his critique,
+which condemned their form
+and character as not historical nor voluminous&mdash;faults
+that do not attach to
+the clouds, if clouds they must be in
+the picture (the finest of Sir Joshua's
+works) of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic
+Muse. It is not our business to enter
+upon the supposed fact, that Sir
+Joshua was jealous of Wilson; the
+one was a polished, the other perhaps
+a somewhat coarse man. We have
+only to see if the criticism be just.
+In this Discourse Sir Joshua has the
+candour to admit, that there were at
+one time jealousies between him and
+Gainsborough; there may have been
+between him and Wilson, but, at all
+events, we cannot take a just criticism
+as a proof of it, or we must convict
+him, and all others too, of being
+jealous of artists and writers whose
+works they in any manner censure.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE.&mdash;We
+come now to Sir Joshua's last Discourse,
+in which the President takes
+leave of the Academy, reviews his
+&quot;Discourses,&quot; and concludes with recommending
+the study of Michael
+Angelo.</p>
+
+<p>Having gone along with the President
+of the Academy in the pursuit
+of the principles of the art in these
+Discourses, and felt a portion of the
+enthusiasm which he felt, and knew
+so well how to impart to others, we
+come to this last Discourse, with a
+melancholy knowledge that it was the
+last; and reflect with pain upon that
+cloud which so soon interposed between
+Reynolds and at least the
+practical enjoyment of his art. He
+takes leave of the Academy affectionately,
+and, like a truth-loving man
+to the last, acknowledges the little
+contentions (in so softening a manner
+does he speak of the &quot;rough hostility
+of Barry,&quot; and &quot;oppositions of Gainsborough&quot;)
+which &quot;ought certainly,&quot;
+says he, &quot;to be lost among ourselves
+in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements:
+every controversy ought
+to be&mdash;I am persuaded will be&mdash;sunk
+in our zeal for the perfection of our
+common art.&quot; &quot;My age, and my infirmities
+still more than my age, make
+it probable that this will be the last
+time I shall have the honour of addressing
+you from this place.&quot; This
+last visit seemed to be threatened with
+a tragical end;&mdash;the circumstance
+showed the calm mind of the President;
+it was characteristic of the man
+who would die with dignity, and
+gracefully. A large assembly were
+present, of rank and importance, besides
+the students. The pressure was
+great&mdash;a beam in the floor gave way
+with a loud crash; a general rush
+was made to the door, all indiscriminately
+falling one over the other, except
+the President, who kept his seat
+&quot;silent and unmoved.&quot; The floor
+only sunk a little, was soon supported,
+and Sir Joshua recommenced his Discourse.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Justum et tenacem propositi<br /></span>
+<span>Impavidum ferient ruin&aelig;.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He compliments the Academy upon
+the ability of the professors, speaks
+with diffidence of his power as a writer,
+(the world has in this respect
+done him justice;) but that he had
+come not unprepared upon the subject
+of art, having reflected much upon his
+own and the opinions of others. He
+found in the art many precepts and
+rules, not reconcilable with each
+other. &quot;To clear away those difficulties
+and reconcile those contrary
+opinions, it became necessary to distinguish
+the greater truth, as it may be
+called, from the lesser truth; the
+larger and more liberal idea of nature
+from the more narrow and confined:
+that which addresses itself to the imagination,
+from that which is solely addressed
+to the eye. In consequence of
+this discrimination, the different
+branches of our art to which those
+different truths were referred, were
+perceived to make so wide a separation,
+and put on so new an appearance,
+that they seemed scarcely to have
+proceeded from the same general
+stock. The different rules and regulations
+which presided over each department
+of art, followed of course;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page200" id="page200" title="200"></a>every mode of excellence, from the
+grand style of the Roman and Florentine
+schools down to the lowest rank
+of still life, had its due weight and value&mdash;fitted
+to some class or other; and
+nothing was thrown away. By this
+disposition of our art into classes, that
+perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend
+every artist has at some time
+experienced from the variety of styles,
+and the variety of excellence with
+which he is surrounded, is, I should
+hope, in some measure removed, and
+the student better enabled to judge for
+himself what peculiarly belongs to
+his own particular pursuit.&quot; Besides
+the practice of art, the student must
+think, and speculate, and consider
+&quot;upon what ground the fabric of our
+art is built.&quot; An artist suffers throughout
+his whole life, from uncertain, confused,
+and erroneous opinions. We
+are persuaded there would be fewer
+fatal errors were these Discourses more
+in the hands of our present artists&mdash;&quot;Nocturn&acirc;
+versate manu, versate diurn&acirc;.&quot;&mdash;An
+example is given of the
+mischief of erroneous opinions. &quot;I
+was acquainted at Rome, in the early
+part of my life, with a student of the
+French Academy, who appeared to me
+to possess all the qualities requisite to
+make a great artist, if he had suffered
+his taste and feelings, and I may add
+even his prejudices, to have fair play.
+He saw and felt the excellences of the
+great works of art with which we
+were surrounded, but lamented that
+there was not to be found that nature
+which is so admirable in the inferior
+schools,&mdash;and he supposed with Felebien,
+Du Piles, and other theorists,
+that such an union of different excellences
+would be the perfection of art.
+He was not aware that the narrow
+idea of nature, of which he lamented
+the absence in the works of those
+great artists, would have destroyed the
+grandeur of the general ideas which
+he admired, and which was indeed the
+cause of his admiration. My opinions
+being then confused and unsettled, I
+was in danger of being borne down by
+this plausible reasoning, though I remember
+I then had a dawning suspicion
+that it was not sound doctrine;
+and at the same time I was unwilling
+obstinately to refuse assent to what I
+was unable to confute.&quot; False and
+low views of art are now so commonly
+taken both in and out of the profession,
+that we have not hesitated to
+quote the above passage; the danger
+Sir Joshua confesses he was in, is common,
+and demands the warning. To
+make it more direct we should add,
+&quot;Read his Discourses.&quot; Again, without
+intending to fetter the student's
+mind to a particular method of study,
+he urges the necessity and wisdom
+of previously obtaining the appropriated
+instruments of art, in a first
+correct design, and a plain manly colouring,
+before any thing more is attempted.
+He does not think it, however,
+of very great importance whether
+or not the student aim first at grace
+and grandeur before he has learned
+correctness, and adduces the example
+of Parmegiano, whose first public work
+was done when a boy, the &quot;St Eustachius&quot;
+in the Church of St Petronius,
+in Bologna&mdash;one of his last is the &quot;Moses
+breaking the Tables,&quot; in Parma.
+The former has grandeur and incorrectness,
+but &quot;discovers the dawnings
+of future greatness.&quot; In mature age
+he had corrected his defects, and the
+drawing of his Moses was equally
+admirable with the grandeur of the conception&mdash;an
+excellent plate is given
+of this figure by Mr Burnet. The
+fact is, the impulse of the mind is not
+to be too much restrained&mdash;it is better
+to give it its due and first play,
+than check it until it has acquired
+correctness&mdash;good sense first or last,
+and a love of the art, will generally insure
+correctness in the end; the impulses
+often checked, come with weakened
+power, and ultimately refuse to
+come at all; and each time that they
+depart unsatisfied, unemployed, take
+away with them as they retire a portion
+of the fire of genius. Parmegiano
+formed himself upon Michael
+Angelo: Michael Angelo brought the
+art to a &quot;sudden maturity,&quot; as Homer
+and Shakspeare did theirs. &quot;Subordinate
+parts of our art, and perhaps of
+other arts, expand themselves by a
+slow and progressive growth; but
+those which depend on a native vigour
+of imagination, generally burst forth
+at once in fulness of beauty.&quot;
+Correctness of drawing and imagination,
+the one of mechanical genius the other
+of poetic, undoubtedly work together
+for perfection&mdash;&quot;a confidence in the
+mechanic produces a boldness in the
+poetic.&quot; He expresses his surprise
+that the race of painters, before Michael
+Angelo, never thought of transferring
+to painting the grandeur they
+<a class="pagenum" name="page201" id="page201" title="201"></a>admired in ancient sculpture. &quot;Raffaelle
+himself seemed to be going on
+very contentedly in the dry manner
+of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael
+Angelo had never appeared, the art
+might still have continued in the same
+style.&quot; &quot;On this foundation the Caracci
+built the truly great academical
+Bolognian school; of which the first
+stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi.&quot;
+The Caracci called him &quot;nostro Michael
+Angelo riformato.&quot; His figure
+of Polyphemus, which had been attributed
+to Michael Angelo in Bishop's
+&quot;Ancient Statues,&quot; is given in a plate
+by Mr Burnet. The Caracci he considers
+sufficiently succeeded in the
+mechanical, not in &quot;the divine part
+which addresses itself to the imagination,&quot;
+as did Tibaldi and Michael Angelo.
+They formed, however, a school
+that was &quot;most respectable,&quot; and
+&quot;calculated to please a greater number.&quot;
+The Venetian school advanced
+&quot;the dignity of their style, by adding
+to their fascinating powers of colouring
+something of the strength of Michael
+Angelo.&quot; Here Sir Joshua seems
+to contradict his former assertion; but
+as he is here abridging, as it were, his
+whole Discourses, he cannot avoid his
+own observations. It was a point,
+however, upon which he was still
+doubtful; for he immediately adds&mdash;&quot;At
+the same time it may still be a
+doubt, how far their ornamental elegance
+would be an advantageous addition
+to his grandeur. But if there is
+any manner of painting, which may
+be said to unite kindly with his (Michael
+Angelo's) style, it is that of Titian.
+His handling, the manner in
+which his colours are left on the canvass,
+appears to proceed (as far as that
+goes) from congenial mind, equally
+disdainful of vulgar criticism. He is
+reminded of a remark of Johnson's,
+that Pope's Homer, had it not been
+clothed with graces and elegances not
+in Homer, would have had fewer
+readers, thus justifying by example
+and authority of Johnson, the graces
+of the Venetian school. Some Flemish
+painters at &quot;the great era of our
+art&quot; took to their country &quot;as much
+of this grandeur as they could carry.&quot;
+It did not thrive, but &quot;perhaps they
+contributed to prepare the way for
+that free, unconstrained, and liberal
+outline, which was afterwards introduced
+by Rubens, through the medium
+of the Venetian painters.&quot; The
+grandeur of style first discovered by
+Michael Angelo passed through Europe,
+and totally &quot;changed the whole
+character and style of design. His
+works excite the same sensation as the
+Epic of Homer. The Sybils, the statue
+of Moses, &quot;come nearer to a comparison
+with his Jupiter, his demigods,
+and heroes; those Sybils and
+prophets being a kind of intermediate
+beings between men and angels.
+Though instances may be produced in
+the works of other painters, which may
+justly stand in competition with those
+I have mentioned, such as the 'Isaiah,'
+and 'Vision of Ezekiel,' by Raffaelle,
+the 'St Mark' of Frate Bartolomeo,
+and many others; yet these, it
+must be allowed, are inventions so
+much in Michael Angelo's manner of
+thinking, that they may be truly considered
+as so many rays which discover
+manifestly the centre from whence
+they emanated.&quot; The style of Michael
+Angelo is so highly artificial that the
+mind must be cultivated to receive it;
+having once received it, the mind is improved
+by it, and cannot go very far
+back. Hence the hold this great style
+has had upon all who are most learned
+in art, and upon nearly all painters in
+the best time of art. As art multiplies,
+false tastes will arise, the early painters
+had not so much to unlearn as
+modern artists. Where Michael Angelo
+is not felt, there is a lost taste to
+recover. Sir Joshua recommends
+young artists to follow Michael Angelo
+as he did the ancient sculptors.
+&quot;He began, when a child, a copy of a
+mutilated Satyr's head, and finished in
+his model what was wanting in the original.&quot;
+So would he recommend the student
+to take his figures from Michael
+Angelo, and to change, and alter, and
+add other figures till he has caught the
+manner. Change the purpose, and retain
+the attitude, as did Titian. By
+habit of seeing with this eye of grandeur,
+he will select from nature all
+that corresponds with this taste. Sir
+Joshua is aware that he is laying himself
+open to sarcasm by his advice,
+but asserts the courage becoming a
+teacher addressing students: &quot;they
+both must equally dare, and bid defiance
+to narrow criticism and vulgar
+opinion.&quot; It is the conceited who
+think that art is nothing but inspiration;
+and such appropriate it in their
+own estimation; but it is to be learned,&mdash;if
+so, the right direction to it is of
+vast importance; and once in the right
+direction, labour and study will accomplish
+<a class="pagenum" name="page202" id="page202" title="202"></a>the better aspirations of the
+artist. Michael Angelo said of Raffaelle,
+that he possessed not his art by
+nature but by long study. &quot;Che
+Raffaelle non ebbe quest' arte da natura,
+ma per longo studio.&quot; Raffaelle
+and Michael Angelo were rivals, but
+ever spoke of each other with the respect
+and veneration they felt, and the
+true meaning of the passage was to
+the praise of Raffaelle; those were
+not the days when men were ashamed
+of being laborious,&mdash;and Raffaelle
+himself &quot;thanked God that he was
+born in the same age with that painter.&quot;&mdash;&quot;I
+feel a self-congratulation,&quot;
+adds Sir Joshua, &quot;in knowing myself
+capable of such sensations as he intended
+to excite. I reflect, not without
+vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony
+of my admiration of that truly
+divine man; and I should desire that
+the last words which I should pronounce
+in this Academy, and from this place,
+might be the name of Michael Angelo.&quot;
+They were his last words from the academical
+chair. He died about fourteen
+months after the delivery of this Discourse.
+Mr Burnet has given five
+excellent plates to this Discourse&mdash;one
+from Parmegiano, one from Tibaldi,
+one from Titian, one from Raffaelle,
+and one from Michael Angelo.
+Mr Burnet's first note repeats what
+we have again and again elsewhere
+urged, the advantage of establishing
+at our universities, Oxford and Cambridge,
+Professorships of Painting&mdash;infinite
+would be the advantage to art,
+and to the public. We do not despair.
+Mr Burnet seems to fear incorrect
+drawing will arise from some
+passages, which he supposes encourages
+it, in these Discourses; and fearing
+it, very properly endeavours to
+correct the error in a note. We had
+intended to conclude this paper with
+some few remarks upon Sir Joshua,
+his style, and influence upon art, but
+we have not space. Perhaps we may
+fulfil this part of our intention in
+another number of Maga.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a name="bw328s4" id="bw328s4"></a><h2>THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Grief hath been known to turn the young head grey&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>To silver over in a single day<br /></span>
+<span>The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime<br /></span>
+<span>Scarcely o'erpast: as in the fearful time<br /></span>
+<span>Of Gallia's madness, that discrown&egrave;d head<br /></span>
+<span>Serene, that on the accursed altar bled<br /></span>
+<span>Miscall'd of Liberty. Oh! martyr'd Queen!<br /></span>
+<span>What must the sufferings of that night have been&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><i>That one</i>&mdash;that sprinkled thy fair tresses o'er<br /></span>
+<span>With time's untimely snow! But now no more<br /></span>
+<span>Lovely, august, unhappy one! of thee&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I have to tell an humbler history;<br /></span>
+<span>A village tale, whose only charm, in sooth,<br /></span>
+<span>(If any) will be sad and simple truth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Mother,&quot; quoth Ambrose to his thrifty dame&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So oft our peasant's use his wife to name,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Father&quot; and &quot;Master&quot; to himself applied,<br /></span>
+<span>As life's grave duties matronize the bride&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Mother,&quot; quoth Ambrose, as he faced the north,<br /></span>
+<span>With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth<br /></span>
+<span>To his day labour, from the cottage door&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before,<br /></span>
+<span>There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton<a id="footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12" href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> roar?<br /></span>
+<span>It's brewing up down westward; and look there,<br /></span>
+<span>One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair;<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page203" id="page203" title="203"></a>And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on,<br /></span>
+<span>As threats, the waters will be out anon.<br /></span>
+<span>That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Best let the young ones bide from school to-day.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Do, mother, do!&quot; the quick-ear'd urchins cried;<br /></span>
+<span>Two little lasses to the father's side<br /></span>
+<span>Close clinging, as they look'd from him, to spy<br /></span>
+<span>The answering language of the mother's eye.<br /></span>
+<span><i>There</i> was denial, and she shook her head:<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Nay, nay&mdash;no harm will come to them,&quot; she said,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;The mistress lets them off these short dark days<br /></span>
+<span>An hour the earlier; and our Liz, she says,<br /></span>
+<span>May quite be trusted&mdash;and I know 'tis true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>To take care of herself and Jenny too.<br /></span>
+<span>And so she ought&mdash;she's seven come first of May&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Two years the oldest: and they give away<br /></span>
+<span>The Christmas bounty at the school to-day.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The mother's will was law, (alas for her<br /></span>
+<span>That hapless day, poor soul!) <i>She</i> could not err,<br /></span>
+<span>Thought Ambrose; and his little fair-hair'd Jane<br /></span>
+<span>(Her namesake) to his heart he hugg'd again,<br /></span>
+<span>When each had had her turn; she clinging so<br /></span>
+<span>As if that day she could not let him go.<br /></span>
+<span>But Labour's sons must snatch a hasty bliss<br /></span>
+<span>In nature's tend'rest mood. One last fond kiss,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;God bless my little maids!&quot; the father said,<br /></span>
+<span>And cheerly went his way to win their bread.<br /></span>
+<span>Then might be seen, the playmate parent gone,<br /></span>
+<span>What looks demure the sister pair put on&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Not of the mother as afraid, or shy,<br /></span>
+<span>Or questioning the love that could deny;<br /></span>
+<span>But simply, as their simple training taught,<br /></span>
+<span>In quiet, plain straightforwardness of thought,<br /></span>
+<span>(Submissively resign'd the hope of play,)<br /></span>
+<span>Towards the serious business of the day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>To me there's something touching, I confess,<br /></span>
+<span>In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,<br /></span>
+<span>Seen often in some little childish face<br /></span>
+<span>Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace<br /></span>
+<span>(Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!)<br /></span>
+<span>The unnatural sufferings of the factory child,<br /></span>
+<span>But a staid quietness, reflective, mild,<br /></span>
+<span>Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes,<br /></span>
+<span>Sense of life's cares, without its miseries.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So to the mother's charge, with thoughtful brow,<br /></span>
+<span>The docile Lizzy stood attentive now;<br /></span>
+<span>Proud of her years and of imputed sense,<br /></span>
+<span>And prudence justifying confidence&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And little Jenny, more <i>demurely</i> still,<br /></span>
+<span>Beside her waited the maternal will.<br /></span>
+<span>So standing hand in hand, a lovelier twain<br /></span>
+<span>Gainsb'rough ne'er painted: no&mdash;nor he of Spain,<br /></span>
+<span>Glorious Murillo!&mdash;and by contrast shown<br /></span>
+<span>More beautiful. The younger little one,<br /></span>
+<span>With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair,<br /></span>
+<span>By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair,<br /></span>
+<span>Sable and glossy as the raven's wing,<br /></span>
+<span>And lustrous eyes as dark.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i23'><a class="pagenum" name="page204" id="page204" title="204"></a>&quot;Now, mind and bring<br /></span>
+<span>Jenny safe home,&quot; the mother said&mdash;&quot;don't stay<br /></span>
+<span>To pull a bough or berry by the way:<br /></span>
+<span>And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast<br /></span>
+<span>Your little sister's hand, till you're quite past&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>That plank's so crazy, and so slippery<br /></span>
+<span>(If not o'erflowed) the stepping-stones will be.<br /></span>
+<span>But you're good children&mdash;steady as old folk,<br /></span>
+<span>I'd trust ye any where.&quot; Then Lizzy's cloak,<br /></span>
+<span>A good grey duffle, lovingly she tied,<br /></span>
+<span>And amply little Jenny's lack supplied<br /></span>
+<span>With her own warmest shawl. &quot;Be sure,&quot; said she,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;To wrap it round and knot it carefully<br /></span>
+<span>(Like this) when you come home; just leaving free<br /></span>
+<span>One hand to hold by. Now, make haste away&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Good will to school, and then good right to play.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Was there no sinking at the mother's heart,<br /></span>
+<span>When all equipt, they turn'd them to depart?<br /></span>
+<span>When down the lane, she watch'd them as they went<br /></span>
+<span>Till out of sight, was no forefeeling sent<br /></span>
+<span>Of coming ill? In truth I cannot tell:<br /></span>
+<span>Such warnings <i>have been sent</i>, we know full well,<br /></span>
+<span>And must believe&mdash;believing that they are&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>In mercy then&mdash;to rouse&mdash;restrain&mdash;prepare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And, now I mind me, something of the kind<br /></span>
+<span>Did surely haunt that day the mother's mind,<br /></span>
+<span>Making it irksome to bide all alone<br /></span>
+<span>By her own quiet hearth. Tho' never known<br /></span>
+<span>For idle gossipry was Jenny Gray,<br /></span>
+<span>Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay<br /></span>
+<span>At home with her own thoughts, but took her way<br /></span>
+<span>To her next neighbour's, half a loaf to borrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Yet might her store have lasted out the morrow.<br /></span>
+<span>&mdash;And with the loan obtain'd, she linger'd still&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Said she&mdash;&quot;My master, if he'd had his will,<br /></span>
+<span>Would have kept back our little ones from school<br /></span>
+<span>This dreadful morning; and I'm such a fool,<br /></span>
+<span>Since they've been gone, I've wish'd them back. But then<br /></span>
+<span>It won't do in such things to humour men&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Our Ambrose specially. If let alone<br /></span>
+<span>He'd spoil those wenches. But it's coming on,<br /></span>
+<span>That storm he said was brewing, sure enough&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Well! what of that?&mdash;To think what idle stuff<br /></span>
+<span>Will come into one's head! and here with you<br /></span>
+<span>I stop, as if I'd nothing else to do&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And they'll come home drown'd rats. I must be gone<br /></span>
+<span>To get dry things, and set the kettle on.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>His day's work done, three mortal miles and more<br /></span>
+<span>Lay between Ambrose and his cottage door.<br /></span>
+<span>A weary way, God wot! for weary wight!<br /></span>
+<span>But yet far off, the curling smoke in sight<br /></span>
+<span>From his own chimney, and his heart felt light.<br /></span>
+<span>How pleasantly the humble homestead stood,<br /></span>
+<span>Down the green lane by sheltering Shirley Wood!<br /></span>
+<span>How sweet the wafting of the evening breeze<br /></span>
+<span>In spring-time, from his two old cherry-trees<br /></span>
+<span>Sheeted with blossom! And in hot July<br /></span>
+<span>From the brown moor-track, shadowless and dry,<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page205" id="page205" title="205"></a>How grateful the cool covert to regain<br /></span>
+<span>Of his own <i>avenue</i>&mdash;that shady lane,<br /></span>
+<span>With the white cottage, in a slanting glow<br /></span>
+<span>Of sunset glory, gleaming bright below,<br /></span>
+<span>And jasmine porch, his rustic portico!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>With what a thankful gladness in his face,<br /></span>
+<span>(Silent heart-homage&mdash;plant of special grace!)<br /></span>
+<span>At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace,<br /></span>
+<span>Would Ambrose send a loving look before;<br /></span>
+<span>Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door,<br /></span>
+<span>The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat<br /></span>
+<span>In welcome, with a more rejoicing note;<br /></span>
+<span>And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed,<br /></span>
+<span>All bristle, back, and tail, but &quot;good at need,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear;<br /></span>
+<span>But of all welcomes pleasantest, most dear,<br /></span>
+<span>The ringing voices, like sweet silver bells,<br /></span>
+<span>Of his two little ones. How fondly swells<br /></span>
+<span>The father's heart, as, dancing up the lane,<br /></span>
+<span>Each clasps a hand in her small hand again;<br /></span>
+<span>And each must tell her tale, and &quot;say her say,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Impeding as she leads, with sweet delay,<br /></span>
+<span>(Childhood's blest thoughtlessness!) his onward way.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And when the winter day closed in so fast,<br /></span>
+<span>Scarce for his task would dreary daylight last;<br /></span>
+<span>And in all weathers&mdash;driving sleet and snow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Home by that bare, bleak moor-track must he go,<br /></span>
+<span>Darkling and lonely. Oh! the blessed sight<br /></span>
+<span>(His pole-star) of that little twinkling light<br /></span>
+<span>From one small window, thro' the leafless trees,<br /></span>
+<span>Glimmering so fitfully; no eye but his<br /></span>
+<span>Had spied it so far off. And sure was he,<br /></span>
+<span>Entering the lane, a steadier beam to see,<br /></span>
+<span>Ruddy and broad as peat-fed hearth could pour,<br /></span>
+<span>Streaming to meet him from the open door.<br /></span>
+<span>Then, tho' the blackbird's welcome was unheard&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Silenced by winter&mdash;note of summer bird<br /></span>
+<span>Still hail'd him from no mortal fowl alive,<br /></span>
+<span>But from the cuckoo-clock just striking five&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Tinker's ear and Tinker's nose were keen&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Off started he, and then a form was seen<br /></span>
+<span>Dark'ning the doorway; and a smaller sprite,<br /></span>
+<span>And then another, peer'd into the night,<br /></span>
+<span>Ready to follow free on Tinker's track,<br /></span>
+<span>But for the mother's hand that held her back;<br /></span>
+<span>And yet a moment&mdash;a few steps&mdash;and there,<br /></span>
+<span>Pull'd o'er the threshold by that eager pair,<br /></span>
+<span>He sits by his own hearth, in his own chair;<br /></span>
+<span>Tinker takes post beside, with eyes that say,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Master! we've done our business for the day.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>The kettle sings, the cat in chorus purs,<br /></span>
+<span>The busy housewife with her tea-things stirs;<br /></span>
+<span>The door's made fast, the old stuff curtain drawn;<br /></span>
+<span>How the hail clatters! Let it clatter on.<br /></span>
+<span>How the wind raves and rattles! What cares he?<br /></span>
+<span>Safe housed, and warm beneath his own roof-tree,<br /></span>
+<span>With a wee lassie prattling on each knee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Such was the hour&mdash;hour sacred and apart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Warm'd in expectancy the poor man's heart.<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page206" id="page206" title="206"></a>Summer and winter, as his toil he plied,<br /></span>
+<span>To him and his the literal doom applied,<br /></span>
+<span>Pronounced on Adam. But the bread was sweet<br /></span>
+<span>So earn'd, for such dear mouths. The weary feet<br /></span>
+<span>Hope-shod, stept lightly on the homeward way;<br /></span>
+<span>So specially it fared with Ambrose Gray<br /></span>
+<span>That time I tell of. He had work'd all day<br /></span>
+<span>At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke<br /></span>
+<span>Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke,<br /></span>
+<span>And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that?<br /></span>
+<span>There was a treasure hidden in his hat&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A plaything for the young ones. He had found<br /></span>
+<span>A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round<br /></span>
+<span>For its long winter sleep; and all his thought<br /></span>
+<span>As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought<br /></span>
+<span>But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,<br /></span>
+<span>And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize,<br /></span>
+<span>When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer,<br /></span>
+<span>Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>'Twas a wild evening&mdash;wild and rough. &quot;I knew,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Thought Ambrose, &quot;those unlucky gulls spoke true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Gaffer Chewton never growls for nought&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I should be mortal 'mazed now, if I thought<br /></span>
+<span>My little maids were not safe housed before<br /></span>
+<span>That blinding hail-storm&mdash;ay, this hour and more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Unless, by that old crazy bit of board,<br /></span>
+<span>They've not passed dry-foot over Shallow-ford,<br /></span>
+<span>That I'll be bound for&mdash;swollen as it must be ...<br /></span>
+<span>Well! if my mistress had been ruled by me ...&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>But, checking the half-thought as heresy,<br /></span>
+<span>He look'd out for the Home-Star. There it shone,<br /></span>
+<span>And with a gladden'd heart he hasten'd on.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>He's in the lane again&mdash;and there below,<br /></span>
+<span>Streams from the open doorway that red glow,<br /></span>
+<span>Which warms him but to look at. For his prize<br /></span>
+<span>Cautious he feels&mdash;all safe and snug it lies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Down Tinker!&mdash;down, old boy!&mdash;not quite so free&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The thing thou sniffest is no game for thee.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But what's the meaning?&mdash;no look-out to-night!<br /></span>
+<span>No living soul a-stir!&mdash;Pray God, all's right!<br /></span>
+<span>Who's flittering round the peat-stack in such weather?<br /></span>
+<span>Mother!&quot; you might have fell'd him with a feather<br /></span>
+<span>When the short answer to his loud&mdash;&quot;Hillo!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>And hurried question&mdash;&quot;Are they come?&quot;&mdash;was&mdash;&quot;No.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>To throw his tools down&mdash;hastily unhook<br /></span>
+<span>The old crack'd lantern from its dusty nook,<br /></span>
+<span>And while he lit it, speak a cheering word,<br /></span>
+<span>That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,<br /></span>
+<span>Was but a moment's act, and he was gone<br /></span>
+<span>To where a fearful foresight led him on.<br /></span>
+<span>Passing a neighbour's cottage in his way&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mark Fenton's&mdash;him he took with short delay<br /></span>
+<span>To bear him company&mdash;for who could say<br /></span>
+<span>What need might be? They struck into the track<br /></span>
+<span>The children should have taken coming back<br /></span>
+<span>From school that day; and many a call and shout<br /></span>
+<span>Into the pitchy darkness they sent out,<br /></span>
+<span>And, by the lantern light, peer'd all about,<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page207" id="page207" title="207"></a>In every road-side thicket, hole, and nook,<br /></span>
+<span>Till suddenly&mdash;as nearing now the brook&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Something brush'd past them. That was Tinker's bark&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Unheeded, he had follow'd in the dark,<br /></span>
+<span>Close at his master's heels, but, swift as light,<br /></span>
+<span>Darted before them now. &quot;Be sure he's right&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>He's on the track,&quot; cried Ambrose. &quot;Hold the light<br /></span>
+<span>Low down&mdash;he's making for the water. Hark!<br /></span>
+<span>I know that whine&mdash;the old dog's found them, Mark.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on<br /></span>
+<span>Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!<br /></span>
+<span>And all his dull contracted light could show<br /></span>
+<span>Was the black void and dark swollen stream below.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Yet there's life somewhere&mdash;more than Tinker's whine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>That's sure,&quot; said Mark. &quot;So, let the lantern shine<br /></span>
+<span>Down yonder. There's the dog&mdash;and, hark!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i24'>&quot;Oh dear!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>And a low sob came faintly on the ear,<br /></span>
+<span>Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,<br /></span>
+<span>Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught<br /></span>
+<span>Fast hold of something&mdash;a dark huddled heap&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep,<br /></span>
+<span>For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd<br /></span>
+<span>By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt<br /></span>
+<span>Endways the broken plank, when it gave way<br /></span>
+<span>With the two little ones that luckless day!<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;My babes!&mdash;my lambkins!&quot; was the father's cry.<br /></span>
+<span><i>One little voice</i> made answer&mdash;&quot;Here am I!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouch'd, with face as white,<br /></span>
+<span>More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light,<br /></span>
+<span>Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips, drawn tight,<br /></span>
+<span>Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,<br /></span>
+<span>And eyes on some dark object underneath,<br /></span>
+<span>Wash'd by the turbid water, fix'd like stone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>One arm and hand stretch'd out, and rigid grown,<br /></span>
+<span>Grasping, as in the death-gripe&mdash;Jenny's frock.<br /></span>
+<span>There she lay drown'd. Could he sustain that shock,<br /></span>
+<span>The doating father? Where's the unriven rock<br /></span>
+<span>Can bide such blasting in its flintiest part<br /></span>
+<span>As that soft sentient thing&mdash;the human heart?<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>They lifted her from out her wat'ry bed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Its covering gone, the lonely little head<br /></span>
+<span>Hung like a broken snowdrop all aside&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied,<br /></span>
+<span>Leaving <i>that</i> free, about the child's small form,<br /></span>
+<span>As was her last injunction&mdash;&quot;<i>fast</i> and warm&quot;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Too well obeyed&mdash;too fast! A fatal hold<br /></span>
+<span>Affording to the scrag by a thick fold<br /></span>
+<span>That caught and pinn'd her in the river's bed,<br /></span>
+<span>While through the reckless water overhead<br /></span>
+<span>Her life-breath bubbled up.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i24'>&quot;She might have lived<br /></span>
+<span>Struggling like Lizzy,&quot; was the thought that rived<br /></span>
+<span>The wretched mother's heart when she knew all.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;But for my foolishness about that shawl&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Master would have kept them back the day;<br /></span>
+<span>But I was wilful&mdash;driving them away<br /></span>
+<span>In such wild weather!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i19'>Thus the tortured heart,<br /></span>
+<span>Unnaturally against itself takes part,<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page208" id="page208" title="208"></a>Driving the sharp edge deeper of a woe<br /></span>
+<span>Too deep already. They had raised her now,<br /></span>
+<span>And parting the wet ringlets from her brow,<br /></span>
+<span>To that, and the cold cheek, and lips as cold,<br /></span>
+<span>The father glued his warm ones, ere they roll'd<br /></span>
+<span>Once more the fatal shawl&mdash;her winding-sheet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>About the precious clay. One heart still beat,<br /></span>
+<span>Warm'd by <i>his heart's</i> blood. To his <i>only child</i><br /></span>
+<span>He turn'd him, but her piteous moaning mild<br /></span>
+<span>Pierced him afresh&mdash;and now she knew him not.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Mother!&quot;&mdash;she murmur'd&mdash;&quot;who says I forgot?<br /></span>
+<span>Mother! indeed, indeed, I kept fast hold,<br /></span>
+<span>And tied the shawl quite close&mdash;she can't be cold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But she won't move&mdash;we slipt&mdash;I don't know how&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But I held on&mdash;and I'm so weary now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And it's so dark and cold! oh dear! oh dear!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And she won't move&mdash;if daddy was but here!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' /><br />
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Poor lamb&mdash;she wander'd in her mind, 'twas clear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But soon the piteous murmur died away,<br /></span>
+<span>And quiet in her father's arms she lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>They their dead burthen had resign'd, to take<br /></span>
+<span>The living so near lost. For her dear sake,<br /></span>
+<span>And one at home, he arm'd himself to bear<br /></span>
+<span>His misery like a man&mdash;with tender care,<br /></span>
+<span>Doffing his coat her shivering form to fold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>(His neighbour bearing <i>that</i> which felt no cold,)<br /></span>
+<span>He clasp'd her close&mdash;and so, with little said,<br /></span>
+<span>Homeward they bore the living and the dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>From Ambrose Gray's poor cottage, all that night,<br /></span>
+<span>Shone fitfully a little shifting light,<br /></span>
+<span>Above&mdash;below:&mdash;for all were watchers there,<br /></span>
+<span>Save one sound sleeper.&mdash;<i>Her</i>, parental care,<br /></span>
+<span>Parental watchfulness, avail'd not now.<br /></span>
+<span>But in the young survivor's throbbing brow,<br /></span>
+<span>And wandering eyes, delirious fever burn'd;<br /></span>
+<span>And all night long from side to side she turn'd,<br /></span>
+<span>Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,<br /></span>
+<span>With now and then the murmur&mdash;&quot;She won't move&quot;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright<br /></span>
+<span>Shone on that pillow, passing strange the sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>That young head's raven hair was streak'd with white!<br /></span>
+<span>No idle fiction this. Such things have been<br /></span>
+<span>We know. And <i>now I tell what I have seen</i>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Life struggled long with death in that small frame,<br /></span>
+<span>But it was strong, and conquer'd. All became<br /></span>
+<span>As it had been with the poor family&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>All&mdash;saving that which never more might be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>There was an empty place&mdash;they were but three.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>C.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page209" id="page209" title="209"></a>
+<a name="bw328s5" id="bw328s5"></a><h2>IMAGINARY CONVERSATION.</h2>
+<h3>BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</h3>
+
+<h3>OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak, lad?
+Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth, it must
+be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no issue at such
+capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face again. Prythee what,
+in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair Master Oliver?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love and
+duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a sort, unto
+my zeal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em. I
+have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his
+devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do suspect,
+Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and nobody will promise
+or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did. So! because
+a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as their representative
+in Parliament, thou art free of all men's houses, forsooth! I would have thee
+to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter for the house they have chaired
+thee unto than for mine. Yet I do not question but thou wilt be as troublesome
+and unruly there as here. Did I not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook
+when thou wert scarcely half the rogue thou art latterly grown up to? And
+yet wert thou immeasurably too big a one for it to hold.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth the
+Lord had not touched me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill conditions,
+and that my name&mdash;even your godson's&mdash;stank in your nostrils.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough, that
+stank first; in my house, at least.<a id="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13" href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> But perhaps there are worse maggots in
+stauncher mummeries.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my urgency.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within it
+another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why thou shouldst stand
+before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting the
+stones of the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head, I warrant
+thee. Come, put on thy beaver.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered in
+the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered at
+baptism for my good behaviour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so presumptuously
+and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to do such an
+absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-hand business in the
+neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more have come under my
+archway.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay in
+the hand of the potter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in their
+own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the wheel of
+these artificers; and little was left but rags when we got off. Sanctified folks
+are the cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and their Jordan tans and constringes
+us to the averdupoise of mummies.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page210" id="page210" title="210"></a><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;The Lord hath chosen his own vessels.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them anywhere
+on ass-back or cart, (cart preferably,) to rid our country of 'em. But
+now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we shall hobble on
+but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command in the army, and hast
+a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and stately piece of horse-flesh, I cannot
+but take it into my fancy that thou hast some commission of array or disarray
+to execute hereabout.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of swounding,
+and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put back nor staid in anywise,
+as you bear testimony unto me, uncle Oliver.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Thou never art more
+pery than when it rains with thee. Wet days, among those of thy kidney,
+portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this work!</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;What work, prythee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in his loving-kindness
+having pity and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand, administer
+unto our necessities and righteously command us, <i>by the aforesaid as
+aforesaid</i> (thus runs the commission) hither am I deputed (woe is me!) to
+levy certain fines in this county, or shire, on such as the Parliament in its wisdom
+doth style malignants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;If there is anything left about the house, never be over nice:
+dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county or shire, we let
+go the civet-bag to save the weazon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be witness
+than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose his servants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Then, faith! thou art his first butler.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found worthy
+of advancement.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy own:
+he does not sniffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or unworthy
+of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for an hour's rest.
+Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest heart afloat, let it be
+sticking in what mud-bank it might: and my wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty
+near as commodious as that over-yonder at Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times
+are changed, and places too! yet the cellar holds good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the other
+side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they are.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I trust,
+for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of tradespeople. But of
+course you leave no person of higher quality in the outer court.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the most
+abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the sun: I would
+not forbid them this indulgence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;But who are they?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;The Lord knows. May-be priests, deacons, and such like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my mansion-house, is
+far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your behaviour in keeping them
+so long at my stable-door. With your permission, or without it, I shall take
+the liberty to invite them to partake of my poor hospitality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances whereby it
+must be manifested that they lie under displeasure&mdash;not mine&mdash;not mine&mdash;but
+my milk must not flow for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;You may enter the house or remain where you are at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+<a class="pagenum" name="page211" id="page211" title="211"></a>of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,<a id="footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14" href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> Oliver! (but God will not surely
+let this be,) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of doubtful fidelity in
+the service of the body.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been taking
+a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in asking your
+worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the <i>men-at-belly</i> under the
+custody of the <i>men-at-arms</i>? This pestilence, like unto one I remember to
+have read about in some poetry of Master Chapman's,<a id="footnotetag15" name="footnotetag15" href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> began with the dogs
+and the mules, and afterwards crope up into the breasts of men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not let
+the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting down to
+dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their colleges,
+these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or his Saints; no, not even stirrup
+or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth against those
+who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they raise not up their
+voices to cry for our deliverance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in college
+halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought hither?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge and
+deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which, unless it
+be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but simply to undertake
+awhile the heavier office of burser for them, to cast up their accounts; to overlook
+the scouring of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens,
+before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abasement
+of the proud and the chastisement of worldlymindedness, may rejoice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings.
+But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty and
+jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity.
+Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who lighted the
+faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering and cocksy, were
+less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but they were not all
+hypocritical; they had not always &quot;<i>the Lord</i>&quot; in their mouths.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;According to their own notions, they might have had at an outlay
+of a farthing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out as any thing
+else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little the grimmer and sourer.</p>
+
+<p>But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I hold it
+unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and so lead them
+away from their peaceful and useful occupations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;I alway bow submissively before the judgment of mine elders;
+and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with greater
+wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas! those collegians
+not only are strong men, as you may readily see if you measure them round the
+waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious challengers. When we, who live
+in the fear of God, exhorted them earnestly unto peace and brotherly love,
+they held us in derision. Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page212" id="page212" title="212"></a>teaching us forbearance and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the
+evil spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most
+wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been so. Why
+then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins against the children of
+Israel? By their own declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies
+the most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully, and
+in the name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering
+it like honest and conscientious men, they attacked me and my people
+on horseback, with syllogisms and centhymemes, and the Lord knows with
+what other such gimcracks, such venemous and rankling old weapons as
+those who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning
+should not make folks mockers&mdash;should not make folks malignants&mdash;should
+not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galloon. Tankards and wassil-bowls had
+stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;How can these learned societies raise the money you exact
+from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that college
+named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed Trinity, there
+are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors or chemists not
+only do possess the faculty of making the precious metals out of old books and
+parchments, but out of the skulls of young lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily
+promise less. And this they bring about by certain gold wires fastened at
+the top of certain caps. Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they
+make a vain and sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting
+their lips with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Well&mdash;at last thou hast some mercy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i> (<i>aloud</i>.)&mdash;Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclan! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up behind you
+and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you at the country-places
+look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable that ye should
+leave unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office of discharging the
+account. If there be any spare beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons
+to occupy the same&mdash;they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that
+more than three lie in each&mdash;they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly
+and unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they
+have not alway been accustomed to the service of guards and ushers. The
+Lord be with ye!&mdash;Slow trot! And now, uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no
+longer your loving-kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's
+duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of your invitation to dine
+and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. After
+the refreshment of needful food, more needful prayer, and that sleep which
+descendeth on the innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak
+I proceed on my journey Londonward.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i> (<i>aloud</i>.)&mdash;Ho, there! (<i>To a servant</i>.)&mdash;Let dinner be prepared
+in the great diningroom; let every servant be in waiting, each in full
+livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed upon the table in due
+courses; arrange all the plate upon the side-board: a gentleman by descent&mdash;a
+stranger, has claimed my hospitality. (<i>Servant goes</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page213" id="page213" title="213"></a>
+<a name="bw328s6" id="bw328s6"></a><h2>CALEB STUKELY.</h2>
+
+<h3>PART XI.</h3>
+
+<h3>SAINTS AND SINNERS.</h3>
+
+<p>The history of my youth is the history
+of my life. My contemporaries
+were setting out on their journey
+when my pilgrimage was at an end.
+I had drained the cup of experience
+before other men had placed it to
+their lips. The vicissitudes of all seasons
+occurred in one, and, before my
+spring had closed, I had felt the
+winter's gloominess and cold. The
+scattered and separated experiences
+that diversify and mark the passage of
+the &quot;threescore years and ten,&quot;
+were collected and thrust into the narrow
+period of my nonage. Within
+that boundary, existence was condensed.
+It was the time of action and of
+suffering. I have passed from youth
+to maturity and decline gently and
+passively; and now, in the cool and
+quiet sunset, I repose, connected with
+the past only by the adhering memories
+that will not be excluded from
+my solitude. I have gathered upon
+my head the enduring snow of age;
+but it has settled there in its natural
+course, with no accompaniment of
+storm and tempest. I look back to
+the land over which I have journeyed,
+and through which I have been conveyed
+to my present humble resting-place,
+and I behold a broad extent of
+plain, spreading from my very feet,
+into the hazy distance, where all is
+cloud, mountain, tumult, and agitation.
+Heaven be praised, I can look
+back with gratitude, chastened and
+informed!</p>
+
+<p>Amongst all the startling and stirring
+events that crowded into the small
+division of time to which I refer, none
+had so confounded, perplexed, alarmed,
+and grieved me, as the discovery
+of Mr Clayton's criminality and falsehood.
+There are mental and moral
+concussions, which, like physical
+shocks, stun and stupify with their
+suddenness and violence. This was
+one of them. Months after I had been
+satisfied of his obliquity, it was difficult
+to <i>realize</i> the conviction that
+truth and justice authoritatively demanded.
+When I thought of the
+minister&mdash;when his form presented
+itself to my mind's eye, as it did, day
+after day, and hour after hour, it was
+impossible to contemplate it with the
+aversion and distaste which were the
+natural productions of his own base
+conduct. I could see nothing but the
+figure and the lineaments of him,
+whose eloquence had charmed, whose
+benevolent hand had nourished and
+maintained me. There are likewise,
+in this mysterious state of life, paroxysms
+and intervals of disordered
+consciousness, which memory refuses
+to acknowledge or record; the epileptic's
+waking dream is one&mdash;an unreal
+reality. And similar to this was my
+impression of the late events. They
+lacked substantiality. Memory took
+no account of them, discarded them,
+and would connect the present only
+with the bright experience she had
+treasured up, prior to the dark
+distempered season. I could not hate
+my benefactor. I could not efface
+the image, which months of apparent
+love had engraven on my heart.</p>
+
+<p>Thrust from Mr Clayton's chapel,
+and unable to obtain admission elsewhere,
+I felt how insecure was my
+tenure of office. I prepared myself
+for dismissal, and hoped that, when
+the hour arrived, I should submit
+without repining. In the meanwhile,
+I was careful in the performance of
+every duty, and studious to give no
+cause, not the remotest, for complaint
+or dissatisfaction. It was not long,
+however, before signs of an altered
+state of things presented themselves
+to view. A straw tells which way
+the wind blows, and wisps began to
+fly in all directions. I found at length
+that I could do nothing right. To-day
+I was too indolent; to-morrow,
+too officious:&mdash;now I was too much of
+a gentlemen; and now not half gentlemanly
+enough. The hardest infliction
+to bear was the treatment of
+my new friend and colleague&mdash;of him
+who had given me kind warning and
+advice, when mischief was only threatening,
+but who, on the first appearance
+of trouble, took alarm, and deserted
+my side. The moment that he
+perceived my inevitable fate, he decided
+upon leaving me alone to fight
+my hard battle. At first he spoke to
+me with shyness and reserve; afterwards
+coolly, and soon, he said nothing
+at all. Sometimes, perhaps, if
+<a class="pagenum" name="page214" id="page214" title="214"></a>we were quite alone, and there was
+no chance whatever of discovery, he
+would venture half a word or so upon
+the convenient subject of the weather;
+but these occasions were very rare.
+If a superior were present, hurricanes
+would not draw a syllable from his
+careful lips; and, under the eye of
+the stout and influential Mr Bombasty,
+it was well for me if frowns and
+sneers were the only exhibitions of
+rudeness on the part of my worldly
+and far-seeing friend. Ah, Jacob
+Whining! With all your policy and
+sagacious selfishness, you found it difficult
+to protract your own official
+existence a few months longer. He
+had hardly congratulated himself upon
+the dexterity which had kept him
+from being involved in my misfortunes,
+before <i>he</i> fell under the ban of
+<i>his</i> church, like me was persecuted,
+and driven into the world a branded
+and excommunicated outcast. Mr
+Whining, however, who had learnt
+much in the world, and more in his
+<i>connexion</i>, was a cleverer and more
+fortunate man than this friend and
+coadjutor. He retired with his experience
+into Yorkshire, drew a small
+brotherhood about him, and in a short
+time became the revered and beloved
+founder of the numerous and far-spread
+sect of <i>Whiningtonians</i>!</p>
+
+<p>It was just a fortnight after my expulsion
+from the <i>Church</i>, that matters
+were brought to a crisis as far as I
+was concerned, by the determined
+tone and conduct of the gentleman at
+the head of our society. Mr Bombasty
+arrived one morning at the
+office, in a perturbed and anxious
+state, and requested my attendance in
+his private room. I waited upon him.
+Perspiration hung about his fleshy
+face&mdash;he wiped it off, and then began:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young man,&quot; said he, &quot;this
+won't do at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, sir?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, don't be impudent. You
+are done for, I can tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How, sir?&quot; I enquired. &quot;What
+have I done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are the subscriptions that
+were due last Saturday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not yet collected, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What money have you belonging
+to the society?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a sixpence, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young man,&quot; continued the lusty
+president in a solemn voice, &quot;you are
+in a woeful state; you are living in
+the world without <i>a security</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matter!&quot; echoed the gentleman.&mdash;&quot;Matter
+with a man that has lost
+his security! Are you positive you
+have got no funds about you? Just
+look into your pocket, my friend, and
+make sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have nothing, sir. Pray, tell
+me what I have done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young man, holding the office
+that I hold, feeling as I feel, and
+knowing what I know, it would be
+perfect madness in me to have any
+thing to do with a man who has been
+given over by his security. Don't
+you understand me? Isn't that very
+good English? Mr Clayton will have
+nothing more to say to you. The society
+gives you warning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I not be informed, sir, why
+I am so summarily dismissed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, my good fellow, what is
+the matter with you? You seem remarkably
+stupid this morning. I can't
+beat about the bush with you. You
+must go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without having committed a
+fault?&quot; I added, mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said the distinguished president,
+looking libraries at me, &quot;when
+one mortal has become security for
+another mortal, and suddenly annuls
+and stultifies his bond, to say that the
+other mortal has committed a <i>fault</i> is
+just to call brandy&mdash;<i>water</i>. Sir,&quot; continued
+Mr Bombasty, adjusting his
+India cravat, &quot;that man has perpetrated
+a crime&mdash;a crime <i>primy facey&mdash;exy
+fishio</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw that my time was come, and
+I said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If,&quot; said Mr Bombasty, &quot;you had
+lost your intellect, I am a voluntary
+contributor, and could have got you
+chains and a keeper in Bedlam. If
+you had broken a limb, I am a life-governor,
+and it would have been a
+pleasure to me to send you to the
+hospital. But you may as well ask
+me to put life into a dead man, as to
+be of service to a creature who has
+lost his security. You had better die
+at once. It would be a happy release.
+I speak as a friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, sir,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hear complaints against you,
+but I don't listen to them. Every
+thing is swallowed up in one remarkable
+fact. Your security has let you
+down. You must go about your business.
+I speak as the president of this
+Christian society, and not, I hope,
+without the feelings of a man. The
+<a class="pagenum" name="page215" id="page215" title="215"></a>treasurer will pay your salary immediately,
+and we dispense with your
+services.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What am I to do?&quot; I asked, half
+aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just the best you can,&quot; answered
+the gentleman. &quot;The audience is at
+an end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Bombasty said no more, but
+drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box
+of enormous dimensions. From it he
+grasped between his thumb and finger
+a moderate handful of stable-smelling
+dust. His nose and India handkerchief
+partook of it in equal shares, and
+then he rang his bell with presidential
+dignity, and ordered up his customary
+lunch of chops and porter. A few
+hours afterwards I was again upon
+the world, ready to begin the fight
+of life anew, and armed with fifteen
+guineas for the coming struggle. Mr
+Clayton had kept his word with me,
+and did not desert me until I was once
+more fairly on the road to ruin.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first consequences of my
+unlooked-for meeting with the faithful
+Thompson, was the repayment of the
+five shillings which he had so generously
+spared me when I was about to
+leave him for Birmingham, without as
+many pence in my scrip. During my
+absence, however, fortune had placed
+my honest friend in a new relation
+to a sum of this value. Five shillings
+were not to him, as before, sixty
+pence. The proprietor of the house
+in which he lived, and which he had
+found it so difficult to let out to his
+satisfaction, had died suddenly, and
+had thought proper to bequeath to
+his tenant the bulk of his property,
+amounting, perhaps, to five thousand
+pounds. Thompson, who was an upholsterer
+by trade, left the workshop in
+which he was employed as journeyman
+immediately, and began to work upon
+his own account. He was a prosperous
+and a thriving man when I rejoined
+him. His manner was, as the
+reader has seen, kind and straightforward
+as ever, and the only change
+that his wealth had wrought in him,
+was that which gold may be supposed
+to work a heart alive to its duties,
+simple and honest in its intentions,
+and lacking only the means to make
+known its strong desire of usefulness.
+His generosity had kept pace with his
+success, his good wishes outstripped
+both. His home was finer, yet scarcely
+more sightly and happier than the
+one large room, which, with its complement
+of ten children, sire and
+dame, had still a nook for the needy
+and friendless stranger. The old house
+had been made over for a twelvemonth
+to the various tenants, free of all charge.
+At the end of that period it was the
+intention of Thompson to pull it down,
+and build a better in its place. A
+young widow, with her three orphans,
+lodged on the attic floor, and the
+grateful prayers of the four went far
+to establish the buoyancy of the landlord's
+spirit, and to maintain the smile
+that seldom departed from his manly
+cheek. Well might the poor creature,
+whom I once visited in her happy
+lodging, talk of the sin of destroying
+so comfortable a residence, and feel
+assured, that &quot;let them build a palace,
+they would never equal the present
+house, or make a sleeping-room
+where a body might rest so peacefully
+and well.&quot; Thompson's mode of life
+had scarcely varied. He was not idle
+amongst his men. When labour was
+suspended, he was with his children;
+another had been added to the number,
+and there were now eleven to
+relieve him of the superabundant profits
+created in the manufactory. Mrs
+Thompson was still a noble housewife,
+worthy of her husband. All was care,
+cleanliness, and economy at home.
+Griping stint would never have been
+tolerated by the hospitable master,
+and virtuous plenty only was admitted
+by the prudent wife. Had there been
+a oneness in the religious views of
+this good couple, <i>Paradise</i> would have
+been a word fit to write beneath the
+board that made known to men John
+Thompson's occupation; but this,
+alas! was wanting to complete a scene
+that otherwise looked rather like perfection.
+The great enemy of man
+seeks in many ways to defeat the
+benevolent aims of Providence. Thompson
+had remained at home one Sunday
+afternoon to smoke a friendly pipe
+with an old acquaintance, when he
+should have gone to church. His wife
+set out alone. Satan took advantage
+of her husband's absence, drew her to
+chapel, and made her&mdash;a <i>dissenter</i>.
+This was Thompson's statement of
+the case, and severer punishment, he
+insisted, had never been inflicted on a
+man for Sabbath-breaking.</p>
+
+<p>When I was dismissed by Mr Bombasty,
+it was a natural step to walk
+towards the abode of the upholsterer.
+I knew his hour for supper, and his
+long hour after that for ale, and pipe,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page216" id="page216" title="216"></a>and recreation. I was not in doubt
+as to my welcome. Mrs Thompson
+had given me a general invitation to
+supper, &quot;because,&quot; she said, &quot;it did
+Thompson good to chat after a hard
+day's work;&quot; and the respected
+Thompson himself had especially invited
+me to the long hour afterwards,
+&quot;because,&quot; he added, &quot;it did the ale
+and 'baccy good, who liked it so much
+better to go out of this here wicked
+world in company.&quot; About seven
+o'clock in the evening I found myself
+under their hospitable roof, seated in
+the room devoted to the general purposes
+of the house. It was large, and
+comfortably furnished. The walls
+were of wainscot, painted white, and
+were graced with two paintings. One,
+a family group, consisting of Thompson,
+wife, and eight children, most
+wretchedly executed, was the production
+of a slowly rising artist, a former
+lodger of my friend's, who had contrived
+to compound with his easy
+landlord for two years and three quarters'
+rent, with this striking display of
+his ability. Thompson was prouder
+of this picture than of the originals
+themselves, if that were possible. The
+design had been his own, and had cost
+him, as he was ready and even anxious
+to acknowledge, more time and trouble
+than he had ever given before, or
+meant to give again, to any luxury in
+life. The artist, as I was informed,
+had endeavoured to reduce to form
+some fifty different schemes that had
+arisen in poor Thompson's brain, but
+had failed in every one, so difficult he
+found it to introduce the thousand and
+one effects that the landlord deemed
+essential to the subject. His first idea
+had been to bring upon the canvass
+every feature of his life from boyhood
+upwards. This being impracticable,
+he wished to bargain for at least the
+workshop and the private residence.
+The lodgers, he thought, might come
+into the background well, and the tools,
+peeping from a basket in the corner,
+would look so much like life and nature.
+The upshot of his plans was the
+existing work of art, which Thompson
+considered matchless, and pronounced
+&quot;dirt cheap, if he had even given the
+fellow a seven years' lease of the
+entire premises.&quot; The situations were
+striking certainly. In the centre
+of the picture were two high chairs,
+on which were seated, as grave as
+judges, the heads of the establishment.
+They sat there, drawn to their full
+height, too dignified to look at one
+another, and yet displaying a fond
+attachment, by a joining of the hands.
+The youngest child had clambered to
+the father's knee, and, with a chisel,
+was digging at his nose, wonderful to
+say, without disturbing the stoic equanimity
+that had settled on the father's
+face. This was the favourite son.
+Another, with a plane larger than
+himself, was menacing the mother's
+knee. The remaining six had each
+a tool, and served in various ways
+to effect most artfully the beloved
+purpose of the vain upholsterer's
+heart&mdash;viz. the introduction of the
+entire workshop. The second painting
+in the centre of the opposite wall,
+represented Mr Clayton. The likeness
+was a failure, and the colours
+were coarse and glaring; but there
+needed no instruction to know that the
+carefully framed production attempted
+to portray the unenviable man,
+who, in spite of his immorality and
+shameless life, was still revered and
+idolized by the blind disciples who
+had taken him for their guide. This
+portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar
+property. There were no other articles
+of <i>virtu</i> in the spacious apartment;
+but cleanliness and decorum
+bestowed upon it a grace, the absence
+of which no idle decoration could supply.
+Early as the hour was, a saucepan
+was on the fire, whose bubbling
+water was busy with the supper that
+at half-past eight must meet the assault
+of many knives and forks. John
+Thompson and two sons&mdash;the eldest&mdash;were
+working in the shop. They had
+been there with little intermission
+since six that morning. The honest
+man was fond of work; so was he of
+his children&mdash;yes, dearly fond of <i>them</i>,
+and they must share with him the
+evening meal; and he must have them
+all about him; and he must help them
+all, and see them eat, and look with
+manly joy and pride upon the noisy
+youngsters, for whom his lusty arm
+had earned the bread that came like
+manna to him&mdash;so wholesome and so
+sweet! Three girls, humbly but neatly
+dressed, the three first steps of this
+great human ladder, were seated at a
+table administering to the necessities
+of sundry shirts and stockings that
+had suffered sensibly in their last week's
+struggle through the world. <i>They</i>
+were indeed a picture worth the looking
+at. You grew a better man in
+gazing on their innocence and industry.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page217" id="page217" title="217"></a>What a lesson stole from their
+quiet and contented looks, their patient
+perseverance, their sweet unity!
+How shining smooth the faces, how
+healthy, and how round, and how impossible
+it seemed for wrinkles ever
+to disturb the fine and glossy surface!
+Modesty never should forsake the
+humble; the bosom of the lowly born
+should be her home. Here she had
+enshrined herself, and given to simplicity
+all her dignity and truth.
+They worked and worked on; who
+should tell which was the most assiduous&mdash;which
+the fairest&mdash;which the
+most eager and successful to increase
+the happiness of all! And turn to
+Billy there, that half-tamed urchin!
+that likeness in little of his sire, rocking
+not so much against his will, as
+against conviction, the last of all the
+Thompsons&mdash;a six months' infant in
+the wicker cradle. How, obedient to
+his mother's wish, like a little man at
+first, he rocks with all his might, and
+then irregularly, and at long intervals&mdash;by
+fits and starts&mdash;and ceases
+altogether very soon, bobbing his
+curly head, and falling gently into a
+deep mesmeric sleep. The older lads
+are making wooden boats, and two,
+still older, stand on either side their
+mother. A book is in the hands of
+each, full of instruction and fine learning.
+It was the source of all their
+knowledge, the cause of all their earliest
+woes. Good Mrs Thompson
+had been neglected as a child, and
+was enthusiastic in the cause of early
+education. Sometimes they looked
+into the book, but oftener still they
+cast attentive eyes upon the fire, as if
+&quot;the book of knowledge fair&quot; was there
+displayed, and not a noisy saucepan,
+almost unable to contain itself for joy
+of the cod's head and shoulders, that
+must be ready by John Thompson's
+supper time. The whole family were
+my friends&mdash;with the boys I was on
+terms of warmest intimacy, and smiles
+and nods, and shouts and cheers, welcomed
+me amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, close your book, Bob,&quot; said
+the mother, soon after I was seated,
+&quot;and, Alec, give me yours. Put your
+hands down, turn from the fire, and
+look up at me, dears. What is the
+capital of Russia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Birman empire,&quot; said Alec,
+with unhesitating confidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baltic sea,&quot; cried Bob, emulous
+and ardent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait&mdash;not so fast; let me see,
+my dears, which of you is right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Thompson appealed immediately
+to her book, after a long and
+private communication with which, she
+emphatically pronounced both wrong.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give us a chance, mother,&quot; said
+Bob in a wheedling tone, (Bob knew
+his mother's weaknesses.) &quot;Them's
+such hard words. I don't know how
+it is, but I never can remember 'em.
+Just tell us the first syllable&mdash;oh, do
+now&mdash;please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know now!&quot; cried Alec.
+&quot;It's something with a G in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Think of the apostles, dears.
+What are the names of the apostles?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, there's Moses,&quot; began Bob,
+counting on his fingers, &quot;and there's
+Sammywell, and there's Aaron, and
+Noah's ark&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop, my dear,&quot; said Mrs Thompson,
+who was very busy with her
+manual, and contriving a method of
+rendering a solution of her question
+easy. &quot;Just begin again. I said&mdash;who
+was Peter&mdash;no, not that&mdash;who
+was an apostle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know now!&quot; cried Alec
+again, (Alec was the sharp boy of the
+family.) &quot;It's Peter. Peter's the
+capital of Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not quite my dear. You are
+very warm&mdash;very warm indeed, but
+not quite hot. Try again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paul,&quot; half murmured Robert,
+with a reckless hope of proving right.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Peter's right; but there's
+something else. What has your father
+been taking down the beds for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a solemn silence, and
+the three industrious sisters blushed
+the faintest blush that could be raised
+upon a maiden's cheek.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To rub that stuff upon the walls,&quot;
+said the ready Alec.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but what was it to kill?&quot;
+continued the instructress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fleas,&quot; said Bob.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Worse than that, my dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know now,&quot; shrieked Alec,
+for the third time. &quot;<i>Petersbug's</i> the
+capital of Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Thompson looked at me with
+pardonable vanity and triumph, and I
+bestowed upon the successful students
+a few comfits which I had purchased
+on my road for my numerous and
+comfit-loving friends. The mere sight
+of this sweet &quot;reward of merit&quot; immediately
+inspired the two boys at
+work upon the boats with a desire for
+<a class="pagenum" name="page218" id="page218" title="218"></a>knowledge, and especially for learning
+the capitals of countries, that was
+most agreeable to contemplate. The
+lesson was continued, more to my
+amusement, I fear, than the edification
+of the pupils. The boys were unable
+to answer a single question until they
+had had so many <i>chances</i>, and had become
+so very <i>hot</i>, that not to have answered
+at length would have bordered
+on the miraculous. The persevering
+governess was not displeased at this,
+for she would not have lost the opportunity
+of displaying her own skill in
+metaphorical illustration, for a great
+deal, I am very sure. The clock struck
+eight; there was a general movement.
+The three sisters folded their work,
+and lodged it carefully in separate
+drawers. The eldest then produced
+the table-cloth, knives, forks, and
+spoons. The second exhibited bibs
+and pinafores; and the third brought
+from their hiding-places a dozen modest
+chairs, and placed them round
+the table. Bob assured the company
+&quot;he was <i>so</i> hungry;&quot; Alec said, &quot;so
+was he;&quot; and the boatmen, in an
+under tone, settled what should be
+done with the great cod's eyes, which,
+they contended, were the best parts of
+the fish, and &quot;shouldn't they be glad
+if father would give 'em one a-piece.&quot;
+The good woman must enquire, of
+course, how nearly the much-relished
+dainty had reached the critical
+and interesting state when it became
+most palatable to John Thompson;
+for John Thompson was an epicure,
+&quot;and must have his little bits of
+things done to a charm, or not at all.&quot;
+Half-past eight had struck. The family
+were bibbed and pinafored; the
+easy coat and slippers were at the fire,
+and warmed through and through&mdash;it
+was a season of intenseness.
+&quot;Here's father!&quot; shouted Alec, and
+all the bibs and pinafores rushed like
+a torrent to the door. Which shall
+the father catch into his ready arms,
+which kiss, which hug, which answer?&mdash;all
+are upon him; they know their
+playmate, their companion, and best
+friend; they have hoarded up, since
+the preceding night, a hundred things
+to say, and now they have got their
+loving and attentive listener. &quot;Look
+what I have done, father,&quot; says the
+chief boatman, &quot;Tom and I together.&quot;
+&quot;Well done, boys!&quot; says the father&mdash;and
+Tom and he are kissed. &quot;I have
+been <i>l</i>ocking baby,&quot; lisps little Billy,
+who, in return, gets rocked himself.
+&quot;Father, what's the capital of Russia?&quot;
+shrieks Alec, tugging at his coat.
+&quot;What do you mean, you dog?&quot; is
+the reply, accompanied by a hearty
+shake of his long flaxen hair. &quot;Petersburg,&quot;
+cry Tom and Alec both,
+following him to the hearth, each one
+endeavouring to relieve him of his
+boots as soon as he is seated there.
+The family circle is completed. The
+flaky fish is ready, and presented for
+inspection. The father has served
+them all, even to little Billy&mdash;their
+plates are full and smoking. &quot;Mother&quot;
+is called upon to ask a blessing.
+She rises, and assumes the looks of
+Jabez Buster&mdash;twenty blessings might
+be asked and granted in half the time
+she takes&mdash;so think and look Bob,
+Alec, and the boatmen; but at length
+she pauses&mdash;the word is given, and
+further ceremony is dispensed with.
+In childhood, supper is a thing to look
+forward to, and to <i>last</i> when it arrives;
+but not in childhood, any more than
+in old age, can sublunary joys endure
+for ever. The meal is finished. A
+short half-hour flies, like lightning,
+by. The children gather round their
+father; and in the name of all, upon
+his knees, he thanks his God for all
+the mercies of the day. Thompson is
+no orator. His heart is warm; his
+words are few and simple. The three
+attendant graces take charge of their
+brethren, detach them from their father's
+side, and conduct them to their
+beds. Happy father! happy children!
+May Providence be merciful, and
+keep the grim enemy away from your
+fireside! Let him not come now in
+the blooming beauty and the freshness
+of your loves! Let him not darken
+and embitter for ever the life that is
+still bright, beautiful, and glorious in
+the power of elevating and sustaining
+thought that leads beyond it. Let
+him wait the matured and not unexpected
+hour, when the shock comes,
+not to crush, to overwhelm, and to
+annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and
+to encourage; not to alarm and stagger
+the untaught spirit, but to bring
+to the subdued and long-tried soul its
+last lesson on the vanity and evanescence
+of its early dreams!</p>
+
+<p>It is half-past nine o'clock. Thompson,
+his wife, and two eldest boys are
+present, and, for the first time, I have
+an opportunity to make known the
+object of my visit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so they have turned you
+off,&quot; said Thompson, when I had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page219" id="page219" title="219"></a>finished. &quot;And who's surprised at
+that? Not I, for one. Missus,&quot; continued
+he, turning to his wife, &quot;why
+haven't you got a curtain yet for that
+ere pictur? I can't abear the sight of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Thompson looked plaintively
+towards the painting, and heaved a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, dear good man! He has got
+his enemies,&quot; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs Thompson!&quot; exclaimed her
+husband, &quot;I have done with that good
+man from this day for'ards; and I do
+hope, old 'ooman, that you'll go next
+Sunday to church with me, as we used
+to do afore you got that pictur
+painted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's no good talking, Thompson,&quot;
+answered the lady, positively and
+firmly. &quot;I can't sit under a cold
+man, and there's an end of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There, that's the way you talk,
+missus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you know, Thompson,
+every thing in the church is cold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not now, my dear&mdash;they've
+put up a large stove. You'll recollect
+you haven't been lately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides, do you think I can sit in
+a place of worship, and hear a man
+say, '<i>Let us pray</i>,' in the middle of
+the service, making a fool of one, as
+if we hadn't been praying all the time?
+As that dear and persecuted saint
+says, (turning to the picture,) it's a
+common assault to our understandings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Polly, that's just always
+how you go off. If you'd only listen
+to reason, that could all be made out
+right in no time. The clergyman
+doesn't mean to say, <i>let us pray</i>, because
+he hasn't been praying afore;&mdash;what
+he means is&mdash;we have been praying
+all this time, and so we'll go on
+praying again&mdash;no, not again exactly&mdash;but
+don't leave off. That isn't what
+I mean either. Let me see, <i>let us
+pray</i>. Oh, yes! Why&mdash;stay. Where
+is it he does say, <i>let us pray</i>? There,
+I say, Stukely, you know it all much
+better than I do. Just make it right
+to the missus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not difficult,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no, Mr Stukely, I daresay
+not!&quot; added Mrs Thompson, interrupting
+me. &quot;Mr Clayton says,
+Satan has got his janysarries abroad,
+and has a reason for every thing. It
+is very proper to say, too, I suppose,
+that it is an <i>imposition</i> when the bishops
+ordain the ministers? What a
+word to make use of. It's truly frightful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm blessed,&quot; exclaimed
+Thompson, &quot;if I don't think you had
+better hold your tongue, old girl,
+about impositions; for sich oudacious
+robbers as your precious brothers is,
+I never come across, since I was stopped
+that ere night, as we were courting,
+on Shooter's Hill. It's a system
+of imposition from beginning to end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look to your Bible, Thompson;
+what does that say? Does that tell
+ministers to read their sermons?
+There can't be no truth and right
+feeling when a man puts down what
+he's going to say; the vital warmth
+is wanting, I'm sure. And then to
+read the same prayers Sunday after
+Sunday, till a body gets quite tired at
+hearing them over and over again,
+and finding nothing new! How can
+you improve an occasion if you are
+tied down in this sort of way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you ever see one of the brothers
+eat, Stukely?&quot; asked Thompson,
+avoiding the main subject.
+&quot;Don't you ask one of them to dinner&mdash;that's
+all. That nice boy Buster
+ought to eat for a wager. I had the
+pleasure of his company to dinner one
+fine afternoon. I don't mean to send
+him another invitation just yet, at all
+events.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; proceeded the fair, but
+stanch nonconformist; &quot;what does
+the Bible say, indeed! 'Take no
+thought of what you should say.'
+Why, in the church, I am told they
+are doing nothing else from Monday
+morning to Saturday night but writing
+the sermon they are going to
+read on the Sabbath. To <i>read</i> a sermon!
+What would the apostles say
+to that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, didn't you tell me, my dear,
+that the gentleman as set for that pictur
+got all his sermons by heart before
+he preached 'em?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I did&mdash;but that's a very
+different thing. Doesn't it all pour
+from him as natural as if it had come
+to him that minute? He doesn't fumble
+over a book like a schoolboy. His
+beautiful eyes, I warrant you, ain't
+looking down all the time, as if he was
+ashamed to hold 'em up. Isn't it a privilege
+to see his blessed eyes rolling all
+sorts of ways; and don't they speak
+wolumes to the poor benighted sinner?
+Besides, don't tell me, Thompson;
+we had better turn Catholics at
+once, if we are to have the minister
+dressing up like the Pope of Rome,
+and all the rest of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are the gal of my heart,&quot;
+exclaimed the uxorious Thompson;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page220" id="page220" title="220"></a>&quot;but I must say you have got some
+of the disgracefulest notions out of
+that ere chapel as ever I heard on.
+Why, it's only common decency to
+wear a dress in the pulpit; and I believe
+in my mind, that that's come
+down to us from time immemorable,
+like every thing else in human natur.
+What's your opinion, Stukely?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; and what's your opinion,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; added the lady immediately,
+&quot;about calling a minister of
+the gospel&mdash;a <i>priest</i>? Is that Paperistical
+or not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That isn't the pint, Polly,&quot; proceeded
+John. &quot;We are talking about
+the silk dress now. Let's have that
+out first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then the absolution&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Poll. Stick to the silk dress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Thompson, it's always the
+way!&quot; continued the mistress of the
+house, growing red and wroth, and
+heedless of the presence of the eager-listening
+children; &quot;it's always the
+way. Satan is ruining of you. You'll
+laugh at the elect, and you'll not find
+your mistake out till it's too late to
+alter. Mr Clayton says, that the
+Establishment is the hothouse of devils;
+and the more I see of its ways,
+the more I feel he is right. Thompson,
+you are in the sink of iniquity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, I can't stand no more of
+this!&quot; exclaimed Thompson, growing
+uneasy in his chair, but without a
+spark of ill-humour. &quot;Let's change
+the topic, old 'ooman; I'm sure it can't
+do the young un's any good to hear
+this idle talk. Let's teach 'em nothing
+at all, if we can't larn 'em
+something better than wrangling
+about religion. Now, Jack,&quot; he continued,
+turning to his eldest boy,
+&quot;what is the matter with you? What
+are you sitting there for with your
+mouth wide open?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the meaning of Paperist,
+father?&quot; asked the boy, who had been
+long waiting to propose the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that to you, you rascal?&quot;
+was the reply; &quot;mind your own business,
+my good fellow, and leave the
+Paperist to mind his'n; that's your father's
+maxim, who got it from his
+father before him. You'll learn to
+find fault with other people fast enough
+without my teaching you. I tell you
+what, Jack, if you look well after yourself,
+you'll find little time left to bother
+about others. If your hands are
+ever idle&mdash;recollect you have ten brothers
+and sisters about you. Look
+about you&mdash;you are the oldest boy&mdash;and
+see what you can do for them.
+Do you mind that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, old chap. Then just
+get out the bottle, and give your father
+something to coax the cod down.
+Poll, that fish won't settle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The long hour was beginning.
+That bottle was the signal. A gin and
+water nightcap, on this occasion, officiated
+for the ale. Jack and his brother
+received a special invitation to a sip
+or two, which they at once unhesitatingly
+accepted. The sturdy fellows
+shook their father and fellow-labourer's
+hand, and were not loth to go to rest.
+Their mother was their attendant.
+The ruffle had departed from her face.
+It was as pleasant as before. She
+was but half a dissenter. So Thompson
+thought when he called her back
+again, and bade his &quot;old 'ooman give
+her hobby one of her good old-fashioned
+busses, and think no more
+about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson and I were left together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what do you mean to do, sir,
+now?&quot; was his first question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hardly know.&quot; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, you'll cut the gang
+entirely&mdash;that's a nat'ral consequence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Thompson, not at present. I
+must not seem so fickle and inconstant.
+I must not seem so to myself.
+I joined this sect not altogether without
+deliberation. I must have further
+proof of the unsoundness of its principles.
+A few of its professors have
+been faithless even to their own position.
+Of what religious profession
+may not the same be said? I will be
+patient, and examine further.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was a-thinking,&quot; said Thompson,
+musingly, &quot;I was a-thinking, 'till
+you've got something else to do&mdash;&mdash;but
+no, never mind, you won't like
+that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I was thinking about the
+young un's. They're shocking back'ard
+in their eddication, and, between
+you and me, the missus makes them
+back'arder. I don't understand the
+way she has got of larning 'em at
+all. I don't want to make scholards
+of 'em. Nobody would but a fool.
+Bless 'em, they'll have enough to do
+to get their bread with sweating and
+toiling, without addling their brains
+about things they can't understand.
+But it is a cruelty, mind you, for a
+parent to hinder his child from reading
+<a class="pagenum" name="page221" id="page221" title="221"></a>his Bible on a Sunday afternoon,
+and to make him stand ashamed of
+himself before his fellow workman
+when he grows up, and finds that he
+can't put <i>paid</i> to a bill on a Saturday
+night. The boys should all know
+how to read and write, and keep accounts,
+and a little summut of human
+nature. This is what I wants to give
+'em, and nobody should I like better
+to put it into 'em than you, my old
+friend, if you'd just take the trouble
+'till you've got something better to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson,&quot; I answered instantly,
+&quot;I will do it with pleasure. I ought
+to have made the offer. It did not
+occur to me. I shall rejoice to repay
+you, in this trifling way, for all your
+good feeling and kindness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no!&quot; answered my friend,
+&quot;none of that. We must have an
+understanding. Don't you think I
+should have asked the question, if I
+meant to sneak out in that dirty sort
+of way. No, that won't do. It's very
+kind of you, but we must make all
+that right. We sha'n't quarrel, I dare
+say. If you mean you'll do it, I have
+only just a word or two to say before
+you begin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be proud to serve you,
+Thompson, and on any terms you
+please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it is a serving me&mdash;I don't
+deny it&mdash;but, mind you, only till you
+have dropped into something worth
+your while. What I wish to say is as
+this: As soon as ever my missus
+hears of what you are going to do, I
+know as well what she'll be at as I
+know what I am talking of now.
+She'll just be breaking my heart to
+have the boys larned French. Now,
+I'd just as soon bind 'em apprentice
+to that ere Clayton. I've seen too
+much of that ere sort of thing in my
+time. I'm as positive as I sit here,
+that when a chap begins to talk French
+he loses all his English spirit, and
+feels all over him as like a mounseer
+as possible. I'm sure he does. I've
+seen it a hundred times, and that I
+couldn't a-bear. Besides, I've been
+told that French is the language the
+thieves talk, and I solemnly believe
+it. That's one thing. Now, here's
+another. You'll excuse me, my dear
+fellow. In course you know more
+than I do, but I must say that you
+have got sometimes a very roundabout
+way of coming to the pint. I
+mean no offence, and I don't blame
+you. It's all along of the company
+you have kept. You are&mdash;it's the
+only fault you have got&mdash;you are
+oudaciously fond of hard words.
+Don't let the young uns larn 'em.
+That's all I have to say, and we'll
+talk of the pay some other time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this turn of the conversation,
+Thompson insisted upon my lighting
+a pipe and joining him in the gin and
+water. We smoked for many minutes
+in silence. My friend had unbuttoned
+his waistcoat, and had drawn
+the table nearer to his warm and
+hospitable fire. A log of wood was
+burning slowly and steadily away,
+and a small, bright&mdash;very bright&mdash;copper
+kettle overlooked it from the
+hob. My host had fixed his feet upon
+the fender&mdash;the unemployed hand was
+in his corduroys. His eyes were
+three parts closed, enjoying what from
+its origin may be called&mdash;a pure tobacco-born
+soliloquy. The smoke
+arose in thin white curls from the clay
+cup, and at regular periods stole
+blandly from the corner of his lips.
+The silent man was blessed. He had
+been happy at his work; he had
+grown happier as the sun went down;
+his happiness was ripening at the
+supper table; <i>now</i>, half-asleep and
+half-awake&mdash;half conscious and half
+dreaming&mdash;wholly free from care,
+and yet not free from pregnant
+thought&mdash;the labourer had reached
+the summit of felicity, and was at
+peace&mdash;intensely.</p>
+
+<p>A few evenings only had elapsed
+after this interesting meeting, before
+I was again spending a delicious hour
+or two with the simple-hearted and
+generous upholsterer. There was
+something very winning in these
+moments snatched and secured from
+the hurricane of life, and passed in
+thorough and undisturbed enjoyment.
+My friend, notwithstanding that he
+had engaged my services, and was
+pleased to express his satisfaction at
+the mode in which I rendered them,
+was yet alive to my interests, and too
+apprehensive of injuring them by
+keeping me away from loftier employment.
+He did not like my being
+<i>thrown out</i> of the chapel, especially
+after he had heard my determination
+not to forsake immediately the sect
+to which I had attached myself. He
+was indifferent to his own fate. His
+worldly prospects could not be injured
+by his expulsion; on the contrary,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page222" id="page222" title="222"></a>he slyly assured me that &quot;his
+neighbours would begin to think better
+of him, and give him credit for
+having become an honester and more
+trustworthy man.&quot; But with regard
+to myself it was a different thing. I
+should require &quot;a character&quot; at some
+time or another, and there was a body
+of men primed and ready to vilify
+and crush me. He advised me, whilst
+he acknowledged it was a hard thing
+to say, and &quot;it went agin him to do
+it,&quot; to apply once more respectfully
+for my dismission. &quot;It won't do,&quot;
+he pertinently said, &quot;to bite your
+nose off to be revenged on your
+tongue.&quot; I was certainly in a mess,
+and must get out of it in the best way
+that I could. Buster and Tomkins
+had great power in <i>the Church</i>, and if
+I represented my case to either or
+both of them, he did hope they might
+be brought to consent not to injure
+me, or stand in the way of my getting
+bread. &quot;In a quarrel,&quot; he said, in
+conclusion, &quot;some one must give in.
+I was a young man, and had my way
+to make, and though he should despise
+his-self if he recommended me to do
+any thing mean and dirty in the business,
+yet, he thought, as the father of
+a numerous family, he ought to advise
+me to be civil, and to do the best for
+myself in this unfortunate dilemmy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I accepted his advice, and determined
+to wait upon the dapper deacon.
+I was physically afraid to encounter
+Buster, not so much on account of
+what I had seen of his spiritual pretension,
+as of what I had heard of his
+domestic behaviour. It was not a very
+difficult task to obtain from Mrs
+Thompson the secret history of many
+of her highly privileged acquaintances
+and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful
+degree, the peculiar virtue of
+her amiable sex, and to communicate
+secrets, delivered to her in strictest
+confidence, and imparted by her again
+with equal caution and provisory care,
+was the choicest recreation of her well
+employed and useful life. It was
+through this lady that I was favoured
+with a glance into the natural heart of
+Mr Buster; or into what he would
+himself have called, with a most unfilial
+disgust, &quot;HIS OLD MAN.&quot; It appeared
+that, like most great <i>actors</i>, he
+was a very different personage before
+and behind the curtain. Kings, who
+are miserable and gloomy through the
+five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who
+must needs die at the end of it, are your
+merriest knaves over a tankard at the
+Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool
+shall be the dullest dog that ever
+spoiled mirth with sour and discontented
+looks. Jabez Buster, his employment
+being over at Mr Clayton's
+theatre, his dress thrown aside, his
+mask put by, was not to be recognised
+by his nearest friend. This is
+the perfection of art. A greater
+tyrant on a small scale, with limited
+means, never existed than the saintly
+Buster when his character was done,
+and he found himself again in the
+bosom of his family. Unhappy bosom
+was it, and a sad flustration did his
+presence, nine times out of ten, produce
+there. He had four sons, and a
+delicate creature for a wife, born to
+be crushed. The sons were remarkable
+chiefly for their hypocrisy, which
+promised, in the fulness of time, to
+throw their highly-gifted parent's far
+into the shade; and, secondarily, for
+their persecution of their helpless and
+indulgent mother. They witnessed
+and approved so much the success of
+Jabez in this particular, that during
+his absence they cultivated the affectionate
+habit until it became a kind of
+second nature, infinitely more racy
+and agreeable than the primary. In
+proportion to their deliberate oppression
+of their mother was their natural
+dread and terror of their father. Mrs
+Thompson pronounced it &quot;the shockingest
+thing in this world to be present
+when the young blue-beards were
+worryting their mother's soul out with
+saying, '<i>I sha'n't</i>' and '<i>I won't</i>' to
+every thing, and swearing '<i>they'd tell
+their father this</i>,' '<i>and put him up to
+that, and then wouldn't he make a jolly
+row about it</i>,' with hollering out for
+nothing at all, only to frighten the
+poor timid cretur, and then making a
+holabaloo with the chairs, or perhaps
+falling down, roaring and kicking,
+just to drive the poor thing clean out
+of her wits, on purpose to laugh at
+her for being so taken in. Well, but
+it was a great treat, too,&quot; she added,
+&quot;to hear, in the midst of all this, Buster's
+heavy foot in the passage, and to
+see what a scrimmage there was at
+once amongst all the young hypocrites.
+How they all run in different
+directions&mdash;one to the fire&mdash;one to the
+table&mdash;one out at the back-door&mdash;one
+any where he could&mdash;all of 'em as
+silent as mice, and afeard of the very
+eye of the blacksmith, who knew,
+good man, how to keep every man
+<a class="pagenum" name="page223" id="page223" title="223"></a>Jack of 'em in order, and, if a word
+didn't do, wasn't by no means behind
+hand with blows. Buster,&quot; she continued,
+&quot;had his faults like other
+men, but he was a saint if ever there
+was one. To be sure he did like to
+have his own way at home, and wasn't
+it natural? And if he was rather
+overbearing and cruel to his wife,
+wasn't that, she should like to know,
+Satan warring with the new man, and
+sometimes getting the better of it?
+And if he was, as Thompson had
+hinted, rayther partial to the creature,
+and liked good living, what was this
+to the purpose? it was an infirmity
+that might happen to the best Christian
+living. Nobody could say that
+he wasn't a renewed man, and a chosen
+vessel, and faithful to his call. A
+man isn't a backslider because he's
+carnally weak, and a man isn't a saint
+because he's moral and well-behaved.
+'Good works,' Mr Clayton said, 'was
+filthy rags,' and so they were. To be
+sure, between themselves, there were
+one or two things said about Buster
+that she couldn't approve of. For instance,
+she had been told&mdash;but <i>this</i>
+was quite in confidence, and really
+must <i>not</i> go further&mdash;that he was&mdash;that&mdash;that,
+in fact, he was overtaken
+now and then with liquor, and then
+the house could hardly hold him, he
+got so furious, and, they did say, used
+such horrid language. But, after all,
+what was this? If a man's elected,
+he is not so much the worse. Besides,
+if one listened to people, one might
+never leave off. She had actually
+heard, she wouldn't say from whom,
+that Buster very often kept out late
+at night&mdash;sometimes didn't come home
+at all, and sometimes did at two
+o'clock in the morning, very hungry
+and ill-tempered, and then forced his
+poor wife out of bed, and made the
+delicate and shivering creature light
+a fire, cook beefsteaks, go into the
+yard for beer, and wait upon him till
+he had even eat every morsel up.
+She for one would never believe all
+this, though Mrs Buster herself had
+told her every word with tears in her
+eyes, and in the greatest confidence;
+so she trusted I wouldn't repeat it, as
+it wouldn't look well in her to be
+found out telling other people's secrets.&quot;
+Singular, perhaps, to say, the
+tale did not go further. I kept the
+lady's secret, and at the same time
+declined to approach Mr Jabez Buster
+in the character of a suppliant. If his
+advocate and panegyrist had nothing
+more to say for him, it could not be
+uncharitable to conclude that the pretended
+saint was as bold a sinner as
+ever paid infamous courtship to religion,
+and as such was studiously to be
+avoided. I turned my attention from
+him to Tomkins. There was no
+grossness about him, no brutality, no
+abominable vice. In the hour of my
+defeat and desertion, he had extended
+to me his sympathy, and, more in sorrow
+than in anger, I am convinced he
+voted for my expulsion from the
+church when he found that his vote,
+and twenty added to it, would not
+have been sufficient to protect me.
+He could not act in opposition to the
+wishes of his friend and patron, Mr
+Clayton, but very glad would he have
+been, as every word and look assured
+me, to meet the wishes of us both, had
+that been practicable. If the great
+desire of Jehu Tomkins' heart could
+have been gratified, he never would
+have been at enmity with a single
+soul on earth. He was a soft, good-natured,
+easy man; most desirous to
+be let alone, and not uneasily envious
+or distressed to see his neighbours
+jogging on, so long as he could do his
+own good stroke of business, and keep
+a little way before them. Jehu was
+a Liberal too&mdash;in politics and in religion&mdash;in
+every thing, in fact, but the
+one small article of <i>money</i>, and here, I
+must confess, the good dissenter dissented
+little from the best of us. He
+was a stanch Conservative in matters
+connected with the <i>till</i>. For his
+private life it was exemplary&mdash;at least
+it looked so to the world, and the
+world is satisfied with what it sees.
+Jehu was attentive to his business&mdash;yes,
+very&mdash;and a business life is not
+monotonous and dull, if it be relieved,
+as it was in this case, by dexterous
+arts, that give an interest and flavour
+to the commonest pursuits. Sometimes
+a customer would die&mdash;a natural
+state of things, but a great event for
+Jehu. First, he would &quot;improve the
+occasion&quot; to the surviving relatives&mdash;condole
+and pray with them. Afterwards
+he would <i>improve</i> it to himself,
+in his own little room, at night, when all
+the children were asleep, and no one was
+awake but Mrs Tomkins and himself.
+Then he would get down his ledger,
+and turn to the deceased's account&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;&mdash;&mdash;How <i>long</i> it is thou see'st,<br /></span>
+<span>And he would gaze 'till it became <i>much longer</i>;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page224" id="page224" title="224"></a>&quot;For who could tell whether six shirts
+or twelve were bought in July last, and
+what could be the harm of making those
+eight handkerchiefs a dozen? He was a
+strange old gentleman; lived by himself&mdash;and
+the books might be referred
+to, and speak boldly for themselves.&quot;
+Yes, cunning Jehu, so they might, with
+those interpolations and erasures that
+would confound and overcome a lawyer.
+When customers did not die, it
+was pastime to be dallying with the
+living. In adding up a bill with haste,
+how many times will four and four
+make <i>nine</i>? They generally did with
+Jehu. The best are liable to errors.
+It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had
+hundreds at command, and the accident
+was amended. How easy is it sometimes
+to give no bill at all! How very
+easy to apply, a few months afterwards,
+for second payment; how much more
+easy still to pocket it without a word;
+or, if discovered and convicted, to
+apologize without a blush for the <i>mistake</i>!
+No, Jehu Tomkins, let me do
+you justice&mdash;this is not so easy&mdash;it
+requires all your zeal and holy intrepidity
+to reach this pitch of human
+frailty and corruption. With regard
+to the domestic position of my interesting
+friend, it is painful to add,
+that the less that is said about it the
+better. In vain was his name in full,
+painted in large yellow letters, over
+the shop front. In vain was <i>Bot. of
+Jehu Tomkins</i> engraven on satin paper,
+with flourishes innumerable beneath
+the royal arms; he was no more the
+master of his house than was the small
+boy of the establishment, who did
+the dirty work of the place for nothing
+a-week and the broken victuals.
+If Jehu was deacon abroad, he was
+taught to acknowledge an <i>arch</i>deacon
+at home&mdash;one to whom he was indebted
+for his success in life, and for reminding
+him of that agreeable fact about four
+times during every day of his existence.
+I was aware of this delicate circumstance
+when I ventured to the linen-draper's
+shop on my almost hopeless
+mission; but, although I had never
+spoken to Mrs Tomkins, I had often
+seen her in the chapel, and I relied
+much on the feeling and natural tenderness
+of the female heart. The
+respectable shop of Mr Tomkins was
+in Fleet Street. The establishment
+consisted of Mrs Tomkins, <i>premi&egrave;re</i>;
+Jehu, under-secretary; and four sickly-looking
+young ladies behind the counter.
+It is to be said, to the honour of
+Mrs Tomkins, that she admitted no
+young woman into her service whose
+character was not <i>decided</i>, and whose
+views were not very clear. Accordingly,
+the four young ladies were
+members of the chapel. It is pleasing
+to reflect, that, in this well-ordered
+house of business, the ladies took their
+turns to attend the weekly prayer
+meetings of the church. Would that
+I might add, that they were <i>not</i> severally
+met on these occasions by their
+young men at the corner of Chancery
+Lane, and invariably escorted by
+them some two or three miles in a
+totally opposite direction. Had Mrs
+Tomkins been born a man, it is difficult
+to decide what situation she would
+have adorned the most. She would
+have made a good man of business&mdash;an
+acute lawyer&mdash;a fine casuist&mdash;a
+great divine. Her attainments were
+immense; her self-confidence unbounded.
+She was a woman of middle
+height, and masculine bearing. She
+was not prepossessing, notwithstanding
+her white teeth and large mouth,
+and the intolerable grin that a customer
+to the amount of a halfpenny
+and upwards could bring upon her
+face under any circumstances, and at
+any hour of the day. Her complexion
+might have been good originally.
+Red blotches scattered over her cheek
+had destroyed its beauty. She wore
+a modest and becoming cap, and a
+gold eyeglass round her neck. She
+was devoted to money-making&mdash;heart
+and soul devoted to it during business
+hours. What time she was not in the
+shop, she passed amongst dissenting
+ministers, spiritual brethren, and deluded
+sinners. It remains to state
+the fact, that, whilst a customer never
+approached the lady without being
+repelled by the offensive smirk that
+she assumed, no dependent ever ventured
+near her without the fear of the
+scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully,
+when she pleased) upon her dark and
+inauspicious brow. What wonder
+that little Jehu was crushed into nothingness,
+behind his own counter,
+under the eye of his own wife!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page225" id="page225" title="225"></a>
+<a name="bw328s7" id="bw328s7"></a><h2>THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES.</h2>
+
+<h3>PART II.</h3>
+
+<p>In our last, we had occasion to
+speak sharply of that class of our
+aristocratic youth known by the name
+of fast fellows, and it may be thought
+that we characterized their foibles
+rather pointedly, and tinctured our
+animadversions with somewhat of undue
+asperity. This charge, however,
+can be made with no ground of reason
+or justice: the fact is, we only
+lashed the follies for which that class
+of men are pre-eminent, but left their
+vices in the shade, in the hope that
+the <i>raw</i> we have already established,
+will shame the fast fellows into a sense
+of the proprieties of conduct due to
+themselves and their station.</p>
+
+<p>The misfortune is, that these fast
+fellows forget, in the pursuit of their
+favourite follies, that the mischief to
+society begins only with themselves:
+that man is naturally a servile, imitative
+animal; and that he follows in the
+track of a great name, as vulgar muttons
+run at the heels of a belwether.
+The poison of fashionable folly runs
+comparatively innocuous while it circulates
+in fashionable veins; but when
+vulgar fellows are innoculated with
+the virus, it becomes a plague, a
+moral small-pox, distorting, disfiguring
+the man's mind, pockpitting his small
+modicum of brains, and blinding his
+mind's eye to the supreme contempt
+his awkward vagaries inspire.</p>
+
+<p>The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly
+in the spread of their servile imitation
+of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly
+profligacy at second-hand; and
+perhaps this is the worst trait in their
+character, for it is at once malicious
+and unwise: malicious, because the
+contemplation of humanity, degraded
+by bad example in high station, should
+rather be a source of secret shame
+than of devilish gratification: unwise,
+because their example is a discredit to
+their order, and a danger. To posses
+birth, fashion, station, wealth, power,
+is title enough to envy, and handle
+sufficient for scandal. How much
+stronger becomes that title&mdash;how
+much longer that handle&mdash;when men,
+enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it,
+not using, but abusing their good fortune!</p>
+
+<p>We should not have troubled our
+heads with the fast fellows at all, if
+it were not absolutely essential to the
+full consideration of our subject, widely
+to sever the prominent classes of
+fashionable life, and to have no excuse
+for continuing in future to confound
+them. We have now done
+with the fast fellows, and shall like them
+the more the less we hear of them.</p>
+
+<h3>CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS.</h3>
+
+<p>The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable
+or aristocratic life, comprises those
+who think that, in the nineteenth century,
+other means must be taken to
+preserve their order in its high and
+responsible position than those which,
+in dark ages, conferred honour upon
+the tallest or the bravest. They think,
+and think wisely, that the only method
+of keeping above the masses, in this
+active-minded age, is by soaring
+higher and further into the boundless
+realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting,
+in a fair neck-and-neck race
+with men of meaner birth, their purer
+blood, and urging the generous contest
+for fame, regardless of the allurements
+of pleasure, or the superior
+advantages of fortune. In truth, we
+might ask, what would become of our
+aristocratic classes ere long, if they
+came, as a body, to be identified with
+their gambling lords, their black-leg
+baronets, their insolvent honourables,
+and the seedy set of Chevaliers Diddlerowski
+and Counts Scaramouchi, who
+caper on the platform outside for their
+living? The populace would pelt these
+harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable
+life off their stage, if there was nothing
+better to be seen inside; but
+it fortunately happens that there is
+better.</p>
+
+<p>We can boast among our nobles
+and aristocratic families, a few men
+of original, commanding, and powerful
+intellect; many respectable in
+most departments of intellectual rivalry;
+many more laborious, hard-working
+men; and about the same
+proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed,
+crabbed, conceited, ignorant, insolent
+<a class="pagenum" name="page226" id="page226" title="226"></a>men, that you may find among the
+same given number of those commonly
+called the educated classes. We
+refer you to the aristocracies of other
+countries, and we think we may safely
+say, that we have more men of that
+class, in this country, who devote
+themselves to the high duties of their
+station, regardless of its pleasures,
+than in any other: men who recognize
+practically the responsibility of
+their rank, and do not shirk from
+them; men who think they have
+something to do, and something to
+repay, for the accidents of birth and
+fortune&mdash;who, in the senate, in the
+field, or in the less prominent, but not
+less noble, career of private life, act,
+as they feel, with the poet:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;At heros, et decus, et qu&aelig; non fecimus ipsi,<br /></span>
+<span>Vix ea nostra voco.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It has been admirably remarked, by
+some one whose name we forget, that
+the grand advantage of high birth is,
+placing a man as far forward at
+twenty-five as another man is at fifty.
+We might, as a corollary to this undeniable
+proposition, add, that birth
+not only places, but keeps a man in
+that advance of his fellows, which in
+the sum of life makes such vast ultimate
+difference in the prominence of
+their position.</p>
+
+<p>This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy
+of birth, of early enrolling
+themselves among the aristocracy of
+power, has, like every thing in the
+natural and moral world, its compensating
+disadvantage: they lose in one
+way what they gain in another; and
+although many of them become eminent
+in public life, few, very few,
+comparatively with the numbers who
+enter the arena, become great. They
+are respected, heard, and admired, by
+virtue of a class-prepossession in their
+favour; yet, after all, they must select
+from the ranks of the aristocracy of
+talent their firmest and best supporters,
+to whom they may delegate the
+heavy responsibilities of business, and
+lift from their own shoulders the burden
+of responsible power.</p>
+
+<p>One striking example of the force
+of birth, station, and association in
+public life, never fails to occur to us,
+as an extraordinary example of the
+magnifying power of these extrinsic
+qualities, in giving to the aristocracy
+of birth a consideration, which,
+though often well bestowed, is yet
+oftener bestowed without any desert
+whatever; and that title to admiration
+and respect, which has died with ancestry,
+patriotism, and suffering in the
+cause of freedom, is transferred from
+the illustrious dead to the undistinguished
+living.</p>
+
+<p>Without giving a catalogue <i>raisonn&eacute;</i>
+of the slow fellows, (we use the term
+not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction
+to the others,) we may
+observe that, besides the public service
+in which the great names are
+sufficiently known, you have poets,
+essayists, dramatists, astronomers,
+geologists, travellers, novelists, and,
+what is better than all, philanthropists.
+In compliment to human nature,
+we take the liberty merely to
+mention the names of Lord Dudley
+Stuart and Lord Ashley. The works
+of the slow fellows, especially their
+poetry, indicate in a greater or less
+degree the social position of the authors;
+seldom or never deficient in
+good taste, and not without feeling,
+they lack power and daring. The
+smooth style has their preference, and
+their verses smack of the school of
+Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not
+that, in poetry or prose, we can point
+out one of our slow fellows of the
+present day rising above judicious
+mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that
+the most daring and original of our
+noble authors have, in their day,
+been fast fellows; it is only necessary
+to name Rochester, Buckingham, and
+Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Among the slow fellows, are multitudes
+of pretenders to intellect in a
+small way. These patronize a drawing-master,
+not to learn to draw, but
+to learn to talk of drawing; they also
+study the <i>Penny Magazine</i> and other
+profound works, to the same purpose;
+they patronize the London University,
+and the Society for the Diffusion
+of Useful Knowledge, as far as lending
+their names; for, being mostly of
+the class of fashionable <i>screws</i>, they
+take care never to subscribe to any
+thing. They have a refined taste in
+shawls, and are consequently in the
+confidence of dressy old women, who
+hold them up as examples of every
+thing that is good. They take chocolate
+of a morning, and tea in the evening;
+drink sherry with a biscuit, and
+wonder how people <i>can</i> eat those hot
+lunches. They take constitutional
+walks and Cockle's pills; and, by
+virtue of meeting them at the Royal
+<a class="pagenum" name="page227" id="page227" title="227"></a>Society, are always consulting medical
+men, but take care never to offer them
+a guinea. They talk of music, of
+which they know something&mdash;of books,
+of which they know little&mdash;and of pictures,
+of which they know less; they
+have always read &quot;the last novel,&quot;
+which is as much as they can well
+carry; they know literary, professional,
+and scientific men at Somerset
+House, but, if they meet them in Park
+Lane, look as if they never saw them
+before; they are very peevish, have
+something to say against every man,
+and always say the worst first; they
+are very quiet in their manner, almost
+sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms
+of the fast fellows; they
+treat their inferiors with great consideration,
+addressing them, &quot;honest
+friend,&quot; &quot;my good man,&quot; and so on,
+but have very little heart, and less
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>They equally abhor the fast fellows
+and the pretenders to fashion. They
+are afraid of the former, who are
+always ridiculing them and their pursuits,
+by jokes theoretical and practical.
+If the fast fellows ascertain that
+a slow fellow affects sketching, they
+club together to annoy him, talking
+of the &quot;autumnal tints,&quot; and &quot;the
+gilding of the western hemisphere;&quot;
+if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage,
+or a root of mangel-wurzel,
+with a serious note, stating, that they
+hear it is a great curiosity in <i>his line</i>;
+if an entomologist, they are sure to
+send him away &quot;with a flea in his
+ear.&quot; If he affects poetry, the fast
+fellows make one of their servants
+transcribe, from <i>Bell's Life</i>, Scroggins's
+poetical version of the fight
+between Bendigo and Bungaree, or
+some such stuff; and, having got the
+slow fellow in a corner, insist upon
+having his opinion, and drive him
+nearly mad. All these, and a thousand
+other pranks, the fast fellows
+play upon their slow brethren, not in
+the hackneyed fashion which low people
+call &quot;<i>gagging</i>,&quot; and genteel people
+&quot;<i>quizzing</i>,&quot; but with a seriousness
+and gravity that heightens all the
+joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly
+ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>It is astonishing, considering the
+opportunities of the slow fellows, that
+they do not make a better figure; it
+seems wonderful, that they who glide
+swiftly down the current of fortune
+with wind and tide, should be distanced
+by those who, close-hauled
+upon a wind, are beating up against
+it all their lives; but so it is;&mdash;the
+compensating power that rules material
+nature, governs the operations of
+the mind. To whom much is given
+of opportunity, little is bestowed of
+the exertion to improve it. Those
+who rely more or less on claims extrinsic,
+are sure to be surpassed by
+those whose power is from within.
+After all, the great names of our nation
+(with here and there an exception
+to prove the rule) are plebeian.</p>
+
+<h3>OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER.</h3>
+
+<p>In their political capacity, people of
+fashion, among whom, for the present
+purpose, we include the whole of the
+aristocracy, are the common butt of
+envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.</p>
+
+<p>They are accused of standing between
+the mass of the people and their
+inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate
+resistance, the progress of rational
+liberty, and of&mdash;&mdash;but, in short, you
+have only to glance over the pages of
+any democratic newspaper, to be made
+aware of the horrible political iniquity
+of the aristocracy of England.</p>
+
+<p>The aristocracy in England, considered
+politically, is a subject too
+broad, too wide, and too deep for us,
+we most readily confess; nor is it exactly
+proper for a work of a sketchy
+nature, in which we only skim lightly
+along the surface of society, picking
+up any little curiosity as we go along,
+but without dipping deep into motives
+or habits of thought or action, especially
+in state affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Since our late lamented friends, the
+Whigs, have gone to enjoy a virtuous
+retirement and dignified ease, we have
+taken no delight in politics. There
+is no fun going on now-a-days&mdash;no
+quackery, no mountebankery, no asses,
+colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot
+fellows who have got into Downing
+Street have made politics no joke;
+and now that silence, as of the tomb,
+reigns amongst <i>quondam</i> leaders of
+the Treasury Benech&mdash;now that the
+camp-followers have followed the
+leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed,
+we really have nobody to laugh
+at; and, like our departed friends,
+have too little of the statesman to be
+serious about serious matters.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page228" id="page228" title="228"></a>With regard to the aristocracy in
+their public capacity, this is the way
+we always look at them.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, they govern us
+through the tolerance of public opinion,
+as men having station, power,
+property, much to lose, and little
+comparatively to gain&mdash;men who have
+put in bail to a large amount for their
+good behaviour: and, in the second
+place, they govern us, because really
+and truly there are so many outrageously
+discordant political quacks,
+desirous of taking our case in hand,
+that we find it our interest to entrust
+our public health to an accomplished
+physician, even although he charges
+a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure
+a perfect cure with a box of pills costing
+thirteenpence-halfpenny. There
+can be no doubt whatever, that the
+most careful men are the men who
+have most to care for: he that has a
+great deal to lose, will think twice,
+where he that has nothing to lose, will
+not think at all: and the government
+of this vast and powerful empire, we
+imagine, with great deference, must
+require a good deal of thinking. In
+a free press, we have a never-dying
+exponent of public opinion, a perpetual
+advocate of rational liberty,
+and a powerful engine for the exposure,
+which is ultimately the redress, of
+wrong: and although this influential
+member of our government receives
+no public money, nor is called right
+honourable, nor speaks in the House,
+yet in fact and in truth it has a seat
+in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous
+occasions, a voice of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>That the aristocracy of power
+should be in advance of public opinion,
+is not in the nature of things, and
+should no more be imputed as a crime
+to them, than to us not to run when
+we are not in a hurry: they cannot,
+as a body, move upwards, because
+they stand so near the top, that dangerous
+ambition is extinguished; and
+it is hardly to be expected that, as a
+body, they should move downwards,
+unless they find themselves supported
+in their position upon the right of
+others, in which case we have always
+seen that, although they descend gradually,
+they descend at last.</p>
+
+<p>This immobility of our aristocracy
+is the origin of the fixity of our political
+institutions, which has been, is,
+and will continue to be, the great element
+of our pre-eminence as a nation:
+it possesses a force corrective and directive,
+and at once restrains the excess,
+while it affords a point of resistance,
+to the current of the popular
+will. And this immobility, it should
+never be forgotten, is owing to that
+very elevation so hated and so envied:
+wanting which the aristocracy
+would be subject to the vulgar ambitions,
+vulgar passions, and sordid desires
+of meaner aspirants after personal
+advantage and distinction. It is a
+providential blessing, we firmly believe,
+to a great nation to possess a
+class, by fortune and station, placed
+above the unseemly contentions of
+adventurers in public life: looked up
+to as men responsible without hire for
+the public weal, and, without sordid
+ambitions of their own, solicitous to
+preserve it: looked up to, moreover,
+as examples of that refinement of feeling,
+jealous sense of honour, and manly
+independence, serving as detersives of
+the grosser humours of commercial
+life, and which, filtering through the
+successive <i>strata</i> of society, clarify and
+purify in their course, leaving the very
+dregs the cleaner for their passage.</p>
+
+<p>A body thus by habit and constitution
+opposed to innovation, and determined
+against the recklessness of inconsiderate
+reforms, has furnished a
+stock argument to those who delight
+in &quot;going a-head&quot; faster than their
+feet, which are the grounds of their
+arguments, can carry them. We
+hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks
+in the way of legislative improvements,
+and, with greater propriety
+of metaphor, likened to drags upon the
+wheel of progressive reform; and so
+on, through all the regions of illustration,
+until we are in at the death of
+the metaphor. How happens to be
+overlooked the advantage of this anti-progressive
+barrier, to the concentration
+and deepening of the flood of
+opinion on any given subject? how is
+it that men are apt altogether to forget
+that this very barrier it is which
+prevents the too eager crowd from
+trampling one another to death in
+their haste? which gives time for the
+ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and
+reckless enthusiasm, and the dregs of
+agitation, quietly to subside; and, for
+all that, bears the impress of reason and
+sound sense to circulate with accumulated
+pressure through the public
+mind? Were it not for the barrier
+which the aristocracy of power thus
+<a class="pagenum" name="page229" id="page229" title="229"></a>interposes for a time, only to withdraw
+when the time for interposition is past,
+we should live in a vortex of revolution
+and counter-revolution. Our whole
+time, and our undivided energies,
+would be employed in acting hastily,
+and repenting at leisure; in repining
+either because our biennial revolutions
+went too far, or did not go far enough;
+in expending our national strength in
+the unprofitable struggles of faction
+with faction, adventurer with adventurer:
+with every change we should
+become more changeful, and with
+every settlement more unsettled: one
+by one our distant colonies would follow
+the bright example of our people
+at home, and our commerce and trade
+would fall with our colonial empire.
+In fine, we should become in the eyes
+of the world what France now is&mdash;a
+people ready to sacrifice every solid
+advantage, every gradual, and therefore
+permanent, improvement, every
+ripening fruit that time and care, and
+the sunshine of peace only can mature,
+to a genius for revolution.</p>
+
+<p>This turbulent torrent of headlong
+reform, to-day flooding its banks, to-morrow
+dribbling in a half-dry channel,
+the aristocracy of power collects,
+concentrates, and converts into a
+power, even while it circumscribes it,
+and represses. So have we seen a
+mountain stream useless in summer,
+dangerous in winter, now a torrent
+now a puddle, wasting its unprofitable
+waters in needless brawling; let a barrier
+be opposed to its downward course,
+let it be dammed up, let a point of
+resistance be afforded where its waters
+may be gathered together, and regulated,
+you find it turned to valuable
+account, acting with men's hands, becoming
+a productive labourer, and
+contributing its time and its industry
+to advance the general sum of rational
+improvement.</p>
+
+<p>From the material to the moral
+world you may always reason by analogy.
+If you study the theory of
+revolutions, you will not fail to observe
+that, wherever, in constructing your
+barrier, you employ ignorant engineers,
+who have not duly calculated
+the depth and velocity of the current;
+whenever you raise your dam to such
+a height that no flood will carry away
+the waste waters; whenever you talk
+of finality to the torrent, saying, thus
+long shalt thou flow, and no longer;
+whenever you put upon your power
+a larger wheel than it can turn&mdash;you
+are slowly but surely preparing for
+that flood which will overwhelm your
+work, destroy your mills, your dams,
+and your engines; in a word, you are
+the remote cause of a revolution.</p>
+
+<p>This is the danger into which aristocracies
+of power are prone to fall:
+the error of democracies is, to delight
+in the absolutism of liberty; but thus
+it is with liberty itself, that true dignity
+of man, that parent of all blessings:
+absolute and uncontrolled, a
+tyranny beyond the power to endure
+itself, the worst of bad masters, a
+fool who is his own client; restrained
+and tempered, it becomes a wholesome
+discipline, a property with its
+rights and its duties, a sober responsibility,
+bringing with it, like all other
+responsibilities, its pleasures and its
+cares; not a toy to be played with, nor
+even a jewel to be worn in the bonnet,
+but a talent to be put out to interest, and
+enjoyed in the unbroken tranquillity
+of national thankfulness and peace.</p>
+
+<p>Another defect in the aristocracy of
+power is, the narrow sphere of their
+sympathies, extending only to those
+they know, and are familiar with; that
+is to say, only as far as the circumference
+of their own limited circle.
+This it is that renders them keenly
+apprehensive of danger close at hand,
+but comparatively indifferent to that
+which menaces them from a distance.
+Placed upon a lofty eminence, they
+are comparatively indifferent while
+clouds obscure, and thunder rattles
+along the vale; their resistance is of
+a passive kind, directed not to the depression
+of those beneath them, nor
+to overcome pressure from above, but
+to preserve themselves in the enviable
+eminence of their position, and there
+to establish themselves in permanent
+security.</p>
+
+<p>As a remedy for this short-sightedness,
+the result of their isolated position,
+the aristocracy of power is always
+prompt to borrow from the aristocracy
+of talent that assistance in
+the practical working of its government
+which it requires; they are
+glad to find safe men among the people
+to whom they can delegate the
+cares of office, the annoyances of patronage,
+and the odium of power;
+and, the better to secure these men,
+they are always ready to lift them
+among themselves, to identify them
+with their exclusive interests, and to
+give them a permanent establishment
+among the nobles of the land.</p>
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="page230" id="page230" title="230"></a>
+<h3>THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS.</h3>
+
+<p>Perhaps we may be expected to say
+something of the dress of men of fashion,
+as it is peculiar, and not less
+characteristic than their manner.
+Their clothes, like their lives, are
+usually of a neutral tint; staring colours
+they studiously eschew, and are
+never seen with elaborate gradations
+of under waistcoats. They would as
+soon appear out of doors <i>in cuerpo</i>, as
+in blue coats with gilt buttons, or
+braided military frocks, or any dress
+smacking of the professional. When
+they indulge in fancy colours and patterns,
+you will not fail to remark that
+these are not worn, although imitated
+by others. The moment a dressy man
+of fashion finds that any thing he has
+patronized gets abroad, he drops the
+neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may
+be, and condemns the tailor as an
+&quot;unsafe&quot; fellow. But it is not often
+that even the most dressy of our men
+of fashion originate any thing <i>outr&eacute;</i>,
+or likely to attract attention; of late
+years their style has been plain, almost
+to scrupulosity.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding that the man of
+fashion is plainly dressed, no more
+than ordinary penetration is required
+to see that he is excellently well
+dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure,
+much plainer than the coat of a Jew-clothesman,
+having neither silk linings,
+nor embroidered pocket-holes, nor cut
+velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see
+how it fits him&mdash;not like cast iron, nor
+like a wet sack, but as if he had been
+born in it.</p>
+
+<p>There is a harmony, a propriety in
+the coat of a man of fashion, an unstudied
+ease, a graceful symmetry, a
+delicacy of expression, that has always
+filled us with the profoundest admiration
+of the genius of the artist; indeed,
+no ready money could purchase coats
+that we have seen&mdash;coats that a real
+love of the subject, and working upon
+long credit, for a high connexion,
+could alone have given to the world&mdash;coats,
+not the dull conceptions of a
+geometric cutter, spiritlessly outlined
+upon the shop-board by the crayon of
+a mercenary foreman, but the fortunate
+creation of superior intelligence,
+boldly executed in the happy moments
+of a generous enthusiasm!</p>
+
+<p>Vain, very vain is it for the pretender
+to fashion to go swelling into the
+<i>atelier</i> of a first-rate coat architect,
+with his ready money in his hand, to
+order such a coat! <i>Order</i> such a
+coat, forsooth! order a Raphael, a
+Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such
+a coat&mdash;we say it with the generous
+indignation of a free Briton&mdash;is one
+of the exclusive privileges reserved,
+by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!</p>
+
+<p>The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too,
+deserves our unlimited approbation.
+Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth
+century, in which those who
+can manage it have the happiness to
+live, than the precision we have attained
+in trouser-cutting. While yet
+the barbarism of the age, or poverty
+of customers, <i>vested</i> the office of
+trouser-cutter and coat architect in
+the same functionary, coats were without
+<i>soul</i>, and &quot;inexpressibles&quot; inexpressibly
+bad, or, as Coleridge would
+have said, &quot;ridiculous exceedingly.&quot;
+In our day, on the contrary, we have
+attained to such a pitch of excellence,
+that the trouser-cutter who fails to
+give expression to his works, is hunted
+into the provinces, and condemned for
+life to manufacture nether garments
+for clergymen and country gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>The results of the minute division
+of labour, to which so much of the
+excellence of all that is excellent in
+London is mainly owing, is in nothing
+more apparent than in that department
+of the fine arts which people devoid
+of taste call fashionable tailoring.
+We have at the West End fashionable
+<i>artistes</i> in riding coats, in dress coats,
+in cut-aways; one is superlative in a
+Taglioni, another devotes the powers
+of his mind exclusively to the construction
+of a Chesterfield, a third
+gives the best years of his life to the
+symmetrical beauty of a barrel-trouser;
+from the united exertions of
+these, and a thousand other men of
+taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed
+man of fashion turned out
+upon the town. Then there are constructors
+of Horse Guards' and of Foot
+Guards' jacket, full and undress; the
+man who contrives these would expire
+if desired to turn his attention to the
+coat of a marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker
+despises the hard, heavy
+style of the cutters for the Royal Artillery,
+and so on. Volumes would
+not shut if we were to fill them with
+the infinite variety of these disguisers
+of that nakedness which formerly was
+<a class="pagenum" name="page231" id="page231" title="231"></a>our shame, but which latterly, it would
+seem, has become our pride. With
+the exception of one gentleman citywards,
+who has achieved an immortality
+in the article of box-coats, every
+contriver of men of fashion, we mean
+in the tailoring, which is the principal
+department, reside in the parish of St
+James's, within easy reach of their
+distinguished patrons. These gentlemen
+have a high and self-respecting
+idea of the nobleness and utility of
+their vocation. A friend of ours, of
+whom we know no harm save that he
+pays his tailors' bills, being one day
+afflicted with this unusual form of insanity,
+desired the artist to deduct
+some odd shillings from his bill; in a
+word, to make it pounds&mdash;&quot;Excuse
+me, sir,&quot; said Snip, &quot;but pray, let <i>us</i>
+not talk of pounds&mdash;pounds for tradesmen,
+if you please; but artists, sir,
+<i>artists</i> are always remunerated with
+guineas!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To return to the outward and visible
+man of fashion, from whose peculiarities
+our dissertation upon the sublime
+and beautiful in tailoring has too
+long detained us. The same subdued
+expression of elegance and ease
+that pervades the leading articles of
+his attire, extends, without exception,
+to all the accessories; or if he is deficient
+in aught, the accessorial <i>toggery</i>,
+such as hats, boots, <i>choker</i>, gloves, are
+always carefully attended to; for it is
+in this department that so distinguished
+a member of the detective police as
+ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised
+snobbery. You will never see
+a man of fashion affect a Paget hat,
+for example, or a D'Orsayan beaver:
+the former has a ridiculous exuberance
+of crown, the latter a by no means
+allowable latitude of brim&mdash;besides,
+borrowing the fashion of a hat, is with
+him what plagiarizing the interior
+furniture of the head is with others.
+He considers stealing the idea of a hat
+low and vulgar, and leaves the unworthy
+theft to be perpetrated by pretenders
+to fashion: content with a hat
+that becomes him, he is careful never
+to be before or behind the prevailing
+hat-intelligence of the time. Three
+hats your man of fashion sedulously
+escheweth&mdash;a new hat, a shocking bad
+hat, and a gossamer. As the song says,
+&quot;when into a shop he goes&quot; he never
+&quot;buys a four-and-nine,&quot; neither buyeth
+he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any
+of the hats indebted for their glossy
+texture to the entrails of the silk
+worm; he sporteth nothing below a
+two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
+putteth it not on his head until his
+valet, exposing it to a shower of rain,
+has &quot;taken the shine out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In boots he is even more scrupulously
+attentive to what Philosopher
+Square so appropriately called the
+fitness of things: his boots are never
+square-toed, or round-toed, like the
+boots of people who think their toes
+are in fashion. You see that they fit
+him, that they are of the best material
+and make, and suitable to the season:
+you never see him sport the Sunday
+patent-leathers of the &quot;snob,&quot; who
+on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny
+high-lows: you never see
+him shambling along in boots a world
+too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled
+victim to the malevolence of
+Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot
+has always been attended to; he has
+worn well-fitting boots every day of
+his life, and he walks as if he knew
+not whether he had boots on or not.
+As for stocks, saving that he be a military
+man, he wears them not; they
+want that easy negligence, attainable
+only by the graceful folds of a well
+tied <i>choker</i>. You never see a man of
+fashion with his neck in the pillory,
+and you hardly ever encounter a
+Cockney whose cervical investment
+does not convey at once the idea of
+that obsolete punishment. A gentleman
+never considers that his neck
+was given him to show off a cataract
+of black satin upon, or as a post
+whereon to display gold-threaded fabrics,
+of all the colours of the rainbow:
+sooner than wear such things,
+he would willingly resign his neck to
+the embraces of a halter. His study is
+to select a modest, unassuming <i>choker,
+fine</i> if you please, but without pretension
+as to pattern, and in colour harmonizing
+with his residual <i>toggery</i>:
+this he ties with an easy, unembarrassed
+air, so that he can conveniently
+look about him. Oxford men, we
+have observed, tie chokers better than
+any others; but we do not know whether
+there are exhibitions or scholarships
+for the encouragement of this
+laudable faculty. At Cambridge
+(except Trinity) there is a laxity in
+chokers, for which it is difficult to
+account, except upon the principle
+that men there attend too closely to
+the mathematics; these, as every body
+knows, are in their essence inimical
+to the higher departments of the fine
+<a class="pagenum" name="page232" id="page232" title="232"></a>arts. There is no reason, however,
+why in this important branch of learning,
+which, as we may say, comes
+home to the bosom of every man, one
+Alma Mater should surpass another;
+since at both the intellects of men are
+almost exclusively occupied for years
+in tying their abominable white chokers,
+so as to look as like tavern waiters
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing: if a gentleman
+sticks a pin in his choker, you may
+be sure it has not a head as big as a
+potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese
+Twin pin, connected by a bit of
+chain, or an imitation precious stone,
+or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears
+studs, they are plain, and have cost
+not less at the least than five guineas
+the set. Neither does he ever make
+a High Sheriff of himself, with chains
+dangling over the front of his waistcoat,
+or little pistols, seals, or trinketry
+appearing below his waistband,
+as much as to say, &quot;<i>if you only knew
+what a watch I have inside</i>!&quot; Nor does
+he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned
+fingers; if he wears rings, you
+may depend upon it that they are of
+value, that they are sparingly distributed,
+and that his hand is not a paw.</p>
+
+<p>A man of fashion never wears
+Woodstock gloves, or gloves with
+double stitches, or eighteen-penny
+imitation French kids: his gloves,
+like himself and every thing about
+him, are the real thing. Dressy young
+men of fashion sport primrose kids in
+the forenoon; and, although they take
+care to avoid the appearance of snobbery
+by never wearing the same pair
+a second day, yet, after all, primrose
+kids in the forenoon are not the thing,
+not in keeping, not quiet enough:
+we therefore denounce primrose kids,
+and desire to see no more of them.</p>
+
+<p>If you are unfortunate enough to
+be acquainted with a snob, you need
+not put yourself to the unnecessary
+expense of purchasing an almanac for
+the ensuing year: your friend the
+snob will answer that useful purpose
+completely to your satisfaction. For
+example, on Thursdays and Sundays
+he shaves and puts on a clean shirt,
+which he exhibits as freely as possible
+in honour of the event: Mondays and
+Fridays you will know by the vegetating
+bristles of his chin, and the
+disappearance of the shirt cuffs and
+collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays
+and Saturdays by supplementary
+collar and cuffs, which, being white
+and starched, form a pleasing contrast
+with that portion of the original <i>chemise</i>,
+vainly attempted to be concealed
+behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
+stock. Wednesdays and Fridays
+you cannot mistake; your friend
+is then at the dirtiest, and his beard at
+the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
+wash and shave: on quarter-day,
+when he gets his salary, he goes to a
+sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman, on the contrary, in
+addition to his other noble inutilities,
+is useless as an almanac. He is never
+half shaven nor half shorn: you never
+can tell when he has had his hair cut,
+nor has he his clean-shirt days, and
+his days of foul linen. He is not
+merely outwardly <i>propre</i>, but asperges
+his cuticle daily with &quot;oriental scrupulosity:&quot;
+he is always and ever, in
+person, manner, dress, and deportment,
+the same, and has never been other
+than he now appears.</p>
+
+<p>You will say, perhaps, this is all
+very fine; but give me the money the
+man of fashion has got, and I will be
+as much a man of fashion as he: I
+will wear my clothes with the same
+ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
+<i>degag&eacute;</i>, as the veriest Bond Street
+lounger of them all. Friend, thou
+mayest say so, or even think so, but I
+defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
+will out; and, if you do not happen
+to be a gentleman born, we tell you
+plainly you will never, by dint of expense
+in dress, succeed in &quot;topping
+the part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We have been for many years
+deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
+into the origin of the peculiar
+attributes characteristic of the man of
+fashion. A work of such importance,
+however, we cannot think of giving
+to the world, except in the appropriate
+envelope of a ponderous quarto:
+just now, by way of whetting the appetite
+of expectation, we shall merely
+observe, that, after much pondering,
+we have at last discovered the secret
+of his wearing his garments &quot;with a
+difference,&quot; or, more properly, with an
+indifference, unattainable by others of
+the human species. You will conjecture,
+haply, that it is because he and
+his father before him have been from
+childhood accustomed to pay attention
+to dress, and that habit has given
+them that air which the occasional
+dresser can never hope to attain: or
+that, having the best <i>artistes</i>, seconded
+by that beautiful division of labour of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page233" id="page233" title="233"></a>which we have spoken heretofore, he
+can attain an evenness of costume, an
+undeviating propriety of toggery&mdash;not
+at all: the whole secret consists
+in <i>never paying, nor intending to pay,
+his tailor</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic
+dispensation, contract for three suits
+a-year, the old ones to be returned,
+and again made new; or those who,
+struck with more than money madness,
+go to a tailor, cash in hand, for
+the purpose of making an investment,
+are always accustomed to consider a
+coat as a representative of so much
+money, transferred only from the
+pocket to the back. Accordingly,
+they are continually labouring under
+the depression of spirits arising from
+a sense of the possible depreciation of
+such a valuable property. Visions of
+showers of rain, and March dust, perpetually
+haunt their morbid imaginations.
+Greasy collars, chalky seams,
+threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that
+the time must come when that tunic,
+for which five pounds ten have been
+lost to them and their heirs for ever,
+will be worth no more than a couple
+of shillings to an old-clothesman in
+Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
+walk along the Strand, with apprehensions
+of anticipated expenditure.
+They walk circumspectly, lest a baker,
+sweep, or hodman, stumbling against
+the coat, may deprive its wearer of
+what to him represents so much ready
+money. These real and imaginary
+evils altogether prohibit the proprietor
+of a paid-up coat wearing it with
+any degree of graceful indifference.</p>
+
+<p>But when a family of fashion, for
+generations, have not only never
+thought of paying a tailor, but have
+considered taking up bills, which the
+too confiding snip has discounted for
+them, as decidedly smacking of the
+punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman;
+thus drawing down upon themselves
+the vengeance of that most intolerant
+sect of Protestants, the Notaries
+Public; when a young man of
+fashion, taught from earliest infancy
+to regard tailors as a Chancellor of
+the Exchequer regards the people at
+large, that is to say, as a class of
+animals created to be victimized in
+every possible way, it is astonishing
+what a subtle grace and indescribable
+expression are conveyed to coats which
+are sent home to you for nothing, or,
+what amounts to exactly the same
+thing, which you have not the most
+remote idea of paying for, <i>in secula
+seculorum</i>. So far from caring whether
+it rains or snows, or whether the
+dust flies, when you have got on one
+of these eleemosynary coats, you are
+rather pleased than otherwise. There
+is a luxury in the idea that on the
+morrow you will start fresh game, and
+victimize your tailor for another. The
+innate cruelty of the human animal is
+gratified, and the idea of a tailor's
+suffering is never conceived by a customer
+without involuntary cachinnation.
+Not only is he denied the attribute
+of integral manhood&mdash;which
+even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys&mdash;but
+that principle which induces
+a few men of enthusiastic temperament
+to pay debts, is always held a
+fault when applied to the bills of
+tailors. And, what is a curious and
+instructive fact in the natural history
+of London fashionable tailors, and
+altogether unnoticed by the Rev.
+Leonard Jenyns, in his <i>Manual of
+British Vertebrate Animals</i>, if you
+go to one of these gentlemen, requesting
+him to &quot;execute,&quot; and professing
+your readiness to pay his bill on demand
+or delivery, he will be sure to
+give your order to the most scurvy
+botch in his establishment, put in the
+worst materials, and treat you altogether
+as a person utterly unacquainted
+with the usages of polite society. But
+if, on the contrary, you are recommended
+to him by Lord Fly-by-night,
+of Denman Priory&mdash;if you give a
+thundering order, and, instead of offering
+to pay for it, pull out a parcel of
+bill-stamps, and <i>promise</i> fifty per cent
+for a few hundreds down, you will be
+surprised to observe what delight will
+express itself in the radiant countenance
+of your victim: visions of cent
+per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams
+of bonds with penalties, and all those
+various shapes in which security delights
+to involve the extravagant, rise
+flatteringly before the inward eye of
+the man of shreds and patches. By
+these transactions with the great, he
+becomes more and more a man, less
+and less a tailor; instead of cutting
+patterns and taking measures, he
+flings the tailoring to his foreman,
+becoming first Lord of the Treasury
+and Chancellor of the Exchequer to
+peers of the realm.</p>
+
+<p>With a few more of the less important
+distinctive peculiarities of the
+gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss
+this portion of our subject. A gentleman
+<a class="pagenum" name="page234" id="page234" title="234"></a>never affects military air or costume
+if he is not a military man, and
+even then avoids professional rigidity
+and swagger as much as possible; he
+never sports spurs or a riding-whip,
+except when he is upon horseback,
+contrary to the rule observed by his
+antagonist the snob, who always sports
+spurs and riding-whip, but who never
+mounts higher than a threepenny stride
+on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a
+gentleman ever wear a <i>moustache</i>, unless
+he belongs to one of the regiments
+of hussars, or the household cavalry,
+who alone are ordered to display that
+ornamental exuberance. Foreigners,
+military or non-military, are recognized
+as wearing hair on the upper
+lip with propriety, as is the custom of
+their country. But no gentleman
+here thinks of such a thing, any more
+than he would think of sporting the
+uniform of the Tenth Hussars.</p>
+
+<p>There is an affectation among the
+vulgar clever, of wearing the <i>moustache</i>,
+which they clip and cut <i>&agrave; la
+Vandyk</i>: this is useful, as affording a
+ready means of distinguishing between
+a man of talent and an ass&mdash;the former,
+trusting to his head, goes clean shaved,
+and looks like an Englishman: the
+latter, whose strength lies altogether
+in his hair, exhausts the power of Macassar
+in endeavouring to make himself
+as like an ourang-outang as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing must be observed
+by all who would successfully ape the
+gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the
+street in mid-day. No better sign can
+you have than this of a fellow reckless
+of decency and behaviour: a gentleman
+smokes, if he smokes at all, where he
+offends not the olfactories of the passers-by.
+Nothing, he is aware, approaches
+more nearly the most offensive
+personal insult, than to compel
+ladies and gentlemen to inhale, after
+you, the ejected fragrance of your
+penny Cuba or your three-halfpenny
+mild Havannah.</p>
+
+<p>In the cities of Germany, where the
+population almost to a man inhale the
+fumes of tobacco, street smoking is
+very properly prohibited; for however
+agreeable may be the sedative influence
+of the Virginian weed when inspired
+from your own manufactory,
+nothing assuredly is more disgusting
+than inhalation of tobacco smoke at
+second-hand.</p>
+
+<p>Your undoubted man of fashion,
+like other animals, has his peculiar
+<i>habitat</i>: you never see him promenading
+in Regent Street between the hours
+of three and five in the afternoon, nor
+by any chance does he venture into
+the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar
+he is never seen except on business,
+and then, never on foot: if he lounges
+any where, it is in Bond Street, or
+about the clubs of St James's.</p>
+
+<h3>OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.</h3>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare, taste, high life and the musical
+glasses.&quot;&mdash;<i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>We will venture to assert, that in
+the course of these essays on the aristocracies
+of London life, we have
+never attempted to induce any of our
+readers to believe that there was any
+cause for him to regret, whatever condition
+of life it had pleased Providence
+to place him in, or to suppose, for one
+moment, that reputable men, though
+in widely different circumstances, are
+not equally reputable. We have studiously
+avoided portraying fashionable
+life according to the vulgar
+notions, whether depreciatory or
+panegyrical. We have shown that
+that class is not to be taken and treated
+of as an integral quantity, but to
+be analyzed as a component body,
+wherein is much sterling ore and no
+little dross. We have shown by sufficient
+examples, that whatever in our
+eyes makes the world of fashion really
+respectable, is solely owing to the real
+worth of its respectable members; and
+on the contrary, whatever contempt
+we fling upon the fashionable world,
+is the result of the misconduct of individuals
+of that order, prominently
+contemptible.</p>
+
+<p>Of the former, the example is of infinite
+value to society, in refining its
+tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed
+ease, which, if not true
+politeness, is its true substitute; and,
+of the latter, the mischief done to society
+is enhanced by the multitude of
+low people ready to imitate their
+vices, inanities, and follies.</p>
+
+<p>Pretenders to fashion, who hang
+upon the outskirts of fashionable society,
+and whose lives are a perpetual
+but unavailing struggle to jump above
+their proper position, are horrid nuisances;
+and they abound, unfortunately,
+in London.</p>
+
+<p>In a republic, where practical equality
+<a class="pagenum" name="page235" id="page235" title="235"></a>is understood and acted upon,
+this pretension would be intolerable;
+in an aristocratic state of society, with
+social gradations pointedly defined
+and universally recognized, it is merely
+ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the
+pretenders, it is a source of much and
+deserved misery and isolation.</p>
+
+<p>There are ten thousand varying
+shades and degrees of this pretension,
+from the truly fashionable people who
+hanker after the <i>exclusives</i>, or seventh
+heaven of high life, down to the courier
+out of place, who, in a pot-house,
+retails Debrett by heart, and talks of
+lords, and dukes, and earls, as of his
+particular acquaintance, and how and
+where he met them when on his travels.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>exclusives</i> are a queer set, some
+of them not by any means people of
+the best pretensions to lead the <i>ton</i>.
+Lady L&mdash;&mdash; and Lady B&mdash;&mdash; may be
+very well as patronesses of Almack's;
+but what do you say to Lady J&mdash;&mdash;,
+a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in
+money, keeping her shop by deputy
+in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill?
+Almack's, as every body knows who
+has been there, or who has talked with
+any observing <i>habitu&eacute;</i> of the place,
+contains a great many queer, spurious
+people, smuggled in somehow by
+indirect influence, when royal command
+is not the least effectual: a
+surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken
+young men, and, in an inverse
+ratio, women who have any thing more
+than the clothes they wear: yet, by
+mere dint of difficulty, by the simple
+circumstance of making admission to
+this assembly a matter of closeting,
+canvassing, balloting, black-balling,
+and so forth, people of much better
+fashion than many of the exclusives
+make it a matter of life and death to
+have their admission secured. Admission
+to Almack's is to a young <i>d&eacute;butante</i>
+of fashion as great an object as a
+seat at the Privy Council Board to a
+flourishing politician: your <i>ton</i> is
+stamped by it, you are of the exclusive
+<i>set</i>, and, by virtue of belonging to that
+set, every other is open to you as a
+matter of course, when you choose to
+condescend to visit it. The room in
+which Almack's balls are held we need
+not describe, because it has been often
+described before, and because the
+doorkeeper, any day you choose to
+go to Duke Street, St James's, will be
+too happy to show it you for sixpence;
+but we will give you in his own words,
+all the information we could contrive
+to get from a man of the highest
+fashion, who is a subscriber.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I really don't know,&quot; said
+he, &quot;that I have any thing to tell you
+about Almack's, except that all that
+the novel-writers say about it is ridiculous
+nonsense: the lights are good,
+the refreshments not so good, the
+music excellent; the women dress
+well, dance a good deal, and talk but
+little. There is a good deal of envy,
+jealousy, and criticism of faces, figures,
+fortunes, and pretensions: one, or at
+most two, of the balls in a season are
+pleasant; the others <i>slow</i> and very
+dull. The point of the thing seems to
+be, that people of rank choose to like
+it because it stamps a set, and low
+people talk about it because they
+cannot by any possibility know any
+thing about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such is Almack's, of which volumes
+have been spun, of most effete and
+lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid
+appetites of the pretenders to fashion.</p>
+
+<p>We must not omit to inform our
+rural readers, that no conventional
+rank gives any one in London a patent
+of privilege in truly fashionable
+society. An old baronet shall be exclusive,
+when a young peer shall
+have no fashionable society at all: a
+lord is by no means necessarily a man
+in what the fashionable sets call good
+society: we have many lords who are
+not men of fashion, and many men of
+fashion who are not lords.</p>
+
+<p>Professional peers, whether legal,
+naval, or military, bishops, judges,
+and all that class of men who attain
+by talents, interest, and good fortune,
+or all, or any of these, a lofty social
+position, have no more to do with the
+exclusive or merely fashionable sets
+than you or I. A man may be a barrister
+in full practice to-day, an attorney-general
+to-morrow, a chief-justice
+the day after with a peerage: yet his
+wife and daughter visit the same people,
+and are visited by the same people,
+that associated with them before.
+If men of fashion know them, it is because
+they have business to transact
+or favours to seek for, or because it
+is part of their system to keep up a
+qualified intimacy with all whom they
+think proper to lift to their own level:
+but this intimacy is only extended by
+the man of birth to the man of talent.
+His family do not become people of
+fashion until the third or fourth generation:
+he remains the man of business,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page236" id="page236" title="236"></a>the useful, working, practical,
+brains-carrying man that he was; and
+his family, if they are wise, seek not
+to become the familiars of the old
+aristocracy, and if they are foolish,
+become the most unfortunate pretenders
+to fashion. They are too near
+to be pleasant; and the gulf which
+people of hereditary fashion place between
+is impassable, even though they
+flounder up to their necks in servile
+mud.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same with baronets, M.P.'s,
+and all that sort of people. These
+handles to men's names go down very
+well in the country, where it is imagined
+that a baronet or an M.P. is,
+<i>ex officio</i>, a man of consequence, and
+that, rank being equal, consequence is
+also equal. In London, on the contrary,
+people laugh at the idea of a
+man pluming himself upon such distinctions
+without a difference: in town
+we have baronets of all sorts&mdash;the
+&quot;Heathcotes, and such large-acred
+men,&quot; Sir Watkyn, and the territorial
+baronetage: then we have the
+Hanmers, and others of undoubted
+fashion, to which their patent is the
+weakest of their claims: then we
+have the military, naval, and medical
+baronet: descending, through infinite
+gradations, we come down to the
+tallow-chandling, the gin-spinning,
+the banking, the pastry-cooking baronetage.</p>
+
+<p>What is there, what can there be,
+in common with these widely severed
+classes, save that they equally enjoy
+<i>Sir</i> at the head and <i>Bart</i>. at the tail
+of their sponsorial and patronymic
+appellations? Do you think the
+landed Bart. knows any more of the
+medical Bart. than that, when he sends
+for the other to attend his wife, he
+calls him generally &quot;doctor,&quot; and
+seldom Sir James: or that the military
+Bart. does not much like the
+naval Bart.? and do not all these
+incongruous Barts. shudder at the
+bare idea of been seen on the same
+side of the street with a gin-spinning,
+Patent-British-Genuine-Foreign-Cognac
+Brandy-making Bart.? and do
+not each and every one of these Barts.
+from head to tail, even including the
+last-mentioned, look down with immeasurable
+disdain upon the poor
+Nova Scotia baronets, who move heaven
+and earth to get permission to
+wear a string round their necks, and
+a badge like the learned fraternity of
+cabmen?</p>
+
+<p>Then as to the magic capitals
+M.P., which provincial people look
+upon as embodying in the wearer
+the concentrated essence of wisdom,
+eloquence, personal distinction, and
+social eminence. Who, in a country
+town, on a market day, has not seen
+tradesmen cocking their eye, apprentices
+glowering through the shop
+front, and ladies subdolously peeping
+behind the window-shutter to catch
+a glimpse of the &quot;member for our
+town,&quot; and, having seen him, think
+they are rather happier then they were
+before? The greatest fun in the
+world is to go to a <i>cul-de-sac</i> off a
+dirty lane near Palace Yard, called
+Manchester Buildings, a sort of senatorial
+pigeon-house, where the meaner
+fry of houseless M.P.'s live, each in
+his one pair, two pair, three pair, as
+the case may be, and give a postman's
+knock at every door in rapid succession.
+In a twinkling, the &quot;collective
+wisdom&quot; of Manchester Buildings and
+the Midland Counties poke out their
+heads. Cobden appears on the balcony;
+Muntz glares out of a second
+floor, like a live bear in a barber's
+window; Wallace of Greenock comes
+to the door in a red nightcap; and a
+long &quot;tail&quot; of the other immortals of
+a session. You may enjoy the scene
+as much as you please; but when you
+hear one or two of the young Irish
+patriotic &quot;mimbers&quot; floundering from
+the attics, the wisest course you can
+take will be incontinently to &quot;mizzle.&quot;
+These men, however, have one redeeming
+quality&mdash;that they live in Manchester
+Buildings, and don't care who
+knows it; they are out of fashion,
+and don't care who are in; they are
+minding their business, and not hanging
+at the skirts of people ever ready
+and willing to kick them off.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the &quot;dandy&quot;
+M.P.'s, who ride hack-horses, associate
+with fashionable actresses, and
+hang about the clubs. Then there is
+the chance or accidental M.P., who
+has been elected he hardly knows how
+or when, and wonders to find himself
+in Parliament. Then there is the
+desperate, adventuring, ear-wigging
+M.P., whose hope of political existence,
+and whose very livelihood, depend
+upon getting or continuing in
+place. Then there is the legal M.P.,
+with one eye fixed on the Queen's,
+the other squinting at the Treasury
+Bench. Then there is the lounging
+M.P., who is usually the scion of a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page237" id="page237" title="237"></a>noble family, and who comes now and
+then into the House, to stare vacantly
+about, and go out again. Then there
+is the military M.P., who finds the
+House an agreeable lounge, and does
+not care to join his regiment on foreign
+service. Then there is the bustling
+M.P. of business, the M.P. of business
+without bustle, and the independent
+country gentleman M.P., who
+wants nothing for himself or any
+body else, and who does not care a
+turnip-top for the whole lot of them.</p>
+
+<p>The aggregate distinction, as a
+member of Parliament, is totally sunk
+in London. It is the man, and not
+the two letters after his name, that
+any body whose regard is worth the
+having in the least regard. There are
+M.P.s never seen beyond the exclusive
+set, except on a committee of the
+House, and then they know and speak
+to nobody save one of themselves.
+There are other M.P.s that you will
+find in no society except Tom Spring's
+or Owen Swift's, at the Horse-shoe in
+Litchborne Street.</p>
+
+<p>These observations upon baronets
+and M.P.s may be extended upwards
+to the peerage, and downwards to the
+professional, commercial, and all other
+the better classes. Every man hangs,
+like a herring, by his own tail; and
+every class would be distinct and separate,
+but that the pretenders to fashion,
+like some equivocal animals in the
+chain of animated nature, connect
+these different classes by copying pertinaciously
+the manners, and studying
+to adopt the tastes and habits of the
+class immediately above them.</p>
+
+<p>Of pretenders to fashion, perhaps
+the most successful in their imitative
+art are the</p>
+
+<p>SHEENIES.&mdash;By this term, as used
+by men of undoubted <i>ton</i> with reference
+to the class we are about to
+consider, you are to understand runagate
+Jews rolling in riches, who profess
+to love roast pork above all things,
+who always eat their turkey with
+sausages, and who have <i>cut</i> their religion
+for the sake of dangling at the
+heels of fashionable Christians. These
+people are &quot;swelling&quot; upon the profits
+of the last generation in St Mary Axe
+or Petticoat Lane. The founders of
+their families have been loan-manufacturers,
+crimps, receivers of stolen
+goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers
+and sweaters, rag-merchants, and
+the like, and conscientious Israelites;
+but their children, not having fortitude
+to abide by their condition, nor
+right principle to adhere to their sect,
+come to the west end of the town, and,
+by right of their money, make unremitting
+assaults upon the loose fish of
+fashionable society, who laugh at, and
+heartily despise them, while they are
+as ashes in the mouths of the respectable
+members of the persuasion to
+which they originally belonged.</p>
+
+<p>HEAVY SWELLS are another very
+important class of pretenders to fashion,
+and are divided into civil and
+military. Professional men, we say
+it to their honour, seldom affect the
+heavy swell, because the feeblest
+glimmerings of that rationality of
+thinking which results from among
+the lowest education, preserves them
+from the folly of the attempt, and, in
+preserving from folly, saves them from
+the self-reproaching misery that attends
+it. Men of education or of
+common sense, look upon pretension
+to birth, rank, or any thing else to
+which they have no legitimate claim,
+as little more than moral forgery; it
+it is with them an uttering base coin
+upon false pretences. It is generally
+the wives and families of professional
+men who are afflicted with pretension
+to fashion, of which we shall give
+abundant examples when we come to
+treat of gentility-mongers. But the
+heavy swell, who is of all classes,
+from the son and heir of an opulent
+blacking-maker down to the lieutenant
+of a marching regiment on half-pay,
+is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably
+illiterate, and therefore incapable,
+by nature and bringing-up, of
+respecting himself by a modest contented
+demeanour. He is never so
+unhappy as when he appears the thing
+he is&mdash;never so completely in his
+element as when acting the thing he
+is not, nor can ever be. He spends his
+life in jumping, like a cat, at shadows
+on the wall. He has day and night
+dreams of people, who have not the
+least idea that such a man is in existence,
+and he comes in time, by mere
+dint of thinking of nobody else, to
+think that he is one of them. He acquaints
+himself with the titles of lords,
+as other men do those of books, and
+then boasts largely of the extent of
+his acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that he is an officer
+of a hard-fighting, foreign-service,
+neglected infantry regiment. This,
+which to a soldier would be an honest
+pride, is the shame of the Heavy Military
+<a class="pagenum" name="page238" id="page238" title="238"></a>Swell. His chief business in life,
+next to knowing the names and faces
+of lords, is concealing from you the
+corps to which he has the dishonour,
+he thinks, to belong. He talks mightily
+of the service, of hussars and light
+dragoons; but when he knows that
+you know better, when you poke him
+hard about the young or old buffs, or
+the dirty half-hundred, he whispers in
+your ear that &quot;my fellows,&quot; as he
+calls them, are very &quot;fast,&quot; and that
+they are &quot;all known in town, very well
+known indeed&quot;&mdash;a piece of information
+you will construe in the case of
+the heavy swell to mean, better known
+than trusted.</p>
+
+<p>When he is on full pay, the heavy
+swell is known to the three old women
+and five desperate daughters who
+compose good society in country quarters.
+He affects a patronizing air at
+small tea-parties, and is wonderfully
+run after by wretched un-idea'd girls,
+that is, by ten girls in twelve; he is
+eternally striving to get upon the
+&quot;staff,&quot; or anyhow to shirk his regimental
+duty; he is a whelp towards
+the men under his command, and has
+a grand idea of spurs, steel scabbards,
+and flogging; to his superiors he is a
+spaniel, to his brother officers an intolerable
+ass; he makes the mess-room
+a perfect hell with his vanity, puppyism,
+and senseless bibble-babble.</p>
+
+<p>On leave, or half-pay, he &quot;mounts
+mustaches,&quot; to help the hussar and
+light-dragoon idea, or to delude the
+ignorant into a belief that he may
+possibly belong to the household cavalry.
+He hangs about doors of military
+clubs, with a whip in his hand;
+talks very loud at the &quot;Tiger&quot; or the
+&quot;Rag and famish,&quot; and never has done
+shouting to the waiter to bring him a
+&quot;Peerage;&quot; carries the &quot;Red Book&quot;
+and &quot;Book of Heraldry&quot; in his pocket;
+sees whence people come, and
+where they go, and makes them out
+somehow; in short, he is regarded
+with a thrill of horror by people of
+fashion, fast or slow, civil or military.</p>
+
+<p>The Civil Heavy Swell affects fashionable
+curricles, and enjoys all the
+consideration a pair of good horses
+can give. He rides a blood bay in
+Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is
+detected by galloping, or some other
+solecism; his dress and liveries are
+always overdone, the money shows on
+every thing about him. He has familiar
+abbreviations for the names of all
+the fast men about town; calls this
+Lord &quot;Jimmy,&quot; 'tother Chess, a third
+Dolly, and thinks he knows them;
+keeps an expensive mistress, because
+&quot;Jimmy&quot; and Chess are supposed to
+do the same, and when he is out of
+the way, his mistress has some of the
+fast fellows to supper, at the heavy
+swell's expense. He settles the point
+whether claret is to be drank from a
+jug or black bottle, and retails the
+merits of a <i>plateau</i> or <i>epergne</i> he saw,
+when last he dined with a &quot;fellow&quot;
+in Belgrave Square.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Foreigneering</i> Heavy Swell has
+much more spirit, talent, and manner,
+than the home-grown article; but he
+is poor in a like ratio, and is therefore
+obliged to feather his nest by
+denuding the pigeon tribe of their
+metallic plumage. He is familiarly
+known to all the fast fellows, who
+<i>cut</i> him, however, as soon as they
+marry, but is not accounted good <i>ton</i>
+by heads of families. He is liked at
+the Hells and Clubs, where he has a
+knack of distinguishing himself without
+presumption or affectation. He
+is a dresser by right divine, and
+dresses ridiculously. The fashionable
+fellows affect loudly to applaud his
+taste, and laugh to see the vulgar imitate
+the foreigneering swell. He is
+the idol of equivocal women, and condescends
+to patronize unpresentable
+gentility-mongers. He is not unhappy
+at heart, like the indigenous
+heavy swell, but enjoys his intimacy
+with the fast fellows, and uses it.</p>
+
+<p>There is an infallible test we should
+advise you to apply, whenever you
+are bored to desperation by any of
+these heavy swells. When he talks
+of &quot;my friend, the Duke of Bayswater,&quot;
+ask him, in a quiet tone,
+where he last met the <i>Duchess</i>. If he
+says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl
+of) is an honest good fellow, enquire
+whether he prefers Lady Mary or
+Lady Seraphina Serpentine. This
+drops him like a shot&mdash;he can't get
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a rule in good society that you
+know the set only when you know the
+women of that set; however you may
+work your way among the men, whatever
+you may do at the Hells and
+Clubs, goes for nothing&mdash;the <i>women</i>
+stamp you counterfeit or current,
+and&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Not to know <i>them</i>, argues yourself unknown.&quot;</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page239" id="page239" title="239"></a>
+<a name="bw328s8" id="bw328s8"></a><h2>EYRE'S CABUL.</h2>
+
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat and Destruction of
+the British Army, January 1842; with a Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan.
+By Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, late Deputy-Commissary of Ordnance
+at Cabul. London: John Murray.</p></div>
+
+<p>This is the first connected account
+that has appeared of the military disasters
+that befell the British army at
+Cabul&mdash;by far the most signal reverse
+our arms have ever sustained in Asia.
+The narrative is full of a deep and
+painful interest, which becomes more
+and more intense as we approach the
+closing catastrophe. The simple detail
+of the daily occurrences stirs up
+our strongest feelings of indignation,
+pity; scorn, admiration, horror, and
+grief. The tale is told without art,
+or any attempt at artificial ornament,
+and in a spirit of manly and gentlemanlike
+forbearance from angry comment
+or invective, that is highly creditable
+to the author, and gives us a
+very favourable opinion both of his
+head and of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>That a British army of nearly six
+thousand fighting men&mdash;occupying a
+position chosen and fortified by our
+own officers, and having possession,
+within two miles of this fortified cantonment,
+of a strong citadel commanding
+the greater part of the town
+of Cabul, a small portion only of
+whose population rose against us at
+the commencement of the revolt&mdash;should
+not only have made no vigorous
+effort to crush the insurrection;
+but that it should ultimately have
+been driven by an undisciplined Asiatic
+mob, destitute of artillery, and
+which never appears to have collected
+in one place above 10,000 men, to
+seek safety in a humiliating capitulation,
+by which it surrendered the
+greater part of its artillery, military
+stores, and treasure, and undertook to
+evacuate the whole country on condition
+of receiving a safe conduct from
+the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they
+placed, and could place, no reliance;
+and finally, that, of about 4500 armed
+soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers,
+many of whom were also
+armed, who set out from Cabul, only
+one man, and he wounded, should
+have arrived at Jellalabad; is an amount
+of misfortune so far exceeding every
+rational anticipation of evil, that we
+should have been entitled to assume
+that these unparalleled military disasters
+arose from a series of unparalleled
+errors, even if we had not had,
+as we now have, the authority of Lord
+Ellenborough for asserting the fact.</p>
+
+<p>But every nation, and more particularly
+the British nation, is little inclined
+to pardon the men under whose
+command any portion of its army or
+of its navy may have been beaten.
+Great Britain, reposing entire confidence
+in the courage of her men, and
+little accustomed to see them overthrown,
+is keenly jealous of the reputation
+of her forces; and, as she is ever
+prompt to reward military excellence
+and success, she heaps unmeasured
+obloquy on those who may have subjected
+her to the degradation of defeat.
+When our forces have encountered
+a reverse, or even when the success
+has not been commensurate with
+the hopes that had been indulged; the
+public mind has ever been prone to
+condemn the commanders; and wherever
+there has been reason to believe
+that errors have been committed
+which have led to disaster, there has
+been little disposition to make any
+allowances for the circumstances of
+the case, or for the fallibility of man;
+but, on the contrary, the nation has too
+often evinced a fierce desire to punish
+the leaders for the mortification the
+country has been made to endure.</p>
+
+<p>This feeling may tend to elevate
+the standard of military character,
+but it must at the same time preclude
+the probability of calm or impartial
+examination, so far as the great body
+of the nation is concerned; and it is
+therefore the more obviously incumbent
+on those who, from a more intimate
+knowledge of the facts, or from
+habits of more deliberate investigation,
+are not carried away by the tide
+of popular indignation and invective,
+to weigh the circumstances with
+conscientious caution, and to await
+the result of judicial enquiry before
+they venture to apportion the blame
+or even to estimate its amount.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The following notes,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre in his preface, &quot;were penned to relieve
+<a class="pagenum" name="page240" id="page240" title="240"></a>the monotony of an Affghan prison,
+while yet the events which they record
+continued fresh in my memory. I now
+give them publicity, in the belief that the
+information which they contain on the
+dreadful scenes lately enacted in Affghanistan,
+though clothed in a homely garb,
+will scarcely fail to be acceptable to many
+of my countrymen, both in India and England,
+who may be ignorant of the chief
+particulars. The time, from the 2d November
+1841, on which day the sudden
+popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to
+the 13th January 1842, which witnessed
+the annihilation of the last small remnant
+of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was
+one continued tragedy. The massacre of
+Sir Alexander Burnes and his associates,&mdash;the
+loss of our commissariat fort&mdash;the
+defeat of our troops under Brigadier
+Shelton at Beymaroo&mdash;the treacherous
+assassination of Sir William Macnaghten,
+our envoy and minister&mdash;and lastly, the
+disastrous retreat and utter destruction of
+a force consisting of 5000 fighting men
+and upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,&mdash;are
+events which will assuredly rouse
+the British Lion from his repose, and excite
+an indignant spirit of enquiry in every
+breast. Men will not be satisfied, in this
+case, with a bare statement of the facts,
+but they will doubtless require to be made
+acquainted with the causes which brought
+about such awful effects. We have lost
+six entire regiments of infantry, three
+companies of sappers, a troop of European
+horse-artillery, half the mountain-train
+battery, nearly a whole regiment of
+regular cavalry, and four squadrons of
+irregular horse, besides a well-stocked
+magazine, which <i>alone</i>, taking into consideration
+the cost of transport up to Cabul,
+may be estimated at nearly a million sterling.
+From first to last, not less than 104
+British officers have fallen: their names
+will be found in the Appendix. I glance
+but slightly at the <i>political</i> events of this
+period, not having been one of the initiated;
+and I do not pretend to enter into
+<i>minute</i> particulars with regard to even
+our <i>military</i> transactions, more especially
+those not immediately connected with the
+sad catastrophe which it has been my ill
+fortune to witness, and whereof I now
+endeavour to portray the leading features.
+In these notes I have been careful to state
+only what I know to be undeniable facts.
+I have set down nothing on mere hearsay
+evidence, nor any thing which cannot be
+attested by living witnesses or by existing
+documentary evidence. In treating of
+matters which occurred under my personal
+observation, it has been difficult to avoid
+<i>altogether</i> the occasional expression of my
+own individual opinion: but I hope it will
+be found that I have made no observations
+bearing hard on men or measures, that
+are either uncalled for, or will not stand
+the test of future investigation.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>After the surrender of Dost Mahomed
+Khan, there remained in Affghanistan
+no chief who possessed a
+dominant power or influence that
+made him formidable to the government
+of Shah Shoojah, or to his English
+allies; and the kingdom of Cabul
+seemed to be gradually, though slowly,
+subsiding into comparative tranquillity.
+In the summer of the year
+1841, the authority of the sovereign
+appears to have been acknowledged
+in almost every part of his dominions.
+A partial revolt of the Giljyes was
+speedily suppressed by our troops.
+The Kohistan, or more correctly,
+Koohdaman of Cabul, a mountainous
+tract, inhabited by a warlike people,
+over whom the authority of the governments
+of the country had long
+been imperfect and precarious, had
+submitted, or had ceased to resist. A
+detachment from the British force at
+Kandahar, after defeating Akter
+Khan, who had been instigated by the
+Vezeer of Herat to rebel, swept the
+country of Zemindawer, drove Akter
+Khan a fugitive to Herat, received
+the submission of all the chiefs in that
+part of the kingdom, and secured the
+persons of such as it was not thought
+prudent to leave at large in those districts.</p>
+
+<p>The Shah's authority was not believed
+to be so firmly established, that
+both Sir William Macnaghten, the
+British envoy at Cabul, who had recently
+been appointed governor of
+Bombay, and Sir Alexander Burnes,
+on whom the duties of the envoy would
+have devolved on Sir W. Macnaghten's
+departure, thought that the time
+had arrived when the amount of the
+British force in Affghanistan, which
+was so heavy a charge upon the revenues
+of India, might with safety be
+reduced, and General Sale's brigade
+was ordered to hold itself in readiness
+to march to Jellalabad, on its route to
+India.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this time, however, Major
+Pottinger, the political agent in Kohistan,
+including, we presume, the
+Koohdaman, thought the force at his
+disposal too small to maintain the
+tranquillity of the district; and the
+chiefs of the valley of Nijrow, or Nijrab,
+a valley of Kohistan Proper, had
+not only refused to submit, but had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page241" id="page241" title="241"></a>harboured the restless and disaffected
+who had made themselves obnoxious
+to the Shah's government. But although
+Major Pottinger had no confidence
+in the good feelings of the
+people of his own district to the government,
+and even seems to have anticipated
+insurrection, no movement
+of that description had yet taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Early in September, however, Captain
+Hay, who was with a small force
+in the Zoormut valley, situated nearly
+west from Ghuznee and south from
+Cabul, having been induced by the
+representations of Moollah Momin&mdash;the
+collector of the revenues, who was
+a Barikzye, and a near relation of one
+of the leaders of the insurrection, in
+which he afterwards himself took an
+active part&mdash;to move against a fort in
+which the murderers of Colonel Herring
+were said to have taken shelter,
+the inhabitants resisted his demands,
+and fired upon the troops. His force
+was found insufficient to reduce it,
+and he was obliged to retire; a stronger
+force was therefore sent, on the
+approach of which the people fled to
+the hills, and the forts they had evacuated
+were blown up. This occurrence
+was not calculated seriously to
+disturb the confident hopes that were
+entertained of the permanent tranquillity
+of the country; but before
+the force employed upon that expedition
+had returned to Cabul, a formidable
+insurrection had broken out in
+another quarter.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Early in October,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre, &quot;three Giljye chiefs of note suddenly
+quitted Cabul, after plundering a
+rich cafila at Tezeen, and took up a
+strong position in the difficult defile of
+Khoord-Cabul, about ten miles from the
+capital, thus blocking up the pass, and
+cutting off our communication with Hindostan.
+Intelligence had not very long
+previously been received that Mahomed
+Akber Khan, second son of the ex-ruler
+Dost Mahomed Khan, had arrived at
+Bameean from Khooloom, for the supposed
+purpose of carrying on intrigues against
+the Government. It is remarkable that he
+is nearly connected by marriage with Mahomed
+Shah Khan and Dost Mahomed
+Khan, also Giljyes, who almost immediately
+joined the above-mentioned chiefs.
+Mahomed Akber had, since the deposition
+of his father, never ceased to foster feelings
+of intense hatred towards the English
+nation; and, though often urged by the
+fallen ruler to deliver himself up, had resolutely
+preferred the life of a houseless exile
+to one of mean dependence on the bounty
+of his enemies. It seems, therefore, in
+the highest degree probable that this hostile
+movement on the part of the Eastern
+Giljyes was the result of his influence over
+them, combined with other causes which
+will be hereafter mentioned.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The other causes here alluded to,
+appear to be &quot;the deep offence given
+to the Giljyes by the ill-advised reduction
+of their annual stipends, a
+measure which had been forced upon
+Sir William Macnaghten by Lord
+Auckland. This they considered, and
+with some show of justice, as a breach
+of faith on the part of our Government.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We presume that it is not Mr
+Eyre's intention to assert that this
+particular measure was ordered by
+Lord Auckland, but merely that the
+rigid economy enforced by his lordship,
+led the Envoy to have recourse
+to this measure as one of the means by
+which the general expenditure might
+be diminished.</p>
+
+<p>Formidable as this revolt of the
+Giljyes was found to be, we are led
+to suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten
+and Sir A. Burnes were misled,
+probably by the Shah's government,
+very greatly to underrate its
+importance and its danger. The
+force under Colonel Monteath,<a id="footnotetag16" name="footnotetag16" href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> which
+in the first instance was sent to suppress
+it, was so small that it was not
+only unable to penetrate into the
+country it was intended to overawe or
+to subdue, but it was immediately attacked
+in its camp, within ten miles of
+Cabul, and lost thirty-five sepoys killed
+and wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Two days afterwards, the 11th
+October, General Sale marched from
+Cabul with H.M.'s 13th light infantry,
+to join Colonel Monteath's
+camp at Bootkhak; and the following
+morning the whole proceeded to force
+the pass of Khoord-Cabul, which was
+effected with some loss. The 13th
+returned through the pass to Bootkhak,
+suffering from the fire of parties
+which still lurked among the rocks.
+The remainder of the brigade encamped
+at Khoord-Cabul, at the further
+extremity of the defile. In this
+divided position the brigade remained
+for some days, and both camps had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page242" id="page242" title="242"></a>to sustain night attacks from the
+Affghans&mdash;&quot;that on the 35th native
+infantry being peculiarly disastrous,
+from the treachery of the Affghan
+horse, who admitted the enemy within
+their lines, by which our troops were
+exposed to a fire from the least suspected
+quarter. Many of our gallant
+sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus
+met their death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the 20th October, General Sale,
+having been reinforced, marched to
+Khoord-Cabul; &quot;and about the 22d,
+the whole force there assembled, with
+Captain Macgregor, political agent,
+marched to Tezeen, encountering
+much determined opposition on the
+road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By this time it was too evident
+that the whole of the Eastern Giljyes
+had risen in one common league
+against us.&quot; The treacherous proceedings
+of their chief or viceroy, Humza
+Khan, which had for some time been
+suspected, were now discovered, and
+he was arrested by order of Shah
+Shoojah.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;It must be remarked,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre, &quot;that for some time previous to
+these overt acts of rebellion, the always
+strong and ill-repressed personal dislike
+of the Affghans towards Europeans, had
+been manifested in a more than usually
+open manner in and about Cabul. Officers
+had been insulted and attempts made
+to assassinate them. Two Europeans had
+been murdered, as also several camp-followers;
+but these and other signs of the
+approaching storm had unfortunately been
+passed over as mere ebullitions of private
+angry feeling. This incredulity and apathy
+is the more to be lamented, as it was pretty
+well known that on the occasion of the
+<i>shub-khoon</i>, or first night attack on the
+35th native infantry at Bootkhak, a large
+portion of our assailants consisted of the
+armed retainers of the different men of
+consequence in Cabul itself, large parties
+of whom had been seen proceeding from
+the city to the scene of action on the
+evening of the attack, and afterwards returning.
+Although these men had to pass
+either through the heart or round the
+skirts of our camp at Seeah Sung, it was
+not deemed expedient even to question
+them, far less to detain them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the 26th October, General Sale
+started in the direction of Gundamuk,
+Captain Macgregor having half-frightened,
+half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs
+into what proved to have been a most
+hollow truce.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On the same day, the 37th native
+infantry, three companies of the Shah's
+sappers under Captain Walsh, and
+three guns of the mountain train under
+Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps
+towards Cabul, where the sappers,
+pushing on, arrived unopposed; but
+the rest of the detachment was attacked
+on the 2d November&mdash;on the
+afternoon of which day, Major Griffiths,
+who commanded it, received
+orders to force his way to Cabul,
+where the insurrection had that morning
+broken out. His march through
+the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul,
+was one continued conflict; but the
+gallantry of his troops, and the excellence
+of his own dispositions, enabled
+him to carry the whole of his wounded
+and baggage safe to the cantonments
+at Cabul, where he arrived about three
+o'clock on the morning of the 3d
+November, followed almost to the
+gates by about 3000 Giljyes.</p>
+
+<p>The causes of the insurrection in
+the capital are not yet fully ascertained,
+or, if ascertained, they have
+not been made public. Lieutenant
+Eyre does not attempt to account for
+it; but he gives us the following memorandum
+of Sir W. Macnaghten's, found,
+we presume, amongst his
+papers after his death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The immediate cause of the outbreak
+in the capital was a seditious letter addressed
+by Abdoollah Khan to several
+chiefs of influence at Cabul, stating that it
+was the design of the Envoy to seize and
+send them all to London! The principal
+rebels met on the previous night, and, relying
+on the inflammable feelings of the
+people of Cabul, they pretended that the
+King had issued an order to put all infidels
+to death; having previously forged an
+order from him for our destruction, by the
+common process of washing out the contents
+of a genuine paper, with the exception
+of the seal, and substituting their own
+wicked inventions.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But this invention, though it was
+probably one of the means employed
+by the conspirators to increase the
+number of their associates, can hardly
+be admitted to account for the insurrection.
+The arrival of Akber Khan
+at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes,
+the previous flight of their chiefs from
+Cabul, and the almost simultaneous
+attack of our posts in the Koohdaman,
+(called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,)
+on the 3d November&mdash;the attack of a
+party conducting prisoners from Candahar
+to Ghuznee&mdash;the immediate
+<a class="pagenum" name="page243" id="page243" title="243"></a>interruption of every line of communication
+with Cabul&mdash;and the selection
+of the season of the year the
+most favourable to the success of the
+insurrection, with many other less
+important circumstances, combine to
+force upon us the opinion, that the
+intention to attack the Cabul force, so
+soon as it should have become isolated
+by the approach of winter, had been
+entertained, and the plan of operations
+concerted, for some considerable time
+before the insurrection broke out.
+That many who wished for its success
+may have been slow to commit
+themselves, is to be presumed, and
+that vigorous measures might, if resorted
+to on the first day, have suppressed
+the revolt, is probable; but
+it can hardly be doubted that we must
+look far deeper, and further back, for
+the causes which united the Affghan
+nation against us.</p>
+
+<p>The will of their chiefs and spiritual
+leaders&mdash;fanatical zeal, and hatred of
+the domination of a race whom they
+regarded as infidels&mdash;may have been
+sufficient to incite the lower orders to
+any acts of violence, or even to the
+persevering efforts they made to extirpate
+the English. In their eyes
+the contest would assume the character
+of a religious war&mdash;of a crusade;
+and every man who took up arms in
+that cause, would go to battle with
+the conviction that, if he should be
+slain, his soul would go at once to
+paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy
+of the faith, he thereby also secured to
+himself eternal happiness. But the
+chiefs are not so full of faith; and
+although we would not altogether exclude
+religious antipathy as an incentive,
+we may safely assume that something
+more immediately affecting their
+temporal and personal concerns must
+with them, or at least with the large
+majority, have been the true motives
+of the conspiracy&mdash;of their desire to
+expel the English from their country.
+Nor is it difficult to conceive what
+some of these motives may have been.
+The former sovereigns of Affghanistan,
+even the most firmly-established
+and the most vigorous, had no other
+means of enforcing their commands,
+than by employing the forces of one
+part of the nation to make their authority
+respected in another; but men
+who were jealous of their own independence
+as chiefs, were not likely to
+aid the sovereign in any attempt to
+destroy the substantial power, the
+importance, or the independence of
+their class; and although a refractory
+chief might occasionally, by the aid of
+his feudal enemies, be taken or destroyed,
+and his property plundered,
+his place was filled by a relation, and
+the order remained unbroken. The
+Affghan chiefs had thus enjoyed,
+under their native governments, an
+amount of independence which was
+incompatible with the system we introduced&mdash;supported
+as that system
+was by our military means. These
+men must have seen that their own
+power and importance, and even their
+security against the caprices of their
+sovereign, could not long be preserved&mdash;that
+they were about to be
+subjected as well as governed&mdash;to be
+deprived of all power to resist the
+oppressions of their own government,
+because its will was enforced by an
+army which had no sympathy with the
+nation, and which was therefore ready
+to use its formidable strength to compel
+unqualified submission to the sovereign's
+commands.</p>
+
+<p>The British army may not have
+been employed to enforce any unjust
+command&mdash;its movements may have
+been less, far less, injurious to the
+countries through which it passed than
+those of an Affghan army would have
+been, and its power in the moment of
+success may have been far less abused;
+but still it gave a strength to the arm
+of the sovereign, which was incompatible
+with the maintenance of the
+pre-existing civil and social institutions
+or condition of the country, and
+especially of the relative positions of
+the sovereign and the noble. In the
+measures we adopted to establish the
+authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted
+to carry out a system of government
+which could only have been
+made successful by a total revolution
+in the social condition of the people,
+and in the relative positions of classes;
+and as these revolutions are not effected
+in a few years, the attempt failed.<a id="footnotetag17" name="footnotetag17" href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a></p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page244" id="page244" title="244"></a>But if the predominance of our influence
+and of our military power,
+and the effects of the system we introduced,
+tended to depress the chiefs, it
+must have still more injuriously affected
+or threatened the power of the
+priesthood.</p>
+
+<p>This we believe to have been one
+of the primary and most essential
+causes of the revolt&mdash;this it was that
+made the insurrection spread with such
+rapidity, and that finally united the
+whole nation against us. With the aristocracy
+and the hierarchy of the country,
+it must have been but a question
+of courage and of means&mdash;a calculation
+of the probability of success; and
+as that probability was greatly increased
+by the results of the first
+movement at Cabul, and by the inertness
+of our army after the first outbreak,
+all acquired courage enough to
+aid in doing what all had previously
+desired to see done.</p>
+
+<p>But if there be any justice in this
+view of the state of feeling in Affghanistan,
+even in the moments of its
+greatest tranquillity, it is difficult to
+account for the confidence with which
+the political authorities charged with
+the management of our affairs in that
+country looked to the future, and the
+indifference with which they appear
+to have regarded what now must appear
+to every one else to have been
+very significant, and even alarming,
+intimations of dissaffection in Cabul,
+and hostility in the neighbouring
+districts.</p>
+
+<p>But it is time we should return to
+Lieutenant Eyre, whose narrative of
+facts is infinitely more attractive than
+any speculations we could offer.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;At an early hour this morning, (2d
+November 1841,) the startling intelligence
+was brought from the city, that a
+popular outbreak had taken place; that
+the shops were all closed; and that a general
+attack had been made on the houses
+of all British officers residing in Cabul.
+About 8 A.M., a hurried note was received
+by the Envoy in cantonments from Sir Alexander
+Burnes, stating that the minds of the
+people had been strongly excited by some
+mischievous reports, but expressing a hope
+that he should succeed in quelling the
+commotion. About 9 A.M., however,
+a rumour was circulated, which afterwards
+proved but too well founded, that Sir
+Alexander had been murdered, and Captain
+Johnson's treasury plundered. Flames
+were now seen to issue from that part of
+the city where they dwelt, and it was too
+apparent that the endeavour to appease
+the people by quiet means had failed, and
+that it would be necessary to have recourse
+to stronger measures. The report of firearms
+was incessant, and seemed to extend
+through the town from end to end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir William Macnaghten now called
+upon General Elphinstone to act. An
+order was accordingly sent to Brigadier
+Shelton, then encamped at Seeah Sung,
+about a mile and a half distant from cantonments,
+to march forthwith to the <i>Bala
+Hissar</i>, or <i>royal citadel</i>, where his Majesty
+Shah Shoojah resided, commanding a
+large portion of the city, with the following
+troops:&mdash;viz. one company of H.M.
+44th foot; a wing of the 54th regiment
+native infantry, under Major Ewart; the
+6th regiment Shah's infantry, under Captain
+Hopkins; and four horse-artillery
+guns, under Captain Nicholl; and on arrival
+there, to act according to his own
+judgment, after consulting with the King.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The remainder of the troops encamped
+at Seeah Sung were at the same
+time ordered into cantonments: viz. H.M.
+44th foot, under Lieutenant-Colonel Mackerell;
+two horse-artillery guns, under
+Lieutenant Waller; and Anderson's irregular
+horse. A messenger was likewise
+dispatched to recall the 37th native infantry
+from Khoord-Cabul without delay.
+The troops at this time in cantonments
+were as follows: viz. 5th regiment native
+infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver;
+a wing of 54th native infantry; five six-pounder
+field guns, with a detachment of
+the Shah's artillery, under Lieutenant
+Warburton; the Envoy's body-guard; a
+troop of Skinner's horse, and another of
+local horse, under Lieutenant Walker;
+three companies of the Shah's sappers,
+under Captain Walsh; and about twenty
+men of the Company's sappers, attached to
+Captain Paton, assistant-quartermaster-general.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page245" id="page245" title="245"></a>&quot;Widely spread and formidable as this
+insurrection proved to be afterwards, it
+was at first a mere insignificant ebullition
+of discontent on the part of a few desperate
+and restless men, which military
+energy and promptitude ought to have
+crushed in the bud. Its commencement
+was an attack by certainly not 300 men on
+the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and
+Captain Johnson, paymaster to the Shah's
+force; and so little did Sir Alexander
+himself apprehend serious consequences,
+that he not only refused, on its first breaking
+out, to comply with the earnest entreaties
+of the wuzeer to accompany him to
+the Bala Hissar, but actually forbade his
+guard to fire on the assailants, attempting
+to check what he supposed to be a mere
+riot, by haranguing the attacking party
+from the gallery of his house. The result
+was fatal to himself; for in spite of the
+devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed
+his guard, and that of the paymaster's
+office and treasury on the opposite
+side of the street, who yielded their trust
+only with their latest breath, the latter
+were plundered, and his two companions,
+Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal
+European regiment, and his brother,
+Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay army,
+were massacred, in common with every
+man, woman, and child found on the premises,
+by these bloodthirsty miscreants.
+Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six
+men with his own hand, before he was
+shot down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The King, who was in the Bala Hissar,
+being somewhat startled by the increasing
+number of the rioters, although not at
+the time aware, so far as we can judge, of
+the assassination of Sir A. Burnes, dispatched
+one of his sons with a number of
+his immediate Affghan retainers, and that
+corps of Hindoostanees commonly called
+Campbell's regiment, with two guns, to
+restore order: no support, however, was
+rendered to these by our troops, whose
+leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the
+intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable
+of adopting more than the most
+puerile defensive measures. Even Sir
+William Macnaghten seemed, from a note
+received at this time from him by Captain
+Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he
+therein expressed his perfect confidence
+as to the speedy and complete success of
+Campbell's Hindoostanees in putting an end
+to the disturbance. Such, however, was
+not the case; for the enemy, encouraged
+by our inaction, increased rapidly in spirit
+and numbers, and drove back the King's
+guard with great slaughter, the guns being
+with difficulty saved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be understood that Captain
+Trevor lived at this time with his family
+in a strong <i>bourge</i> or tower, situated by
+the river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter,
+which, on the west, is wholly distinct
+from the remainder of the city. Within
+musket-shot, on the opposite side of the
+river, in the direction of the strong and
+populous village of Deh Affghan, is a fort
+of some size, then used as a godown, or
+storehouse, by the Shah's commissariat,
+part of it being occupied by Brigadier
+Anquetil, commanding the Shah's force.
+Close to this fort, divided by a narrow
+watercourse, was the house of Captain
+Troup, brigade-major of the Shah's force,
+perfectly defensible against musketry.
+Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain
+Troup had gone out on horseback early
+in the morning towards cantonments, and
+were unable to return; but the above fort
+and house contained the usual guard of
+sepoys; and in a garden close at hand,
+called the <i>Yaboo-Khaneh</i>, or lines of the
+baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of
+the Shah's sappers and miners, and a party
+of Captain Ferris's juzailchees. Captain
+Trevor's tower was capable of being made
+good against a much stronger force than
+the rebels at this present time could have
+collected, had it been properly garrisoned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As it was, the Hazirbash,<a id="footnotetag18" name="footnotetag18" href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> or King's lifeguards,
+were, under Captain Trevor, congregated
+round their leader, to protect
+him and his family; which duty, it will
+be seen, they well performed under very
+trying circumstances. For what took place
+in this quarter I beg to refer to a communication
+made to me at my request by
+Captain Colin Mackenzie,<a id="footnotetag19" name="footnotetag19" href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> assistant political
+agent at Peshawur, who then occupied
+the godown portion of the fort above mentioned,
+which will be found hereafter.<a id="footnotetag20" name="footnotetag20" href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a></p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page246" id="page246" title="246"></a>&quot;I have already stated that Brigadier
+Shelton was, early in the day, directed to
+proceed with part of the Seeah Sung
+force to occupy the Bala Hissar, and, if
+requisite, to lead his troops against the
+insurgents. Captain Lawrence, military
+secretary to the Envoy, was at the same
+time sent forward to prepare the King for
+that officer's reception. Taking with him
+four troopers of the body-guard, he was
+galloping along the main road, when,
+shortly after crossing the river, he was
+suddenly attacked by an Affghan, who,
+rushing from behind a wall, made a desperate
+cut at him with a large two-handed
+knife. He dexterously avoided the blow
+by spurring his horse on one side; but,
+passing onwards, he was fired upon by
+about fifty men, who, having seen his approach,
+ran out from the Lahore gate of
+the city to intercept him. He reached
+the Bala Hissar safe, where he found the
+King apparently in a state of great agitation,
+he having witnessed the assault from
+the window of his palace. His Majesty
+expressed an eager desire to conform to
+the Envoy's wishes in all respects in this
+emergency.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Lawrence was still conferring
+with the King, when Lieutenant Sturt, our
+executive engineer, rushed into the palace,
+stabbed in three places about the face and
+neck. He had been sent by Brigadier
+Shelton to make arrangements for the
+accommodation of the troops, and had
+reached the gate of the <i>Dewan Khaneh</i>,
+or hall of audience, when the attempt at
+his life was made by some one who had
+concealed himself there for that purpose,
+and who immediately effected his escape.
+The wounds were fortunately not dangerous,
+and Lieutenant Sturt was conveyed
+back to cantonments in the King's own
+palanquin, under a strong escort. Soon
+after this Brigadier Shelton's force arrived;
+but the day was suffered to pass
+without any thing being done demonstrative
+of British energy and power. The
+murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation
+of public and private property, was
+perpetrated with impunity within a mile
+of our cantonment, and under the very
+walls of the Bala Hissar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such an exhibition on our part taught
+the enemy their strength&mdash;confirmed
+against us those who, however disposed
+to join in the rebellion, had hitherto kept
+aloof from prudential motives, and ultimately
+encouraged the nation to unite as
+one man for our destruction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was, in fact, the crisis of all others
+calculated to test the qualities of a military
+commander. Whilst, however, it is
+impossible for an unprejudiced person to
+approve the military dispositions of this
+eventful period, it is equally our duty to
+discriminate. The most <i>responsible</i> party
+is not always the most culpable. It would
+be the height of injustice to a most amiable
+and gallant officer not to notice the
+long course of painful and wearing illness,
+which had materially affected the nerves,
+and probably even the intellect, of General
+Elphinstone; cruelly incapacitating him,
+so far as he was personally concerned,
+from acting in this sudden emergency with
+the promptitude and vigour necessary for
+our preservation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unhappily, Sir William Macnaghten
+at first made light of the insurrection,
+and, by his representations as to the general
+feeling of the people towards us,
+not only deluded himself, but misled the
+General in council. The unwelcome truth
+was soon forced upon us, that in the whole
+Affghan nation we could not reckon on a
+single friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But though no active measures of aggression
+were taken, all necessary preparations
+were made to secure the cantonment
+against attack. It fell to my own
+lot to place every available gun in position
+round the works. Besides the guns already
+mentioned, we had in the magazine
+6 nine-pounder iron guns, 3 twenty-four
+pounder howitzers, 1 twelve-pounder ditto,
+and 3 5&frac12;-inch mortars; but the detail of
+artillerymen fell very short of what was
+required to man all these efficiently, consisting
+of only 80 Punjabees belonging to
+the Shah, under Lieutenant Warburton,
+very insufficiently instructed, and of doubtful
+fidelity.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The fortified cantonment occupied
+by the British troops was a quadrangle
+of 1000 yards long by 600 broad,
+with round flanking bastions at each
+corner, every one of which was commanded
+by some fort or hill. To one
+end of this work was attached the
+Mission compound and enclosure,
+about half as large as the cantonment,
+surrounded by a simple wall. This
+space required to be defended in time
+of war, and it rendered the whole of
+one face of the cantonment nugatory
+for purposes of defence. The profile
+of the works themselves was weak,
+being in fact an ordinary field-work.
+But the most strange and unaccountable
+circumstance recorded by Lieutenant
+Eyre respecting these military arrangements,
+is certainly the fact, that
+the commissariat stores, containing
+whatever the army possessed of food
+or clothing, was not within the circuit
+of these fortified cantonments, but in
+a detached and weak fort, the gate of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page247" id="page247" title="247"></a>which was commanded by another
+building at a short distance. Our author
+thus sums up his observations on
+these cantonments:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;In fact, we were so hemmed in on all
+sides, that, when the rebellion became
+general, the troops could not move out a
+dozen paces from either gate without being
+exposed to the fire of some neighbouring
+hostile fort, garrisoned, too, by marksmen
+who seldom missed their aim. The
+country around us was likewise full of impediments
+to the movements of artillery
+and cavalry, being in many places flooded,
+and every where closely intersected by
+deep water-cuts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot help adding, in conclusion,
+that almost all the calamities that befell
+our ill-starred force may be traced more
+or less to the defects of our position; and
+that our cantonment at Cabul, whether we
+look to its situation or its construction,
+must ever be spoken of as a disgrace to
+our military skill and judgment.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 3.&mdash;The 37th native infantry
+arrived in cantonments, as previously
+stated.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Early in the afternoon, a detachment
+under Major Swayne, consisting of two
+companies 5th native infantry, one of
+H.M. 44th, and two H.A. guns under
+Lieutenant Waller, proceeded out of the
+western gate towards the city, to effect, if
+possible, a junction at the Lahore gate
+with a part of Brigadier Shelton's force
+from the Bala Hissar. They drove back
+and defeated a party of the enemy who
+occupied the road near the Shah Bagh,
+but had to encounter a sharp fire from the
+Kohistan gate of the city, and from the
+walls of various enclosures, behind which
+a number of marksmen had concealed
+themselves, as also from the fort of Mahmood
+Khan, commanding the road along
+which they had to pass. Lieutenant Waller
+and several sepoys were wounded. Major
+Swayne, observing the whole line of road
+towards the Lahore gate strongly occupied
+by some Affghan horse and juzailchees,
+and fearing that he would be unable to
+effect the object in view with so small a
+force unsupported by cavalry, retired into
+cantonments. Shortly after this, a large
+body of the rebels having issued from the
+fort of Mahmood Khan, 900 yards southeast
+of cantonments, extended themselves
+in a line along the bank of the river, displaying
+a flag; an iron nine-pounder was
+brought to bear on them from our southeast
+bastion, and a round or two of shrapnell
+caused them to seek shelter behind
+some neighbouring banks, whence, after
+some desultory firing on both sides, they
+retired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever hopes may have been entertained,
+up to this period, of a speedy
+termination to the insurrection, they began
+now to wax fainter every hour, and an
+order was dispatched to the officer
+commanding at Candahar to lose no time in
+sending to our assistance the 16th and
+43d regiments native infantry, (which
+were under orders for India,) together
+with a troop of horse-artillery and half a
+regiment of cavalry; an order was likewise
+sent off to recall General Sale with
+his brigade from Gundamuk. Captain
+John Conolly, political assistant to the
+Envoy, went into the Bala Hissar early
+this morning, to remain with the King,
+and to render every assistance in his power
+to Brigadier Shelton.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On this day Lieutenants Maule and
+Wheeler were murdered at Kahdarrah
+in Koohdaman; the Kohistan regiment
+of Affghans which they commanded,
+offering no resistance to the
+rebels. The two officers defended
+themselves resolutely for some time,
+but fell under the fire of the enemy.
+Lieutenant Maule had been warned of
+his danger by a friendly native, but
+refused to desert his post.</p>
+
+<p>On this day also Lieutenant Rattray,
+Major Pottinger's assistant, was
+treacherously murdered at Lughmanee,
+during a conference to which
+he had been invited, and within sight
+of the small fort in which these two
+gentlemen resided. This act was followed
+by a general insurrection in
+Kohistan and Koohdaman, which terminated
+in the destruction of the Goorkha
+regiment at Charikar, and the
+slaughter of all the Europeans in that
+district except Major Pottinger and
+Lieutenant Haughton, both severely
+wounded, who, with one sepoy and
+one or two followers, succeeded in
+eluding the vigilance of the Affghan
+parties, who were patrolling the roads
+for the purpose of intercepting them,
+and at length arrived in cantonments,
+having actually passed at night
+through the town and bazars of Cabul.
+For the details of this interesting
+and afflicting episode in Mr Eyre's
+narrative, we must refer our readers
+to the work itself. Major Pottinger
+appears on this occasion to have exhibited
+the same high courage and
+promptitude and vigour in action,
+and the same resources in difficulty,
+that made him conspicuous at Herat,
+and Lieutenant Haughton was no unworthy
+companion of such a man.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p><a class="pagenum" name="page248" id="page248" title="248"></a>&quot;<i>November</i> 4.&mdash;The enemy having taken
+strong possession of the <i>Shah Bagh</i>, or
+King's Garden, and thrown a garrison
+into the fort of Mahomed Shereef,
+nearly opposite the bazar, effectually prevented
+any communication between the
+cantonment and commissariat fort, the
+gate of which latter was commanded by
+the gate of the Shah Bagh on the other
+side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ensign Warren of the 5th native infantry
+at this time occupied the commissariat
+fort with 100 men, and having reported
+that he was very hard pressed by the
+enemy, and in danger of being completely
+cut off, the General, either forgetful or
+unaware at the moment of the important
+fact, that upon the possession of this fort
+we were entirely dependent for provisions,
+and anxious only to save the lives of men
+whom he believed to be in imminent peril,
+hastily gave directions that a party under
+the command of Captain Swayne, of
+H.M.'s 44th regiment, should proceed
+immediately to bring off Ensign Warren
+and his garrison to cantonments, abandoning
+the fort to the enemy. A few minutes
+previously an attempt to relieve him
+had been made by Ensign Gordon, with a
+company of the 37th native infantry and eleven
+camels laden with ammunition; but the
+party were driven back, and Ensign Gordon
+killed. Captain Swayne now accordingly
+proceeded towards the spot with two
+companies of H.M.'s 44th; scarcely had
+they issued from cantonments ere a sharp
+and destructive fire was poured upon
+them from Mahomed Shereef's fort
+which, as they proceeded, was taken up
+by the marksmen in the Shah Bagh, under
+whose deadly aim both officers and men
+suffered severely; Captains Swayne and
+Robinson of the 44th being killed, and
+Lieutenants Hallahan, Evans, and Fortye
+wounded in this disastrous business. It
+now seemed to the officer, on whom the
+command had devolved, impracticable to
+bring off Ensign Warren's party without
+risking the annihilation of his own, which
+had already sustained so rapid and severe
+a loss in officers; he therefore returned
+forthwith to cantonments. In the course
+of the evening another attempt was made
+by a party of the 5th light cavalry; but
+they encountered so severe a fire from the
+neighbouring enclosures as obliged them
+to return without effecting their desired
+object, with the loss of eight troopers
+killed and fourteen badly wounded. Captain
+Boyd, the assistant commissary-general,
+having meanwhile been made acquainted
+with the General's intention to
+give up the fort, hastened to lay before
+him the disastrous consequences that
+would ensue from so doing. He stated
+that the place contained, besides large
+supplies of wheat and attah, all his stores
+of rum, medicine, clothing, &amp;c., the value
+of which might be estimated at four lacs
+of rupees; that to abandon such valuable
+property would not only expose the force
+to the immediate want of the necessaries
+of life, but would infallibly inspire the
+enemy with tenfold courage. He added
+that we had not above two days' supply
+of provisions in cantonments, and that
+neither himself nor Captain Johnson of
+the Shah's commissariat had any prospect
+of procuring them elsewhere under existing
+circumstances. In consequence of
+this strong representation on the part of
+Captain Boyd, the General sent immediate
+orders to Ensign Warren to hold out the
+fort to the last extremity. (Ensign Warren,
+it must be remarked, denied having
+received this note.) Early in the night a
+letter was received from him to the effect
+that he believed the enemy were busily
+engaged in mining one of the towers, and
+that such was the alarm among the sepoys
+that several of them had actually made
+their escape over the wall to cantonments;
+that the enemy were making preparations
+to burn down the gate; and
+that, considering the temper of his men,
+he did not expect to be able to hold out
+many hours longer, unless reinforced without
+delay. In reply to this he was informed
+that he would be reinforced by
+two A.M.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At about nine o'clock P.M., there was
+an assembly of staff and other officers at
+the General's house, when the Envoy
+came in and expressed his serious conviction,
+that unless Mahomed Shereef's fort
+were taken that very night, we should lose
+the commissariat fort, or at all events be
+unable to bring out of it provisions for the
+troops. The disaster of the morning rendered
+the General extremely unwilling to
+expose his officers and men to any similar
+peril; but, on the other hand, it was
+urged that the darkness of the night
+would nullify the enemy's fire, who would
+also most likely be taken unawares, as it
+was not the custom of the Affghans to
+maintain a very strict watch at night. A
+man in Captain Johnson's employ was
+accordingly sent out to reconnoitre the
+place. He returned in a few minutes
+with the intelligence that about twenty
+men were seated outside the fort near the
+gate, smoking and talking; and, from what
+he overheard of their conversation, he
+judged the garrison to be very small, and
+unable to resist a sudden onset. The debate
+was now resumed, but another hour
+passed and the General could not make up
+his mind. A second spy was dispatched,
+whose report tended to corroborate what
+<a class="pagenum" name="page249" id="page249" title="249"></a>the first had said. I was then sent to
+Lieutenant Sturt, the engineer, who was
+nearly recovered from his wounds, for his
+opinion. He at first expressed himself
+in favour of an immediate attack, but, on
+hearing that some of the enemy were on
+the watch at the gate, he judged it prudent
+to defer the assault till an early hour
+in the morning: this decided the General,
+though not before several hours had slipped
+away in fruitless discussion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Orders were at last given for a detachment
+to be in readiness at four A.M.
+at the Kohistan gate; and Captain Bellew,
+deputy-assistant quartermaster-general,
+volunteered to blow open the gate;
+another party of H.M.'s 44th were at the
+same time to issue by a cut in the south
+face of the rampart, and march simultaneously
+towards the commissariat fort, to
+reinforce the garrison. Morning had,
+however, well dawned ere the men could
+be got under arms; and they were on the
+point of marching off, when it was reported
+that Ensign Warren had just arrived
+in cantonments with his garrison,
+having evacuated the fort. It seems that
+the enemy had actually set fire to the gate;
+and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect
+of a reinforcement, and expecting the
+enemy every moment to rush in, led out
+his men by a hole which he had prepared
+in the wall. Being called upon in a public
+letter from the assistant adjutant-general
+to state his reasons for abandoning
+his post, he replied that he was ready to
+do so before a court of enquiry, which he
+requested might be assembled to investigate
+his conduct; it was not, however,
+deemed expedient to comply with his
+request.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is beyond a doubt that our feeble
+and ineffectual defence of this fort, and
+the valuable booty it yielded, was the first
+<i>fatal</i> blow to our supremacy at Cabul,
+and at once determined those chiefs&mdash;and
+more particularly the Kuzzilbashes&mdash;who
+had hitherto remained neutral, to join in
+the general combination to drive us from
+the country.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 5.&mdash;It no sooner became
+generally known that the commissariat
+fort, upon which we were dependent
+for supplies, had been abandoned,
+than one universal feeling of indignation
+pervaded the garrison. Nor
+can I describe,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre, &quot;the impatience of the troops,
+but especially of the native portion,
+to be led out for its recapture&mdash;a feeling
+that was by no means diminished
+by seeing the Affghans crossing and
+re-crossing the road between the
+commissariat fort and the gate of the
+<i>Shah Bagh</i>, laden with the provisions
+upon which had depended our ability
+to make a protracted defence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That the whole commissariat should
+have been deposited in a detached
+fort is extraordinary and inexcusable,
+but that the garrison of that fort
+should not have been reinforced, is
+even more unintelligible; and that
+a sufficient force was not at once
+sent to succour and protect it when
+attacked, is altogether unaccountable.
+General Elphinstone was disabled by
+his infirmities from efficiently discharging
+the duties that had devolved
+upon him, but he appears to have
+been ready to act upon the suggestion
+of others. What then were his staff
+about?&mdash;some of them are said to have
+had little difficulty or delicacy in urging
+their own views upon their commander.
+Did they not suggest to him
+in time the importance, the necessity,
+of saving the commissariat at all hazards?</p>
+
+<p>At the suggestion of Lieutenant
+Eyre, it was determined to attempt
+the capture of Mahomed Shereef's fort
+by blowing open the gate, Mr Eyre
+volunteering to keep the road clear
+for the storming party with the guns.
+&quot;The General agreed; a storming
+party under Major Swayne, 6th native
+infantry, was ordered; the powder
+bags were got ready, and at noon we
+issued from the western gate.&quot; &quot;For
+twenty minutes the guns were worked
+under a very sharp fire from the fort;&quot;
+but &quot;Major Swayne, instead of rushing
+forward with his men as had been
+agreed, had in the mean time remained
+stationary, under cover of the wall
+by the road-side.&quot; The General, seeing
+that the attempt had failed, recalled
+the troops into cantonments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 6.&mdash;It was now determined
+to take the fort of Mahomed Shereef by
+regular breach and assault.&quot; A practicable
+breach was effected, and a
+storming party composed of one company
+H.M. 44th, under Ensign Raban,
+one ditto 5th native infantry, under
+Lieutenant Deas, and one ditto
+37th native infantry, under Lieutenant
+Steer, the whole commanded by Major
+Griffiths, speedily carried the place.
+&quot;Poor Raban was shot through the
+heart when conspicuously waving a
+flag on the summit of the breach.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As this fort adjoined the Shah
+Bagh, it was deemed advisable to dislodge
+<a class="pagenum" name="page250" id="page250" title="250"></a>the enemy from the latter if
+possible. This was partially effected,
+and, had advantage been taken of the
+opportunity to occupy the buildings
+of the garden gateway, &quot;immediate
+re-possession could have been taken
+of the commissariat fort opposite,
+which had not yet been emptied of
+half its contents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, our cavalry were
+engaged in an affair with the enemy's
+horse, in which we appear to have
+had the advantage. &quot;The officers
+gallantly headed their men, and encountered
+about an equal number of
+the enemy who advanced to meet
+them. A hand-to-hand encounter
+took place, which ended in the Affghan
+horse retreating to the plain,
+leaving the hill in our possession. In
+this affair, Captain Anderson personally
+engaged and slew the brother in-law
+of Abdoolah Khan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the Affghans collected from various
+quarters; the juzailchees,<a id="footnotetag21" name="footnotetag21" href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> under
+Captain Mackenzie, were driven
+with great loss from the Shah Bagh
+which they had entered; and a gun
+which had been employed to clear
+that enclosure was with difficulty
+saved. Our troops having been drawn
+up on the plain, remained prepared to
+receive an attack from the enemy,
+who gradually retired as the night
+closed in.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 8.&mdash;An attempt was made by
+the enemy to mine a tower of the fort
+that had been taken, which they could
+not have done had the gate of the
+Shah Bagh been occupied. The
+chief cause of anxiety now was the
+empty state of the granary. Even
+with high bribes and liberal payment,
+the Envoy could not procure
+sufficient for daily consumption. The
+plan of the enemy now was to starve
+us out, and the chiefs exerted all
+their influence to prevent our being
+supplied.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 9.&mdash;The General's weak
+state of health rendered it necessary
+to relieve him from the command of
+the garrison, and at the earnest request
+of the Envoy, Brigadier Shelton
+was summoned from the Bala
+Hissar, &quot;in the hope that, by heartily
+co-operating with the Envoy and
+General, he would strengthen their
+hands and rouse the sinking confidence
+of the troops. He entered
+cantonments this morning, bringing
+with him one H.A. gun, one mountain-train
+ditto, one company H.M.'s
+44th, the Shah's 6th infantry, and a
+small supply of attah (flour.)&quot;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;<i>November</i> 10.&mdash;Henceforward Brigadier
+Shelton bore a conspicuous part in
+the drama, upon the issue of which so much
+depended. He had, however, from the
+very first, seemed to despair of the force
+being able to hold out the winter at Cabul,
+and strenuously advocated an immediate
+retreat to Jellalabad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This sort of despondency proved, unhappily,
+very infectious. It soon spread its
+baneful influence among the officers, and
+was by them communicated to the soldiery.
+The number of <i>croakers</i> in garrison became
+perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks
+and dismal prophecies being encountered
+every where. The severe losses sustained
+by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on
+the 4th instant, had very much discouraged
+the men of that regiment; and it is a lamentable
+fact that some of those European
+soldiers, who were naturally expected
+to exhibit to their native brethren in arms
+an example of endurance and fortitude,
+were among the first to loose confidence,
+and give vent to feelings of discontent at
+the duties imposed on them. The evil
+seed, once sprung up, became more and
+more difficult to eradicate, showing daily
+more and more how completely demoralizing
+to the British soldier is the very idea
+of a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir William Macnaghten and his suite
+were altogether opposed to Brigadier
+Shelton in this matter, it being in his (the
+Envoy's) estimation a duty we owed the
+Government to retain our post, at whatsoever
+risk. This difference of opinion,
+on a question of such vital importance,
+was attended with unhappy results, inasmuch
+as it deprived the General, in his
+hour of need, of the strength which unanimity
+imparts, and produced an uncommunicative
+and disheartening reserve in
+an emergency which demanded the freest
+interchange of counsel and ideas.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On the morning of this day, large
+parties of the enemy's horse and foot
+occupied the heights to the east and
+to the west of the cantonments, which,
+it was supposed, they intended to assault.
+No attack was made; but &quot;on
+the eastern quarter, parties of the
+enemy, moving down into the plain,
+occupied all the forts in that direction.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page251" id="page251" title="251"></a>... At this time, not above two
+days' provisions remained in garrison;
+and it was very clear, that unless the
+enemy were quickly driven out from
+their new possession, we should soon
+be completely hemmed in on all sides.&quot;
+At the Envoy's urgent desire, he taking
+the entire responsibility on himself,
+the General ordered a force, under Brigadier
+Shelton, to storm the Rikabashee
+fort, which was within musket-shot
+of the cantonments, and from
+which a galling fire had been poured
+into the Mission compound by the
+Affghans. About noon, the troops
+assembled at the eastern gate; a
+storming party of two companies
+from each regiment taking the lead,
+preceded by Captain Bellew, who
+hurried forward to blow open the gate&mdash;but
+missing the gate, he blew open
+a small wicket, through which not
+more than two or three men could
+enter abreast, and these in a stooping
+posture. A sharp fire was kept up
+from the walls, and many of the bravest
+fell in attempting to force their
+entrance through the wicket; but
+Colonel Mackerell of the 44th, and
+Lieutenant Bird of the Shah's 6th
+infantry, with a handful of Europeans
+and a few sepoys, forced their way
+in&mdash;the garrison fled through the gate
+which was at the opposite side, and
+Colonel Mackerell and his little party
+closed it, securing the chain with a
+bayonet; but, at this moment, some
+Affghan horse charged round the
+corner&mdash;the cry of cavalry was raised&mdash;&quot;the
+Europeans gave way simultaneously
+with the sepoys&mdash;a bugler
+of the 6th infantry, through mistake,
+sounded the retreat&mdash;and it became
+for a time, a scene of <i>sauve qui peut</i>.&quot;
+In vain did the officers endeavour to
+rally the men, and to lead them back
+to the rescue of their commanding-officer
+and their comrades; only one
+man, private Stewart of the 44th,
+listened to the appeal and returned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me here (says Lieutenant
+Eyre) do Brigadier Shelton justice:
+his acknowledged courage redeemed
+the day.&quot; After great efforts, at last
+he rallied them&mdash;again advancing to
+the attack, again they faltered. A
+third time did the Brigadier bring on
+his men to the assault, which now
+proved successful; but while this disgraceful
+scene was passing outside the
+fort, the enemy had forced their way
+into it, and had cut to pieces Colonel
+Mackerell and all his little party, except
+Lieutenant Bird, who, with one
+sepoy, was found in a barricaded
+apartment, where these two brave
+men had defended themselves till the
+return of the troops, killing above
+thirty of the enemy by the fire of
+their two muskets.</p>
+
+<p>Our loss on this occasion was not
+less than 200 killed and wounded;
+but the results of this success, though
+dearly purchased, were important.
+Four neighbouring forts were immediately
+evacuated by the enemy, and
+occupied by our troops: they were
+found to contain 1400 maunds of
+grain, of which about one-half was
+removed into cantonments immediately;
+but Brigadier Shelton not having
+thought it prudent to place a guard
+for the protection of the remainder, it
+was carried off during the night by
+the Affghans. &quot;Permanent possession
+was, however, taken of the Rikabashee
+and Zoolfikar forts, and the
+towers of the remainder were blown
+up on the following day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It cannot fail to excite surprise,
+that these forts, which do not seem to
+have been occupied by the enemy till
+the 10th, were not either occupied or
+destroyed by the British troops before
+that day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 13.&mdash;The enemy appeared in
+great force on the western heights,
+where, having posted two guns, they
+fired into cantonments with considerable
+precision. At the entreaty of
+the Envoy, it was determined to attack
+them&mdash;a force, under Brigadier
+Shelton, moved out for that purpose&mdash;the
+advance, under Major Thain,
+ascended the hill with great gallantry;
+&quot;but the enemy resolutely stood
+their ground at the summit of the
+ridge, and unflinchingly received the
+discharge of our musketry, which,
+strange to say, even at the short
+range of ten or twelve yards, did little
+or no execution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fire of our guns, however,
+threw the Affghans into confusion.
+A charge of cavalry drove them up
+the hill, and the infantry advancing,
+carried the height, the enemy retreating
+along the ridge, closely followed
+by our troops, and abandoning their
+guns to us; but, owing to the misconduct
+of the troops, only one of them
+was carried away, the men refusing
+to advance to drag off the other,
+which was therefore spiked by Lieutenant
+<a class="pagenum" name="page252" id="page252" title="252"></a>Eyre, with the aid of one artilleryman.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;This was the last success our arms
+were destined to experience. Henceforward
+it becomes my weary task to relate
+a catalogue of errors, disasters, and difficulties,
+which, following close upon each
+other, disgusted our officers, disheartened
+our soldiers, and finally sunk us all into
+irretrievable ruin, as though Heaven itself,
+by a combination of evil circumstances, for
+its own inscrutable purposes, had planned
+our downfall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>November 16th</i>.&mdash;The impression
+made by the enemy by the action of the
+13th was so far salutary, that they did not
+venture to annoy us again for several days.
+Advantage was taken of this respite to
+throw magazine supplies from time to time
+into the Bala Hissar, a duty which was
+ably performed by Lieutenant Walker,
+with a resalah of irregular horse, under
+cover of night. But even in this short
+interval of comparative rest, such was the
+wretched construction of the cantonment,
+that the mere ordinary routine of garrison
+duty, and the necessity of closely manning
+our long line of rampart both by day and
+night, was a severe trial to the health and
+patience of the troops; especially now that
+the winter began to show symptoms of
+unusual severity. There seemed, indeed,
+every probability of an early fall of snow,
+to which all looked forward with dread,
+as the harbinger of fresh difficulties and of
+augmented suffering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These considerations, and the manifest
+superiority of the Bala Hissar as a
+military position, led to the early discussion
+of the expediency of abandoning the
+cantonment, and consolidating our forces in
+the above-mentioned stronghold. The
+Envoy himself was, from the first, greatly
+in favour of this move, until overruled by
+the many objections urged against it by the
+military authorities; to which, as will be
+seen by a letter from him presently quoted,
+he learned by degrees to attach some
+weight himself; but to the very last it was
+a measure that had many advocates, and I
+venture to state my own firm belief that,
+had we at this time moved into the Bala
+Hissar, Cabul would have been still in our
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Brigadier Shelton having firmly
+set his face against the movement from
+the first moment of its proposition, all
+serious idea of it was gradually abandoned,
+though it continued to the very last a subject
+of common discussion.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 18. Accounts were this day
+received from Jellalabad, that General
+Sale, having sallied from the town,
+had repulsed the enemy with considerable
+loss.... The hope
+of his return has tended much to support
+our spirits; our disappointment
+was therefore great, to learn that all
+expectation of aid from that quarter
+was at an end. Our eyes were now
+turned towards the Kandahar force
+as our last resource though an advance
+from that quarter seemed
+scarcely practicable so late in the
+year.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The propriety of attacking Mahomed
+Khan's fort, the possession of
+which would have opened an easy
+communication with the Bala Hissar,
+was discussed; but, on some sudden
+objection raised by Lieutenant Sturt
+of the engineers, the project was
+abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th, a letter was addressed
+by the Envoy to the General, the object
+of which seems not to be very apparent.
+He raises objections to a retreat
+either to Jellalabad or to the
+Bala Hissar, and expresses a decided
+objection to abandon the cantonment
+under any circumstances, if food can
+be procured; but, nevertheless, it is
+sufficiently evident that his hopes of
+successful resistance had even now
+become feeble, and he refers to the
+possibility that succours may arrive
+from Kandahar, or that &quot;something
+might turn up in our favour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The village of Beymaroo, (or Husbandless,
+from a beautiful virgin who
+was nursed there,) within half a mile
+of the cantonments, had been our
+chief source of supply, to which the
+enemy had in some measure put a
+stop by occupying it every morning.
+It was therefore determined to endeavour
+to anticipate them by taking
+possession of it before their arrival.
+For this purpose, a party moved out
+under Major Swayne of the 5th native
+infantry; but the Major, &quot;it would
+seem, by his own account, found the
+village already occupied, and the entrance
+blocked up in such a manner
+that he considered it out of his power
+to force a passage.&quot; It does not appear
+that the attempt was made.
+Later in the day there was some skirmishing
+in the plain, in the course of
+which Lieutenant Eyre was wounded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is worthy of note that Mahomed
+Akber Khan, second son of the
+late Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan,
+arrived in Cabul this night (22d Nov.)
+from Bameean. This man was destined
+to exercise an evil influence
+<a class="pagenum" name="page253" id="page253" title="253"></a>over our future fortunes. The crisis
+of our struggle was already nigh at
+hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 23.&mdash;This day decided the
+fate of the Cabul force.&quot; It had been
+determined by a council, at the special
+recommendation of the Envoy, that a
+force under Brigadier Shelton should
+storm the village of Beymaroo, and
+maintain the hill above it against any
+numbers of the enemy that might appear.
+At two A.M., the troops<a id="footnotetag22" name="footnotetag22" href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a> moved
+out of cantonments, ascended the hill
+by the gorge, dragging up the gun,
+and moved along the ridge to a
+point overlooking the village. A
+sharp fire of grape created great confusion,
+and it was suggested by Captain
+Bellew and others to General
+Shelton, to storm the village, while
+the evident panic of the enemy lasted.
+To this the Brigadier did not
+accede.</p>
+
+<p>When day broke, the enemy, whose
+ammunition had failed, were seen
+hurrying from the village&mdash;not 40
+men remained. A storming party,
+under Majors Swayne and Kershaw,
+was ordered to carry the village; but
+Major Swayne missed the gate, which
+was open, and arrived at a barricaded
+wicket, which he had no means of
+forcing. Major Swayne was wounded,
+and lost some men, and was ultimately
+recalled. Leaving a reserve
+of three companies of the 37th native
+infantry, under Major Kershaw, at
+the point overhanging Beymaroo, the
+Brigadier moved back with the rest
+of the troops and the gun to the part
+of the hill which overlooked the gorge.
+It was suggested to raise a sungar or
+breastwork to protect the troops, for
+which purpose the sappers had been
+taken out, but it was not done. Immense
+numbers of the enemy, issuing
+from the city, had now crowned the
+opposite hill&mdash;in all, probably 10,000
+men. Our skirmishers were kept out
+with great difficulty, and chiefly by
+the exertions and example of Colonel
+Oliver. The remainder of the troops
+were formed into two squares, and
+the cavalry drawn up <i>en masse</i> immediately
+in their rear, and all suffered
+severely&mdash;the vent of the only
+gun became too hot to be served. A
+party of cavalry under Lieutenant
+Walker was recalled to prevent its
+destruction, and a demonstration of
+the Affghan cavalry on our right flank,
+which had been exposed by the recall
+of Lieutenant Walker, was repulsed
+by a fire of shrapnell, which mortally
+wounded a chief of consequence. The
+enemy surrounded the troops on three
+sides. The men were faint with fatigue
+and thirst&mdash;the Affghan skirmishers
+pressed on, and our's gave
+way. The men could not be got to
+charge bayonets. The enemy made
+a rush at the guns, the cavalry were
+ordered to charge, but would not follow
+their officers. The first square
+and the cavalry gave way, and were
+with difficulty rallied behind the second
+square, leaving the gun in the
+hands of the enemy, who immediately
+carried off the limber and horses.
+News of Abdoolah Khan's wound
+spread amongst the Affghans, who
+now retired. Our men resumed courage,
+and regained possession of the
+gun; and fresh ammunition having
+arrived from cantonments, it again
+opened on the enemy: but our cavalry
+would not act, and the infantry were
+too much exhausted and disheartened
+to make a forward movement, and too
+few in number. The whole force of
+the enemy came on with renewed
+vigour&mdash;the front of the advanced
+square had been literally mowed down,
+and most of the gallant artillerymen
+had fallen. The gun was scarcely
+limbered up preparatory to retreat,
+when a rush from the Ghazees broke
+the first square. All order was at an
+end, the entreaties and commands of
+the officers were unheeded, and an
+utter rout ensued down the hill towards
+the cantonments, the enemy's
+cavalry making a fearful slaughter
+among the unresisting fugitives. The
+retreat of Major Kershaw's party was
+cut off, and his men were nearly all
+destroyed. The mingled tide of flight
+and pursuit seemed to be about to
+enter the cantonments together; but
+the pursuers were checked by the fire
+of the Shah's 5th infantry and the juzailchees,
+and by a charge of a fresh
+troop of cavalry under Lieutenant
+Hardyman, and fifteen or twenty of
+his own men rallied by Lieutenant
+Walker, who fell in that encounter.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page254" id="page254" title="254"></a>Osman Khan, too, a chief whose men
+were amongst the foremost, voluntarily
+halted them and drew them off,
+&quot;which may be reckoned, indeed,
+(says Lieutenant Eyre,) the chief reason
+why <i>all</i> of our people who on
+that day went forth to battle were not
+destroyed.&quot; The gun and the second
+limber which had arrived from the
+cantonments, in attempting to gallop
+down hill, was overturned and lost.
+&quot;Our loss was tremendous&mdash;the
+greater part of the wounded, including
+Colonel Oliver, having been left
+in the field, where they were miserably
+cut to pieces.&quot;<a id="footnotetag23" name="footnotetag23" href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Thus terminated in disaster the
+military struggle at Cabul, and then
+commenced that series of negotiations
+not less disastrous, which led to the
+murder of the Envoy, to the retreat
+of the army, and to its ultimate
+annihilation. In Lieutenant Eyre's account
+of their military operations, we
+look in vain for any evidence of
+promptitude, vigour, or decision, skill
+or judgment, in the commanders; and
+we have abundant evidence of a lamentable
+want of discipline and proper
+spirit in the troops, especially
+amongst the Europeans. Instances
+of high personal courage and gallantry
+amongst the officers are numerous,
+and they always will be, when the occasion
+requires them; but if the facts
+of this narrative had been given without
+the names, no man would have recognised
+in it the operations of a
+British army.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 24.&mdash;Our troops (says Eyre) had
+now lost all confidence; and even such of the
+officers as had hitherto indulged the hope
+of a favourable turn in our affairs, began
+at last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings
+as to our future fate. Our force
+resembled a ship in danger of wrecking
+among rocks and shoals, for want of an
+able pilot to guide it safely through them.
+Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the
+helm of affairs been grasped by a hand
+competent to the important task, we might
+perhaps have steered clear of destruction;
+but, in the absence of any such deliverer,
+it was but too evident that Heaven alone
+could save us by some unforeseen interposition.
+The spirit of the men was gone;
+the influence of the officers over them
+declined daily; and that boasted discipline,
+which alone renders a handful of our
+troops superior to an irregular multitude,
+began fast to disappear from among us.
+The enemy, on the other hand, waxed
+bolder every day and every hour; nor was
+it long ere we got accustomed to be
+bearded with impunity from under the
+very ramparts of our garrison.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never were troops exposed to greater
+hardships and dangers; yet, sad to say,
+never did soldiers shed their blood with
+less beneficial result than during the investment
+of the British lines at Cabul.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Captain Conolly now wrote from
+the Bala Hissar, urging an immediate
+retreat thither; &quot;but the old objections
+were still urged against the measure
+by Brigadier Shelton and others,&quot;
+though several of the chief military,
+and all the political officers, approved
+<a class="pagenum" name="page255" id="page255" title="255"></a>of it. Shah Shoojah was impatient
+to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>The door to negotiation was opened
+by a letter to the Envoy from Osman
+Khan Barukzye, a near relation of the
+new king, Nuwab Mahomed Zuman
+Khan, who had sheltered Captain
+Drummond in his own house since the
+first day of the outbreak. He took
+credit to himself for having checked
+the ardour of his followers on the
+preceding day, and having thus saved
+the British force from destruction; he
+declared that the chiefs only desired
+we should quietly evacuate the country,
+leaving them to govern it according
+to their own rules, and with a
+king of their own choosing. The
+General, on being referred to, was of
+opinion that the cantonments could
+not be defended throughout the winter,
+and approved of opening a negotiation
+on the basis of the evacuation
+of the country. On the 27th, two
+deputies were sent by the assembled
+chiefs to confer with Sir W. Macnaghten;
+but the terms they proposed
+were such as he could not accept.
+The deputies took leave of the Envoy,
+with the exclamation, that &quot;we should
+meet again in battle.&quot; &quot;We shall
+at all events meet,&quot; replied Sir William,
+&quot;at the day of judgment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At night the Envoy received a letter,
+proposing &quot;that we should deliver up
+Shah Shoojah and all his family&mdash;lay
+down our arms, and make an unconditional
+surrender&mdash;when they might,
+perhaps, be induced to spare our lives,
+and allow us to leave the country on
+condition of never returning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Envoy replied, &quot;that these
+terms were too dishonourable to be
+entertained for a moment; and that, if
+they were persisted in, he must again
+appeal to arms, leaving the result to
+the God of battles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Active hostilities were not renewed
+till the 1st of December, when a desperate
+effort was made by the enemy
+to gain possession of the Bala Hissar;
+but they were repulsed by Major
+Ewart with considerable slaughter.
+On the 4th, they cannonaded the cantonment
+from the Beymaroo hills, but
+did little mischief, and at night they
+made an unsuccessful attempt on Mahomed
+Shereef's fort. On the 5th,
+they completed, without opposition,
+the destruction of the bridge over the
+Cabul river. On the 6th, the garrison
+of Mahomed Shereef's fort disgracefully
+abandoned it, the men of
+the 44th apparently being the first to
+fly; and a garrison of the same regiment,
+in the bazar village, was with
+difficulty restrained from following
+their example. On the 7th, this post
+of honour was occupied by the 37th
+native infantry; the 44th, who had
+hitherto been intrusted with it, being
+no longer considered worthy to retain
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It is but justice to Mr Eyre to give
+in his own words some remarks which
+he has thought it right to make, with
+reference to what he has recorded of
+the conduct of that unhappy
+regiment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;In the course of this narrative, I have
+been compelled by stern truth to note down
+facts nearly affecting the honour and interests
+of a British regiment. It may, or
+rather I fear it must, inevitably happen,
+that my unreserved statements of the Cabul
+occurrences will prove unacceptable to
+many, whose private or public feelings are
+interested in glossing over or suppressing
+the numerous errors committed and censures
+deservedly incurred. But my heart
+tells me that no paltry motives of rivalry
+or malice influence my pen; rather a sincere
+and honest desire to benefit the public
+service, by pointing out the rocks on
+which our reputation was wrecked, the
+means by which our honour was sullied,
+and our Indian empire endangered, as a
+warning to future actors in similar scenes.
+In a word, I believe that more good is
+likely to ensue from the publication of the
+whole unmitigated truth, than from a mere
+garbled statement of it. A kingdom has
+been lost&mdash;an army slain;&mdash;and surely, if
+I can show that, had we been but true to
+ourselves, and had vigorous measures been
+adopted, the result might have been widely
+different, I shall have written an instructive
+lesson to rulers and subjects, to generals
+and armies, and shall not have incurred
+in vain the disapprobation of the
+self-interested or the proud.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The Envoy having again appealed
+to the General, again received an answer,
+stating the impossibility of holding
+out, and recommending that the
+Envoy should lose no time in entering
+into negotiations. This letter was
+countersigned by Brigadiers Shelton
+and Anquetil, and Colonel Chambers.</p>
+
+<p>On the 11th December, the Envoy,
+accompanied by Captains Lawrence,
+Trevor, and Mackenzie, and a few
+troopers, went out by agreement to
+meet the chiefs on the plain towards
+the Seah Sung hills. A conciliatory
+address from the Envoy was met by
+professions of personal esteem and approbation
+<a class="pagenum" name="page256" id="page256" title="256"></a>of the views he had laid before
+them, and of gratitude for the
+manner in which the Ameer Dost
+Mahomed Khan had been treated.
+The Envoy then read to them a sketch
+of the proposed treaty, which was to
+the following effect:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;That the British should evacuate
+Affghanistan, including Candahar, Ghuznee,
+Cabul, Jellalabad, and all the other
+stations absolutely within the limits of the
+country so called; that they should be
+permitted to return not only unmolested
+to India, but that supplies of every description
+should be afforded them in their
+road thither, certain men of consequence
+accompanying them as hostages; that the
+Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan, his family,
+and every Affghan now in exile for political
+offences, should be allowed to return
+to their country; that Shah Shoojah and
+his family should be allowed the option
+of remaining at Cabul, or proceeding
+with the British troops to Loodiana,
+in either case receiving from the Affghan
+Government a pension of one lac
+of rupees per annum; that means of transport,
+for the conveyance of our baggage,
+stores, &amp;c., including that required by the
+royal family, in case of their adopting the
+latter alternative, should be furnished by
+the existing Affghan Government: that an
+amnesty should be granted to all those
+who had made themselves obnoxious on
+account of their attachment to Shah Shoojah
+and his allies, the British; that all
+prisoners should be released; that no
+British force should be ever again sent
+into Affghanistan, unless called for by the
+Affghan government, between whom and
+the British nation perpetual friendship
+should be established on the sure foundation
+of mutual good offices.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>After some objections on the part
+of Mahomed Akber Khan, the terms
+were agreed to, and it was further arranged
+that provisions should be
+supplied to our troops, and that they
+should evacuate the cantonment in
+three days.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations were immediately
+commenced for the retreat. Arms
+were ordered to be distributed from
+the stores, now about to be abandoned,
+to some of the camp-followers, and
+such of the soldiers as might require
+them; and a disgraceful scene of confusion
+and tumult followed, which
+showed the fearful extent to which the
+army was disorganized.</p>
+
+<p>The troops in the Bala Hissar were
+moved into cantonments, not without
+a foretaste of what they had to expect
+on their march to Jellalabad, under
+the safe conduct of Akber Khan.</p>
+
+<p>The demands of the chiefs now rose
+from day to day. They refused to
+supply provisions until we should further
+assure them of our sincerity, by
+giving up every fort in the immediate
+vicinity of the cantonment. The troops
+were accordingly withdrawn, the forts
+were immediately occupied by the
+Affghans, and the cantonment thus
+placed at their mercy. On the 18th,
+the promised cattle for carriage had
+not yet been supplied, and a heavy
+fall of snow rendered the situation of
+the troops more desperate. On the
+19th, the Envoy wrote an order for the
+evacuation of Ghuznee. On the
+20th, the Envoy had another interview
+with the chiefs, who now demanded
+that a portion of the guns and ammunition
+should be given up. This also
+was agreed to. At this stage of the
+proceedings, Lieutenant Sturt of the
+engineers proposed to the General to
+break off the treaty, and march forthwith
+to Jellalabad; but the proposal
+was not approved. The arrangements
+for giving effect to the treaty were
+still carried on; and the Envoy again
+met Akber Khan and Osman Khan
+on the plain, when Captains Conolly
+and Airey were given up as hostages,
+and the Envoy sent his carriage and
+horses, and a pair of pistols, as presents
+to Akber Khan, who further demanded
+an Arab horse, the property of
+Captain Grant, assistant adjutant-general:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Late in the evening of the 22d December,&quot;
+(says Capt. Mackenzie, in a letter
+to Lieut. Eyre,) &quot;Capt. James Skinner,
+who, after having been concealed in Cabul
+during the greater part of the siege, had
+latterly been the guest of Mahomed Akber,
+arrived in cantonments, accompanied by
+Mahomed Sudeeq Khan, a first cousin of
+Mahomed Akber, and by Sirwar Khan,
+the Arhanee merchant, who, in the beginning
+of the campaign, had furnished the
+army with camels, and who had been much
+in the confidence of Sir A. Burnes, being,
+in fact, one of our stanchest friends.
+The two latter remained in a different
+apartment, while Skinner dined with the
+Envoy. During dinner, Skinner jestingly
+remarked that he felt as if laden with
+combustibles, being charged with a message
+from Mahomed Akber to the Envoy
+of a most portentous nature.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even then I remarked that the Envoy's
+eye glanced eagerly towards Skinner
+<a class="pagenum" name="page257" id="page257" title="257"></a>with an expression of hope. In fact, he
+was like a drowning man catching at straws.
+Skinner, however, referred him to his Affghan
+companions, and after dinner the four
+retired into a room by themselves. My
+knowledge of what there took place is
+gained from poor Skinner's own relation,
+as given during my subsequent captivity
+with him in Akber's house. Mahomed
+Sudeeq disclosed Mahomed Akber's proposition
+to the Envoy, which was, that the
+following day Sir William should meet
+him (Mahomed Akber) and a few of his
+immediate friends, viz. the chiefs of the
+Eastern Giljyes, outside the cantonments,
+when a final agreement should be made,
+so as to be fully understood by both parties;
+that Sir William should have a considerable
+body of troops in readiness,
+which, on a given signal, were to join with
+those of Mahomed Akber and the Giljyes,
+assault and take Mahmood Khan's fort,
+and secure the person of Ameenoolah.
+At this stage of the proposition Mahomed
+Sudeeq signified that, for a certain sum of
+money, the head of Ameenoolah should be
+presented to the Envoy; but from this Sir
+William shrunk with abhorrence, declaring
+that it was neither his custom nor
+that of his country to give a price for
+blood. Mahomed Sudeeq then went on
+to say, that, after having subdued the rest
+of the khans, the English should be permitted
+to remain in the country eight
+months longer, so as to save their <i>purdah</i>,
+(veil, or credit,) but that they were then
+to evacuate Affghanistan, as if of their
+own accord; that Shah Shoojah was to
+continue king of the country, and that
+Mahomed Akber was to be his wuzeer.
+As a further reward for his (Mahomed
+Akber's) assistance, the British Government
+were to pay him thirty lacs of rupees,
+and four lacs of rupees per annum
+during his life! To this extraordinary
+and wild proposal, Sir William gave ear
+with an eagerness which nothing can account
+for but the supposition, confirmed
+by many other circumstances, that his
+strong mind had been harassed until it
+had in some degree lost its equipoise;
+and he not only assented fully to these
+terms, but actually gave a Persian paper
+to that effect, written in his own hand,
+declaring as his motives that it was not
+only an excellent opportunity to carry into
+effect the real wishes of Government&mdash;which
+were to evacuate the country with
+as much credit to ourselves as possible&mdash;but
+that it would give England time to
+enter into a treaty with Russia, defining
+the bounds beyond which neither were to
+pass in Central Asia. So ended this fatal
+conference, the nature and result of which,
+contrary to his usual custom, Sir William
+communicated to none of those who, on
+all former occasions, were fully in his confidence,
+viz. Trevor, Lawrence, and myself.
+It seemed as if he feared that we
+might insist on the impracticability of the
+plan, which he must have studiously concealed
+from himself. All the following
+morning his manner was distracted and
+hurried, in a way that none of us had ever
+before witnessed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;After breakfast, Trevor, Lawrence,
+and myself were summoned to attend the
+Envoy during his conference with Mahomed
+Akber Khan. I found him alone, when,
+for the first time, he disclosed to me the
+nature of the transaction he was engaged
+in. I immediately warned him that it was
+a plot against him. He replied hastily,
+'A plot! let me alone for that&mdash;trust me
+for that!' and I consequently offered no
+further remonstrance. Sir William then
+arranged with General Elphinstone that
+the 54th regiment, under Major Ewart,
+should be held in readiness for immediate
+service. The Shah's 6th, and two guns,
+were also warned.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Sir W. Macnaghten, halting the
+troopers of the escort, advanced about
+500 or 600 yards from the eastern
+rampart of the cantonment, and there
+awaited Akber Khan and his party:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Close by where some hillocks, on the
+further side of which from the cantonment
+a carpet was spread where the snow lay
+least thick, and there the khans and Sir
+William sat down to hold their conference.
+Men talk of presentiment; I suppose
+it was something of the kind which
+came over me, for I could scarcely prevail
+upon myself to quit my horse. I did so,
+however, and was invited to sit down
+among the Sirdars. After the usual salutations,
+Mahomed Akber commenced business
+by asking the Envoy if he was perfectly
+ready to carry into effect the proposition
+of the preceding night? The
+Envoy replied, 'Why not?' My attention
+was then called off by an old Affghan
+acquaintance of mine, formerly chief of the
+Cabul police, by name Gholam Moyun-ood-deen.
+I rose from my recumbent
+posture, and stood apart with him conversing.
+I afterwards remembered that
+my friend betrayed much anxiety as to
+where my pistols were, and why I did not
+carry them on my person. I answered,
+that although I wore my sword for form,
+it was not necessary to be armed <i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i>.
+His discourse was also full of extravagant
+compliments, I suppose for the purpose
+of lulling me to sleep. At length my
+attention was called off from what he
+was saying, by observing that a number
+<a class="pagenum" name="page258" id="page258" title="258"></a>of men, armed to the teeth, had gradually
+approached to the scene of conference,
+and were drawing round in a
+sort of circle. This Lawrence and myself
+pointed out to some of the chief men, who
+affected at first to drive them off with
+whips; but Mahomed Akber observed,
+that it was of no consequence, as they
+were in the secret. I again resumed my
+conversation with Gholam Moyun-ood-deen,
+when suddenly I heard Mahomed
+Akber call out, 'Begeer, begeer,' (seize!
+seize!) and, turning round, I saw him
+grasp the Envoy's left hand, with an expression
+in his face of the most diabolical
+ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who
+laid hold of the Envoy's right hand. They
+dragged him in a stooping posture down
+the hillock; the only words I heard poor
+Sir William utter being, 'Az barae Khooda'
+(for God's sake!) I saw his face,
+however, and it was full of horror and
+astonishment. I did not see what became
+of Trevor, but Lawrence was dragged past
+me by several Affghans, whom I saw wrest
+his weapons from him. Up to this moment
+I was so engrossed in observing what was
+taking place, that I actually was not aware
+that my own right arm was mastered, that
+my urbane friend held a pistol to my
+temple, and that I was surrounded by a
+circle of Ghazees, with drawn swords and
+cocked juzails. Resistance was in vain,
+so, listening to the exhortations of Gholam
+Moyun-ood-deen, which were enforced by
+the whistling of divers bullets over my
+head, I hurried through the snow with
+him to the place where his horse was
+standing, being despoiled <i>en route</i> of my
+sabre, and narrowly escaping divers attempts
+made on my life. As I mounted
+behind my captor, now my energetic defender,
+the crowd increased around us, the
+cries of 'Kill the Kafir' became more
+vehement, and, although we hurried on
+at a fast canter, it was with the utmost
+difficulty Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, although
+assisted by one or two friends or
+followers, could ward off and avoid the
+sword-cuts aimed at me, the rascals being
+afraid to fire lest they should kill my conductor.
+Indeed he was obliged to wheel
+his horse round once, and taking off his
+turban, (the last appeal a Mussulman can
+make,) to implore them for God's sake to
+respect the life of his friend. At last,
+ascending a slippery bank, the horse fell.
+My cap had been snatched off, and I now
+received a heavy blow on the head from a
+bludgeon, which fortunately did not quite
+deprive me of my senses. I had sufficient
+sense left to shoot a-head of the fallen
+horse, where my protector with another
+man joined me, and clasping me in their
+arms, hurried me towards the wall of
+Mahomed Khan's fort. How I reached
+the spot where Mahomed Akber was receiving
+the gratulations of the multitude I
+know not, but I remember a fanatic rushing
+on me, and twisting his hand in my
+collar until I became exhausted from suffocation.
+I must do Mahomed Akber the
+Justice to say, that, finding the Ghazees
+bent on my slaughter, even after I had
+reached his stirrup, he drew his sword
+and laid about him right manfully, for my
+conductor and Meerza B&agrave;oodeen Khan
+were obliged to press me up against the
+wall, covering me with their own bodies,
+and protesting that no blow should reach
+me but through their persons.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pride, however, overcame Mahomed
+Akber's sense of courtesy, when he thought
+I was safe, for he then turned round to
+me, and repeatedly said, in a tone of triumphant
+derision, 'Shuma moolk-i-ma me
+geered!' (<i>You'll</i> seize my country, will
+you!)&mdash;he then rode off, and I was hurried
+towards the gate of the fort. Here new
+dangers awaited me, for Moolah Momin,
+fresh from the slaughter of poor Trevor,
+who was killed riding close behind me&mdash;Sultan
+Jan having the credit of having
+given him the first sabre-cut&mdash;stood here
+with his followers, whom he exhorted to
+slay me, setting them the example by cutting
+fiercely at me himself. Fortunately a
+gun stood between us, but still he would
+have effected his purpose, had not Mahomed
+Shah Khan at that instant, with
+some followers, come to my assistance.
+These drew their swords in my defence,
+the chief himself throwing his arm round
+my neck, and receiving on his shoulder a
+cut aimed by Moollah Momin at my head.
+During the bustle I pushed forward into
+the fort, and was immediately taken to a
+sort of dungeon, where I found Lawrence
+safe, but somewhat exhausted by his
+hideous ride and the violence he had sustained,
+although unwounded. Here the
+Giljye chiefs, Mahomed Shah Khan, and
+his brother Dost Mahomed Khan, presently
+joined us, and endeavoured to
+cheer up our flagging spirits, assuring us
+that the Envoy and Trevor were not dead,
+but on the contrary quite well. They
+stayed with us during the afternoon, their
+presence being absolutely necessary for our
+protection. Many attempts were made
+by the fanatics to force the door to accomplish
+our destruction. Others spit at us
+and abused us through a small window,
+through which one fellow levelled a blunderbuss
+at us, which was struck up by
+our keepers and himself thrust back. At
+last Ameenoollah made his appearance,
+and threatened us with instant death.
+Some of his people most officiously advanced
+to make good his word, until pushed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page259" id="page259" title="259"></a>back by the Giljye chiefs, who remonstrated
+with this iniquitous old monster,
+their master, whom they persuaded to relieve
+us from his hateful presence. During
+the afternoon, a human hand was held up
+in mockery to us at the window. We said
+that it had belonged to an European, but
+were not aware at the time that it was actually
+the hand of the poor Envoy. Of all
+the Mahomedans assembled in the room
+discussing the events of the day, one only,
+an old moollah, openly and fearlessly condemned
+the acts of his brethren, declaring
+that the treachery was abominable, and a
+disgrace to Islam. At night they brought
+us food, and gave us each a postheen to
+sleep on. At midnight we were awakened
+to go to the house of Mahomed Akber in
+the city. Mahomed Shah Khan then, with
+the meanness common to all Affghans of
+rank, robbed Lawrence of his watch, while
+his brother did me a similar favour. I had
+been plundered of my rings and every thing
+else previously, by the understrappers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reaching Mahomed Akber's abode, we
+were shown into the room where he lay in
+bed. He received us with great outward
+show of courtesy, assuring us of the welfare
+of the Envoy and Trevor, but there
+was a constraint in his manner for which I
+could not account. We were shortly taken
+to another apartment, where we found
+Skinner, who had returned, being on parole,
+early in the morning. Doubt and
+gloom marked our meeting, and the latter
+was fearfully deepened by the intelligence
+which we now received from our fellow-captive
+of the base murder of Sir William
+and Trevor. He informed us that the head
+of the former had been carried about the
+city in triumph. We of course spent a
+miserable night. The next day we were
+taken under a strong guard to the house
+of Zuman Khan, where a council of the
+Khans were being held. Here we found
+Captains Conolly and Airey, who had some
+days previously been sent to the hurwah's
+house as hostage for the performance of
+certain parts of the treaty which was to
+have been entered into. A violent discussion
+took place, in which Mahomed Akber
+bore the most prominent part. We were
+vehemently accused of treachery, and every
+thing that was bad, and told that the whole
+of the transactions of the night previous
+had been a trick of Mahomed Akber, and
+Ameenoollah, to ascertain the Envoy's sincerity.
+They declared that they would now
+grant us no terms, save on the surrender
+of the whole of the married families as
+hostages, all the guns, ammunition, and
+treasure. At this time Conolly told me
+that on the preceding day the Envoy's head
+had been paraded about in the court-yard;
+that his and Trevor's bodies had been hung
+up in the public bazar, or <i>chouk</i>; and that
+it was with the greatest difficulty that the
+old hurwah, Zuman Khan, had saved him
+and Airey from being murdered by a body
+of fanatics, who had attempted to rush into
+the room where they were. Also, that previous
+to the arrival of Lawrence, Skinner,
+and myself, Mahomed Akber had been relating
+the events of the preceding day to
+the <i>Jeerga</i> or council, and that he had unguardedly
+avowed having, while endeavouring
+to force the Envoy either to mount on
+horseback or to move more quickly, <i>struck</i>
+him; and that, seeing Conolly's eyes fastened
+upon him with an expression of intense
+indignation, he had altered the phrase and
+said, 'I mean I <i>pushed</i> him.' After an
+immense deal of gabble, a proposal for a
+renewal of the treaty, not, however, demanding
+all the guns, was determined to be sent
+to the cantonments, and Skinner, Lawrence,
+and myself were marched back to
+Akber's house, enduring <i>en route</i> all
+manner of threats and insults. Here we
+were closely confined in an inner apartment,
+which was indeed necessary for
+our safety. That evening we received
+a visit from Mahomed Akber, Sultan
+Jan, and several other Affghans. Mahomed
+Akber exhibited his double-barrelled
+pistols to us, which he had worn the
+previous day, requesting us to put their
+locks to rights, something being amiss.
+<i>Two of the barrels had been recently discharged</i>,
+which he endeavoured in a most
+confused way to account for by saying, that
+he had been charged by a havildar of the
+escort, and had fired both barrels at him.
+Now all the escort had run away without
+even attempting to charge, the only man
+who advanced to the rescue having been
+a Hindoo Jemadar of Chuprassies, who
+was instantly cut to pieces by the assembled
+Ghazees. This defence he made
+without any accusation on our part, betraying
+the anxiety of a liar to be believed.
+On the 26th, Captain Lawrence was taken
+to the house of Ameenoollah, whence he
+did not return to us. Captain Skinner
+and myself remained in Akber's house until
+the 30th. During this time we were
+civilly treated, and conversed with numbers
+of Affghan gentlemen who came to visit
+us. Some of them asserted that the Envoy
+had been murdered by the unruly soldiery.
+Others could not deny that Akber himself
+was the assassin. For two or three days
+we had a fellow-prisoner in poor Sirwar
+Khan, who had been deceived throughout
+the whole matter, and out of whom they
+were then endeavouring to screw money.
+He, of course, was aware from his countrymen,
+that not only had Akber committed
+the murder, but that he protested to the
+Ghazees that he gloried in the deed. On
+<a class="pagenum" name="page260" id="page260" title="260"></a>one occasion a moonshee of Major Pottinger,
+who had escaped from Charekhar,
+named Mohun Beer, came direct from the
+presence of Mahomed Akber to visit us.
+He told us that Mahomed Akber had begun
+to see the impolicy of having murdered
+the Envoy, which fact he had just avowed
+to him, shedding many tears, either of
+pretended remorse or of real vexation
+at having committed himself. On several
+occasions Mahomed Akber personally, and
+by deputy, besought Skinner and myself to
+give him advice as to how he was to extricate
+himself from the dilemma in which
+he was placed, more than once endeavouring
+to excuse himself for not having effectually
+protected the Envoy, by saying that
+Sir William had drawn a sword-stick upon
+him. It seems that meanwhile the renewed
+negotiations with Major Pottinger, who had
+assumed the Envoy's place in cantonments,
+had been brought to a head; for on the
+night of the 30th, Akber furnished me
+with an Affghan dress, (Skinner already
+wore one,) and sent us both back to cantonments.
+Several Affghans, with whom
+I fell in afterwards, protested to me that
+they had seen Mahomed Akber shoot the
+Envoy with his own hand; amongst them
+Meerza B&aacute;oodeen Khan, who, being an
+old acquaintance, always retained a sneaking
+kindness for the English.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am, my dear Eyre, yours very truly,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;C. MACKENZIE.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cabul, 29th July, 1842.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The negotiations were now renewed
+by Major Pottinger, who had been
+requested by General Elphinstone to
+assume the unenviable office of political
+agent and adviser.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The additional clauses in the treaty
+now proposed for our renewed acceptance
+were&mdash;1st. That we should leave behind
+our guns, excepting six. 2nd. That we
+should immediately give up all our treasures.
+3d. That the hostages should be
+all exchanged for married men, with their
+wives and families. The difficulties of
+Major Pottinger's position will be readily
+perceived, when it is borne in mind that
+he had before him the most conclusive
+evidence of the late Envoy's ill-advised
+intrigue with Mahomed Akber Khan, in
+direct violation of that very treaty which
+was now once more tendered for consideration.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A sum of fourteen lacs of rupees,
+about L.140,000, was also demanded,
+which was said to be payable to the
+several chiefs on the promise of the
+late Envoy.</p>
+
+<p>Major Pottinger, at a council of
+war convened by the General, &quot;declared
+his conviction that no confidence
+could be placed in any treaty
+formed with the Affghan chiefs; that,
+under such circumstances, to bind the
+hands of the Government by promising
+to evacuate the country, and to restore
+the deposed Ameer, and to
+waste, moreover, so much public
+money merely to save our own lives
+and property, would be inconsistent
+with the duty we owed to our country
+and the Government we served;
+and that the only honourable course
+would be, either to hold out at Cabul,
+or to force our immediate retreat to
+Jellalabad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This however, the officers composing
+the council, one and all declared
+to be impracticable, owing to the
+want of provisions, the surrender of
+the surrounding forts, and the insuperable
+difficulties of the road at the
+present season.&quot; The new treaty was
+therefore, forthwith accepted. The
+demand of the chiefs, that married
+officers with their families should be
+left as hostages, was successfully resisted.
+Captains Drummond, Walsh,
+Warburton, and Webb, were accepted
+in their place, and on the 29th went
+to join Captains Conolly and Airey at
+the house of Nuwab Zuman Khan.
+Lieutenant Haughton and a portion of
+the sick and wounded, were sent into
+the city, and placed under the protection
+of the chiefs. &quot;Three of the Shah's
+guns, with the greater portion of our
+treasure, were made over during the
+day, much to the evident disgust of
+the soldiery.&quot; On the following day,
+&quot;the remainder of the sick went into
+the city, Lieutenant Evans, H.M.
+44th foot, being placed in command,
+and Dr Campbell, 54th native infantry,
+with Dr Berwick of the mission, in
+medical charge of the whole. Two
+more of the Shah's guns were given
+up. It snowed hard the whole day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>January</i> 5.&mdash;Affairs continued in
+the same unsettled state to this date.
+The chiefs postponed our departure
+from day to day on various pretexts....
+Numerous cautions were received
+from various well-wishers, to
+place no confidence in the professions
+of the chiefs, who had sworn together
+to accomplish our entire destruction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is not our intention to offer any
+lengthened comments on these details.
+They require none. The facts,
+if they be correctly stated, speak for
+<a class="pagenum" name="page261" id="page261" title="261"></a>themselves; and, for reasons already
+referred to, we are unwilling to anticipate
+the result of the judicial investigation
+now understood to be in progress.
+This much, however, we may
+be permitted to say, that the traces of
+fatal disunion amongst ourselves will,
+we fear, be made every where apparent.
+It is notorious that Sir William
+Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes
+were on terms the reverse of cordial.
+The Envoy had no confidence in the
+General. The General was disgusted
+with the authority the Envoy had assumed,
+even in matters exclusively
+military&mdash;and, debilitated by disease,
+was unable always to assert his authority
+even in his own family. The arrival
+of General Shelton in the cantonments
+does not appear to have
+tended to restore harmony, cordiality,
+or confidence, or even to have revived
+the drooping courage of the troops, or to
+have renovated the feelings of obedience,
+and given effect to the bonds of
+discipline, which had been too much relaxed.
+But, even after admitting all
+these things, much more still remains to
+be explained before we can account for
+all that has happened&mdash;before we can
+understand how the political authorities
+came to reject every evidence of approaching
+danger, and therefore to be
+quite unprepared for it when it came.
+Why no effort was made on the first
+day to put down the insurrection: Why,
+in the arrangements for the defence
+of the cantonments, the commisariat
+fort was neglected, and the other forts
+neither occupied nor destroyed: Why
+almost every detachment that was sent
+out was too small to effect its object:
+Why, with a force of nearly six thousand
+men, we should never on any
+one occasion have had two thousand
+in the field, and, as in the action at
+Beymaroo, only one gun: Why so
+many orders appear to have been disregarded;
+why so few were punctually
+obeyed.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;At last the fatal morning dawned
+(the 6th January) which was to witness
+the departure of the Cabul force from the
+cantonments in which it had endured a
+two months' siege.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;Dreary indeed was the scene over
+which, with drooping spirits and dismal
+forebodings, we had to bend our unwilling
+steps. Deep snow covered every inch of
+mountain and plain with one unspotted
+sheet of dazzling whiteness; and so intensely
+bitter was the cold, as to penetrate
+and defy the defences of the warmest
+clothing.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Encumbered with baggage, crowded
+with 12,000 camp-followers, and
+accompanied by many helpless women
+and children, of all ranks and of all
+ages&mdash;with misery before, and death
+behind, and treachery all around
+them&mdash;with little hope of successful
+resistance if attacked, without tents
+enough to cover them, and without food
+or fuel for the march, 4500 fighting
+men, with nine guns, set out on this
+march of death.</p>
+
+<p>At 9 A.M. the advance moved out,
+but was delayed for upwards of an
+hour at the river, having found the
+temporary bridge incomplete; and it
+was noon ere the road was clear for
+the main column, which, with its long
+train of loaded camels, continued to
+pour out of the gate until the evening,
+by which time thousands of Affghans
+thronged the area of the cantonment
+rending the air with exulting cries,
+and committing every kind of atrocity.
+Before the rearguard commenced
+its march it was night; but by
+the light of the burning buildings the
+Affghan marksmen laid Lieut. Hardyman,
+and fifty rank and file, lifeless
+on the snow. The order of march
+was soon lost; scores of sepoys and
+camp-followers sat down in despair to
+perish, and it was 2 A.M. before the
+rearguard reached the camp at Bygram,
+a distance of five miles. Here
+all was confusion; different regiments,
+with baggage, camp-followers, camels,
+and horses, mixed up together. The
+cold towards morning became more
+intense, and thousands were lying on
+the bare snow, without shelter, fire,
+or food. Several died during the
+night, amongst whom was an European
+conductor; and the proportion
+of those who escaped without frostbites
+was small. Yet this was but the
+<i>beginning</i> of sorrows.</p>
+
+<p><i>January 7th</i>.&mdash;At 8 A.M. the force
+moved on in the same inextricable
+confusion. Already nearly half the
+sepoys, from sheer inability to keep
+their ranks, had joined the crowd of
+non-combatants. The rearguard was
+attacked, and much baggage lost, and
+one of the guns having been overturned,
+was taken by the Affghans,
+whose cavalry charged into the very
+heart of the column.</p>
+
+<p>Akber Khan said, that the force
+<a class="pagenum" name="page262" id="page262" title="262"></a>had been attacked because it had
+marched contrary to the wish of the
+chiefs. He insisted that it should
+halt, and promised to supply food,
+forage, and fuel for the troops, but
+demanded six more hostages, which
+were given. These terms having
+been agreed to, the firing ceased for
+the present, and the army encamped
+at Bootkhak, where the confusion was
+indescribable. &quot;Night again,&quot; says
+Lieutenant Eyre, &quot;closed over us,
+with its attendant horrors&mdash;starvation,
+cold, exhaustion, death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At an early hour on the 8th the
+Affghans commenced firing into the
+camp; and as they collected in considerable
+numbers, Major Thain led
+the 44th to attack them. In this
+business the regiment behaved with a
+resolution and gallantry worthy of
+British soldiers. Again Akber Khan
+demanded hostages. Again they were
+given, and again the firing ceased.
+This seems to prove that Akber Khan
+had the power, if he had chosen to
+exert it, to restrain those tribes. Once
+more the living mass of men and animals
+was put in motion. The frost
+had so crippled the hands and feet of
+the strongest men, as to prostrate
+their powers and to incapacitate them
+for service.</p>
+
+<p>The Khoord-Cabul pass, which
+they were about to enter, is about five
+miles long, shut in by lofty hills, and
+by precipices of 500 or 600 feet in
+height, whose summits approach one
+another in some parts to within about
+fifty or sixty yards. Down the centre
+dashed a torrent, bordered with ice,
+which was crossed about eight-and-twenty
+times.</p>
+
+<p>While in this dark and narrow
+gorge, a hot fire was opened upon
+the advance, with whom were several
+ladies, who, seeing no other chance of
+safety, galloped forwards, &quot;running
+the gauntlet of the enemy's bullets,
+which whizzed in hundreds about their
+ears, until they were fairly out of
+the pass. Providentially the whole
+escaped, except Lady Sale, who was
+slightly wounded in the arm.&quot; Several
+of Akber Khan's chief adherents
+exerted themselves in vain to restrain
+the Giljyes; and as the crowd moved
+onward into the thickest of the fire,
+the slaughter was fearful. Another
+horse-artillery gun was abandoned,
+and the whole of its artillerymen
+slain, and some of the children of the
+officers became prisoners. It is supposed
+that 3000 souls perished in the
+pass, amongst whom were many
+officers.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;On the force reaching Khoord-Cabul,
+snow began to fall, and continued till
+morning. Only four small tents were saved,
+of which one belonged to the General:
+two were devoted to the ladies and
+children, and one was given up to the
+sick; but an immense number of poor
+wounded wretches wandered about the
+camp destitute of shelter, and perished
+during the night. Groans of misery and
+distress assailed the ear from all quarters.
+We had ascended to a still colder climate
+than we had left behind, and we were without
+tents, fuel, or food: the snow was the
+only bed for all, and of many, ere morning,
+it proved the <i>winding-sheet</i>. It is
+only marvellous that any should have survived
+that fearful night!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>January 9th</i>.&mdash;Another morning
+dawned, awakening thousands to increased
+misery; and many a wretched survivor
+cast looks of envy at his comrades, who
+lay stretched beside him in the quiet sleep
+of death. Daylight was the signal for a
+renewal of that confusion which attended
+every movement of the force.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Many of the troops and followers
+moved without orders at 8 A.M., but
+were recalled by the General, in consequence
+of an arrangement with Akber
+Khan. &quot;This delay, and prolongation
+of their sufferings in the
+snow, of which one more march would
+have carried them clear, made a very
+unfavourable impression on the minds
+of the native soldiery, who now, for
+the first time, began very generally
+to entertain the idea of deserting.&quot;
+And it is not to be wondered at, that
+the instinct of self-preservation should
+have led them to falter in their fealty
+when the condition of the whole army
+had become utterly hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>Akber Khan now proposed that the
+ladies and children should be made
+over to his care; and, anxious to save
+them further suffering, the General
+gave his consent to the arrangement,
+permitting their husbands and the
+wounded officers to accompany them.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Up to this time scarcely one of the
+ladies had tasted a meal since leaving Cabul.
+Some had infants a few days old at
+the breast, and were unable to stand without
+assistance. Others were so far advanced
+in pregnancy, that, under ordinary
+circumstances, a walk across a drawing-room
+would have been an exertion; yet
+<a class="pagenum" name="page263" id="page263" title="263"></a>these helpless women, with their young families,
+had already been obliged to rough it
+on the backs of camels, and on the tops of
+the baggage yaboos: those who had a horse
+to ride, or were capable of sitting on one,
+were considered fortunate indeed. Most
+had been without shelter since quitting the
+cantonment&mdash;their servants had nearly all
+deserted or been killed&mdash;and, with the
+exception of Lady Macnaghten and Mrs
+Trevor, they had lost all their baggage,
+having nothing in the world left but the
+clothes on their backs; <i>those</i>, in the case
+of some of the invalids, consisted of <i>night
+dresses</i> in which they had started from
+Cabul in their litters. Under such circumstances,
+a few more hours would probably
+have seen some of them stiffening corpses.
+The offer of Mahomed Akber was consequently
+their only chance of preservation.
+The husbands, better clothed and hardy,
+would have infinitely preferred taking their
+chance with the troops; but where is the
+man who would prefer his own safety, when
+he thought he could by his presence assist
+and console those near and dear to him?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not, therefore, wonderful, that
+from persons so circumstanced the General's
+proposal should have met with little
+opposition, although it was a matter of
+serious doubt whether the whole were
+not rushing into the very jaws of death,
+by placing themselves at the mercy of a
+man who had so lately imbrued his hands
+in the blood of a British envoy, whom he
+had lured to destruction by similar professions
+of peace and good-will.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Anticipating an attack, the troops
+paraded to repel it, and it was now
+found that the 44th mustered only
+100 files, and the native infantry regiments
+about sixty each. &quot;The promises
+of Mahomed Akber to provide
+food and fuel were unfulfilled, and
+another night of starvation and cold
+consigned more victims to a miserable
+death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><i>January</i> 10.&mdash;At break of day all
+was again confusion, every one hurrying
+to the front, and dreading above
+all things to be left in the rear. The
+Europeans were the only efficient men
+left, the Hindostanees having suffered
+so severely from the frost in their
+hands and feet, that few could hold a
+musket, much less pull a trigger.
+The enemy had occupied the rocks
+above the gorge, and thence poured a
+destructive fire upon the column as it
+slowly advanced. Fresh numbers fell
+at every volley. The sepoys, unable to
+use their arms, cast them away, and,
+with the followers, fled for their lives.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The Affghans now rushed down upon
+their helpless and unresisting victims
+sword in hand, and a general massacre
+took place. The last small remnant of
+the native infantry regiments were here
+scattered and destroyed; and the public
+treasure, with all the remaining baggage,
+fell into the hands of the enemy. Meanwhile,
+the advance, after pushing through
+the Tungee with great loss, had reached
+Kubbur-i-Jubbar, about five miles a-head,
+without more opposition. Here they
+halted to enable the rear to join, but, from
+the few stragglers who from time to time
+came up, the astounding truth was brought
+to light, that of all who had that morning
+marched from Khoord-Cabul they
+were almost the sole survivors, nearly the
+whole of the main and rear columns having
+been cut off and destroyed. About
+50 horse-artillerymen, with one twelve-pounder
+howitzer, 70 files H.M.'s 44th,
+and 150 cavalry troopers, now composed
+the whole Cabul force; but, notwithstanding
+the slaughter and dispersion that had
+taken place, the camp-followers still formed
+a considerable body.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Another remonstrance was now addressed
+to Akber Khan. He declared,
+in reply, his inability to restrain
+the Giljyes. As the troops entered a
+narrow defile at the foot of the Huft
+Kotul, they found it strewn with the
+dead bodies of their companions. A
+destructive fire was maintained on the
+troops from the heights on either side,
+and fresh numbers of dead and wounded
+lined the course of the stream.
+&quot;Brigadier Shelton commanded the
+rear with a few Europeans, and but
+for his persevering energy and unflinching
+fortitude in repelling the
+assailants, it is probable the whole
+would have been there sacrificed.&quot;
+They encamped in the Tezeen valley,
+having lost 12,000 men since leaving
+Cabul; fifteen officers had been killed
+and wounded in this day's march.</p>
+
+<p>After resting three hours, they
+marched, under cover of the darkness,
+at seven P.M. Here the last
+gun was abandoned, and with it Dr
+Cardew, whose zeal and gallantry had
+endeared him to the soldiers; and a
+little further on Dr Duff was left on
+the road in a state of utter exhaustion.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Bodies of the neighbouring tribes
+were by this time on the alert, and fired
+at random from the heights, it being fortunately
+too dark for them to aim with
+precision; but the panic-stricken camp-followers
+now resembled a herd of startled
+deer, and fluctuated backwards and forwards,
+<i>en masse</i>, at every shot, blocking
+up the entire road, and fatally retarding
+<a class="pagenum" name="page264" id="page264" title="264"></a>the progress of the little body of soldiers
+who, under Brigadier Shelton, brought up
+the rear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Burik-&agrave;b a heavy fire was encountered
+by the hindmost from some caves
+near the road-side, occasioning fresh disorder,
+which continued all the way to Kutter-Sung,
+where the advance arrived at
+dawn of day, and awaited the junction of
+the rear, which did not take place till 8
+A.M.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><i>January</i> 11.&mdash; ...</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;From Kutter-Sung to Jugdulluk it
+was one continued conflict; Brigadier
+Shelton, with his brave little band in the
+rear, holding overwhelming numbers in
+check, and literally performing wonders.
+But no efforts could avail to ward off the
+withering fire of juzails, which from all
+sides assailed the crowded column, lining
+the road with bleeding carcasses. About
+three P.M. the advance reached Jugdulluk,
+and took up its position behind some
+ruined walls that crowned a height by the
+road-side. To show an imposing front,
+the officers extended themselves in line,
+and Captain Grant, assistant adjutant-general,
+at the same moment received a
+wound in the face. From this eminence
+they cheered their comrades under Brigadier
+Shelton in the rear, as they still
+struggled their way gallantly along every
+foot of ground, perseveringly followed up
+by their merciless enemy, until they arrived
+at their ground. But even here
+rest was denied them; for the Affghans,
+immediately occupying two hills which
+commanded the position, kept up a fire
+from which the walls of the enclosure afforded
+but a partial shelter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The exhausted troops and followers
+now began to suffer greatly from thirst,
+which they were unable to satisfy. A
+tempting stream trickled near the foot of
+the hill, but to venture down to it was
+certain death. Some snow that covered
+the ground was eagerly devoured, but increased,
+instead of alleviating, their sufferings.
+The raw flesh of three bullocks,
+which had fortunately been saved, was
+served out to the soldiers, and ravenously
+swallowed.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>About half-past three Akber Khan
+sent for Capt. Skinner, who promptly
+obeyed the call, hoping still to effect
+some arrangement for the preservation
+of those who survived. The men now
+threw themselves down, hoping for a
+brief repose, but the enemy poured
+volleys from the heights into the enclosures
+in rapid succession. Captain
+Bygrave, with about fifteen brave
+Europeans, sallied forth, determined
+to drive the enemy from the heights
+or perish in the attempt. They succeeded;
+but the enemy, who had fled
+before them, returned and resumed
+their fatal fire. At five P.M. Captain
+Skinner returned with a message from
+Akber Khan, requesting the presence
+of the General at a conference, and demanding
+Brigadier Shelton and Capt.
+Johnson as hostages for the surrender
+of Jellalabad. The troops saw the departure
+of these officers with despair,
+feeling assured that these treacherous
+negotiations &quot;were preparatory to
+fresh sacrifices of blood.&quot; The General
+and his companions were received
+with every outward token of
+kindness, and they were supplied with
+food, but they were not permitted to
+return. The Sirdar put the General
+off with promises; and at seven P.M.
+on the 12th, firing being heard, it was
+ascertained that the troops, impatient
+of further delay, had actually moved
+off. Before their departure Captain
+Skinner had been treacherously shot.
+They had been exposed during the
+whole day to the fire of the enemy&mdash;&quot;sally
+after sally had been made by
+the Europeans, bravely led by Major
+Thain, Captain Bygrave, and Lieutenants
+Wade and Macartney, but
+again and again the enemy returned
+to worry and destroy. Night came,
+and all further delay in such a place
+being useless, the whole sallied forth,
+determined to pursue the route to Jellalabad
+at all risks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sick and the wounded were
+necessarily abandoned to their fate.
+For some time the Giljyes seemed not
+to be on the alert; but in the defile, at
+the top of the rise, further progress
+was obstructed by barriers formed
+of prickly trees. This caused great delay,
+and &quot;a terrible fire was poured
+in from all quarters&mdash;a massacre even
+worse than that of the Tunga Tarikee<a id="footnotetag24" name="footnotetag24" href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a>
+commenced, the Affghans rushing in
+furiously upon the pent-up crowd of
+troops and followers, and committing
+wholesale slaughter. A miserable
+remnant managed to clear the barriers.
+Twelve officers, amongst whom
+was Brigadier Anquetil, were killed.
+Upwards of forty others succeeded in
+pushing through, about twelve of
+whom, being pretty well mounted,
+rode on a-head of the rest with the
+few remaining cavalry, intending to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page265" id="page265" title="265"></a>make the best of their way to Jellalabad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The country now became more
+open&mdash;the Europeans dispersed, in
+small parties under different officers.
+The Giljyes were too much occupied
+in plundering the dead to pursue
+them, but they were much delayed by
+the amiable anxiety of the men to
+carry on their wounded comrades.
+The morning of the 13th dawned as
+they approached Gundamuk, revealing
+to the enemy the insignificance of
+their numerical strength; and they
+were compelled, by the vigorous assaults
+of the Giljyes, to take up a
+defensive position on a height to the
+left of the road, &quot;where they made a
+resolute stand, determined to sell
+their lives at the dearest possible price.
+At this time they could only muster
+about twenty muskets.&quot; An attempt
+to effect an amicable arrangement
+terminated in a renewal of hostilities,
+and &quot;the enemy marked off man after
+man, and officer after officer, with unerring
+aim. Parties of Affghans
+rushed up at intervals to complete the
+work of extermination, but were as
+often driven back by the still dauntless
+handful of invincibles. At length,
+all being wounded more or less, a final
+onset of the enemy, sword in hand,
+terminated the unequal struggle and
+completed the dismal tragedy.&quot; Captain
+Souter, who was wounded, and
+three or four privates, were spared and
+led away captive. Major Griffiths
+and Captain Blewitt, having descended
+to confer with the enemy,
+had been previously led off. Of the
+twelve officers who had gone on in advance
+eleven were destroyed, and Dr
+Brydon alone of the whole Cabul
+force reached Jellalabad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such was the memorable retreat
+of the British army from Cabul, which,
+viewed in all its circumstances&mdash;in
+the military conduct which preceded
+and brought about such a consummation,
+the treachery, disaster, and
+suffering which accompanied it&mdash;is,
+perhaps, without a parallel in history.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page266" id="page266" title="266"></a>
+<a name="bw328s9" id="bw328s9"></a><h2>THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.</h2>
+
+<p>Since the day when Lord Auckland,
+by his famous proclamation in
+October 1838, &quot;directed the assemblage
+of a British force for service
+across the Indus,&quot; we have never
+ceased to denounce the invasion and
+continued occupation of Affghanistan
+as equally unjust and impolitic<a id="footnotetag25" name="footnotetag25" href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a>&mdash;unjust,
+as directed against a people
+whose conduct had afforded us no
+legitimate grounds of hostility, and
+against a ruler whose only offence
+was, that he had accepted<a id="footnotetag26" name="footnotetag26" href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a> the proffer
+from another quarter of that support
+and alliance which we had denied to
+his earnest entreaty&mdash;and impolitic,
+as tending not only to plunge us into
+an endless succession of ruinous and
+unprofitable warfare, but to rouse
+against us an implacable spirit of enmity,
+in a nation which had hitherto
+shown every disposition to cultivate
+amicable relations with our Anglo-Indian
+Government. In all points,
+our anticipations have been fatally
+verified. After more than two years
+consumed in unavailing efforts to
+complete the reduction of the country,
+our army of occupation was at
+last overwhelmed by the universal
+and irresistible outbreak of an indignant
+and fanatic population; and
+the restored monarch, Shah-Shoojah,
+(&quot;whose popularity throughout Affghanistan
+had been proved to the
+Governor-general by the strong and
+unanimous testimony of the best authorities&quot;)
+perished, as soon as he lost
+the protection of foreign bayonets, by
+the hands of his outraged countrymen.<a id="footnotetag27" name="footnotetag27" href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The tottering and unsubstantial
+phantom of a <i>Doorauni kingdom</i> vanished
+at once and for ever&mdash;and the
+only remaining alternative was, (as
+we stated the case in our number of
+last July,) &quot;either to perpetrate a
+second act of violence and national
+injustice, by reconquering Affghanistan
+<i>for the vindication</i> (as the phrase
+is) <i>of our military honour</i>, and holding
+it without disguise as a province
+of our empire&mdash;or to make the best
+of a bad bargain, by contenting ourselves
+with the occupation of a few
+posts on the frontier, and leaving the
+unhappy natives to recover, without
+foreign interference, from the dreadful
+state of anarchy into which our
+irruption has thrown them.&quot; Fortunately
+for British interests in the
+East, the latter course has been
+adopted. After a succession of brilliant
+military triumphs, which, in the
+words of Lord Ellenborough's recent
+proclamation, &quot;have, in one short
+campaign, avenged our late disasters
+upon every scene of past misfortune,&quot;
+the evacuation of the country has
+been directed&mdash;not, however, before a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page267" id="page267" title="267"></a>fortunate chance had procured the
+liberation of <i>all</i> the prisoners who
+had fallen into the power of the Affghans
+in January last; and ere this
+time, we trust, not a single British
+regiment remains on the bloodstained
+soil of Affghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>The proclamation above referred
+to,<a id="footnotetag28" name="footnotetag28" href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a> (which we have given at length
+at the conclusion of this article,) announcing
+these events, and defining
+the line of policy in future to be pursued
+by the Anglo-Indian Government,
+is in all respects a remarkable
+document. As a specimen of frankness
+and plain speaking, it stands
+unique in the history of diplomacy;
+and, accordingly, both its matter and
+its manner have been made the subjects
+of unqualified censure by those
+scribes of the Opposition press who,
+&quot;content to dwell in forms for ever,&quot;
+have accustomed themselves to regard
+the mystified protocols of Lord Palmerston
+as the models of official style.
+The <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, with amusing
+ignorance of the state of the public
+mind in India, condemns the Governor-general
+for allowing it to
+become known to the natives that
+the abandonment of Affghanistan was
+in consequence of a change of policy!
+conceiving (we suppose) that our Indian
+subjects would otherwise have
+believed the Cabul disasters to have
+formed part of the original plan of
+the war, and to have veiled some purpose
+of inscrutable wisdom; while the
+<i>Globe</i>, (Dec. 3,) after a reluctant
+admission that &quot;the policy itself of
+evacuating the country <i>may be wise</i>,&quot;
+would fain deprive Lord Ellenborough
+of the credit of having originated this
+decisive step, by an assertion that &quot;we
+have discovered no proof that a permanent
+possession of the country beyond
+the Indus was contemplated by
+his predecessor.&quot; It would certainly
+have been somewhat premature in
+Lord Auckland to have announced his
+ultimate intentions on this point while
+the country in question was as yet but
+imperfectly subjugated, or when our
+troops were subsequently almost
+driven out of it; but the views of
+the then home Government, from
+which it is to be presumed that Lord
+Auckland received his instructions,
+were pretty clearly revealed in the
+House of Commons on the 10th of
+August last, by one whose authority
+the <i>Globe</i>, at least, will scarcely dispute&mdash;by
+Lord Palmerston himself.
+To prevent the possibility of misconstruction,
+we quote the words attributed
+to the late Foreign Secretary.
+After drawing the somewhat unwarrantable
+inference, from Sir Robert
+Peel's statement, &quot;that no immediate
+withdrawal of our troops from Candahar
+and Jellalabad was contemplated,&quot;
+that an order had at one time been
+given for the abandonment of Affghanistan,
+he proceeds&mdash;&quot;I do trust
+that her Majesty's Government will
+not carry into effect, either immediately
+or at <i>any</i> future time, the arrangement
+thus contemplated. It was all very
+well when we were in power, and it
+was suited to party purposes, to run
+down any thing we had done, and to
+represent as valueless any acquisition
+on which we may have prided ourselves&mdash;it
+was all very well to raise an
+outcry against the Affghan expedition,
+and to undervalue the great advantages
+which the possession of the
+country was calculated to afford us&mdash;but
+I trust the Government will rise
+above any consideration of that sort,
+and that they will give the matter
+their fair, dispassionate, and deliberate
+consideration. I must say, I never
+was more convinced of any thing in
+the whole course of my life&mdash;and I
+may be believed when I speak my
+earnest conviction&mdash;that the most important
+interests of this country, both
+commercial and political, would be
+sacrificed, if we were to sacrifice the
+military possession of the country of
+Eastern Affghanistan.&quot; Is it in the
+power of words to convey a clearer
+admission, that the pledge embodied
+in Lord Auckland's manifesto&mdash;&quot;to
+withdraw the British army as soon as
+the independence and integrity of Affghanistan
+should be secured by the
+establishment of the Shah&quot;&mdash;was in
+fact mere moonshine: and the real object
+of the expedition was the conquest
+of a country advantageously situated
+<a class="pagenum" name="page268" id="page268" title="268"></a>for the defence of our Indian frontier
+against (as it now appears) an imaginary
+invader? Thus Napoleon, in
+December 1810, alleged &quot;the necessity,
+in consequence of the new order
+of things which has arisen, of new
+guarantees for the security of my empire,&quot;
+as a pretext for that wholesale
+measure of territorial spoliation in
+Northern Germany, which, from the
+umbrage it gave Russia, proved ultimately
+the cause of his downfall: but
+it was reserved for us of the present
+day, to hear a <i>British</i> minister avow
+and justify a violent and perfidious
+usurpation on the plea of political expediency.
+It must indeed be admitted
+that, in the early stages of the war,
+the utter iniquity of the measure met
+with but faint reprobation from any
+party in the state: the nation, dazzled
+by the long-disused splendours of military
+glory, was willing, without any
+very close enquiry, to take upon trust
+all the assertions so confidently put
+forth on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah,
+the hostile machinations of Dost
+Mohammed, and the philanthropic and
+disinterested wishes of the Indian Government
+for (to quote a notable
+phrase to which we have more than
+once previously referred) &quot;<i>the reconstruction
+of the social edifice</i>&quot; in Affghanistan.
+But now that all these
+subterfuges, flimsy as they were at
+best, have been utterly dissipated by
+this undisguised declaration of Lord
+Palmerston, that the real object of
+the war was to seize and hold the
+country on our own account, the attempt
+of the <i>Globe</i> to claim for Lord
+Auckland the credit of having from
+the first contemplated a measure thus
+vehemently protested against and disclaimed
+by the late official leader of
+his party, is rather too barefaced to
+be passed over without comment.</p>
+
+<p>Without, however, occupying ourselves
+further in combating the attacks
+of the Whig press on this proclamation,
+which may very well be left to
+stand on its own merits, we now proceed
+to recapitulate the course of the
+events which have, in a few months, so
+completely changed the aspect of affairs
+beyond the Indus. When we
+took leave, in July last, of the subject
+of the Affghan campaign, we left
+General Pollock, with the force which
+had made its way through the Khyber
+Pass, still stationary at Jellalabad, for
+want (as it was said) of camels and
+other means of transport: while General
+Nott, at Candahar, not only held
+his ground, but victoriously repulsed
+in the open field the Affghan <i>insurgents</i>,
+(as it is the fashion to call them,)
+who were headed by the prince Seifdar-Jung,
+son of Shah Shoojah! and
+General England, after his repulse on
+the 28th of March at the Kojuck Pass,
+remained motionless at Quettah. The
+latter officer (in consequence, as it
+is said, of peremptory orders from General
+Nott to meet him on a given
+day at the further side of the Pass)
+was the first to resume active operations;
+and on the 28th of April, the
+works at Hykulzie in the Kojuck,
+which had been unaccountably represented
+on the former occasion as most
+formidable defences,<a id="footnotetag29" name="footnotetag29" href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a> were carried
+without loss or difficulty, and the force
+continued its march uninterrupted to
+Candahar. The fort of Khelat-i-Ghiljie,
+lying about halfway between
+Candahar and Ghazni, was at the
+sane time gallantly and successfully
+defended by handful of Europeans
+and sepoys, till relieved by the advance
+of a division from Candahar,
+which brought off the garrison, and
+razed the fortifications of the place.
+Girishk, the hereditary stronghold of
+the Barukzye chiefs, about eighty miles
+west of Candahar, was also dismantled
+and abandoned; and all the troops
+in Western Affghanistan were thus
+<a class="pagenum" name="page269" id="page269" title="269"></a>concentrated under the immediate
+command of General Nott, whose success
+in every encounter with the Affghans
+continued to be so decisive, that
+all armed opposition disappeared from
+the neighbourhood of Candahar; and
+the prince Seifdar-Jung, despairing of
+the cause, of which he had perhaps
+been from the first not a very willing
+supporter, came in and made his submission
+to the British commander.</p>
+
+<p>During the progress of these triumphant
+operations in Western Affghanistan,
+General Pollock still lay inactive
+at Jellalabad; and some abortive
+attempts were made to negotiate with
+the dominant party at Cabul for the
+release of the prisoners taken the
+preceding winter. Since the death of
+Shah-Shoojah, the throne had been
+nominally filled by his third son,
+Futteh-Jung, the only one of the
+princes who was on the spot; but
+all the real power was vested, with
+the rank of vizier, in the hands of
+Akhbar Khan, who had not only
+possessed himself of the Bala-Hissar
+and the treasure of the late
+king, but had succeeded in recruiting
+the forces of the Affghan league, by
+a reconciliation with Ameen-ullah
+Khan,<a id="footnotetag30" name="footnotetag30" href="#footnote30"><sup>30</sup></a> the original leader of the outbreak,
+with whom he had formerly
+been at variance. All efforts, however,
+to procure the liberation of the
+captives, on any other condition than
+the liberation of Dost Mohammed, and
+the evacuation of Affghanistan by the
+English, (as hostages for which they
+had originally been given,) proved
+fruitless; and at length, after more
+than four months' delay, during which
+several sharp affairs had taken place
+with advanced bodies of the Affghans,
+General Pollock moved forward with
+his whole force, on the 20th of August,
+against Cabul. This city had
+again in the mean time become a scene
+of tumult and disorder&mdash;the Kizilbashes
+or Persian inhabitants, as well
+as many of the native chiefs, resisting
+the exactions of Akhbar Khan; who,
+at last, irritated by the opposition to
+his measures, imprisoned the titular
+shah, Futteh-Jung, in the Bala-Hissar;
+whence he succeeded after a
+time in escaping, and made his appearance,
+in miserable plight, (Sept.
+1,) at the British headquarters at Futtehabad,
+between Jellalabad and Gundamuck.
+The advance of the army was
+constantly opposed by detached bodies
+of the enemy, and several spirited
+skirmishes took place:&mdash;till, on the
+13th of September, the main Affghan
+force, to the number of 16,000 men,
+under Akhbar Khan and other leaders,
+was descried on the heights near
+Tazeen, (where the slaughter of our
+troops had taken place in January,)
+at the entrance of the formidable
+defiles called the Huft-Kothul, or
+Seven Passes. It is admitted on all
+hands that in this last struggle, (as
+they believed, for independence,) the
+Affghans fought with most distinguished
+gallantry, frequently charging
+sword in hand upon the bayonets;
+but their irregular valour eventually
+gave way before the discipline of their
+opponents, and a total rout took place.
+The chiefs fled in various directions,
+&quot;abandoning Cabul to the <i>avengers of
+British wrongs</i>,&quot; who entered the city
+in triumph on the 15th, and hoisted
+the British colours on the Bala-Hissar.
+The principal point now remaining
+to be effected was the rescue of
+the prisoners whom Akhbar Khan had
+carried off with him in his flight, with
+the intention (as was rumoured) of
+transporting them into Turkestan;
+but from this peril they were fortunately
+delivered by the venality of
+the chief to whose care they had been
+temporarily intrusted; and on the
+21st they all reached the camp in safety,
+with the exception of Captain Bygrave,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page270" id="page270" title="270"></a>who was also liberated, a few days
+later, by the voluntary act of Akhbar
+himself.<a id="footnotetag31" name="footnotetag31" href="#footnote31"><sup>31</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>General Nott, meanwhile, in pursuance
+of his secret orders from the
+Supreme Government, had been making
+preparations for abandoning Candahar;
+and, on the 7th and 8th of
+August, the city was accordingly evacuated,
+both by his corps and by the
+division of General England&mdash;the
+Affghan prince, Seifdar-Jung, being
+left in possession of the place. The
+routes of the two commanders were
+now separated. General England,
+with an immense train of luggage,
+stores, &amp;c., directed his march through
+the Kojuck Pass to Quettah, which
+he reached with little opposition;&mdash;while
+Nott, with a more lightly-equipped
+column, about 7000 strong,
+advanced by Khelat-i-Ghiljie against
+Ghazni. This offensive movement
+appears to have taken the Affghans at
+first by surprise; and it was not till
+he arrived within thirty-eight miles
+of Ghazni that General Nott found
+his progress opposed (August 30) by
+12,000 men under the governor,
+Shams-o-deen Khan, a cousin of Mohammed
+Akhbar. The dispersion of
+this tumultuary array was apparently
+accomplished (as far as can be gathered
+from the extremely laconic despatches
+of the General) without much
+difficulty; and, on the 6th of September,
+after a sharp skirmish in the environs,
+the British once more entered
+Ghazni. In the city and neighbouring
+villages were found not fewer
+than 327 sepoys of the former garrison,
+which had been massacred to a
+man (according to report) immediately
+after the surrender; but notwithstanding
+this evidence of the moderation
+with which the Affghans had
+used their triumph, General Nott, (in
+obedience, as is said, to the <i>positive
+tenor of his instructions</i>,) &quot;directed the
+city of Ghazni, with the citadel and
+the whole of its works, to be destroyed;&quot;
+and this order appears, from
+the engineer's report, to have been rigorously
+carried into effect. The
+mace of Mamood Shah Ghaznevi, the
+first Moslem conqueror of Hindostan,
+and the famous sandal-wood portals of
+his tomb, (once the gates of the great
+Hindoo temple at Somnaut,<a id="footnotetag32" name="footnotetag32" href="#footnote32"><sup>32</sup></a>) were
+carried off as trophies: the ruins of
+Ghazni were left as a monument of
+British vengeance; and General Nott,
+resuming his march, and again routing
+Shams-o-deen Khan at the defiles
+of Myden, effected his junction with
+General Pollock, on the 17th of September,
+at Cabul; whence the united
+corps, together mustering 18,000 effective
+men, were to take the route for
+Hindostan through the Punjab early
+in October.</p>
+
+<p>Such have been the principal events
+of the brief but brilliant campaign
+which has concluded the Affghan war,
+and which, if regarded solely in a military
+point of view, must be admitted
+to have amply vindicated the lustre of
+the British arms from the transient
+cloud cast on them by the failures and
+disasters of last winter.</p>
+
+<p>The Affghan tragedy, however,
+may now, we hope, be considered as
+concluded, so far as related to our own
+participation in its crimes and calamities;
+but for the Affghans themselves,
+&quot;left to create a government in the
+midst of anarchy,&quot; there can be at present
+little chance of even comparative
+tranquillity, after the total dislocation
+of their institutions and internal relations
+by the fearful torrent of war
+which has swept over the country.
+The last atonement now in our power
+to make, both to the people and the
+ruler whom we have so deeply injured,
+as well as the best course for our own
+interests, would be at once to release
+Dost Mohammed from the unmerited
+and ignominious confinement to which
+he has been subjected in Hindostan,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page271" id="page271" title="271"></a>and to send him back in honour to
+Cabul; where his own ancient partisans,
+as well as those of his son,
+would quickly rally round him; and
+where his presence and accustomed
+authority might have some effect in
+restraining the crowd of fierce chiefs,
+who will be ready to tear each other
+to pieces as soon as they are released
+from the presence of the <i>Feringhis</i>.
+There would thus be at least a possibility
+of obtaining a nucleus for the
+re-establishment of something like
+good order; while in no other quarter
+does there appear much prospect of a
+government being formed, which
+might be either &quot;approved by the
+Affghans themselves,&quot; or &quot;capable of
+maintaining friendly relations with
+neighbouring states.&quot; If the accounts
+received may be depended upon, our
+troops had scarcely cleared the Kojuck
+Pass, on their way from Candahar to
+the Indus, when that city became the
+scene of a contest between the Prince
+Seifdar-Jung and the Barukzye chiefs
+in the vicinity; and though the latter
+are said to have been worsted in the
+first instance, there can be little doubt
+that our departure will be the signal
+for the speedy return of the quondam
+<i>Sirdars</i>, or rulers of Candahar, (brothers
+of Dost Mohammed,) who have
+found an asylum in Persia since their
+expulsion in 1839, but who will scarcely
+neglect so favourable an opportunity
+for recovering their lost authority.
+Yet another competitor may still, perhaps,
+be found in the same quarter&mdash;one
+whose name, though sufficiently
+before the public a few years since,
+has now been almost forgotten in the
+strife of more mighty interests. This
+is Shah Kamran of Herat, the rumours
+of whose death or dethronement prove
+to have been unfounded, and who certainly
+would have at this moment a
+better chance than he has ever yet
+had, for regaining at least Candahar
+and Western Affghanistan. He was
+said to be on the point of making the
+attempt after the repulse of the Persians
+before Herat, just before our
+adoption of Shah-Shoojah; and his
+title to the crown is at least as good
+as that of the late Shah, or any of his
+sons. It will be strange if this prince,
+whose danger from Persia was the
+original pretext for crossing the Indus,
+should be the only one of all the parties
+concerned, whose condition underwent
+no ultimate change, through
+all the vicissitudes of the tempest
+which has raged around him.</p>
+
+<p>Nor are the elements of discord less
+abundant and complicated on the side
+of Cabul. The defeat of Tazeen will
+not, any more than the preceding ones,
+have annihilated Akhbar Khan and his
+confederate chiefs:&mdash;they are still
+hovering in the Kohistan, and will
+doubtless lose no time in returning to
+Cabul as soon as the retreat of the
+English is ascertained. It is true
+that the civil wars of the Affghans,
+though frequent, have never been protracted
+or sanguinary:&mdash;like the
+Highlanders, as described by Bailie
+Nicol Jarvie, &quot;though they may quarrel
+among themselves, and gie ilk
+ither ill names, and may be a slash
+wi' a claymore, they are sure to join
+in the long run against a' civilized
+folk:&quot;&mdash;but it is scarcely possible that
+so many conflicting interests, now
+that the bond of common danger is
+removed, can be reconciled without
+strife and bloodshed. It is possible,
+indeed, that Futteh-Jung (whom the
+last accounts state to have remained
+at Cabul when our troops withdrew,
+in the hope of maintaining himself on
+the musnud, and who is said to be the
+most acceptable to the Affghans of
+the four sons<a id="footnotetag33" name="footnotetag33" href="#footnote33"><sup>33</sup></a> of Shah-Shoojah) may
+be allowed to retain for a time the title
+of king; but he had no treasure and
+few partizans; and the rooted distaste
+of the Affghans for the titles and prerogatives
+of royalty is so well ascertained,
+that Dost Mohammed, even in
+the plenitude of his power, never ventured
+to assume them. All speculations
+on these points, however, can at
+present amount to nothing more than
+vague conjecture; the troubled waters
+must have time to settle, before any
+thing can be certainly prognosticated
+<a class="pagenum" name="page272" id="page272" title="272"></a>as to the future destinies of Affghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>The kingdom of the Punjab will
+now become the barrier between Affghanistan
+and our north-western frontier
+in India; and it is said that the
+Sikhs, already in possession of Peshawer
+and the rich plain extending to
+the foot of the Khyber mountains,
+have undertaken in future to occupy
+the important defiles of this range,
+and the fort of Ali-Musjid, so as to
+keep the Affghans within bounds. It
+seems to us doubtful, however, whether
+they will be able to maintain
+themselves long, unaided, in this perilous
+advanced post: though the national
+animosity which subsists between
+them and the Affghans is a sufficient
+pledge of their good-will for the
+service&mdash;and their co-operation in the
+late campaign against Cabul has been
+rendered with a zeal and promptitude
+affording a strong contrast to their lukewarmness
+at the beginning of the war,
+when they conceived its object to be
+the re-establishment of the monarchy
+and national unity of their inveterate
+foes. But the vigour of the Sikh
+kingdom, and the discipline and efficiency
+of their troops, have greatly
+declined in the hands of the present
+sovereign, Shere Singh, who, though
+a frank and gallant soldier, has little
+genius for civil government, and is
+thwarted and overborne in his measures
+by the overweening power of the
+minister, Rajah Dhian Singh, who
+originally rose to eminence by the favour
+of Runjeet. At present, our information
+as to the state of politics in
+the Punjab is not very explicit, the
+intelligence from India during several
+months, having been almost wholly engrossed
+by the details of the campaign
+in Affghanistan; but as far as can be
+gathered from these statements, the
+country has been brought, by the insubordination
+of the troops, and the
+disputes of the Maharajah and his Minister,
+to a state not far removed from
+anarchy. It is said that the fortress
+of Govindghur, where the vast treasures
+amassed by Runjeet are deposited,
+has been taken possession of by
+the malecontent faction, and that Shere
+Singh has applied for the assistance
+of our troops to recover it; and the
+<i>Delhi Gazette</i> even goes so far as to
+assert that this prince, &quot;disgusted with
+the perpetual turmoil in which he is
+embroiled, and feeling his incapacity
+of ruling his turbulent chieftains, is
+willing to cede his country to us, and
+become a pensioner of our Government.&quot;
+But this announcement,
+though confidently given, we believe
+to be at least premature. That the
+Punjab must inevitably, sooner or
+later, become part of the Anglo-Indian
+empire, either as a subsidiary
+power, like the Nizam, or directly, as a
+province, no one can doubt; but its
+incorporation at this moment, in the
+teeth of our late declaration against
+any further extension of territory, and
+at the time when the Sikhs are zealously
+fulfilling their engagements as
+our allies, would be both injudicious
+and unpopular in the highest degree.
+An interview, however, is reported to
+have been arranged between Lord
+Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which
+is to take place in the course of the
+ensuing summer, and at which some
+definitive arrangements will probably
+be entered into, on the future political
+relations of the two Governments.<a id="footnotetag34" name="footnotetag34" href="#footnote34"><sup>34</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The only permanent accession of
+territory, then, which will result from
+the Affghan war, will consist in the
+extension of our frontier along the
+whole course of the Sutlej and Lower
+Indus&mdash;&quot;the limits which nature appears
+to have assigned to the Indian
+empire&quot;&mdash;and in the altered relations
+with some of the native states consequent
+on these arrangements. As far
+as Loodeana, indeed, our frontier on
+the Sutlej has long been well established,
+and defined by our recognition
+of the Sikh kingdom on the opposite
+bank;&mdash;but the possessions of the
+chief of Bhawulpoor, extending on the
+left bank nearly from Loodeana to the
+confluence of the Sutlej with the Indus,
+have hitherto been almost exempt
+from British interference;<a id="footnotetag35" name="footnotetag35" href="#footnote35"><sup>35</sup></a> as have
+<a class="pagenum" name="page273" id="page273" title="273"></a>also the petty Rajpoot states of Bikaneer,
+Jesulmeer, &amp;c., which form oases
+in the desert intervening between
+Scinde and the provinces more immediately
+under British control. These,
+it is to be presumed, will now be summarily
+taken under the <i>protection</i> of
+the Anglo-Indian Government:&mdash;but
+more difficulty will probably be experienced
+with the fierce and imperfectly
+subdued tribes of Scindians and Belooches,
+inhabiting the lower valley of
+the Indus;&mdash;and, in order to protect
+the commerce of the river, and maintain
+the undisputed command of its
+course, it will be necessary to retain a
+sufficient extent of vantage-ground
+on the further bank, and to keep up
+in the country an amount of force adequate
+to the effectual coercion of these
+predatory races. For this purpose, a
+<i>place d'armes</i> has been judiciously established
+at Sukkur, a town which,
+communicating with the fort of Bukkur
+on an island of the Indus, and
+with Roree on the opposite bank, effectually
+secures the passage of the
+river; and the ports of Kurrachee
+and Sonmeani on the coast, the future
+marts of the commerce of the Indus,
+have also been garrisoned by British
+troops.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>It has long since been evident<a id="footnotetag36" name="footnotetag36" href="#footnote36"><sup>36</sup></a> that
+Scinde, by that <i>principle of unavoidable
+expansion</i> to which we had so
+often had occasion to refer, must
+eventually have been absorbed into
+the dominions of the Company; but
+the process by which it at last came
+into our hands is so curious a specimen
+of our Bonapartean method of
+dealing with reluctant or refractory
+neutrals, that we cannot pass it altogether
+without notice. Scinde, as
+well as Beloochistan, had formed part
+of the extensive empire subdued by
+Ahmed Shah, the founder of the
+Doorani monarchy; but in the reign
+of his indolent son Timour, the Affghan
+yoke was shaken off by the
+<i>Ameers</i>, or chiefs of the Belooch
+family of Talpoor, who, fixing their
+residences respectively at Hydrabad,
+Meerpoor, and Khyrpoor, defied all
+the efforts of the kings of Cabul to
+reduce them to submission, though
+they more than once averted an invasion
+by the promise of tribute. It has
+been rumoured that Shah-Shoojah,
+during his long exile, made repeated
+overtures to the Cabinet of Calcutta
+for the cession of his dormant claims
+to the <i>suzeraint&eacute;</i> of Scinde, in exchange
+for an equivalent, either pecuniary
+or territorial; but the representations
+of a fugitive prince, who
+proposed to cede what was not in his
+possession, were disregarded by the
+rulers of India; and even in the
+famous manifesto preceding the invasion
+of Affghanistan, Lord Auckland
+announced, that &quot;a guaranteed independence,
+on favourable conditions,
+would be tendered to the Ameers of
+Scinde.&quot; On the appearance of our
+army on the border, however, the
+Ameers demurred, not very unreasonably,
+to the passage of this formidable
+host; and considerable delay ensued,
+from the imperfect information possessed
+by the British commanders of
+the amount of resistance to be expected;
+but at last the country and
+fortress were forcibly occupied; the
+seaport of Kurrachee (where alone
+any armed opposition was attempted)
+was bombarded and captured by our
+ships of war; and a treaty was imposed
+at the point of the bayonet on
+the Scindian rulers, by virtue of
+which they paid a contribution of
+twenty-seven laks of rupees (nearly
+&pound;300,000) to the expenses of the war,
+under the name of arrears of tribute
+to Shah-Shoojah, acknowledging, at
+the same time, the supremacy, <i>not of
+Shah-Shoojah</i>, but of the English
+Government! The tolls on the Indus
+were also abolished, and the navigation
+of the river placed, by a special
+stipulation, wholly under the control
+of British functionaries. Since this
+<a class="pagenum" name="page274" id="page274" title="274"></a>summary procedure, our predominance
+in Scinde has been undisturbed, unless
+by occasional local commotions; but
+the last advices state that the whole
+country is now &quot;in an insurrectionary
+state;&quot; and it is fully expected that
+an attempt will erelong be made to
+follow the example of the Affghans,
+and get rid of the intrusive <i>Feringhis</i>;
+in which case, as the same accounts
+inform us, &quot;the Ameers will be sent
+as state-prisoners to Benares, and the
+territory placed wholly under British
+administration.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may be thought of
+the strict legality of the conveyance,
+in virtue of which Scinde has been converted
+into an integral part of our
+Eastern empire, its geographical position,
+as well as its natural products,
+will render it a most valuable acquisition,
+both in a commercial and political
+point of view. At the beginning
+of the present century, the East-India
+Company had a factory at
+Tatta, (the Pattala of the ancients,)
+the former capital of Scinde, immediately
+above the Delta of the Indus;
+but their agents were withdrawn during
+the anarchy which preceded the
+disruption of the Doorani monarchy.
+From that period till the late occurrences,
+all the commercial intercourse
+with British India was maintained
+either by land-carriage from Cutch,
+by which mode of conveyance the
+opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast
+quantities of which are exported in
+this direction) chiefly found its way
+into Scinde and Beloochistan; or by
+country vessels of a peculiar build, with
+a disproportionately lofty poop, and an
+elongated bow instead of a bowsprit,
+which carried on an uncertain and
+desultory traffic with Bombay and
+some of the Malabar ports. To avoid
+the dangerous sandbanks at the mouths
+of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation
+through the winding streams
+of the Delta, (the course of which, as
+in the Mississippi, changes with every
+inundation,) they usually discharged
+their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence
+they were transported sixty miles
+overland to Tatta, and there embarked
+in flat-bottomed boats on the main
+stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen
+miles N.W. from the Pittee, or
+western mouth of the Indus, and
+Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the
+territory of Lus, between forty and
+fifty miles further in the same direction,
+are the only harbours of import
+in the long sea-coast of Beloochistan;
+and the possession of them gives the
+British the undivided command of a
+trade which, in spite of the late disasters,
+already promises to become
+considerable; while the interposition
+of the now friendly state of Khelat<a id="footnotetag37" name="footnotetag37" href="#footnote37"><sup>37</sup></a>
+between the coast and the perturbed
+tribes of Affghanistan, will secure the
+merchandise landed here a free passage
+into the interior. The trade
+with these ports deserves, indeed, all
+the fostering care of the Indian Government;
+since they must inevitably
+be, at least for some years to come,
+the only inlet for Indian produce into
+Beloochistan, Cabul, and the wide
+regions of Central Asia beyond them.
+The overland carrying trade through
+Scinde and the Punjab, in which (according
+to M. Masson) not less than
+6500 camels were annually employed,
+has been almost annihilated&mdash;not only
+by the confusion arising from the war,
+but from the absolute want of means
+of transport, from the unprecedented
+destruction of the camels occasioned
+<a class="pagenum" name="page275" id="page275" title="275"></a>by the exigencies of the commissariat,
+&amp;c. The rocky defiles of Affghanistan
+were heaped with the carcasses of
+these indispensable animals, 50,000 of
+which (as is proved by the official returns)
+perished in this manner in the
+course of three years; and some years
+must necessarily elapse before the
+chasm thus made in the numbers of
+the species throughout North-western
+India can be supplied. The immense
+expenditure of the Army of Occupation,
+at the same time, brought such
+an influx of specie into Affghanistan,
+as had never been known since the
+sack of Delhi by Ahmed Shah Doorani&mdash;while
+the traffic with India being
+at a stand-still for the reasons we have
+just given, the superfluity of capital
+thus produced was driven to find an
+outlet in the northern markets of
+Bokhara and Turkestan. The consequence
+of this has been, that Russian
+manufactures to an enormous
+amount have been poured into these
+regions, by way of Astrakhan and the
+Caspian, to meet this increasing demand;
+and the value of Russian commerce
+with Central Asia, which (as
+we pointed out in April 1840, p. 522)
+had for many years been progressively
+declining, was doubled during 1840
+and 1841, (<i>Bombay Times</i>, April 2,
+1842,) and is believed to be still on
+the increase! The opening of the
+navigation of the Indus, with the exertions
+of the Bombay Chamber of
+Commerce to establish depots on its
+course, and to facilitate the transmission
+of goods into the surrounding
+countries, has already done much for
+the restoration of traffic in this direction,
+in spite of the efforts of the Russian
+agents in the north to keep possession
+of the opening thus unexpectedly
+afforded them; but it cannot be
+denied that the &quot;great enlargement of
+our field of commerce,&quot; so confidently
+prognosticated by Lord Palmerston,
+from &quot;the great operations undertaken
+in the countries lying west of
+the Indus,&quot; has run a heavy risk of
+being permanently diverted into other
+channels, by the operation of the
+causes detailed above.</p>
+
+<p>Before we finally dismiss the subject
+of the Affghan war and its consequences,
+we cannot overlook one
+feature in the termination of the contest,
+which is of the highest importance,
+as indicating a return to a better
+system than that miserable course of
+reduction and parsimony, which, for
+some years past, has slowly but surely
+been alienating the attachment, and
+breaking down the military spirit, of
+our native army. We refer to the
+distribution, by order of Lord Ellenborough,
+of badges of honorary distinction,
+as well as of more substantial
+rewards, in the form of augmented
+allowances,<a id="footnotetag38" name="footnotetag38" href="#footnote38"><sup>38</sup></a> &amp;c., to the sepoy corps
+which have borne the brunt of the
+late severe campaign. Right well
+have these honours and gratuities
+been merited; nor could any measure
+have been better timed to strengthen
+in the hearts of the sepoys the bonds
+of the <i>Feringhi salt</i>, to which they
+have so long proved faithful. The
+policy, as well as the justice, of holding
+out every inducement which may
+rivet the attachment of the native
+troops to our service, obvious as it
+must appear, has in truth been of late
+too much neglected;<a id="footnotetag39" name="footnotetag39" href="#footnote39"><sup>39</sup></a> and it has become
+at this juncture doubly imperative,
+both from the severe and
+unpopular duty in which a considerable
+portion of the troops have
+recently been engaged, and from the
+widely-spread disaffection which has
+<a class="pagenum" name="page276" id="page276" title="276"></a>lately manifested itself in various quarters
+among the native population.
+We predicted in July, as the probable
+consequence of our reverses in Affghanistan,
+some open manifestation
+of the spirit of revolt constantly
+smouldering among the various races
+of our subjects in India, but the prophecy
+had already been anticipated
+by the event. The first overt resistance
+to authority appeared in Bhundelkund,
+a wild and imperfectly subjugated
+province in the centre of Hindostan,
+inhabited by a fierce people
+called Bhoondelahs. An insurrection,
+in which nearly all the native chiefs
+are believed to be implicated, broke
+out here early in April; and a desultory
+and harassing warfare has since
+been carried on in the midst of the almost
+impenetrable jungles and ravines
+which overspread the district. The
+Nawab of Banda and the Bhoondee
+Rajah, a Moslem and a Hindoo prince,
+respectively of some note in the neighbourhood
+of the disturbed tracts, have
+been placed under surveillance at
+Allahabad as the secret instigators of
+these movements, &quot;which,&quot; (says the
+<i>Agra Ukhbar</i>) &quot;appear to have been
+regularly organized all over India, the
+first intimation of which was the Nawab
+of Kurnool's affair&quot;&mdash;whose deposition
+we noticed in July. The
+valley of Berar, also, in the vicinity
+of the Nizam's frontier, has been the
+scene of several encounters between
+our troops and irregular bands of insurgents;
+and the restless Arab mercenaries
+in the Dekkan are still in
+arms, ready to take service with any
+native ruler who chooses to employ
+them against the <i>Feringhis</i>. In the
+northern provinces, the aspect of affairs
+is equally unfavourable. The
+Rohillas, the most warlike and nationally-united
+race of Moslems in India,
+have shown alarming symptoms of a
+refractory temper, fomented (as it has
+been reported) by the disbanded
+troopers of the 2d Bengal cavalry,<a id="footnotetag40" name="footnotetag40" href="#footnote40"><sup>40</sup></a>
+(a great proportion of whom were
+Rohillas,) and by Moslem deserters
+from the other regiments in Affghanistan,
+who have industriously magnified
+the amount of our losses&mdash;a pleasing
+duty, in which the native press, as
+usual, has zealously co-operated. One
+of the newspapers printed in the Persian
+language at Delhi, recently assured
+its readers that, at the forcing of
+the Khyber Pass, &quot;six thousand Europeans
+fell under the sharp swords of
+the Faithful&quot;&mdash;with other veracious
+intelligence, calculated to produce the
+belief that the campaign must inevitably
+end, like the preceding, in the defeat
+and extermination of the whole invading
+force. The fruits of these inflammatory
+appeals to the pride and bigotry
+of the Moslems, is thus painted in a letter
+from Rohilcund, which we quote from
+that excellent periodical the <i>Asiatic
+Journal</i> for September:&mdash;&quot;The Mahomedans
+throughout Rohilcund hate
+us to a degree only second to what
+the Affghans do, their interest in
+whose welfare they can scarcely conceal....
+There are hundreds of
+heads of tribes, all of whom would
+rise to a man on what they considered
+a fitting opportunity, which they are
+actually thirsting after. A hint from
+their moolahs, and the display of the
+green flag, would rally around it every
+Mussulman. In March last, the population
+<a class="pagenum" name="page277" id="page277" title="277"></a>made no scruple of declaring
+that the <i>Feringhi raj</i> (English rule)
+was at an end; and some even disputed
+payment of the revenue, saying
+it was probable they should have to
+pay it again to another Government!
+They have given out a report that
+Akhbar Khan has disbanded his army
+for the present, in order that his men
+may visit their families; but in the
+cold weather, when our troops will be
+weakened and unfit for action, he will
+return with an overwhelming force,
+aided by every Mussulman as far as
+Ispahan, when they will annihilate
+our whole force and march straight to
+Delhi, and ultimately send us to our
+ships. The whole Mussulman population,
+in fact, are filled with rejoicing
+and <i>hope</i> at our late reverses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that we are unnecessarily
+multiplying instances, and that
+these symptoms of local fermentation
+are of little individual importance; but
+nothing can be misplaced which has a
+tendency to dispel the universal and
+unaccountable error which prevails in
+England, as to the <i>popularity of our
+sway in India</i>. The signs of the times
+are tolerably significant&mdash;and the apprehensions
+of a coming commotion
+which we expressed in July, as well
+as of the quarter in which it will probably
+break out, are amply borne out
+by the language of the best-informed
+publications of India. &quot;That the
+seeds of discontent&quot; says the <i>Delhi
+Gazette</i>&mdash;&quot;have been sown by the
+Moslems, and have partially found
+root among the Hindoos, is more than
+conjecture&quot;&mdash;and the warnings of the
+<i>Agra Ukhbar</i> are still more unequivocal.
+&quot;Reports have reached Agra
+that a general rise will erelong take
+place in the Dekkan. There have
+already been several allusions made
+to a very extensive organization among
+the native states<a id="footnotetag41" name="footnotetag41" href="#footnote41"><sup>41</sup></a> against the British
+power, the resources of which will,
+no doubt, be stretched to the utmost
+during the ensuing cold season. Disaffection
+is wide and prevalent, and
+when our withdrawal from Affghanistan
+becomes known, it will ripen
+into open insurrection. With rebellion
+in Central India, and famine in
+Northern, Government have little time
+to lose in collecting their energies to
+meet the crisis.&quot; The increase of
+means which the return of the army
+from Affghanistan will place at the
+disposal of the Governor-General,
+will doubtless do much in either overawing
+or suppressing these insurrectionary
+demonstrations; but even in
+this case the snake will have been
+only &quot;scotched, not killed;&quot; and the
+most practical and effectual method of
+rendering such attempts hopeless for
+the future, will be the replacing the
+Indian army on the same efficient
+footing, as to numbers and composition,
+on which it stood before the ill-judged
+measures of Lord William Bentinck.
+The energies of the native
+troops have been heavily tasked, and
+their fidelity severely tried, during
+the Affghan war; and though they
+have throughout nobly sustained the
+high character which they had earned
+by their past achievements, the experiment
+on their endurance should
+not be carried too far. Many of the
+errors of past Indian administrations
+have already been remedied by Lord
+Ellenborough; and we cannot refrain
+from the hope, that the period of his
+Government will not be suffered to
+elapse without a return to the old system
+on this point also&mdash;the vital point
+on which the stability of our empire
+depends.</p>
+
+<p>Such have been the consequences, as
+far as they have hitherto been developed,
+to the foreign and domestic
+relations of our Eastern empire, of
+the late memorable Affghan war. In
+many points, an obvious parallel may
+be drawn between its commencement
+and progress, and that of the invasion
+of Spain by Napoleon. In both cases,
+the territory of an unoffending people
+was invaded and overrun, in the plenitude
+of (as was deemed by the aggressors)
+irresistible power, on the pretext,
+in each case, that it was necessary
+<a class="pagenum" name="page278" id="page278" title="278"></a>to anticipate an ambitious rival in
+the possession of a country which
+might be used as a vantage ground
+against us. In both cases, the usurpation
+was thinly veiled by the elevation
+of a pageant-monarch to the
+throne; till the invaded people, goaded
+by the repeated indignities offered
+to their religious and national pride,
+rose <i>en masse</i> against their oppressors
+at the same moment in the capital and
+the provinces, and either cut them off,
+or drove them to the frontier. In
+each case the intruders, by the arrival
+of reinforcements, regained for a time
+their lost ground; and if our Whig
+rulers had continued longer at the
+helm of affairs, the parallel might
+have become complete throughout.
+The strength and resources of our
+Indian empire might have been drained
+in the vain attempt to complete
+the subjugation of a rugged and impracticable
+country, inhabited by a
+fierce and bigoted population; and
+an &quot;Affghan <i>ulcer</i>.&quot; (to use the ordinary
+phrase of Napoleon himself in
+speaking of the Spanish war) might
+have corroded the vitals, and undermined
+the fabric, of British domination
+in the East. Fortunately, however,
+for our national welfare and our
+national character, better counsels are
+at length in the ascendant. The triumphs
+which have again crowned our
+arms, have not tempted our rulers to
+resume the perfidious policy which
+their predecessors, in the teeth of
+their own original declarations, have
+now openly avowed, by &quot;retaining
+military possession of the countries
+west of the Indus;&quot; and the candid
+acknowledgement of the error committed
+in the first instance, affords security
+against the repetition of such
+acts of wanton aggression, and for adherence
+to the pacific policy now laid
+down. The ample resources of India
+have yet in a great measure to be explored
+and developed, and it is impossible
+to foresee what results may be attained,
+when (in the language of the
+<i>Bombay Times</i>) &quot;wisdom guides for
+good and worthy ends, that resistless
+energy which madness has wasted on
+the opposite. We now see that, even
+with Affghanistan as a broken barrier,
+Russia dares not move her finger
+against us&mdash;that with seventeen millions
+sterling thrown away, we are
+able to recover all our mischances, if
+relieved from the rulers and the system
+which imposed them upon us!&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The late proclamation of Lord
+Ellenborough has been so frequently
+referred to in the foregoing pages,
+that for the sake of perspicuity we
+subjoin it in full.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Secret Department, Simla,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oct. 1, 1842.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Government of India directed
+its army to pass the Indus, in order
+to expel from Affghanistan a chief
+believed to be hostile to British interests,
+and to replace upon his throne a
+sovereign represented to be friendly
+to those interests, and popular with
+his former subjects.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The chief believed to be hostile
+became a prisoner, and the sovereign
+represented to be popular was replaced
+upon his throne; but after
+events which brought into question
+his fidelity to the Government by
+which he was restored, he lost, by the
+hands of an assassin, the throne he
+had only held amidst insurrections,
+and his death was preceded and followed
+by still existing anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Disasters, unparalleled in their
+extent, unless by the errors in which
+they originated, and by the treachery
+by which they were completed, have
+in one short campaign been avenged
+upon every scene of past misfortune;
+and repeated victories in the field, and
+the capture of the cities and citadels
+of Ghazni and Cabul, have again attached
+the opinion of invincibility to
+the British arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The British army in possession of
+Affghanistan will now be withdrawn
+to the Sutlej.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General will leave
+it to the Affghans themselves to create
+a government amidst the anarchy
+which is the consequence of their
+crimes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To force a sovereign upon a reluctant
+people, would be as inconsistent
+with the policy, as it is with the
+principles, of the British Government,
+tending to place the arms and resources
+of that people at the disposal
+of the first invader, and to impose the
+burden of supporting a sovereign
+without the prospect of benefit from
+his alliance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General will willingly
+recognize any government approved
+by the Affghans themselves,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page279" id="page279" title="279"></a>which shall appear desirous and capable
+of maintaining friendly relations
+with neighbouring states.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Content with the limits nature
+appears to have assigned to its empire,
+the Government of India will devote
+all its efforts to the establishment and
+maintenance of general peace, to the
+protection of the sovereigns and chiefs
+its allies, and to the prosperity and
+happiness of its own faithful subjects.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The rivers of the Punjab and the
+Indus, and the mountainous passes
+and the barbarous tribes of Affghanistan,
+will be placed between the British
+army and an enemy from the
+west, if indeed such an enemy there
+can be, and no longer between the
+army and its supplies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The enormous expenditure required
+for the support of a large force
+in a false military position, at a distance
+from its own frontier and its resources,
+will no longer arrest every
+measure for the improvement of the
+country and of the people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The combined army of England
+and of India, superior in equipment,
+in discipline, in valour, and in the
+officers by whom it is commanded, to
+any force which can be opposed to it
+in Asia, will stand in unassailable
+strength upon its own soil, and for ever,
+under the blessing of Providence, preserve
+the glorious empire it has won,
+in security and in honour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General cannot
+fear the misconstruction of his motives
+in thus frankly announcing to
+surrounding states the pacific and conservative
+policy of his Government.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Affghanistan and China have seen
+at once the forces at his disposal, and
+the effect with which they can be applied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sincerely attached to peace for
+the sake of the benefits it confers upon
+the people, the Governor-General is
+resolved that peace shall be observed,
+and will put forth the whole power of
+the British Government to coerce the
+state by which it shall be infringed.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page280" id="page280" title="280"></a>
+<a name="bw328s10" id="bw328s10"></a><h2>DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.</h2>
+
+<p>There are few things more painful connected with the increase of years
+in an established periodical like our own, than to observe how &quot;friend after
+friend departs,&quot; to witness the gradual thinning of the ranks of its contributors
+by death, and the departure, from the scene, of those whose talents or
+genius had contributed to its early influence and popularity. Many years
+have not elapsed since we were called on to record the death of the upright
+and intelligent publisher, to whose energy and just appreciation of the public
+taste, its origin and success are in a great degree to be ascribed. On the
+present occasion another of these melancholy memorials is required of us; the
+accomplished author of &quot;Cyril Thornton,&quot; whose name and talents had been
+associated with the Magazine from its commencement, is no more. He died
+at Pisa on the 7th December last.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Hamilton exhibited a remarkable union of scholarship, high breeding,
+and amiability of disposition. To the habitual refinement of taste which
+an early mastery of the classics had produced, his military profession and intercourse
+with society had added the ease of the man of the world, while they
+had left unimpaired his warmth of feeling and kindliness of heart. Amidst
+the active services of the Peninsular and American campaigns, he preserved
+his literary tastes; and, when the close of the war restored him to his country,
+he seemed to feel that the peaceful leisure of a soldier's life could not be
+more appropriately filled up than by the cultivation of literature. The characteristic
+of his mind was rather a happy union and balance of qualities than
+the possession of any one in excess; and the result was a peculiar composure
+and gracefulness, pervading equally his outward deportment and his habits
+of thought. The only work of fiction which he has given to the public certainly
+indicates high powers both of pathetic and graphic delineation; but the
+qualities which first and most naturally attracted attention, were rather his
+excellent judgment of character, at once just and generous, his fine perception
+and command of wit and quiet humour, rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into
+satire or sarcasm, and the refinement, taste, and precision with which he
+clothed his ideas, whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous
+or extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society and
+in taste.</p>
+
+<p>Of his contributions to this Magazine it would be out of place here to speak,
+further than to say that they indicated a wide range and versatility of talent,
+embraced both prose and verse, and were universally popular. &quot;Cyril Thornton,&quot;
+which appeared in 1827, instantly arrested public attention and curiosity,
+even in an age eminently fertile in great works of fiction. With
+little of plot&mdash;for it pursued the desultory ramblings of military life through
+various climes&mdash;it possessed a wonderful truth and reality, great skill in the
+observation and portraiture of original character, and a peculiar charm of
+style, blending freshness and vivacity of movement with classic delicacy and
+grace. The work soon became naturally and justly popular, having reached
+a second edition shortly after publication: a third edition has recently appeared.
+The &quot;Annals of the Peninsular Campaign&quot; had the merit of clear narration,
+united with much of the same felicity of style; but the size of the work excluded
+that full development and picturesque detail which were requisite to
+give individuality to its pictures. His last work was &quot;Men and Manners in
+America,&quot; of which two German and one French translations have already
+appeared; a work eminently characterized by a tone of gentlemanly feeling,
+sagacious observation, just views of national character and institutions, and
+their reciprocal influence, and by tolerant criticism; and which, so far from
+having been superseded by recent works of the same class and on the same
+subject, has only risen in public estimation by the comparison.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+
+<a name="bw328-footnotes" id="bw328-footnotes"></a><h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag1">return</a>)
+<p> &quot;<i>Taille and the Gabelle</i>.&quot; Sully thus describes these fertile sources of crime
+and misery:&mdash;&quot;Taille, source principale d'abus et de vexations de toute esp&egrave;ce, sans
+sa repartition et sa perception. Il est bien &agrave; souhaiter, mais pas &agrave; esp&eacute;rer, qu'on change
+un jour en entier le fond de cette partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau
+avec la Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouv&eacute; de si <i>bizarrement tyrannique</i> que de faire
+acheter &agrave; un particulier, plus de sel qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de
+lui d&eacute;fendre encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a><b>Footnote 2</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag2">return</a>)
+<p> Ulysses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a><b>Footnote 3</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag3">return</a>)
+<p> Need we say to the general reader, that Oileus here alludes to the strife between
+Ajax and Ulysses, which has furnished a subject to the Greek tragic poet, who has
+depicted, more strikingly than any historian, that intense emulation for glory, and that
+mortal agony in defeat, which made the main secret of the prodigious energy of the
+Greek character? The poet, in taking his hero from the Homeric age, endowed him
+with the feelings of the Athenian republicans he addressed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a><b>Footnote 4</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag4">return</a>)
+<p> Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a><b>Footnote 5</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag5">return</a>)
+<p> Cassandra.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a><b>Footnote 6</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag6">return</a>)
+<p> Literally, &quot;<i>A judge (ein richter)</i> was again upon the earth.&quot; The word substituted
+in the translation, is introduced in order to recall to the reader the sublime
+name given, not without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., &quot;THE LIVING LAW.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a><b>Footnote 7</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag7">return</a>)
+<p> This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules
+contended in vain against Ant&aelig;us, the Son of Earth,&mdash;so long as the Earth gave her
+giant offspring new strength in every fall,&mdash;so the soul contends in vain with evil&mdash;the
+natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the
+enemy for the struggle. And as Ant&aelig;us was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him
+from the earth and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy,
+(the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring,) when bearing it from earth
+itself, and stifling it in the higher air.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a><b>Footnote 8</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag8">return</a>)
+<p> Hermes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a><b>Footnote 9</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag9">return</a>)
+<p> War-horse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a><b>Footnote 10</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag10">return</a>)
+<p> Could Sir Joshua now be permitted to visit his own Academy, and our exhibitions
+in general, he would be startled at the excess of ornament, in defiance of his rule of
+repose, succeeding the slovenliness of his own day. Whatever be the subject, history,
+landscape, or familiar life, it superabounds both in objects and colour. In established
+academies, the faults of genius are more readily adopted than their excellences; they
+are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy of imitation. We have, therefore, less
+hesitation in referring the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir
+Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more injurious the delinquency. We
+therefore adduce as examples, works of our most inventive and able artist, his &quot;Macbeth&quot;
+and his &quot;Hamlet&quot;&mdash;they are greatly overloaded with the faults of superabundance
+of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works of great power, and such as none but
+a painter of high genius could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and
+where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate, and even in the
+multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by their grouping and management, he has
+preserved a seeming moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the wholeness,
+the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The story is told, and admirably&mdash;as
+Sir Joshua says, &quot;at one blow.&quot; We speak of his &quot;Sleeping Beauty.&quot; We see at
+once that the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united by that light
+and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too prominently, the magic under whose
+working and whose light the whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the
+prince&mdash;there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the execution of the figure that
+considerably dignifies the story, and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it.
+The many groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way injure the
+simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast in not undue proportion, because
+that simplicity is preserved. Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,)
+and chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of repose, and a sunny repose,
+too, befitting the &quot;Sleeping Beauty.&quot; Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty
+and danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not in such subjects
+alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's rule; we too often see portraits where
+the dress and accessaries obtrude&mdash;there is too much lace and too little expression&mdash;and
+our painters of views follow the fashion most unaccountably&mdash;ornament is every
+where; we have not a town where the houses are not &quot;turned out of windows,&quot; and
+all the furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to show a pretty general
+bankruptcy, together with the artist's own poverty, you would imagine an auction going
+on in every other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging from the
+windows. We have even seen a &quot;Rag Fair&quot; in a turnpike road.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a><b>Footnote 11</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag11">return</a>)
+<p> The reader will remember the supposed epitaph,</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Lie heavy on him, earth, for he<br /></span>
+<span>Laid many a heavy load on thee.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a><b>Footnote 12</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag12">return</a>)
+<p> A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton Bunny.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a><b>Footnote 13</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag13">return</a>)
+<p> See Forster's Life of Cromwell.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a><b>Footnote 14</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag14">return</a>)
+<p> Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by possibility, have seen
+all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has
+produced from its first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon, Shakspeare,
+Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
+intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh,
+Spenser, Hooker, Elliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke,
+were existing in his lifetime; and several more, who may be compared with the smaller
+of these.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a><b>Footnote 15</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag15">return</a>)
+<p> Chapman's <i>Homer</i>, first book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a><b>Footnote 16</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag16">return</a>)
+<p> 35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a><b>Footnote 17</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag17">return</a>)
+<p> The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no doubt, have been carried
+through by an overwhelming military force, if the country had been worth the cost;
+but if it was not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it appears to
+us that the native government was far too much interfered with&mdash;that the British
+envoy, the British officers employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army,
+stood too much between the Shah and his subjects&mdash;that we were forming a government
+which it would be impossible to work in our absence, and creating a state of things
+which, the longer it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which our
+interference could be dispensed with.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a><b>Footnote 18</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag18">return</a>)
+<p> Affghan horse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a><b>Footnote 19</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag19">return</a>)
+<p> The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about seventy juzailchees
+or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers, who had been left in the town in charge of the
+wives and children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the cantonments by
+that gallant party, who fought their way from the heart of the town.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a><b>Footnote 20</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag20">return</a>)
+<p> &quot;I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me with the rest of the
+manuscript. I have not struck out the reference, because there is hope that it still
+exists, and may yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else from
+Captain Mackenzie's pen will be regretted by all who read his other communication,
+the account of the Envoy's murder.&mdash;EDITOR.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a><b>Footnote 21</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag21">return</a>)
+<p> Affghan riflemen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a><b>Footnote 22</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag22">return</a>)
+<p> Five companies 44th; six companies 5th native infantry; six companies 37th native
+infantry; 100 sappers; 2&frac12; squadrons cavalry; one gun.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a><b>Footnote 23</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag23">return</a>)
+<p> In Mr Eyre's observations on this disastrous affair, he enumerates six errors,
+which he says must present themselves to the most unpractised military eye. &quot;The
+first, and perhaps the most fatal mistake of all, was the taking only one gun;&quot; but he
+admits that there was only one gun ready, and that, if the Brigadier had waited for the
+second, he must have postponed the enterprise for a day. This would probably have
+been the more prudent course.
+</p><p>
+The second error was, that advantage was not taken of the panic in the village, to
+storm it at once in the dark; but it appears from his own account, that there were not
+more than forty men remaining in the village when it was attacked, after daylight,
+and that the chief cause of the failure of that attack, was Major Swayne's having missed
+the gate, a misfortune which was, certainly, at least as likely to have occurred in
+the dark.
+</p><p>
+The third was, that the sappers were not employed to raise a breastwork for the
+protection of the troops. This objection appears to be well founded.
+</p><p>
+The fourth was, that the infantry were formed into squares, to resist the distant fire
+of infantry, on ground over which no cavalry could have charged with effect. It appears
+to be so utterly unintelligible that any officer should have been guilty of so
+manifest an absurdity, that the circumstances seem to require further elucidation; but
+that the formation was unfortunate, is sufficiently obvious.
+</p><p>
+Fifthly, that the position chosen for the cavalry was erroneous; and sixthly, that the
+retreat was too long deferred. Both these objections appear to be just.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a><b>Footnote 24</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag24">return</a>)
+<p> Strait of Darkness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a><b>Footnote 25</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag25">return</a>)
+<p> See the articles &quot;Persia, Affghanistan, and India,&quot; in Jan. 1839&mdash;&quot;Khiva,
+Central Asia, and Cabul,&quot; in April 1840&mdash;&quot;Results of our Affghan Conquests,&quot;
+in Aug. 1841&mdash;&quot;Affghanistan and India,&quot; in July 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a><b>Footnote 26</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag26">return</a>)
+<p> It now seems even doubtful whether the famous letter of Dost Mohammed
+to the Emperor of Russia, which constituted the <i>gravamen</i> of the charge against
+him, was ever really written, or at least with his concurrence.&mdash;<i>Vide</i> &quot;Report of
+the Colonial Society on the Affghan War,&quot; p. 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a><b>Footnote 27</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag27">return</a>)
+<p> The particulars of Shah-Shoojah's fate, which were unknown when we last
+referred to the subject, have been since ascertained. After the retreat of the
+English from Cabul, he remained for some time secluded in the Bala-Hissar, observing
+great caution in his intercourse with the insurgent leaders; but he was
+at length prevailed upon, by assurances of loyalty and fidelity, (about the middle
+of April,) to quit the fortress, in order to head an army against Jellalabad. He
+had only proceeded, however, a short distance from the city, when his litter was
+fired upon by a party of musketeers placed in ambush by a Doorauni chief named
+Soojah-ed-Dowlah; and the king was shot dead on the spot. Such was the ultimate
+fate of a prince, the vicissitudes of whose life almost exceed the fictions of
+romance, and who possessed talents sufficient, in more tranquil times, to have
+given <i>&eacute;clat</i> to his reign. During his exile at Loodiana, he composed in Persian a
+curious narrative of his past adventures, a version of part of which appears in the
+30th volume of the <i>Asiatic Journal</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a><b>Footnote 28</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag28">return</a>)
+<p> It is singular that this proclamation was issued on the fourth anniversary
+of Lord Auckland's &quot;Declaration&quot; of Oct. 1, 1838; and from the same place,
+Simla.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a><b>Footnote 29</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag29">return</a>)
+<p> &quot;The fieldworks <i>believed to be described</i> in the despatch as 'consisting of a
+succession of breastworks, improved by a ditch and abattis&mdash;the latter being filled
+with thorns,' turned out to be a paltry stone wall, with a cut two feet deep, and
+of corresponding width, to which the designation of ditch was most grossly misapplied....
+A score or two of active men might have completed the work
+in a few days.&quot;&mdash;(Letter quoted in the <i>Asiatic Journal</i>, Sept., p. 107.) On whom
+the blame of these misrepresentations should be laid&mdash;whether on the officer who
+reconnoitred the ground, or on the general who wrote the despatch&mdash;does not very
+clearly appear: yet the political agent at Quettah was removed from his charge,
+for not having given notice of the construction in his vicinity of works which
+are now proved to have had no existence!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a><b>Footnote 30</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag30">return</a>)
+<p> It was this chief whose betrayal or destruction Sir William McNaghten is
+accused, on the authority of General Elphinstone's correspondence, of having
+meditated, on the occasion when he met with his own fate. We hope, for the
+honour of the English name, that the memory of the late Resident at Cabul may
+be cleared from this heavy imputation; but he certainly cannot be acquitted of
+having, by his wilful blindness and self-sufficiency, contributed to precipitate the
+catastrophe to which he himself fell a victim. In proof of this assertion, it is
+sufficient to refer to the tenor of his remarks on the letter addressed to him by
+Sir A. Burnes on the affairs of Cabul, August 7, 1840, which appeared some
+time since in the <i>Bombay Times</i>, and afterwards in the <i>Asiatic Journal</i> for October
+and November last.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a><b>Footnote 31</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag31">return</a>)
+<p> The kindness and humanity which these unfortunate <i>detenus</i> experienced
+from first to last at the hands of Akhbar, reflect the highest honour on the character
+of this chief, whom it has been the fashion to hold up to execration as a
+monster of perfidy and cruelty. As a contrast to this conduct of the Affghan
+<i>barbarians</i>, it is worth while to refer to Colonel Lindsay's narrative of his captivity
+in the dungeons of Hyder and Tippoo, which has recently appeared in the
+<i>Asiatic Journal</i>, September, December, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a><b>Footnote 32</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag32">return</a>)
+<p> The value still attached by the Hindoos to these relics was shown on the conclusion
+of the treaty, in 1832, between Shah-Shoojah and Runjeet Singh, previous
+to the Shah's last unaided attempt to recover his throne; in which their restoration,
+in case of his success, was an express stipulation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a><b>Footnote 33</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag33">return</a>)
+<p> The elder of these princes, Timour, who was governor of Candahar during
+the reign of his father, has accompanied General England to Hindostan, preferring,
+as he says, the life of a private gentleman under British protection to the
+perils of civil discord in Affghanistan. Of the second, Mohammed-Akhbar, (whose
+mother is said to be sister of Dost Mohammed,) we know nothing;&mdash;Futteh-Jung
+is the third, and was intended by Shah-Shoojah for his successor;&mdash;Seifdar-Jung,
+now at Candahar, is the youngest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a><b>Footnote 34</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag34">return</a>)
+<p> The war in Tibet, to which we alluded in July last, between the followers of
+the Sikh chief Zorawur Singh and the Chinese, is still in progress&mdash;and the latter
+are said to be on the point of following up their successes by an invasion of
+Cashmeer. As we are now at peace with the Celestial Empire, our mediation may
+be made available to terminate the contest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a><b>Footnote 35</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag35">return</a>)
+<p> Bhawulpoor is so far under British protection, that it was saved from the
+arms of the Sikhs by the treaty with Runjeet Singh, which confined him to the
+other bank of the Sutlej; but it has never paid allegiance to the British Government.
+Its territory is of considerable extent, stretching nearly 300 miles along
+the river, by 100 miles average breadth; but great part of the surface consists
+of sandy desert.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a><b>Footnote 36</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag36">return</a>)
+<p> So well were the Scindians aware of this, that Burnes, when ascending the
+Indus, on his way to Lahore in 1831, frequently heard it remarked, &quot;Scinde is
+now gone, since the English have seen the river, which is the road to its conquest.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a><b>Footnote 37</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag37">return</a>)
+<p> Khelat (more properly Khelat-i-Nussear Khan, &quot;the citadel of Nussear
+Khan,&quot; by whom it was strongly fortified in 1750,) is the principal city and fortress
+of the Brahooes or Eastern Baloochee, and the residence of their chief. It
+had never been taken by any of the Affghan kings, and had even opposed a successful
+resistance to the arms of Ahmed Shah;&mdash;but on November 13, 1839, it
+was stormed by an Anglo-Indian force under General Wiltshire, and the Khan
+Mihrab was slain sword in hand, gallantly fighting to the last at the entrance of
+his zenana. The place, however, was soon after surprised and recaptured by the
+son of the fallen chief, Nussear Khan, who, though again expelled, continued to
+maintain himself with a few followers in the mountains, and at last effected an
+accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud. He has
+since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary fidelity; and as his fears of
+compulsory vassalage to the nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at
+an end, he appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian chief converted
+into a firm friend and ally.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a><b>Footnote 38</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag38">return</a>)
+<p> By a general order, issued from Simla October 4, all officers and soldiers, of
+whatever grade, who took part in the operations about Candahar, the defence of
+Khelat-i-Ghiljie, the recapture of Ghazni or Cabul, or the forcing of the Khyber
+Pass, are to receive a silver medal with appropriate inscriptions&mdash;a similar distinction
+having been previously conferred on the defenders of Jellalabad. <i>What
+is at present the value of the Order of the Doorani Empire</i>, with its showy decorations
+of the first, second, and third classes, the last of which was so rightfully
+spurned by poor Dennie?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a><b>Footnote 39</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag39">return</a>)
+<p> The following remarks of the <i>Madras United Service Gazette</i>, though intended
+to apply only to the Secunderabad disturbances, deserve general attention at
+present:&mdash;&quot;We attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for their
+European officers to <i>a diminished inclination for the service</i>, the duties whereof
+have of late years increased in about the same proportion that its advantages have
+been reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than double the
+work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;... and the infantry sepoy's
+garrison guard-work has been for years most fatiguing at every station, from the
+numerical strength of the troops being quite inadequate to the duties....
+These several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a distaste for
+the service, which has been augmented by the stagnant state of promotion, caused
+by the reductions in 1829, when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the
+cavalry, native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became supernumerary,
+thus effectually closing the door of promotion to the inferior grades for years to
+come. Hopeless of advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less
+attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as careless of a service which
+no longer held out any prospect of promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline
+were not altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of corporal
+punishment; and from the promulgation of that ill-judged order may be dated the
+decided change for the worse which has taken place in the character of the native
+soldiery.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a><b>Footnote 40</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag40">return</a>)
+<p> This corps, it will be remembered, was broken for its misconduct in the battle
+of Purwan-Durrah, against Dost Mohammed, November 2, 1840.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a><b>Footnote 41</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag41">return</a>)
+<p> The Nawab of Arcot, one of the native princes, whose fidelity is now strongly
+suspected, assured the Resident, in his reply to the official communication of
+the capture of Ghazni in 1839, that from his excessive joy at the triumph of his
+good friend the Company, his bulk of body had so greatly increased that he was
+under the necessity of providing himself with a new wardrobe&mdash;his garments having
+become too strait for his unbounded stomach! A choice specimen of oriental
+bombast.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13062 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., 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. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: July 30, 2004 [EBook #13062]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page scans provided by The Internet
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+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+NO. CCCXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1843. VOL. LIII.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY
+    POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.--NO. V.
+    REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.
+    THE YOUNG GREY HEAD
+    IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+        OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL
+    CALEB STUKELY. PART XI.
+    THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART II.
+    EYRE'S CABUL
+    THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN
+    DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.
+
+
+If any doubt could exist as to the nature of the loss which the
+premature death of Dr Arnold has inflicted on the literature of his
+country, the perusal of the volume before us must be sufficient to show
+how great, how serious, nay, all circumstances taken together, we had
+almost said how irreparable, it ought to be considered. Recently placed
+in a situation which gave his extraordinary faculties as a teacher still
+wider scope than they before possessed, at an age when the vivacity and
+energy of a commanding intellect were matured, not chilled, by constant
+observation and long experience--gifted with industry to collect, with
+sagacity to appreciate, with skill to arrange the materials of
+history--master of a vivid and attractive style for their communication
+and display--eminent, above all, for a degree of candour and sincerity
+which gave additional value to all his other endowments--what but
+leisure did Dr Arnold require to qualify him for a place among our most
+illustrious authors? Under his auspices, we might not unreasonably have
+hoped for works that would have rivalled those of the great continental
+writers in depth and variety of research; in which the light of original
+and contemporaneous documents would be steadily flung on the still
+unexplored portions of our history; and that Oxford would have balanced
+the fame of Schlösser and Thierry and Sismondi, by the labours of a
+writer peculiarly, and, as this volume proves, most affectionately her
+own.
+
+The first Lecture in the present volume is full of striking and original
+remarks, delivered with a delightful simplicity; which, since genius has
+become rare among us, has almost disappeared from the conversation and
+writings of Englishmen. Open the pages of Herodotus, or Xenophon, or
+Cæsar, and how plain, how unpretending are the preambles to their
+immortal works--in what exquisite proportion does the edifice arise,
+without apparent effort, without ostentatious struggle, without, if the
+allusion may be allowed, the sound of the axe or hammer, till "the pile
+stands fixed her stately height" before us--the just admiration of
+succeeding ages! But our modern _filosofastri_ insist upon stunning us
+with the noise of their machinery, and blinding us with the dust of
+their operations. They will not allow the smallest portion of their
+vulgar labours to escape our notice. They drag us through the chaos of
+sand and lime, and stone and bricks, which they have accumulated, hoping
+that the magnitude of the preparation may atone for the meanness of the
+performance. Very different from this is the style of Dr Arnold. We will
+endeavour to exhibit a just idea of his views, so far as they regard the
+true character of history, the manner in which it should be studied,
+and the events by which his theory is illustrated. To study history as
+it should be studied, much more to write history as it should be
+written, is a task which may dignify the most splendid abilities, and
+occupy the most extended life.
+
+Lucian in one of his admirable treatises, ridicules those who imagine
+that any one who chooses may sit down and write history as easily as he
+would walk or sleep, or perform any other function of nature,
+
+    "Thought, to the man that never thinks, may seem
+    As natural as when asleep to dream."
+
+From the remarks of this greatest of all satirists, it is manifest that,
+in his days, history had been employed, as it has in ours, for the
+purposes of slander and adulation. He selects particularly a writer who
+compared, in his account of the Persian wars, the Roman emperor to
+Achilles, his enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian had lived in the present
+day, he would have discovered that the race of such writers was not
+extinguished. He might have found ample proofs that the detestable habit
+still prevails of interweaving the names of our contemporaries among the
+accounts of former centuries, and thus corrupting the history of past
+times into a means of abuse and flattery for the present. This is to
+degrade history into the worst style of a Treasury pamphlet, or a daily
+newspaper. It is a fault almost peculiar to this country.
+
+We are told in one of these works, for instance, that the "tones of Sir
+W. Follett's voice are silvery"--a proposition that we do not at all
+intend to dispute; nor would it be easy to pronounce any panegyric on
+that really great man in which we should not zealously concur; but can
+it be necessary to mention this in a history of the eighteenth century?
+Or can any thing be more trivial or offensive, or totally without the
+shadow of justification, than this forced allusion to the "ignorant
+present time," in the midst of what ought to be an unbiassed narrative
+of events that affected former generations? We do not know whether the
+author of this ingenious allusion borrowed the idea from the
+advertisements in which our humbler artists recommend their productions
+to vulgar notice; or whether it is the spontaneous growth of his own
+happy intellect: but plagiarized or original, and however adapted it may
+be to the tone and keeping of his work, its insertion is totally
+irreconcilable with the qualities that a man should possess who means to
+instruct posterity. When gold is extracted from lead, or silver from
+tin, such a writer may become an historian. "Forget," says Lucian, "the
+present, look to future ages for your reward; let it be said of you that
+you are high-spirited, full of independence, that there is nothing about
+you servile or fulsome."
+
+Modern history is now exclusively to be considered. Modern history,
+separated from the history of Greece and Rome, and the annals of
+barbarous emigration, by the event which above all others has
+influenced, and continues still to influence, after so many centuries,
+the fate of Europe--the fall of the Western Empire--the boundary line
+which separates modern from ancient history, is not ideal and
+capricious, but definite and certain. It can neither be advanced nor
+carried back. Modern history displays a national life still in
+existence. It commences with that period in which the great elements of
+separate national existence now in being--race, language, institutions,
+and religion--can be traced in simultaneous operation. To the influences
+which pervaded the ancient world, another, at first scarcely
+perceptible, for a time almost predominant, and even now powerful and
+comprehensive, was annexed. In the fourth century of the Christian era,
+the Roman world comprised Christianity, Grecian intellect, Roman
+jurisprudence--all the ingredients, in short, of modern history, except
+the Teutonic element. It is the infusion of this element which has
+changed the quality of the compound, and leavened the whole mass with
+its peculiarities. To this we owe the middle ages, the law of
+inheritance, the spirit of chivalry, and the feudal system, than which
+no cause more powerful ever contributed to the miseries of mankind. It
+filled Europe not with men but slaves; and the tyranny under which the
+people groaned was the more intolerable, as it was wrought into an
+artificial method, confirmed by law, established by inveterate custom,
+and even supported by religion. In vain did the nations cast their eyes
+to Rome, from whom they had a right to claim assistance, or at least
+sympathy and consolation. The appeal was useless. The living waters were
+tainted in their source. Instead of health they spread abroad
+infection--instead of giving nourishment to the poor, they were the
+narcotics which drenched in slumber the consciences of the rich.
+Wretched forms, ridiculous legends, the insipid rhetoric of the Fathers,
+were the substitutes for all generous learning. The nobles enslaved the
+body; the hierarchy put its fetters on the soul. The growth of the
+public mind was checked and stunted and the misery of Europe was
+complete. The sufferer was taught to expect his reward in another world;
+their oppressor, if his bequests were liberal, was sure of obtaining
+consolation in this, and the kingdom of God was openly offered to the
+highest bidder. But to the causes which gave rise to this state of
+things, we must trace our origin as a nation.
+
+With the Britons whom Cæsar conquered, though they occupied the surface
+of our soil, we have, nationally speaking, no concern; but when the
+white horse of Hengist, after many a long and desperate struggle,
+floated in triumph or in peace from the Tamar to the Tweed, our
+existence as a nation, the period to which we may refer the origin of
+English habits, language, and institutions, undoubtedly begins. So, when
+the Franks established themselves west of the Rhine, the French nation
+may be said to have come into being. True, the Saxons yielded to the
+discipline and valour of a foreign race; true, the barbarous hordes of
+the Elbe and the Saal were not the ancestors, as any one who travels in
+the south of France can hardly fail to see, of the majority of the
+present nation of the French: but the Normans and Saxons sprang from the
+same stock, and the changes worked by Clovis and his warriors were so
+vast and durable, (though, in comparison with their conquered vassals,
+they were numerically few,) that with the invasion of Hengist in the one
+case, and the battle of Poictiers in the other, the modern history of
+both countries may not improperly be said to have begun. To the student
+of that history, however, one consideration must occur, which imparts to
+the objects of his studies an interest emphatically its own. It is this:
+he has strong reason to believe that all the elements of society are
+before him. It may indeed be true that Providence has reserved some yet
+unknown tribe, wandering on the banks of the Amour or of the Amazons, as
+the instrument of accomplishing some mighty purpose--humanly speaking,
+however, such an event is most improbable. To adopt such an hypothesis,
+would be in direct opposition to all the analogies by which, in the
+absence of clearer or more precise motives, human infirmity must be
+guided. The map of the world is spread out before us; there are no
+regions which we speak of in the terms of doubt and ignorance that the
+wisest Romans applied to the countries beyond the Vistula and the Rhine,
+when in Lord Bacon's words "the world was altogether home-bred." When
+Cicero jested with Trebatius on the little importance of a Roman jurist
+among hordes of Celtic barbarians, he little thought that from that
+despised country would arise a nation, before the blaze of whose
+conquests the splendour of Roman Empire would grow pale; a nation which
+would carry the art of government and the enjoyment of freedom to a
+perfection, the idea of which, had it been presented to the illustrious
+orator, stored as his mind was with all the lore of Grecian sages, and
+with whatever knowledge the history of his own country could supply,
+would have been consigned by him, with the glorious visions of his own
+Academy, to the shady spaces of an ideal world. Had he, while bewailing
+the loss of that freedom which he would not survive, disfigured as it
+was by popular tumult and patrician insolence--had he been told that a
+figure far more faultless was one day to arise amid the unknown forests
+and marshes of Britain, and to be protected by the rude hands of her
+barbarous inhabitants till it reached the full maturity of immortal
+loveliness--the eloquence of Cicero himself would have been silenced,
+and, whatever might have been the exultation of the philosopher, the
+pride of the Roman would have died within him. But we can anticipate no
+similar revolution. The nations by which the world is inhabited are
+known to us; the regions which they occupy are limited; there are no
+fresh combinations to count upon, no reserves upon which we can
+depend;--there is every reason to suppose that, in the great conflict
+with physical and moral evil, which it is the destiny of man to wage,
+the last battalion is in the field.
+
+The course to be adopted by the student of modern history is pointed out
+in the following pages; and the remarks of Dr Arnold on this subject are
+distinguished by a degree of good sense and discrimination which it is
+difficult to overrate. Vast indeed is the difference between ancient and
+modern annals, as far as relates to the demand upon the student's time
+and attention. Instead of sailing upon a narrow channel, the shores of
+which are hardly ever beyond his view, he launches out upon an ocean of
+immeasurable extent, through which the greatest skill and most assiduous
+labour are hardly sufficient to conduct him--
+
+    "Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo,
+    Nec meminisse viæ, mediâ Palinurus in undâ."
+
+Instead of a few great writers, the student is beset on all sides by
+writers of different sort and degree, from the light memorialist to the
+great historian; instead of two countries, two hemispheres are
+candidates for his attention; and history assumes a variety of garbs,
+many of which were strangers to her during the earlier period of her
+existence. To the careful study of many periods of history, not
+extending over any very wide portion of time, the labour of a tolerably
+long life would be inadequate. The unpublished Despatches of Cardinal
+Granvelle at Besançon, amount to sixty volumes. The archives of Venice
+(a mine, by the way, scarcely opened) fill a large apartment. For
+printed works it may be enough to mention the Benedictine editions and
+Munatoris Annals, historians of the dark and middle ages, relating to
+two countries only, and two periods. All history, therefore, however
+insatiable may be the intellectual _boulimia_ that devours him, can
+never be a proper object of curiosity to any man. It is natural enough
+that the first effect produced by this discovery on the mind of the
+youthful student should be surprise and mortification; nor is it before
+the conviction that his researches, to be valuable, must be limited,
+forces itself upon him, that he concentrates to some particular period,
+and perhaps to some exclusive object, the powers of his undivided
+attention. When he has thus put an end to his desultory enquiries, and
+selected the portion of history which it is his purpose to explore, his
+first object should be to avail himself of the information which other
+travellers in the same regions have been enabled to collect. Their
+mistakes will teach him caution; their wanderings will serve to keep him
+in the right path. Weak and feeble as he may be, compared with the first
+adventurers who have visited the mighty maze before him, yet he has not
+their difficulties to encounter, nor their perils to apprehend. The clue
+is in his hands which may lead him through the labyrinth in which it has
+been the lot of so many master-spirits to wander--
+
+    "And find no end, in boundless mazes lost."
+
+But it is time to hear Dr Arnold:--
+
+     "To proceed, therefore, with our supposed student's course of
+     reading. Keeping the general history which he has been reading
+     as his text, and getting from it the skeleton, in a manner, of
+     the future figure, he must now break forth excursively to the
+     right and left, collecting richness and fulness of knowledge
+     from the most various sources. For example, we will suppose
+     that where his popular historian has mentioned that an alliance
+     was concluded between two powers, or a treaty of peace agreed
+     upon, he first of all resolves to consult the actual documents
+     themselves, as they are to be found in some one of the great
+     collections of European treaties, or, if they are connected
+     with English history, in Rymer's _Foedera_. By comparing the
+     actual treaty with his historian's report of its provisions, we
+     get, in the first place, a critical process of some value,
+     inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once tested: but
+     there are other purposes answered besides. An historian's
+     report of a treaty is almost always an abridgement of it; minor
+     articles will probably be omitted, and the rest condensed, and
+     stripped of all their formal language. But our object now being
+     to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is possible, the very
+     life of the period which we are studying, minute particulars
+     help us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration of titles,
+     and the specification of towns and districts in their legal
+     style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their
+     very particularity. Every common history records the substance
+     of the treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the succession to
+     the crown of France was given to Henry V. But the treaty in
+     itself, or the English version of it which Henry sent over to
+     England to be proclaimed there, gives a far more lively
+     impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, and
+     the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles VI., in the
+     ostentatious care taken to provide for the recognition of his
+     formal title during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded
+     to Henry, and provision is made for the perpetual union
+     hereafter of the two kingdoms under his sole government.
+
+     "I have named treaties as the first class of official
+     instruments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs
+     unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents,
+     certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently
+     referred to by popular historians, consists of statutes,
+     ordinances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names
+     the laws of each particular period happen to be designated.
+     _That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred to
+     by writers on English history_, has always seemed to me a
+     matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so busy in
+     every country as it has been with us; yet every where, and in
+     every period, it has done something. Evils, real or supposed,
+     have always existed, which the supreme power in the nation has
+     endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. And under the
+     name of laws I would include the acts of councils, which form
+     an important part of the history of European nations during
+     many centuries; provincial councils, as you are aware, having
+     been held very frequently, and their enactments relating to
+     local and particular evils, so that they illustrate history in
+     a very lively manner. Now, in these and all the other laws of
+     any given period, we find in the first place, from their
+     particularity, a great additional help towards becoming
+     familiar with the times in which they were passed; we learn the
+     names of various officers, courts, and processes; and these,
+     when understood, (and I suppose always the habit of reading
+     nothing without taking pains to understand it,) help us, from
+     their very number, to realize the state of things then
+     existing; a lively notion of any object depending on our
+     clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we people it, so
+     to speak, with distinct images, the more it comes to resemble
+     the crowded world around us. But in addition to this benefit,
+     which I am disposed to rate in itself very highly, every thing
+     of the nature of law has a peculiar interest and value,
+     _because it is the expression of the deliberate mind of the
+     supreme government of society_; and as history, as commonly
+     written, records so much of the passionate and unreflecting
+     part of human nature, we are bound in fairness to acquaint
+     ourselves with its calmer and better part also."
+
+The inner life of a nation will be determined by its end, that end being
+the security of its highest happiness, or, as it is "conceived and
+expressed more piously, a setting forth of God's glory by doing his
+appointed work." The history of a nation's internal life is the history
+of its institutions and its laws. Here, then, it is that we shall find
+the noblest lessons of history; here it is that we must look for the
+causes, direct and indirect, which have modified the characters, and
+decided the fate of nations. To this imperishable possession it is that
+the philosopher appeals for the corroboration of his theory, as it is to
+it also that the statesman ought to look for the regulation of his
+practice. Religion, property, science, commerce, literature, whatever
+can civilize and instruct rude mankind, whatever can embellish life in
+its more advanced condition, even till it exhibit the wonders of which
+it is now the theatre, may be referred to this subject, and are
+comprised under this denomination. The importance of history has been
+the theme of many a pen, but we question whether it has ever been more
+beautifully described than in the following passage:--
+
+     "Enough has been said, I think, to show that history contains
+     no mean treasures; that, as being the biography of a nation, it
+     partakes of the richness and variety of those elements which
+     make up a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the
+     final cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and
+     man's perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of
+     history. Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in
+     human nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature, or
+     sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering, whether blessed
+     or unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
+     reverses, in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied
+     powers, its courage and its patience, its genius and its
+     wisdom, its justice and its love, that also is the measure of
+     the interest and variety of history. The treasures indeed are
+     ample, but we may more reasonably fear whether we may have
+     strength and skill to win them."
+
+In passing we may observe, after Dr Arnold, that the most important
+bearing of a particular institution upon the character of a nation is
+not always limited to the effect which is most obvious; few who have
+watched the proceedings in our courts of justice can doubt that, in
+civil cases, the interference of a jury is often an obstacle, and
+sometimes an insurmountable obstacle, to the attainment of justice. Dr
+Arnold's remarks on this subject are entitled to great attention:--
+
+     "The effect," he says, "of any particular arrangement of the
+     judicial power, is seen directly in the greater or less purity
+     with which justice is administered; but there is a further
+     effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to
+     a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means
+     of moral and intellectual culture--the opportunity, namely, of
+     exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to accustom a
+     number of persons to the intellectual exercise of attending to,
+     and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to the moral exercise
+     of being placed in a high and responsible situation, invested
+     with one of God's own attributes, that of judgment, and having
+     to determine with authority between truth and falsehood, right
+     and wrong, is to furnish them with very high means of moral and
+     intellectual culture--in other words, it is providing them with
+     one of the highest kinds of education. And thus a judicial
+     constitution may secure a pure administration of justice, and
+     yet fail as an engine of national cultivation, where it is
+     vested in the hands of a small body of professional men, like
+     the old French parliament. While, on the other hand, it may
+     communicate the judicial office very widely, as by our system
+     of juries, and thus may educate, if I may so speak, a very
+     large portion of the nation, but yet may not succeed in
+     obtaining the greatest certainty of just legal decisions. I do
+     not mean that our jury system does not succeed, but it is
+     conceivable that it should not. So, in the same way, different
+     arrangements of the executive and legislative powers should be
+     always regarded in this twofold aspect--as effecting their
+     direct objects, good government and good legislation; and as
+     educating the nation more or less extensively, by affording to
+     a greater or less number of persons practical lessons in
+     governing and legislating."
+
+History is an account of the common purpose pursued by some one of the
+great families of the human race. It is the biography of a nation; as
+the history of a particular sect, or a particular body of men, describes
+the particular end which the sect or body was instituted to pursue, so
+history, in its more comprehensive sense, describes the paramount object
+which the first and sovereign society--the society to which all others
+are necessarily subordinate--endeavours to attain. According to Dr
+Arnold, a nation's life is twofold, external and internal. Its external
+life consists principally in wars. "Here history has been sufficiently
+busy. The wars of the human race have been recorded when every thing
+else has perished."
+
+Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold justly observes, is calculated to
+contract and enfeeble the understanding. It is a pedantic love of
+detail, with an indifference to the result, for which alone it can be
+considered valuable. It is the mistake, into which men are perpetually
+falling, of the means for the end. There are people to whom the
+tragedies of Sophocles are less precious than the Scholiast on
+Lycophron, and who prize the speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because
+they may fling light on the dress of an Athenian citizen. The same
+tendency discovers itself in other pursuits. Oxen are fattened into
+plethoras to encourage agriculture, and men of station dress like
+grooms, and bet like blacklegs, to keep up the breed of horses. It is
+true that such evils will happen when agriculture is encouraged, and a
+valuable breed of horses cherished; but they are the consequences, not
+the cause of such a state of things. So the disciples of the old
+philosophers drank hemlock to acquire pallid countenances--but they are
+as far from obtaining the wisdom of their masters by this adventitious
+resemblance, as the antiquarian is from the historian. To write well
+about the past, we must have a vigorous and lively perception of the
+present. This, says Dr Arnold, is the merit of Mitford. It is certainly
+the only one he possesses; a person more totally unqualified for writing
+history at all--to say nothing of the history of Greece--it is difficult
+for us, aided as our imagination may be by the works of our modern
+writers, to conceive. But Raleigh, whom he quotes afterwards, is indeed
+a striking instance of that combination of actual experience with
+speculative knowledge which all should aim at, but which it seldom
+happens that one man in a generation is fortunate enough to obtain.
+
+From the sixteenth century, the writers of history begin to assume a
+different character from that of their predecessors. During the middle
+ages, the elements of society were fewer and less diversified. Before
+that time the people were nothing. Popes, emperors, kings, nobles,
+bishops, knights, are the only materials about which the writer of
+history cared to know or enquire. Perhaps some exception to this rule
+might be found in the historians of the free towns of Italy; but they
+are few and insignificant. After that period, not only did the classes
+of society increase, but every class was modified by more varieties of
+individual life. Even within the last century, the science of political
+economy has given a new colouring to the thoughts and actions of large
+communities, as the different opinions held by its votaries have
+multiplied them into distinct and various classes. Modern historians,
+therefore, may be divided into two classes; the one describing a state
+of society in which the elements are few; the other the times in which
+they were more numerous. As a specimen of the first order, he selects
+Bede. Bede was born in 674, fifty years after the flight of Mahomet from
+Mecca. He died in 755, two or three years after the victory of Charles
+Martel over the Saracens. His ecclesiastical history, in five books,
+describes the period from Augustine's arrival in Kent, 597.
+
+Dr Arnold's dissertation on Bede involves him in the discussion of a
+question on which much skill and ability have been exercised. We allude
+to the question of miracles. "The question," says he, "in Bede takes
+this form--What credit is to be attached to the frequent stories of
+miracles or wonders which occur in his narrative?" He seizes at once
+upon the difficulty, without compromise or evasion. He makes a
+distinction between a wonder and a miracle: "to say that all recorded
+wonders are false, from those recorded by Herodotus to the latest
+reports of animal magnetism, would be a boldness of assertion wholly
+unjustifiable." At the same time he thinks the character of Bede, added
+to the religious difficulty, may incline us to limit miracles to the
+earliest times of Christianity, and refuse our belief to all which are
+reported by the historians of subsequent centuries. He then proceeds to
+consider the questions which suggest themselves when we read Matthew
+Paris, or still more, any of the French, German, or Italian historians
+of the same period:--
+
+     "The thirteenth century contains in it, at its beginning, the
+     most splendid period of the Papacy, the time of Innocent the
+     Third; its end coincides with that great struggle between
+     Boniface the Eighth and Philip the Fair, which marks the first
+     stage of its decline. It contains the reign of Frederick the
+     Second, and his long contest with the popes in Italy; the
+     foundation of the orders of friars, Dominican and Franciscan;
+     the last period of the crusades, and the age of the greatest
+     glory of the schoolmen. Thus, full of matters of interest as it
+     is, it will yet be found that all its interest is more or less
+     connected with two great questions concerning the church;
+     namely, the power of the priesthood in matters of government
+     and in matters of faith; the merits of the contest between the
+     Papacy and the kings of Europe; the nature and character of
+     that influence over men's minds which affected the whole
+     philosophy of the period, the whole intellectual condition of
+     the Christian world."--P. 138.
+
+The pretensions and corruptions of the Church are undoubtedly the chief
+object to which, at this period, the attention of the reader must be
+attracted. "Is the church system of Innocent III. in faith or government
+the system of the New Testament?" Is the difference between them
+inconsiderable, such as may be accounted for by the natural progress of
+society, or does the rent extend to the foundation? "The first century,"
+says Dr Arnold, "is to determine our judgment of the second and of all
+subsequent centuries. It will not do to assume that the judgment must be
+interpreted by the very practices and opinions, the merits of which it
+has to try." As a specimen of the chroniclers, he selects Philip de
+Comines, almost the last great writer of his class. In him is
+exemplified one of the peculiar distinctions of attaching to modern
+history the importance of attending to genealogies.
+
+     "For instance, Comines records the marriage of Mary, duchess
+     of Burgundy, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold,
+     with Maximilian, archduke of Austria. This marriage, conveying
+     all the dominions of Burgundy to Maximilian and his heirs,
+     established a great independent sovereign on the frontiers of
+     France, giving to him on the north, not only the present
+     kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, but large portions of what is
+     now French territory, the old provinces of Artois and French
+     Flanders, French Hainault and French Luxemburg; while on the
+     east it gave him Franche Comté, thus yielding him a footing
+     within the Jura, on the very banks of the Saône. Thence ensued
+     in after ages, when the Spanish branch of the house of Austria
+     had inherited this part of its dominions--the long contests
+     which deluged the Netherlands with blood, the campaigns of King
+     William and Luxembourg, the nine years of efforts, no less
+     skilful than valiant, in which Marlborough broke his way
+     through the fortresses of the iron frontier. Again, when Spain
+     became in a manner French by the accession of the House of
+     Bourbon, the Netherlands reverted once more to Austria itself;
+     and from thence the powers of Europe advanced, almost in our
+     own days, to assail France as a republic; and on this ground,
+     on the plains of Fleurus, was won the first of those great
+     victories which, for nearly twenty years, carried the French
+     standards triumphantly over Europe. Thus the marriage recorded
+     by Comines has been working busily down to our very own times:
+     it is only since the settlement of 1814, and that more recent
+     one of 1830, that the Netherlands have ceased to be effected by
+     the union of Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian of
+     Austria"--P. 148.
+
+Again, in order to understand the contest which Philip de Comines
+records between a Frenchman and a Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
+must go back to the dark and bloody page in the annals of the thirteenth
+century, which relates the extinction of the last heir of the great
+Swabian race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of Anjou, the fit and
+unrelenting instrument of Papal hatred--the dreadful expiation of that
+great crime by the Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of the House of
+Anjou in Sicily, the crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna, the new
+contest occasioned by her adoption--all these events must be known to
+him who would understand the expedition of Charles VIII. The following
+passage is an admirable description of the reasons which lend to the
+pages of Philip de Comines a deep and melancholy interest:--
+
+     "The Memoirs of Philip de Comines terminate about twenty years
+     before the Reformation, six years after the first voyage of
+     Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately
+     preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage
+     of an old state of things, now on the point of passing away.
+     Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurricane, the
+     almost oppressive stillness which announces the eruption, or,
+     to use Campbell's beautiful image--
+
+     'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'--
+
+     are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is
+     not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,
+     nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their
+     dissolution is fast approaching--the interest has yet another
+     source; our knowledge, namely, that in that tranquil period lay
+     the germs of the great changes following, taking their shape
+     for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while all
+     wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by
+     experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we wish in
+     vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
+     condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing
+     hour. And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we
+     are curious to know whether his previous words or behaviour
+     indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine the
+     records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to observe
+     whether, in any point, there may be discerned an anticipation
+     of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
+     insensibility. In this respect, Comines' Memoirs are striking
+     from their perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
+     ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other notions
+     than such as they had tended to foster; he describes their
+     events, their characters, their relations, as if they were to
+     continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the simplest
+     form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the
+     instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common
+     mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between
+     Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king, that
+     to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But, resembling
+     Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in
+     another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly
+     of all men, without respect of persons, Philip de Comines
+     praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of
+     princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life,
+     but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and
+     has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de
+     Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with whom the
+     crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere
+     with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and
+     respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he
+     himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on
+     his mind no impression."
+
+We now enter upon a period which may be called the modern part of modern
+history, the more complicated period, in contradistinction to the more
+simple state of things which, up to this moment, has occupied the
+student's attention. It is impossible to read, without deep regret, the
+passage in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention--"if life and health
+be spared him, to enter into minute details; selecting some one country
+as the principal subject of his enquiries, and illustrating the lessons
+of history for the most part from its particular experience."
+
+He proceeds, however, to the performance of the task immediately before
+him. After stating that the great object, the [Greek: teleiotaton
+telos], of history is that which most nearly touches the inner life of
+civilized man, he pauses for a while at the threshold before he enters
+into the sanctuary, and undoubtedly some external knowledge is requisite
+before we penetrate into its recesses: we want some dwelling-place, as
+it were, for the mind, some local habitation in which our ideas may be
+arranged, some topics that may be firmly grasped by the memory, and on
+which the understanding may confidently rest; and thus it is that
+geography, even with a view to other purposes, must engross, in the
+first instance, a considerable share of our attention. The sense in
+which Dr Arnold understands a knowledge of geography, is explained in
+the following luminous and instructive commentary:--
+
+     "I said that geography held out one hand to geology and
+     physiology, while she held out the other to history. In fact,
+     geology and physiology themselves are closely connected with
+     history. For instance, what lies at the bottom of that question
+     which is now being discussed every where, the question of the
+     corn-laws, but the geological fact that England is more richly
+     supplied with coal-mines than any other country in the world?
+     what has given a peculiar interest to our relations with China,
+     but the physiological fact, that the tea-plant, which is become
+     so necessary to our daily life, has been cultivated with equal
+     success in no other climate or country? what is it which
+     threatens the permanence of the union between the northern and
+     southern states of the American confederacy, but the
+     physiological fact, that the soil and climate of the southern
+     states render them essentially agricultural, while those of the
+     northern states, combined with their geographical advantages as
+     to sea-ports, dispose them no less naturally to be
+     manufacturing and commercial? The whole character of a nation
+     may be influenced by its geology and physical geography. But
+     for the sake of its mere beauty and liveliness, if there were
+     no other consideration, it would be worth our while to acquire
+     this richer view of geography. Conceive only the difference
+     between a ground-plan and a picture. The mere plan geography of
+     Italy gives us its shape, as I have observed, and the position
+     of its towns; to these it may add a semicircle of mountains
+     round the northern boundary to represent the Alps, and another
+     long line stretching down the middle of the country to
+     represent the Apennines. But let us carry on this a little
+     further, and give life and meaning and harmony to what is at
+     present at once lifeless and confused. Observe, in the first
+     place, how the Apennine line, beginning from the southern
+     extremity of the Alps, runs across Italy to the very edge of
+     the Adriatic, and thus separates naturally the Italy proper of
+     the Romans, from Cisalpine Gaul. Observe again, how the Alps,
+     after running north and south, where they divide Italy from
+     France, turn then away to the eastward, running almost parallel
+     to the Apennines, till they too touch the head of the Adriatic,
+     on the confines of Istria. Thus between these two lines of
+     mountains there is enclosed one great basin or plain; enclosed
+     on three sides by mountains, open only on the east to the sea.
+     Observe how widely it spreads itself out, and then see how well
+     it is watered. One great river flows through it in its whole
+     extent, and this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
+     descending towards it on either side, from the Alps on the one
+     side, and from the Apennines on the other. Who can wonder that
+     this large and rich and well-watered plain should be filled
+     with flourishing cities, or that it should have been contended
+     for so often by successive invaders? Then descending into Italy
+     proper, we find the complexity of its geography quite in
+     accordance with its manifold political division. It is not one
+     simple central ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of
+     level country on either side between it and the sea, nor yet
+     is it a chain rising immediately from the sea on one side, like
+     the Andes in South America, and leaving room, therefore, on the
+     other side for wide plains of table-land, and rivers with a
+     sufficient length of course to become at last great and
+     navigable. It is a back-bone thickly set with spines of unequal
+     length, some of them running out at regular distances parallel
+     to each other, but others twisted so strangely that they often
+     run for a long way parallel to the back-bone, or main ridge,
+     and interlace with one another in a maze almost inextricable.
+     And, as if to complete the disorder, in those spots where the
+     spines of the Apennines, being twisted round, run parallel to
+     the sea and to their own central chain, and thus leave an
+     interval of plain between their bases and the Mediterranean,
+     volcanic agency has broken up the space thus left with other
+     and distinct groups of hills of its own creation, as in the
+     case of Vesuvius, and of the Alban hills near Rome. Speaking
+     generally then, Italy is made up of an infinite multitude of
+     valleys pent in between high and steep hills, each forming a
+     country to itself, and cut off by natural barriers from the
+     others. Its several parts are isolated by nature, and no art of
+     man can thoroughly unite them. Even the various provinces of
+     the same kingdom are strangers to each other; the Abruzzi are
+     like an unknown world to the inhabitants of Naples, insomuch,
+     that when two Neapolitan naturalists, not ten years since, made
+     an excursion to visit the Majella, one of the highest of the
+     central Apennines, they found there many medicinal plants
+     growing in the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were
+     regularly in the habit of importing from other countries, as no
+     one suspected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence
+     arises the romantic character of Italian scenery: the constant
+     combination of a mountain outline and all the wild features of
+     a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern
+     climate in the valleys. Hence too the rudeness, the pastoral
+     simplicity, and the occasional robber habits, to be found in
+     the population; so that to this day you may travel in many
+     places for miles together in the plains and valleys without
+     passing through a single town or village; for the towns still
+     cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on
+     some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking
+     down abruptly below them, the very 'congesta manu præruptis
+     oppida saxis' of Virgil's description, which he even then
+     called 'antique walls,' because they had been the strongholds
+     of the primæval inhabitants of the country, and which are still
+     inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, nothing of the
+     stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated
+     into these lonely valleys, and tempted the people to quit their
+     mountain fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling in the
+     plain.
+
+     "I have been led on further than I intended, but I wished to
+     give an example of what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
+     of geography, which brings the whole character of a country
+     before our eyes, and enables us to understand its influence
+     upon the social and political condition of its inhabitants. And
+     this knowledge, as I said before, is very important to enable
+     us to follow clearly the external revolutions of different
+     nations, which we want to comprehend before we penetrate to
+     what has been passing within."
+
+This introductory discussion is followed by a rapid sketch of the
+different struggles for power and independence in Europe during the
+three last centuries. The general tendency of this period has been to
+consolidate severed nations into great kingdoms; but this tendency has
+been checked when the growth of any single power has become excessive,
+by the combined efforts of other European nations. Spain, France,
+England, and Austria, all in their turns have excited the jealousy of
+their neighbours, and have been attacked by their confederate strength.
+But in 1793 the peace of Europe was assailed by an enemy still more
+dangerous and energetic--still more destructive--we doubt whether in the
+English language a more vivid description is to be found of the evil,
+its progress, and its termination, than Dr Arnold has given in the
+following passage:--
+
+     "Ten years afterwards there broke out by far the most alarming
+     danger of universal dominion, which had ever threatened Europe.
+     The most military people in Europe became engaged in a war for
+     their very existence. Invasion on the frontiers, civil war and
+     all imaginable horrors raging within, the ordinary relations of
+     life went to wreck, and every Frenchman became a soldier. It
+     was a multitude numerous as the hosts of Persia, but animated
+     by the courage and skill and energy of the old Romans. One
+     thing alone was wanting, that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
+     wanted, to enable them to conquer the world--a general and a
+     ruler like himself. There was wanted a master hand to restore
+     and maintain peace at home, and to concentrate and direct the
+     immense military resources of France against her foreign
+     enemies. And such an one appeared in Napoleon. Pacifying La
+     Vendée, receiving back the emigrants, restoring the church,
+     remodelling the law, personally absolute, yet carefully
+     preserving and maintaining all the great points which the
+     nation had won at the Revolution, Napoleon united in himself,
+     not only the power, but the whole will of France; and that
+     power and will were guided by a genius for war such as Europe
+     had never seen since Cæsar. The effect was absolutely magical.
+     In November 1799, he was made First Consul; he found France
+     humbled by defeats, his Italian conquests lost, his allies
+     invaded, his own frontier threatened. He took the field in May
+     1800, and in June the whole fortune of the war was changed, and
+     Austria driven out of Lombardy by the victory of Marengo. Still
+     the flood of the tide rose higher and higher, and every
+     successive wave of its advance swept away a kingdom. Earthly
+     state has never reached a prouder pinnacle than when Napoleon,
+     in June 1812, gathered his army at Dresden--that mighty host,
+     unequalled in all time, of 450,000, not men merely, but
+     effective soldiers, and there received the homage of subject
+     kings. And now, what was the principal adversary of this
+     tremendous power? by whom was it checked, and resisted, and put
+     down? By none, and by nothing, but the direct and manifest
+     interposition of God. I know of no language so well fitted to
+     describe that victorious advance to Moscow, and the utter
+     humiliation of the retreat, as the language of the prophet with
+     respect to the advance and subsequent destruction of the host
+     of Sennacherib. 'When they arose early in the morning, behold
+     they were all dead corpses,' applies almost literally to that
+     memorable night of frost, in which twenty thousand horses
+     perished, and the strength of the French army was utterly
+     broken. Human instruments, no doubt, were employed in the
+     remainder of the work; nor would I deny to Germany and to
+     Prussia the glories of the year 1813, nor to England the honour
+     of her victories in Spain, or of the crowning victory of
+     Waterloo. But at the distance of thirty years, those who lived
+     in the time of danger and remember its magnitude, and now
+     calmly review what there was in human strength to avert it,
+     must acknowledge, I think, beyond all controversy, that the
+     deliverance of Europe from the dominion of Napoleon was
+     effected neither by Russia, nor by Germany, nor by England, but
+     by the hand of God alone."
+
+The question, whether some races of men possess an inherent superiority
+over others, is mooted by Dr Arnold, in his dissertation on military
+science. Without laying down any universal rule, it may be stated that
+such a superiority can be predicated of no European nation. Frederick
+the Great defeated the French at Rosbach, as easily as Napoleon overcame
+the Prussians at Jena. If Marlborough was uniformly successful, William
+III. was always beaten by Luxembourg, and the Duke of Cumberland by
+D'Etrées and Saxe. It seems, therefore, a fair inference, that no
+civilized European nation possesses over its neighbours that degree of
+superiority which greater genius in the general, or greater discipline
+in the troops of its antagonists, will not be sufficient to counteract.
+The defeat of the Vendéans in France, by the soldiers of the garrison of
+Mentz; and the admirable conduct of our own Sepoys under British
+generals, are, no doubt, strong instances to show the prodigious
+importance of systematic discipline. Still, we cannot quite coincide
+with Dr Arnold's opinion on this subject. We are quite ready to
+admit--who, indeed, for a moment would deny?--in military as well as in
+all other subjects, the value of professional attainments and long
+experience. We cannot, however, consider them superior to those great
+qualities of our nature which discipline may regulate and embellish, but
+which it can never destroy or supersede. As every man is bound to form
+his own opinion on religious matters, though he may not be a priest,
+every man is obliged to defend his country when invaded, though he may
+not be a soldier. Nor can the miseries which such a state of things
+involves, furnish any argument against its necessity. All war must be
+attended with misfortunes, which freeze the blood and make the soul sick
+in their contemplation; but these very misfortunes deter those who wield
+the reins of empire from appealing wantonly to its determination. The
+resistance of Saragossa was not the less glorious, it does not the less
+fire the heart of every reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
+because it was not conducted according to the strict forms of military
+tactics, because citizens and even women participated in its fame. The
+inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish nation for its oppressor--which
+wore down the French armies, which no severities, no violence, no
+defeat, could subdue--will be, as long as time shall last, a terrible
+lesson to ambitious conquerors. They will learn that there is in the
+fury of an insulted nation a danger which the most exquisite military
+combinations cannot remove, which the most perfectly served artillery
+cannot sweep away, before which all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
+lines of fortification in the world are useless--and compared with which
+the science of the commander is pedantry, and strategy but a word. They
+will discover that something more than mechanical power, however
+great--something more than the skill of the practised officer, or the
+instinct of well-trained soldiers, are requisite for success--where
+every plain is a Marathon, and every valley a Thermopylæ.
+
+Would to God that the same reproach urged against the Spanish
+nation--that they defended their native soil irregularly--that they
+fought like freemen rather than like soldiers--that they transgressed
+the rules of war by defending one side of a street while the artillery
+of the enemy, with its thousand mouths, was pouring death upon them from
+the other--that they struggled too long, that they surrendered too late,
+that they died too readily, could have been applied to Poland--one
+fearful instance of success would have been wanting to encourage the
+designs of despotism!
+
+Some of the rights of war are next considered--that of sacking a town
+taken by assault, and of blockading a town defended, not by the
+inhabitants, but by a military garrison--are next examined;--in both
+these cases the penalty falls upon the innocent. The Homeric description
+of a town taken by assault, is still applicable to modern warfare:--
+
+     [Greek: andras men kteinoysi, polin de te pyr amathynei
+             tekna de t' alloi agoysi, bathyzônoys te gynaikas.]
+
+The unhappy fate of Genoa is thus beautifully related--
+
+     "Some of you, I doubt not, remember Genoa; you have seen that
+     queenly city with its streets of palaces, rising tier above
+     tier from the water, girdling with the long lines of its bright
+     white houses the vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of which
+     is marked by a huge natural mole of rock, crowned by its
+     magnificent lighthouse tower. You remember how its white houses
+     rose out of a mass of fig and olive and orange trees, the glory
+     of its old patrician luxury. You may have observed the
+     mountains, behind the town, spotted at intervals by small
+     circular low towers; one of which is distinctly conspicuous
+     where the ridge of the hills rises to its summit, and hides
+     from view all the country behind it. Those towers are the forts
+     of the famous lines, which, curiously resembling in shape the
+     later Syracusan walls enclosing Epipalæ, converge inland from
+     the eastern and western extremities of the city, looking
+     down--the western line on the valley of the Polcevera, the
+     eastern, on that of the Bisagno--till they meet, as I have
+     said, on the summit of the mountains, where the hills cease to
+     rise from the sea, and become more or less of a table land,
+     running off towards the interior, at the distance, as well as I
+     remember, of between two and three miles from the outside of
+     the city. Thus a very large open space is enclosed within the
+     lines, and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming a vast
+     intrenched camp, holding not so much a garrison as an army. In
+     the autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven the French out of
+     Lombardy and Piedmont; their last victory of Fossano or Genola
+     had won the fortress of Coni or Cunco, close under the Alps,
+     and at the very extremity of the plain of the Po; the French
+     clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa--the
+     narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea, which
+     extends from the frontiers of France almost to the mouth of the
+     Arno. Hither the remains of the French force were collected,
+     commanded by General Massena; and the point of chief importance
+     to his defence was the city of Genoa. Napoleon had just
+     returned from Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could
+     not be expected to take the field till the following spring,
+     and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from
+     without--every thing was to depend on his own pertinacity. The
+     strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a
+     position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the
+     population of a great city, held out to the enemy a hope of
+     reducing it by famine; and as Genoa derives most of its
+     supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British naval
+     commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance of
+     his naval force to the Austrians; and, by the vigilance of his
+     cruizers, the whole coasting trade right and left along the
+     Riviera, was effectually cut off. It is not at once that the
+     inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the daily sight of
+     well-stored shops and an abundant market, begin to realize the
+     idea of scarcity; or that the wealthy classes of society, who
+     have never known any other state than one of abundance and
+     luxury, begin seriously to conceive of famine. But the shops
+     were emptied; and the storehouses began to be drawn upon; and
+     no fresh supply, or hope of supply, appeared.
+
+     "Winter passed away and spring returned, so early and so
+     beautiful on that garden-like coast, sheltered as it is from
+     the north winds by its belts of mountains, and open to the full
+     rays of the southern sun. Spring returned and clothed the
+     hill-sides within the lines with its fresh verdure. But that
+     verdure was no longer the mere delight of the careless eye of
+     luxury, refreshing the citizens by its liveliness and softness,
+     when they rode or walked up thither from the city to enjoy the
+     surpassing beauty of the prospect. The green hill-sides were
+     now visited for a very different object; ladies of the highest
+     rank might be seen cutting up every plant which it was possible
+     to turn to food, and bearing home the common weeds of our
+     road-sides as a most precious treasure. The French general
+     pitied the distresses of the people; but the lives and strength
+     of his garrison seemed to him more important than the lives of
+     the Genoese, and such provisions as remained were reserved, in
+     the first place, for the French army. Scarcity became utter
+     want, and want became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of
+     that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of
+     its humblest poor, death was busy; not the momentary death of
+     battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but the
+     lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants died
+     before their parents' eyes, husbands and wives lay down to
+     expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825, told me,
+     that his father and two of his brothers had been starved to
+     death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the month of
+     June, when Napoleon had already descended from the Alps into
+     the plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable, and
+     Massena surrendered. But before he did so, twenty thousand
+     innocent persons, old and young, women and children, had died
+     by the most horrible of deaths which humanity can endure. Other
+     horrors which occurred besides during this blockade, I pass
+     over; the agonizing death of twenty thousand innocent and
+     helpless persons requires nothing to be added to it.
+
+     "Now, is it right that such a tragedy as this should take
+     place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify
+     the authors of it? Conceive having been an officer in Lord
+     Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed in stopping
+     the food which was being brought for the relief of such misery.
+     For the thing was done deliberately; the helplessness of the
+     Genoese was known; their distress was known; it was known that
+     they could not force Massena to surrender; it was known that
+     they were dying daily by hundreds, yet week after week, and
+     month after month, did the British ships of war keep their iron
+     watch along all the coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any
+     article of provision could escape their vigilance. One cannot
+     but be thankful that Nelson was spared from commanding at this
+     horrible blockade of Genoa.
+
+     "Now, on which side the law of nations should throw the guilt
+     of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence,
+     or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that
+     the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless
+     persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the
+     parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest
+     course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be
+     allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who
+     should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same
+     light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to
+     be in the habit of butchering women and children. For it is not
+     true that war only looks to the speediest and most effectual
+     way of attaining its object; so that, as the letting the
+     inhabitants go out would enable the garrison to maintain the
+     town longer, the laws of war authorize the keeping them in and
+     starving them. Poisoning wells might be a still quicker method
+     of reducing a place; but do the laws of war therefore sanction
+     it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to be placing the
+     guilt of the individuals concerned in the two cases which I am
+     going to compare, on an equal footing; it would be most unjust
+     to do so--for in the one case they acted, as they supposed,
+     according to a law which made what they did their duty. But,
+     take the cases themselves, and examine them in all their
+     circumstances; the degree of suffering inflicted--the innocence
+     and helplessness of the sufferers--the interests at stake--and
+     the possibility of otherwise securing them; and if any man can
+     defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the
+     inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the
+     lawfulness of the massacres of September."
+
+We rejoice to find that the great authority of Colonel W. Napier--an
+authority of which posterity will know the value--is arrayed on the side
+of those who think that war, the best school, as after all it must often
+be, of some of our noblest virtues, need not be always the cause of
+such atrocities.
+
+This enquiry shows us how the centre of external movement in Europe has
+varied; but it is not merely to the territorial struggle that our
+attention should be confined--mighty principles, Christian truth, civil
+freedom, were often partially at issue on one side, or on the other, in
+the different contests which the gold and steel of Europe were set in
+motion to determine; hence the necessity of considering not only the
+moral power, but the economical and military strength of the respective
+countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an
+encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is
+beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were
+brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned,
+not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was
+accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated
+to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land,
+besides the support of its owner and the actual demands of the State, is
+encumbered with the support of two or three persons who represent the
+creditors of the nation; and every man who would have laboured twelve
+hours, had no national debt existed, is now obliged to toil sixteen for
+the same remuneration: such a state of things may be necessary, but it
+certainly requires investigation.
+
+Other parts of the law of nations, the maritime law especially, require
+improvement. Superficial men are apt to overlook the transcendent
+importance of error on these subjects by which desolation may be spread
+from one quarter of the globe to the other. As no man can bear long the
+unanimous disapprobation of his fellows, no nation can long set at
+defiance the voice of a civilized world. But we return to history in
+military operations. A good map is essential to this study. For
+instance, to understand the wars of Frederick the Great, it is not
+enough to know that he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen, and
+Cunersdorf--that he was victorious at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf, and
+Prague--that he was opposed by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff--we must
+also comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions with regard to
+those of the allies--the importance of Saxony as covering Prussia on the
+side of Austria--the importance of Silesia as running into the Austrian
+frontier, and flanking a large part of Bohemia, should also be
+considered--this will alone enable us to account for Frederick's attack
+on Saxony, and his pertinacity in keeping possession of Silesia; nor
+should it be forgotten, that the military positions of one generation
+are not always those of the next, and that the military history of one
+period will be almost unintelligible, if judged according to the roads
+and fortresses of another. For instance, St Dizier in Champagne, which
+arrested Charles the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly
+untenable--Turin, so celebrated for the sieges it has sustained, is an
+open town, while Alexandria is the great Piedmontese fortress. The
+addition of Paris to the list of French strongholds, is, if really
+intended, a greater change than any that has been enumerated. This
+discussion leads to an allusion to mountain warfare, which has been
+termed the poetry of the military art, and of which the struggle in
+Switzerland in 1799, when the eastern part of that country was turned
+into a vast citadel, defended by the French against Suwaroff, is a most
+remarkable instance, as well as the most recent. The history by General
+Mathieu Dumas of the campaign in 1799 and 1800, is referred to as
+containing a good account and explanation of this branch of military
+science.
+
+The internal history of Europe during the three hundred and forty years
+which have elapsed since the middle ages, is the subject now proposed
+for our consideration. To the question--What was the external object of
+Europe during any part of this period? the answer is obvious, that it
+was engaged in resisting the aggression of Spain, or France, or Austria.
+But if we carry our view to the moral world, do we find any principle
+equally obvious, and a solution as satisfactory? By no means. We may,
+indeed, say, with apparent precision, that during the earliest part of
+this epoch, Europe was divided between the champions and antagonists of
+religion, as, during its latter portion, it was between the enemies and
+supporters of political reformation. But a deeper analysis will show us
+that these names were but the badges of ideas, always complex, sometimes
+contradictory--the war-cry of contending parties, by whom the reality
+was now forgotten, or to whom, compared with other purposes, it was
+altogether subordinate.
+
+Take, for instance, the exercise of political power. Is a state free in
+proportion to the number of its subjects who are admitted to rank among
+its citizens, or to the degree in which its recognised citizens are
+invested with political authority? In the latter point of view, the
+government of Athens was the freest the world has ever seen. In the
+former it was a most exclusive and jealous oligarchy. "For a city to be
+well governed," says Aristotle in his Politics, "those who share in its
+government must be free from the care of providing for their own
+support. This," he adds, "is an admitted truth."
+
+Again, the attentive reader can hardly fail to see that, in the struggle
+between Pompey and Cæsar, Cæsar represented the popular as Pompey did
+the aristocratical party, and that Pompey's triumph would have been
+attended, as Cicero clearly saw, by the domination of an aristocracy in
+the shape most oppressive and intolerable. The government of Rome, after
+several desperate struggles, had degenerated into the most corrupt
+oligarchy, in which all the eloquence of Cicero was unable to kindle the
+faintest gleam of public virtue. Owing to the success of Cæsar, the
+civilized world exchanged the dominion of several tyrants for that of
+one, and the opposition to his design was the resistance of the few to
+the many.
+
+Or we may take another view of the subject. By freedom do we mean the
+absence of all restraint in private life, the non-interference by the
+state in the details of ordinary intercourse? According to such a view,
+the old government of Venice and the present government of Austria,
+where debauchery is more than tolerated, would be freer than the Puritan
+commonwealths in North America, where dramatic representations were
+prohibited as impious, and death was the legal punishment of
+fornication.
+
+These are specimens of the difficulties by which we are beset, when we
+endeavour to obtain an exact and faithful image from the troubled medium
+through which human affairs are reflected to us. Dr Arnold dwells on
+this point with his usual felicity of language and illustration.
+
+     "This inattention to altered circumstances, which would make us
+     be Guelfs in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, because
+     the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or twelfth, is a
+     fault of most universal application in all political questions,
+     and is often most seriously mischievous. It is deeply seated in
+     human nature, being, in fact, no other than an exemplification
+     of the force of habit. It is like the case of a settler,
+     landing in a country overrun with wood and undrained, and
+     visited therefore by excessive falls of rain. The evil of wet,
+     and damp, and closeness, is besetting him on every side; he
+     clears away the woods, and he drains his land, and he, by doing
+     so, mends both his climate and his own condition. Encouraged by
+     his success, he perseveres in his system; clearing a country is
+     with him synonymous with making it fertile and habitable; and
+     he levels, or rather sets fire to, his forests without mercy.
+     Meanwhile, the tide is turned without his observing it; he has
+     already cleared enough, and every additional clearance is a
+     mischief; damp and wet are no longer the evil most to be
+     dreaded, but excessive drought. The rains do not fall in
+     sufficient quantity; the springs become low, the rivers become
+     less and less fitted for navigation. Yet habit blinds him for a
+     long while to the real state of the case; and he continues to
+     encourage a coming mischief in his dread of one that is become
+     obsolete. We have been long making progress on our present
+     tack; yet if we do not go about now, we shall run ashore.
+     Consider the popular feeling at this moment against capital
+     punishment; what is it but continuing to burn the woods, when
+     the country actually wants shade and moisture? Year after year,
+     men talked of the severity of the penal code, and struggled
+     against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and stronger,
+     and at last effected all, and more than all, which it had at
+     first vainly demanded; yet still, from mere habit, it pursues
+     its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, but
+     to the injury of innocence and the encouragement of crime, and
+     encouraging that worse evil--a sympathy with wickedness justly
+     punished rather than with the law, whether of God or man,
+     unjustly violated. So men have continued to cry out against the
+     power of the Crown after the Crown had been shackled hand and
+     foot; and to express the greatest dread of popular violence
+     long after that violence was exhausted, and the anti-popular
+     party was not only rallied, but had turned the tide of battle,
+     and was victoriously pressing upon its enemy."
+
+The view which Dr Arnold gives of the parties in England during the
+sixteenth century--that great epoch of English genius--is remarkable for
+its candour and moderation. He considers the distinctions which then
+prevailed in England as political rather than religious, "inasmuch as
+they disputed about points of church government, without any reference
+to a supposed priesthood; and because even those who maintained that one
+or another form was to be preferred, because it was of divine
+appointment, were influenced in their interpretation of the doubtful
+language of the Scriptures by their own strong persuasion of what that
+language could not but mean to say."
+
+And he then concludes by the unanswerable remark, that in England,
+according to the theory of the constitution during the sixteenth
+century, church and state were one. The proofs of this proposition are
+innumerable--not merely the act by which the supremacy was conferred on
+Henry VIII.--not merely the powers, almost unlimited, in matters
+ecclesiastical, delegated to the king's vicegerent, that vicegerent
+being a layman--not merely the communion established by the sole
+authority of Edward VI.--without the least participation in it by any
+bishop or clergyman; but the still more conclusive argument furnished by
+the fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline, or ritual of our
+church, was established except by the power of Parliament, and the power
+of Parliament alone--nay, more, that they were established in direct
+defiance of the implacable opposition of the bishops, by whom, being
+then Roman Catholics, the English Church, on the accession of Elizabeth,
+was represented--to which the omission of the names of the Lords
+Spiritual in the Act of Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the
+"Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in
+Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and
+unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr
+Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions
+concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a
+few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious
+men, to propagate, and which would lead, by a direct and logical
+process, to the complete overthrow of Protestant faith and worship.
+Such, then, being the state of things "recognized on all hands, church
+government was no light matter, but one which essentially involved in it
+the government of the state; and the disputing the Queen's supremacy,
+was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important portions of
+her sovereignty, and committing half of the government of the nation to
+other hands."
+
+At the accession of Henry VIII., the most profound tranquillity
+prevailed over England. The last embers of those factions by which,
+during his father's reign, the peace of the nation had been disturbed
+rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of
+that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in
+England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the
+wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation.
+The parties of York and Lancaster were no more--the Episcopal and
+Puritan factions were not yet in being--every day diminished the
+influence of the nobles--the strength of the Commons was in its
+infancy--the Crown alone remained, strong in its own prerogative,
+stronger still in the want of all competitors. Crime after crime was
+committed by the savage tyrant who inherited it; he was
+ostentatious--the treasures of the nation were lavished at his feet; he
+was vindictive--the blood of the wise, the noble, and the beautiful, was
+shed, like water, to gratify his resentment; he was rapacious--the
+accumulations of ancient piety were surrendered to glut his avarice; he
+was arbitrary--and his proclamations were made equivalent to acts of
+Parliament; he was fickle--and the religion of the nation was changed to
+gratify his lust. To all this the English people submitted, as to some
+divine infliction, in silence and consternation--the purses, lives,
+liberties, and consciences of his people were, for a time, at his
+disposal. During the times of his son and his eldest daughter, the
+general aspect of affairs was the same. But, though the hurricane of
+royal caprice and bigotry swept over the land, seemingly without
+resistance, the sublime truths which were the daily subject of
+controversy, and the solid studies with which the age was conversant,
+penetrated into every corner of the land, and were incorporated with the
+very being of the nation. Then, as the mist of doubt and persecution
+which had covered Mary's throne cleared away, the intellect of England,
+in all its health, and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed in the men
+and women of the Elizabethan age:--
+
+     "To say," observes Dr Arnold, "that the Puritans were wanting
+     in humility because they did not acquiesce in the state of
+     things which they found around them, is a mere extravagance,
+     arising out of a total misapprehension of the nature of
+     humility, and of the merits of the feeling of veneration. All
+     earnestness and depth of character is incompatible with such a
+     notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with some great
+     truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey it, cannot listen to
+     every one who may be indifferent to it, or opposed to it. There
+     is a voice to which he already owes obedience, which he serves
+     with the humblest devotion, which he worships with the most
+     intense veneration. It is not that such feelings are dead in
+     him, but that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are
+     claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question
+     of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship
+     may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his
+     opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown
+     that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may be justly
+     taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the
+     very notion of an earnest character; for its earnestness
+     consists in its devotion to some one object, as opposed to a
+     proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be meant that
+     reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects of
+     veneration we have the better is our character, this is to
+     confound the essential difference between veneration and love.
+     The excellence of love is its universality; we are told that
+     even the highest object of all cannot be loved if inferior
+     objects are hated."
+
+Opinions, in the meanwhile, not very favourable to established authority
+in the state, and marked by a rooted antipathy to ecclesiastical
+pretensions, were rapidly gaining proselytes in the nation, and even at
+the court. But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth, and, still more,
+the great veneration and esteem for that magnanimous princess, which
+were for many years the ruling principle--we might almost say, the
+darling passion--of Englishmen, enabled her to keep at bay the dangerous
+animosities which her miserable successor had neither dexterity to
+conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In his time the cravings, moral and
+intellectual, of the English nation discovered themselves in forms not
+to be mistaken--some more, some less formidable to established
+government; but all announcing that the time was come when concession to
+them was inevitable. No matter whether it was the Puritan who complained
+of the rags of popery, or the judge who questioned the prerogative of
+the sovereign, or the patriot who bewailed the profligate expenditure of
+James's polluted court, or the pamphleteer whom one of our dramatists
+has described so admirably, or the hoarse murmur of the crowd execrating
+the pusillanimous murder of Raleigh--whosesoever the voice might be,
+whatever shape it might assume, petition, controversy, remonstrance,
+address, impeachment, libel, menace, insurrection, the language it spoke
+was uniform and unequivocal; it demanded for the people a share in the
+administration of their government, civil and ecclesiastical--it
+expressed their determination to make the House of Commons a reality.
+
+The observations that follow are fraught with the most profound wisdom,
+and afford an admirable exemplification of the manner in which history
+should be read by those who wish to find in it something more than a
+mere register of facts and anecdotes:--
+
+     "Under these circumstances there were now working together in
+     the same party many principles which, as we have seen, are
+     sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance the popular
+     principle, that the influence of many should not be overborne
+     by that of one, was working side by side with the principle of
+     movement, or the desire of carrying on the work of the
+     Reformation to the furthest possible point, and not only the
+     desire of completing the Reformation, but that of shaking off
+     the manifold evils of the existing state of things, both
+     political and moral. Yet it is remarkable that the spirit of
+     intellectual movement stood as it were hesitating which party
+     it ought to join: and as the contest went on, it seemed rather
+     to incline to that party which was most opposed to the
+     political movement. This is a point in the state of English
+     party in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing,
+     and we must endeavour to comprehend it.
+
+     "We might think, _a priori_, that the spirit of political, and
+     that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go
+     on together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But the
+     Spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two in
+     this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of
+     mankind have little sympathy. Political benefits all men can
+     appreciate; and all good men, and a great many more than we
+     might well dare to call good, can appreciate also the value,
+     not of all, but of some religious truth which to them may seem
+     all: the way to obtain God's favour and to worship Him aright,
+     is a thing which great bodies of men can value, and be moved to
+     the most determined efforts if they fancy that they are
+     hindered from attaining to it. But intellectual movement in
+     itself is a thing which few care for. Political truth may be
+     dear to them, so far as it effects their common well-being; and
+     religious truth so far as they may think it their duty to learn
+     it; but truth abstractedly, and because it is truth, which is
+     the object, I suppose, of the pure intellect, is to the mass of
+     mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the workings of the intellect
+     come even to be regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we have
+     got, we say, what we want, and we are well contented with it;
+     why should we be kept in perpetual restlessness, because you
+     are searching after some new truths which, when found, will
+     compel us to derange the state of our minds in order to make
+     room for them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and
+     hated Socrates; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew that
+     Cleon's partizans, no less than his own aristocratical friends,
+     would sympathize with his satire when directed against the
+     philosophers. But if this hold in political matters, much more
+     does it hold religiously. The two great parties of the
+     Christian world have each their own standard of truth, by which
+     they try all things: Scripture on the one hand, the voice of
+     the church on the other. To both, therefore, the pure
+     intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, but they dislike
+     it. It will question what they will not allow to be questioned;
+     it may arrive at conclusions which they would regard as
+     impious. And, therefore, in an age of religious movement
+     particularly, the spirit of intellectual movement soon finds
+     itself proscribed rather than countenanced."
+
+In the extract which follows, the pure and tender morality of the
+sentiment vies with the atmosphere of fine writing that invests it. The
+passage is one which Plato might have envied, and which we should
+imagine the most hardened and successful of our modern apostates cannot
+read without some feeling like contrition and remorse. Fortunate indeed
+were the youth trained to virtue by such a monitor, and still more
+fortunate the country where such a duty was confided to such a man:--
+
+     "I have tried to analyze the popular party: I must now
+     endeavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of
+     course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly at different
+     times; when it is in the ascendant, its vilest elements are
+     sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,--just men, wise men,
+     noble-minded men,--then refuse to take part with it. But when
+     it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to imitate its
+     practices, then again many of the best and noblest spirits
+     return to it, and share its defeat though they abhorred its
+     victory. We must distinguish, therefore, very widely, between
+     the anti-popular party in 1640, before the Long Parliament met,
+     and the same party a few years, or even a few months,
+     afterwards. Now, taking the best specimens of this party in its
+     best state, we can scarcely admire them too highly. A man who
+     leaves the popular cause when it is triumphant, and joins the
+     party opposed to it, without really changing his principles and
+     becoming a renegade, is one of the noblest characters in
+     history. He may not have the clearest judgment, or the firmest
+     wisdom; he may have been mistaken, but, as far as he is
+     concerned personally, we cannot but admire him. But such a man
+     changes his party not to conquer but to die. He does not allow
+     the caresses of his new friends to make him forget that he is a
+     sojourner with them, and not a citizen: his old friends may
+     have used him ill, they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly:
+     still their faults, though they may have driven him into exile,
+     cannot banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is
+     his true home: that their cause is habitually just and
+     habitually the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray
+     by an unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly
+     against their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather
+     than in their company; but die he must, for there is no place
+     left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is
+     obliged to leave the country of his affections, and life
+     elsewhere is intolerable. This man is no renegade, no apostate,
+     but the purest of martyrs: for what testimony to truth can be
+     so pure as that which is given uncheered by any sympathy; given
+     not against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing
+     enemies. And such a martyr was Falkland!
+
+     "Others who fall off from a popular party in its triumph, are
+     of a different character; ambitious men, who think that they
+     become necessary to their opponents and who crave the glory of
+     being able to undo their own work as easily as they had done
+     it: passionate men, who, quarrelling with their old associates
+     on some personal question, join the adversary in search of
+     revenge; vain men, who think their place unequal to their
+     merits, and hope to gain a higher on the opposite side: timid
+     men, who are frightened as it were at the noise of their own
+     guns, and the stir of actual battle--who had liked to dally
+     with popular principles in the parade service of debating or
+     writing in quiet times, but who shrink alarmed when both sides
+     are become thoroughly in earnest: and again, quiet and honest
+     men, who never having fully comprehended the general principles
+     at issue, and judging only by what they see before them, are
+     shocked at the violence of their party, and think that the
+     opposite party is now become innocent and just, because it is
+     now suffering wrong rather than doing it. Lastly, men who
+     rightly understand that good government is the result of
+     popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather
+     than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim, therefore, is
+     to prevent either from going too far, and to throw their weight
+     into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful, up to the
+     moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war,
+     and the question is--which shall conquer? For no man can
+     pretend to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the
+     arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves:
+     and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the
+     whole the best, or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one
+     must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party
+     so crushed should be the worse."
+
+Dr Arnold--rightly, we hope--assumes, that in lectures addressed to
+Englishmen and Protestants, it is unnecessary to vindicate the
+principles of the Revolution; it would, indeed, be an affront to any
+class of educated Protestant freemen, to argue that our present
+constitution was better than a feudal monarchy, or the religion of
+Tillotson superior to that of Laud--in his own words, "whether the
+doctrine and discipline of our Protestant Church of England, be not
+better and truer than that of Rome." He therefore supposes the
+Revolution complete, the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act already
+passed, the authority of King William recognized in England and in
+Scotland, while in Ireland the party of King James was still
+predominant. He then bids us consider the character and object of the
+parties by which Great Britain was then divided; on the side of the
+Revolution were enlisted the great families of our aristocracy, and the
+bulk of the middle classes. The faction of James included the great mass
+of country gentlemen, the lower orders, and, (after the first dread of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed away,) except in a very few
+instances, the parochial and teaching clergy; civil and religious
+liberty was the motto of one party--hereditary right and passive
+obedience, of the other. As the Revolution had been bloodless, it might
+have been supposed that its reward would have been secure, and that our
+great deliverer would have been allowed to pursue his schemes for the
+liberty of Europe, if not without opposition, at least without
+hostility. But the old Royalist party had been surprised and confounded,
+not broken or altogether overcome. They rallied--some from pure, others
+from selfish and sordid motives--under the banner to which they had been
+so long accustomed; and, though ultimately baffled, they were able to
+place in jeopardy, and in some measure to fling away the advantages
+which the blood and treasure of England had been prodigally lavished to
+obtain.
+
+The conquest of Ireland was followed by that terrible code against the
+Catholics, the last remnant of which is now obliterated from our
+statute-book. It is singular that this savage proscription should have
+been the work of the party at whose head stood the champion of
+toleration. The account which Mr Burke has given of it, and for the
+accuracy of which he appeals to Bishop Burnet, does not entirely
+coincide with the view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke says--
+
+     "A party in this nation, enemies to the system of the
+     Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King
+     William. They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy to
+     all persecution. They knew that he came to free us from slavery
+     and Popery, out of a country where a third of the people are
+     contented Catholics, under a Protestant government. He came,
+     with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to
+     overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a
+     tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty served in every way,
+     and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own principles.
+     Whilst freedom is true to itself, every thing becomes subject
+     to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its hands.
+
+     "The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage
+     the best friends of their country) resolved to make the King
+     either violate his principles of toleration, or incur the odium
+     of protecting Papists. They, therefore, brought in this bill,
+     and made it purposely wicked and absurd, that it might be
+     rejected. The then court-party discovering their game, turned
+     the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed
+     with still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon
+     its original authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back
+     to them, kicked it back again to their adversaries. And thus
+     this act, loaded with the double injustice of two parties,
+     neither of whom intended to pass what they hoped the other
+     would be persuaded to reject, went through the legislature,
+     contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the
+     parties that composed it. In this manner these insolent and
+     profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and
+     counters, made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of
+     their fellow-creatures. Other acts of persecution have been
+     acts of malice. This was a subversion of justice from
+     wantonness."
+
+Whether Dr Arnold's theory be applicable or not to this particular case,
+it furnishes but too just a solution of Irish misgovernment in general.
+It is, that excessive severity toward conquered rebels, is by no means
+inconsistent with the principles of free government, or even with the
+triumph of a democracy. The truth of this fact is extorted from us by
+all history, and may be accounted for first, by the circumstance, that
+large bodies of men are less affected than individuals, by the feelings
+of shame and a sense of responsibility; and, secondly, that conduct the
+most selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion of which would be enough
+to brand an individual with everlasting infamy, assumes, when adopted by
+popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike wisdom and patriotic
+inflexibility. The main cause of the difference with which the lower
+orders in France and England regarded the Revolution in their respective
+countries, is to be found in the different nature of the evils which
+they were intended to remove. The English Revolution was merely
+political--the French was social also; the benefits of the Bill of
+Rights, great and inestimable as they were, were such as demanded some
+knowledge and reflection to appreciate--they did not come home directly
+to the business and bosom of the peasant; it was only in rare and great
+emergencies that he could become sensible of the rights they gave, or of
+the means of oppression they took away: while the time-honoured
+dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells were menaced and assailed,
+nothing but the most senseless tyranny could render the cottage
+insecure; but the abolition of the seignorial rights in France, free
+communication between her provinces, equal taxation, impartial
+justice--these were blessings which it required no economist to
+illustrate, and no philosopher to explain. Every labourer in France,
+whose sweat had flowed for the benefit of others, whose goods had been
+seized by the exactors of the Taille and the Gabelle,[1] the fruits of
+whose soil had been wasted because he was not allowed to sell them at
+the neighbouring market, whose domestic happiness had been polluted, or
+whose self-respect had been lowered by injuries and insults, all
+retribution for which was hopeless, might well be expected to value
+these advantages more than life itself. But when the principles of the
+Revolution were triumphant, and the House of Brunswick finally seated on
+the throne of this country, it remains to be seen what were, during the
+eighteenth century, the fruits of this great and lasting victory. The
+answer is a melancholy one. Content with what had been achieved, the
+nation seems at once to have abandoned all idea of any further moral or
+intellectual progress. In private life the grossest ignorance and
+debauchery were written upon our social habits, in the broadest and most
+legible characters. In public life, we see chicanery in the law, apathy
+in the Church, corruption in Parliament, brutality on the seat of
+justice; trade burdened with a great variety of capricious restrictions;
+the punishment of death multiplied with the most shocking indifference;
+the state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment--which might be, and
+in those days often was, the lot of the most innocent of mankind--became
+in itself a tremendous punishment; the press virtually shackled;
+education every where wanted, and no where to be found.
+
+     [1] "_Taille and the Gabelle_." Sully thus describes these
+     fertile sources of crime and misery:--"Taille, source
+     principale d'abus et de vexations de toute espèce, sans sa
+     repartition et sa perception. Il est bien à souhaiter, mais pas
+     à espérer, qu'on change un jour en entier le fond de cette
+     partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau avec la
+     Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouvé de si _bizarrement
+     tyrannique_ que de faire acheter à un particulier, plus de sel
+     qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de lui défendre
+     encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop."
+
+The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and
+even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the
+common welfare, by the representatives of a free people. Turn to any of
+the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of
+Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the
+melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the
+delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the
+present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten
+me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and
+sordid violence. Throughout the volumes of these great writers, the
+features perpetually recur of insolence, corruption, violence, and
+debauchery in the one class, and of servility and cunning in the other.
+It is impossible for the worst quality of an aristocracy--nominally, to
+be sure, subject to the restraint of the law, but practically, almost
+wholly exempt from its operation--to be more clearly and more fearfully
+represented. The South Sea scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the
+disgraceful expeditions on the coast of France; the conduct of Lord
+George Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt on Carthagena, the
+loss of Minorca, the convention of Closterseven, the insecurity of the
+high-roads, nay, of the public streets in the metropolis itself, all
+serve to show the deplorable condition into which the nation was fast
+sinking, abroad and at home, when the "Great Commoner" once more aroused
+its energies, concentrated its strength, and carried it to a higher
+pinnacle of glory than it has ever been the lot even of Great Britain to
+attain. Yet this effect was transient--the progress of corruption was
+checked, but the disease still lurked in the heart, and tainted the
+life-blood of the community. The orgies of Medmenham Abbey, the triumphs
+of Wilkes, and the loss of America, bear fatal testimony to the want of
+decency and disregard of merit in private as well as public life which
+infected Great Britain, polluting the sources of her domestic virtues,
+and bringing disgrace upon her arms and councils during the greater part
+of the eighteenth century. It is with a masterly review of this period
+of our history that Dr Arnold closes his analysis of the three last
+centuries. His remaining lecture is dedicated to the examination of
+historical evidence--a subject on which it is not our present intention
+to offer any commentary.
+
+To trace effects to their causes, is the object of all science; and by
+this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any
+particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in
+reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human
+actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as
+that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth,
+though the connexion between cause and effect is not equally
+discernible. The depression of the nobles and the rise of the commons in
+England, after the statutes of alienation, were the result of causes as
+infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and
+the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is
+heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more
+questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely
+dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to those of
+yesterday, and those of to-morrow will be bound to those of to-day, no
+less certainly than the harvest of the present year springs from the
+grain which is the produce of former harvests. When by a severe and
+diligent analysis we have ascertained all the ingredients of any
+phenomenon, and have separated it from all that is foreign and
+adventitious, we know its true nature, and may deduce a general law from
+our experiment; for a general law is nothing more than an expression of
+the effect produced by the same cause operating under the same
+circumstances. In the reign of Louis XV., a Montmorency was convicted of
+an atrocious murder. He was punished by a short imprisonment in the
+Bastile. His servant and accomplice was, for the same offence at the
+same time, broken alive upon the wheel. Is the proposition, that the
+angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, more certain than
+the ruin of a system under which such a state of things was tolerated?
+How, then, does it come to pass, that the same people who cling to one
+set of truths reject the other with obstinate incredulity? Cicero shall
+account for it:--"Sensus nostros non parens, non nutrix, non poeta, non
+scena depravat; animis omnes tendentur insidiæ." The discoveries of
+physical science, in the present day at least, allow little scope to
+prejudice and inclination. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative,
+agree, that fire will burn and water suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so
+far as we know, has ventured to call in question the truths established
+by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political
+science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable
+hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and
+prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or
+stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river
+and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread--another vote that sixteen
+shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public
+credit--proceedings in no degree more reasonable than a denial that two
+and two make four, or using gunpowder instead of water to stop a
+conflagration. Again, in physical science, the chain which binds the
+cause to its effect is short, simple, and passes through no region of
+vapour and obscurity; in moral phenomena, it is long hidden and
+intertwined with the links of ten thousand other chains, which ramify
+and cross each other in a confusion which it requires no common patience
+and sagacity to unravel. Therefore it is that the lessons of history,
+dearly as they have been purchased, are forgotten and thrown
+away--therefore it is that nations sow in folly and reap in
+affliction--that thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed, and commerce
+fettered by vexatious restrictions, by those who live in one century,
+without enabling their descendants to become wiser or richer in the
+next. The death of Charles I. did not prevent the exile of James II.,
+and, in spite of the disasters of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted fortune
+too often and too long. It is not, then, by the mere knowledge of
+separate facts that history can contribute to our improvement or our
+happiness; it would then exchange the character of philosophy treated by
+examples, for that of sophistry misleading by empiricism. The more
+systematic the view of human events which it enables us to gain, the
+more nearly does it approach its real office, and entitle itself to the
+splendid panegyric of the Roman statesman--"Historia, testis temporum,
+lux veritatis, vita memoriæ, magistra vitæ, nuntia vetustatis."
+
+But while we insist upon the certainty of those truths which a calm
+examination of history confirms, and the sure operation of those general
+laws by which Providence in its wisdom has ordained that the affairs of
+this lower world shall be controlled--let it not be supposed that we for
+a moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes took such pains to inculcate
+upon his countrymen, that fortune in human affairs is for a time
+omnipotent. That fortune, which "erring men call chance," is the name
+which finite beings must apply to those secret and unknown causes which
+no human sagacity can penetrate or comprehend. What depends upon a few
+persons, observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed to chance; what arises from
+a great number, may often be accounted for by known and determinate
+causes; and he illustrates this position by the instance of a loaded
+die, the bias of which, however it may for a short time escape
+detection, will certainly in a great number of instances become
+predominant. The issue of a battle may be decided by a sunbeam or a
+cloud of dust. Had an heir been born to Charles II. of Spain--had the
+youthful son of Monsieur De Bouillé not fallen asleep when Louis XVI.
+entered Varennes--had Napoleon, on his return from Egypt, been stopped
+by an English cruizer--how different would have been the face of Europe.
+The _poco di piu_ and _poco di meno_ has, in such contingencies, an
+unbounded influence. The trade-winds are steady enough to furnish
+grounds for the most accurate calculation; but will any man in our
+climate venture to predict from what quarter, on any particular day, the
+wind may chance to blow?
+
+Therefore, in forming our judgment of human affairs, we must apply a
+"Lesbian rule," instead of one that is inflexible. Here it is that the
+line is drawn between science, and the wisdom which has for its object
+the administration of human affairs. The masters of science explore a
+multitude of phenomena to ascertain a single cause; the statesman and
+legislator, engaged in pursuits "hardliest reduced to axiom," examine a
+multitude of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon. The
+investigations, however, to which such questions lead, are singularly
+difficult, as they require an accurate analysis of the most complicated
+class of facts which can possibly engross our attention, and to the
+complete examination of which the faculties of any one man must be
+inadequate. The finest specimens of such enquiries which we possess are
+the works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu. The latter, indeed, may be
+called a great historian. He sought in every quarter for his account of
+those fundamental principles which are common to all governments, as
+well as of those peculiarities by which they are distinguished one from
+another. The analogy which reaches from the first dim gleam of civility
+to the last and consummate result of policy and intelligence, from the
+law of the Salian Franks to the Code Napoleon, it was reserved for him
+to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the
+expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a
+tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even
+monstrous--that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the
+same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's
+project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a
+magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, and will serve
+as a landmark to future enquirers when its puny critics are not known
+enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual
+observations, detached hints--from the principles concealed in the
+intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which
+barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany--from the
+manners of the polished Athenian, and from the usages of the wandering
+Tartar--from the rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions of refined
+society--a digest of luminous and coherent evidence, by which the
+condition of man, in the different stages of his social progress, is
+exemplified and ascertained. The loss of the History of Louis XI.--a
+work which he had projected, and of which he had traced the outline--is
+a disappointment which the reader of modern history can never enough
+deplore.
+
+The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable;
+that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate.
+What is universally true is alone necessarily true--the knowledge that
+rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains
+experience--the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who
+read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who
+knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new
+road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is
+the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of
+the "Cierge."
+
+    "Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie
+    Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la même envie;
+    Et nouvel Empédocle, aux flammes condamné
+        Par sa pure et propre folie,
+    Il se lança dédans--ce fût mal raisonné,
+    Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie."
+
+The mere chemist or mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the
+man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars,
+while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the
+philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the
+other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the
+realms of practice and experience.
+
+History teems with instances that--although the general course of the
+human mind is marked out, and each succeeding phasis in which it
+exhibits itself appears inevitable--the human race cannot be considered,
+as Vico and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to look upon it, as a mass
+without intelligence, traversing its orbit according to laws which it
+has no power to modify or control. On such an hypothesis, Wisdom and
+Folly, Justice and Injustice, would be the same, followed by the same
+consequences and subject to the same destiny--no certain laws
+establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions
+of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end; the
+feelings, faculties, and instincts of man would be useless in a world
+where the wise was always as the foolish, the just as the unjust, where
+calculation was impossible, and experience of no avail.
+
+Man is no doubt the instrument, but the unconscious instrument, of
+Providence; and for the end they propose to themselves, though not for
+the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are
+responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would
+be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent
+ravings, a disordered chaos of antagonist illusions--
+
+        ----"A tale
+    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
+    Signifying nothing."
+
+But on the contrary, it is in history that the lessons of morality are
+delivered with most effect. The priest may provoke our suspicion--the
+moralist may fail to work in us any practical conviction; but the
+lessons of history are not such as vanish in the fumes of unprofitable
+speculation, or which it is possible for us to mistrust, or to deride.
+Obscure as the dispensations of Providence often are, it sometimes, to
+use Lord Bacon's language--"pleases God, for the confutation of such as
+are without God in the world, to write them in such text and capital
+letters that he who runneth by may read it--that is, mere sensual
+persons which hasten by God's judgments, and never tend or fix their
+cogitations upon them, are nevertheless in their passage and race urged
+to discern it." In all historical writers, philosophical or trivial,
+sacred or profane, from the meagre accounts of the monkish chronicler,
+no less than from the pages stamped with all the indignant energy of
+Tacitus, gleams forth the light which, amid surrounding gloom and
+injustice, amid the apparent triumph of evil, discovers the influence of
+that power which the heathens personified as Nemesis. Her tread, indeed,
+is often noiseless--her form may be long invisible--but the moment at
+length arrives when the measure of forbearance is complete; the echoes
+of her step vibrate upon the ear, her form bursts upon the eye, and her
+victim--be it a savage tyrant, or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical
+church, or a corrupt nation--perishes.
+
+        "Come quei che va di notte,
+    Che porta il lume dietro, _e a se non giova,
+    Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte_."
+
+And as in daily life we rejoice to trace means directed to an end, and
+proofs of sagacity and instinct even among the lower tribes of animated
+nature, with how much greater delight do we seize the proofs vouchsafed
+to us in history of that eternal law, by which the affairs of the
+universe are governed? How much more do we rejoice to find that the
+order to which physical nature owes its existence and perpetuity, does
+not stop at the threshold of national life--that the moral world is not
+_fatherless_, and that man, formed to look before and after, is not
+abandoned to confusion and insecurity?
+
+Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history, comprising
+the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction--all the
+various shapes into which man has been cast--all the different scenes in
+which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his
+weakness, his folly and his wisdom, his virtues in their meridian
+height, his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation, are
+displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely
+diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price--a vast
+repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or
+so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so
+abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation
+so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and
+elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and
+sufferings, and genius, and experience, of our species have laboured for
+successive generations to accumulate and preserve. The fruit of their
+blood, of their labour, of their doubts, and their struggles, is before
+us--a treasure that no malignity can corrupt, or violence take away. And
+above all, it is here that, when tormented by doubt, or startled by
+anomalies, stung by disappointment, or exasperated by injustice, we may
+look for consolation and encouragement. As we see the same events, that
+to those who witnessed them must have appeared isolated and capricious,
+tending to one great end, and accomplishing one specific purpose, we may
+learn to infer that those which appear to us most extraordinary, are
+alike subservient to a wise and benevolent dispensation. Poetry, the
+greatest of all critics has told us, has this advantage over history,
+that the lessons which it furnishes are not mixed and confined to
+particular cases, but pure and universal. Studied, however, in this
+spirit, history, while it improves the reason, may satisfy the heart,
+enabling us to await with patience the lesson of the great instructor,
+Time, and to employ the mighty elements it places within our reach, to
+the only legitimate purpose of all knowledge--"The advancement of God's
+glory, and the relief of man's estate."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
+
+No. V.
+
+THE VICTORY FEAST.
+
+
+[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which
+Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender
+philosophy which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the
+heroes introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where
+reminded of Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, _there is
+an under current of sentiment_ which betrays the thoughtful _Northern_
+minstrel. This detracts from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation,
+but constitutes its very charm as an original composition. Its
+inspiration rises from a source purely Hellenic, but the streamlets it
+receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to change the metaphor) it
+has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the toning down of the
+colours betrays the German.]
+
+    The stately walls of Troy had sunken,
+      Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;
+    The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,
+      Richly laden with the spoil,
+    Are on their lofty barks reclin'd
+      Along the Hellespontine strand;
+    A gleesome freight the favouring wind
+      Shall bear to Greece's glorious land;
+      And gleesome sounds the chaunted strain,
+        As towards the household altars, now,
+        Each bark inclines the painted prow--
+      For Home shall smile again!
+
+    And there the Trojan women, weeping,
+      Sit ranged in many a length'ning row;
+    Their heedless locks, dishevell'd, sweeping
+      Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.
+    No festive sounds that peal along,
+      _Their_ mournful dirge can overwhelm;
+    Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song
+      Commingled, wails the ruin'd realm.
+      "Farewell, beloved shores!" it said,
+        "From home afar behold us torn,
+        By foreign lords as captives borne--
+      Ah, happy are the Dead!"
+
+    And Calchas, while the altars blaze,
+      Invokes the high gods to their feast!
+    On Pallas, mighty or to raise
+      Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest--
+    And Him, who wreathes around the land
+      The girdle of his watery world,
+    And Zeus, from whose almighty hand
+      The terror and the bolt are hurl'd.
+      Success at last awards the crown--
+        The long and weary war is past;
+        Time's destined circle ends at last--
+      And fall'n the Mighty Town!
+
+    The Son of Atreus, king of men,
+      The muster of the hosts survey'd,
+    How dwindled from the thousands, when
+      Along Scamander first array'd!
+    With sorrow and the cloudy thought,
+      The Great King's stately look grew dim--
+    Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,
+      How few to Greece return with him!
+      Still let the song to gladness call,
+        For those who yet their home shall greet!--
+        For them the blooming life is sweet:
+      Return is not for all!
+
+    Nor all who reach their native land
+      May long the joy of welcome feel--
+    Beside the household gods may stand
+      Grim Murther with awaiting steel;
+    And they who 'scape the foe, may die
+      Beneath the foul familiar glaive.
+    Thus He[2] to whose prophetic eye
+      Her light the wise Minerva gave:--
+      "Ah! blest whose hearth, to memory true,
+        The goddess keeps unstain'd and pure--
+        For woman's guile is deep and sure,
+      And Falsehood loves the New!"
+
+    The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,
+      By the best blood of Greece recaptured;
+    Round that fair form his glowing arms--
+      (A second bridal)--wreathe enraptured.
+    "Woe waits the work of evil birth--
+      Revenge to deeds unblest is given!
+    For watchful o'er the things of earth,
+      The eternal Council-Halls of Heaven.
+      Yes, ill shall ever ill repay--
+        Jove to the impious hands that stain
+        The Altar of Man's Hearth, again
+      The doomer's doom shall weigh!"
+
+    "Well they, reserved for joy to day,"
+      Cried out Oïleus' valiant son,
+    "May laud the favouring gods who sway
+      Our earth, their easy thrones upon;
+    Without a choice they mete our doom,
+      Our woe or welfare Hazard gives--
+    Patroclus slumbers in the tomb,
+      And all unharm'd Thersites lives.
+      While luck and life to every one
+        Blind Fate dispenses, well may they
+        Enjoy the life and luck to day
+      By whom the prize is won!
+
+    "Yes, war will still devour the best!--
+      Brother, remember'd in this hour!
+    His shade should be in feasts a guest,
+      Whose form was in the strife a tower!
+    What time our ships the Trojan fired,
+      Thine arm to Greece the safety gave--
+    The prize to which thy soul aspired,
+      The crafty wrested from the brave.[3]
+      Peace to thine ever-holy rest--
+        Not thine to fall before the foe!
+        Ajax alone laid Ajax low:
+      Ah--wrath destroys the best!"
+
+    To his dead sire--(the Dorian king)--
+      The bright-hair'd Pyrrhus[4] pours the wine:--
+    "Of every lot that life can bring,
+      My soul, great Father, prizes thine.
+    Whate'er the goods of earth, of all,
+      The highest and the holiest--FAME!
+    For when the Form in dust shall fall,
+      O'er dust triumphant lives the Name!
+      Brave Man, thy light of glory never
+        Shall fade, while song to man shall last;
+        The Living, soon from earth are pass'd,
+      'THE DEAD--ENDURE FOR EVER!'"
+
+    "While silent in their grief and shame,
+      The conquer'd hear the conqueror's praise,"
+    Quoth Tydeus' son, "let Hector's fame,
+      In me, his foe, its witness raise!
+    Who, battling for the altar-hearth,
+      A brave defender, bravely fell--
+    It takes not from the victor's worth,
+      If honour with the vanquish'd dwell.
+      Who falleth for the altar-hearth,
+        A rock and a defence laid low,
+        Shall leave behind him, in the foe,
+      The lips that speak his worth!"
+
+    Lo, Nestor now, whose stately age
+      Through threefold lives of mortals lives!--
+    The laurel'd bowl, the kingly sage
+      To Hector's tearful mother gives.
+    "Drink--in the draught new strength is glowing,
+      The grief it bathes forgets the smart!
+    O Bacchus! wond'rous boons bestowing,
+      Oh how thy balsam heals the heart!
+      Drink--in the draught new vigour gloweth,
+        The grief it bathes forgets the smart--
+        And balsam to the breaking heart,
+      The healing god bestoweth.
+
+    "As Niobe, when weeping mute,
+      To angry gods the scorn and prey,
+    But tasted of the charmed fruit,
+      And cast despair itself away;
+    So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
+      This stream of life enchanted flows,
+    Remember'd grief, that stung before,
+      Sinks down to Lethè's calm repose.
+      So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
+        The stream of life enchanted flows--
+        Drown'd deep in Lethè's calm repose,
+      The grief that stung before!"
+
+    Seized by the god--behold the dark
+      And dreaming Prophetess[5] arise!
+    She gazes from the lofty bark,
+      Where Home's dim vapour wraps the skies--
+    "A vapour, all of human birth!
+      As mists ascending, seen and gone,
+    So fade earth's great ones from the earth,
+      And leave the changeless gods alone!
+      Behind the steed that skirs away,
+        Or on the galley's deck--sits Care!
+        To-morrow comes--and Life is where?
+      At least--we'll live to-day!"
+
+     [2] Ulysses.
+
+     [3] Need we say to the general reader, that Oileus here alludes
+     to the strife between Ajax and Ulysses, which has furnished a
+     subject to the Greek tragic poet, who has depicted, more
+     strikingly than any historian, that intense emulation for
+     glory, and that mortal agony in defeat, which made the main
+     secret of the prodigious energy of the Greek character? The
+     poet, in taking his hero from the Homeric age, endowed him with
+     the feelings of the Athenian republicans he addressed.
+
+     [4] Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.
+
+     [5] Cassandra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG.--A BALLAD.
+
+
+[Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet
+grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to
+depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in
+Ægidius Tschudi--a Swiss chronicler--and Schiller (who, as Hinrichs
+suggests,) probably met with it in the researches connected with the
+compositions of his drama, "William Tell," appears to have adhered, with
+much fidelity, to the original narrative.]
+
+    At Aachen, in imperial state,
+      In that time-hallow'd hall renown'd,
+    At solemn feast King Rudolf sate,
+      The day that saw the hero crown'd!
+    Bohemia and thy Palgrave, Rhine,
+    Give this the feast, and that the wine;
+        The Arch Electoral Seven,
+    Like choral stars around the sun,
+    Gird him whose hand a world has won,
+        The anointed choice of Heaven.
+
+    In galleries raised above the pomp,
+      Press'd crowd on crowd, their panting way;
+    And with the joy-resounding tromp,
+      Rang out the million's loud hurra!
+    For closed at last the age of slaughter,
+    When human blood was pour'd as water--
+        LAW dawns upon the world![6]
+    Sharp Force no more shall right the wrong,
+    And grind the weak to crown the strong--
+        War's carnage-flag is furl'd!
+
+    In Rudolf's hand the goblet shines--
+      And gaily round the board look'd he;
+    "And proud the feast, and bright the wines,
+      My kingly heart feels glad to me!
+    Yet where the lord of sweet desire,
+    Who moves the heart beneath the lyre,
+        And dulcet Sound Divine?
+    Dear from my youth the craft of song,
+    And what as knight I loved so long,
+        As Kaisar, still be mine."
+
+    Lo, from the circle bending there,
+      With sweeping robe the Bard appears,
+    As silver, white his gleaming hair,
+      Bleach'd by the many winds of years:
+    "And music sleeps in golden strings--
+    The minstrel's hire, the LOVE he sings;
+        Well known to him the ALL
+    High thoughts and ardent souls desire!--
+    What would the Kaisar from the lyre
+        Amidst the banquet-hall?"
+
+    The Great One smiled--"Not mine the sway--
+      The minstrel owns a loftier power--
+    A mightier king inspires the lay--
+      Its hest--THE IMPULSE OF THE HOUR!
+    As through wide air the tempests sweep,
+    As gush the springs from mystic deep,
+        Or lone untrodden glen;
+    So from dark hidden fount within,
+    Comes SONG, its own wild world to win
+        Amidst the souls of men!"
+
+    Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,
+      And loud the music swept the ear:--
+    "Forth to the chase a Hero rode,
+      To hunt the bounding chamois-deer:
+    With shaft and horn the squire behind:--
+    Through greensward meads the riders wind--
+        A small sweet bell they hear.
+    Lo, with the HOST, a holy man,--
+    Before him strides the sacristan,
+        And the bell sounds near and near.
+
+    The noble hunter down-inclined
+      His reverent head and soften'd eye,
+    And honour'd with a Christian's mind
+      The Christ who loves humility!
+    Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves
+    A brook--the rains had fed the waves,
+        And torrents from the hill.
+    His sandal shoon the priest unbound,
+    And laid the Host upon the ground,
+        And near'd the swollen rill!
+
+    "What wouldst thou, priest?" the Count began,
+      As, marvelling much, he halted there.
+    "Sir Count, I seek a dying man,
+      Sore hungering for the heavenly fare.
+    The bridge that once its safety gave,
+    Rent by the anger of the wave,
+        Drifts down the tide below.
+    Yet barefoot now, I will not fear
+    (The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)
+        Through the wild wave to go!"
+
+    He gave that priest the knightly steed,
+      He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,
+    That he might serve the sick man's need,
+      Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.
+    He took the horse the squire bestrode;
+    On to the chase the hunter rode,
+        On to the sick the priest!
+    And when the morrow's sun was red,
+    The servant of the Saviour led
+        Back to its lord the beast.
+
+    "Now Heaven forefend," the hero cried,
+      "That e'er to chase or battle more
+    These limbs the sacred steed bestride,
+      That once my Maker's image bore!
+    But not for sale or barter given;
+    Henceforth its Master is the Heaven--
+        My tribute to that King,
+    From whom I hold as fiefs, since birth,
+    Honour, renown, the goods of earth,
+        Life, and each living thing."
+
+    "So may the God who faileth never
+      To hear the weak and guide the dim,
+    To thee give honour here and ever,
+      As thou hast duly honour'd Him!
+    Far-famed ev'n now through Switzerland
+    Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;
+        And fair from thine embrace
+    Six daughters bloom--six crowns to bring--
+    Blest as the Daughters of a KING--
+        The Mothers of a RACE!"
+
+    The mighty Kaisar heard amazed;
+      His heart was in the days of old:
+    Into the minstrel's eyes he gazed--
+      That tale the Kaisar's own had told.
+    Yes, in the bard, the priest he knew,
+    And in the purple veil'd from view
+        The gush of holy tears.
+    A thrill through that vast audience ran,
+    And every heart the godlike man,
+        Revering God, reveres!
+
+     [6] Literally, "_A judge (ein richter)_ was again upon the
+     earth." The word substituted in the translation, is introduced
+     in order to recall to the reader the sublime name given, not
+     without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., "THE LIVING LAW."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE WORDS OF ERROR.
+
+
+        Three errors there are, that for ever are found
+          On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best;
+        But empty their meaning and hollow their sound--
+          And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.
+        The fruits of existence escape from the clasp
+        Of the seeker who strives but these shadows to grasp--
+
+        So long as Man dreams of some Age in _this_ life
+          When the Right and the Good will all evil subdue;
+        For the Right and the Good lead us ever to strife,
+          And wherever they lead us, the Fiend will pursue.
+        And (till from the earth borne, and stifled at length)
+        The earth that he touches still gifts him with strength![7]
+
+        So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,
+          Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;
+        For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give--
+          And Virtue possesses no title to earth!
+        That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,
+        Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!
+
+        So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,
+          The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;
+        The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,
+          And all we can learn is--to guess and divine!
+        Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?
+        The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!
+
+        O, Noble Soul! fly from delusions like these,
+          More heavenly belief be it thine to adore;
+        Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,
+          Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore!
+        Not _without_ thee the streams--there the Dull seek them;--No!
+        Look _within_ thee--behold both the fount and the flow!
+
+     [7] This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat
+     obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antæus, the
+     Son of Earth,--so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring
+     new strength in every fall,--so the soul contends in vain with
+     evil--the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of
+     the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antæus
+     was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and
+     strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the
+     enemy, (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's
+     offspring,) when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it
+     in the higher air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE WORDS OF BELIEF.
+
+
+    Three Words will I name thee--around and about,
+      From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;
+    But they had not their birth in the being without,
+      And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!
+    And all worth in the man shall for ever be o'er
+    When in those Three Words he believes no more.
+
+    Man is made FREE!--Man, by birthright, is free,
+      Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.
+    Whatever the shout of the rabble may be--
+      Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool--
+    Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain,
+    For the Man made a Freeman grows safe in his gain.
+
+    And VIRTUE is more than a shade or a sound,
+      And Man may her voice, in this being, obey;
+    And though ever he slip on the stony ground,
+      Yet ever again to the godlike way.
+    Though _her_ wisdom _our_ wisdom may not perceive,
+    Yet the childlike spirit can still believe.
+
+    And a GOD there is!--over Space, over Time,
+      While the Human Will rocks, like a reed, to and fro,
+    Lives the Will of the Holy--A Purpose Sublime,
+      A Thought woven over creation below;
+    Changing and shifting the All we inherit,
+    But changeless through all One Immutable Spirit!
+
+    Hold fast the Three Words of Belief--though about
+      From the lip to the lip, full of meaning they flee;
+    Yet they take not their birth from the being without--
+      But a voice from within must their oracle be;
+    And never all worth in the Man can be o'er,
+    Till in those Three Words he believes no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE MIGHT OF SONG.
+
+
+    A rain-flood from the mountain-riven,
+      It leaps, in thunder, forth to Day,
+    Before its rush the crags are driven--
+      The oaks uprooted, whirl'd away--
+    Aw'd, yet in awe all wildly glad'ning,
+      The startled wanderer halts below;
+    He hears the rock-born waters mad'ning,
+      Nor wits the source from whence they go,--
+    So, from their high, mysterious Founts along,
+    Stream on the silenc'd world the Waves of Song!
+
+    Knit with the threads of life, for ever,
+      By those dread Powers that weave the woof,--
+    Whose art the singer's spell can sever?
+     Whose breast has mail to music proof?
+    Lo, to the Bard, a wand of wonder
+      The Herald[8] of the Gods has given:
+    He sinks the soul the death-realm under,
+      Or lifts it breathless up to heaven--
+    Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion
+    Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.
+
+    As, when the halls of Mirth are crowded,
+      Portentous, on the wanton scene--
+    Some Fate, before from wisdom shrouded,
+      Awakes and awes the souls of Men--
+    Before that Stranger from ANOTHER,
+      Behold how THIS world's great ones bow--
+    Mean joys their idle clamour smother,
+      The mask is vanish'd from the brow--
+    And from Truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurl'd,
+    Fly all the craven Falsehoods of the World!
+
+    So, rapt from every care and folly,
+      When spreads abroad the lofty lay,
+    The Human kindles to the Holy,
+      And into Spirit soars the Clay!
+    One with the Gods the Bard: before him
+      All things unclean and earthly fly--
+    Hush'd are all meaner powers, and o'er him
+      The dark fate swoops unharming by;
+    And while the Soother's magic measures flow,
+    Smooth'd every wrinkle on the brows of Woe!
+
+    Even as a child that, after pining
+      For the sweet absent mother--hears
+    Her voice--and, round her neck entwining
+      Young arms, vents all his soul in tears;--
+    So, by harsh custom far estranged,
+      Along the glad and guileless track,
+    To childhood's happy home, unchanged,
+      The swift song wafts the wanderer back--
+    Snatch'd from the coldness of unloving Art
+    To Nature's mother arms--to Nature's glowing heart!
+
+     [8] Hermes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HONOUR TO WOMAN.
+
+
+        Honour to Woman! To her it is given
+        To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
+          All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir--
+        In the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,
+        She tends on each altar that's hallow'd to Feeling,
+          And keeps ever-living the fire!
+
+          From the bounds of Truth careering,
+            Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
+          With each hasty impulse veering,
+            Down to Passion's troubled deeps.
+          And his heart, contented never,
+            Greeds to grapple with the Far,
+          Chasing his own dream for ever,
+            On through many a distant Star!
+
+        But Woman with looks that can charm and enchain,
+        Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,
+          By the spell of her presence beguil'd--
+        In the home of the Mother her modest abode,
+        And modest the manners by Nature bestow'd
+          On Nature's most exquisite child!
+
+          Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,
+            Foe to foe, the angry strife;
+          Man the Wild One, never resting,
+            Roams along the troubled life;
+          What he planneth, still pursuing;
+            Vainly as the Hydra bleeds,
+          Crest the sever'd crest renewing--
+            Wish to wither'd wish succeeds.
+
+        But Woman at peace with all being, reposes,
+        And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses--
+          Whose sweets to her culture belong.
+        Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
+        The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,
+          And the infinite Circle of Song.
+
+          Strong, and proud, and self-depending,
+            Man's cold bosom beats alone;
+          Heart with heart divinely blending,
+            In the love that Gods have known,
+          Souls' sweet interchange of feeling,
+            Melting tears--he never knows,
+          Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
+            Arms against a world of foes.
+
+        Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever
+        If woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
+          Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;
+        Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
+        How quiver the chords--how thy bosom is heaving--
+          How trembles thy glance through the tear!
+
+          Man's dominion, war and labour;
+            Might to right the Statute gave;
+          Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;
+            Where the Mede reign'd--see the Slave!
+          Peace and Meekness grimly routing,
+            Prowls the War-lust, rude and wild;
+          Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
+            Where the vanish'd Graces smil'd.
+
+        But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth--
+        Of the Senses she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;
+          She lulls, as she looks from above,
+        The Discord whose Hell for its victims is gaping,
+        And blending awhile the for-ever escaping,
+          Whispers Hate to the Image of Love!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.
+
+
+    Who comes?--why rushes fast and loud,
+    Through lane and street the hurtling crowd,
+    Is Rhodes on fire?--Hurrah!--along
+    Faster and fast storms the throng!
+    High towers a shape in knightly garb--
+    Behold the Rider and the Barb!
+    Behind is dragg'd a wondrous load;
+    Beneath what monster groans the road?
+    The horrid jaws--the Crocodile,
+      The shape the mightier Dragon, shows--
+    From Man to Monster all the while--
+      The alternate wonder glancing goes.
+
+    Shout thousands, with a single voice,
+    "Behold the Dragon, and rejoice,
+    Safe roves the herd, and safe the swain!
+    Lo!--there the Slayer--here the Slain!
+    Full many a breast, a gallant life,
+    Has waged against the ghastly strife,
+    And ne'er return'd to mortal sight--
+    Hurrah, then, for the Hero Knight!"
+    So to the Cloister, where the vow'd
+      And peerless Brethren of St John
+    In conclave sit--that sea-like crowd,
+      Wave upon wave, goes thundering on.
+
+    High o'er the rest, the chief is seen--
+    There wends the Knight with modest mien;
+    Pours through the galleries raised for all
+    Above that Hero-council Hall,
+    The crowd--And thus the Victor One:--
+    "Prince--the knight's duty I have done.
+    The Dragon that devour'd the land
+    Lies slain beneath thy servant's hand;
+    Free, o'er the pasture, rove the flocks--
+      And free the idler's steps may stray--
+    And freely o'er the lonely rocks,
+      The holier pilgrim wends his way!"
+
+    A lofty look the Master gave,
+    "Certes," he said; "thy deed is brave;
+    Dread was the danger, dread the fight--
+    Bold deeds bring fame to vulgar knight;
+    But say, what sways with holier laws
+    The knight who sees in Christ his cause,
+    And wears the cross?"--Then every cheek
+    Grew pale to hear the Master speak;
+    But nobler was the blush that spread
+      His face--the Victor's of the day--
+    As bending lowly--"Prince," he said;
+      "His noblest duty--TO OBEY!"
+
+    "And yet that duty, son," replied
+    The chief, "methinks thou hast denied;
+    And dared thy sacred sword to wield
+    For fame in a forbidden field."
+    "Master, thy judgment, howsoe'er
+    It lean, till all is told, forbear--
+    Thy law in spirit and in will,
+    I had no thought but to fulfil.
+    Not rash, as some, did I depart
+      A Christian's blood in vain to shed;
+    But hoped by skill, and strove by art,
+      To make my life avenge the dead.
+
+    "Five of our Order, in renown
+    The war-gems of our saintly crown,
+    The martyr's glory bought with life;
+    'Twas then thy law forbade the strife.
+    Yet in my heart there gnaw'd, like fire,
+    Proud sorrow, fed with stern desire:
+    In the still visions of the night,
+    Panting, I fought the fancied fight;
+    And when the morrow glimmering came,
+      With tales of ravage freshly done,
+    The dream remember'd, turn'd to shame,
+      That night should dare what day should shun.
+
+    "And thus my fiery musings ran--
+    'What youth has learn'd should nerve the man;
+    How lived the great in days of old,
+    Whose Fame to time by bards is told--
+    Who, heathens though they were, became
+    As gods--upborne to heaven by fame?
+    How proved they best the hero's worth?
+    They chased the monster from the earth--
+    They sought the lion in his den--
+      They pierced the Cretan's deadly maze--
+    Their noble blood gave humble men
+      Their happy birthright--peaceful days.
+
+    "'What! sacred, but against the horde
+    Of Mahound, is the Christian's sword?
+    All strife, save one, should he forbear?
+    No! earth itself the Christian's care--
+    From every ill and every harm,
+    Man's shield should be the Christian's arm.
+    Yet art o'er strength will oft prevail,
+    And mind must aid where heart may fail!'
+    Thus musing, oft I roam'd alone,
+      Where wont the Hell-born Beast to lie;
+    Till sudden light upon me shone,
+      And on my hope broke victory!
+
+    "Then, Prince, I sought thee with the prayer
+    To breathe once more my native air;
+    The license given--the ocean past--
+    I reach'd the shores of home at last.
+    Scarce hail'd the old beloved land,
+    Than huge, beneath the artist's hand,
+    To every hideous feature true,
+    The Dragon's monster-model grew.
+    The dwarf'd, deformed limbs upbore
+      The lengthen'd body's ponderous load;
+    The scales the impervious surface wore,
+      Like links of burnish'd harness, glow'd.
+
+    "Life-like, the huge neck seem'd to swell,
+    And widely, as some porch to hell
+    You might the horrent jaws survey,
+    Griesly, and greeding for their prey.
+    Grim fangs an added terror gave,
+    Like crags that whiten through a cave.
+    The very tongue a sword in seeming--
+    The deep-sunk eyes in sparkles gleaming.
+    Where the vast body ends, succeed
+      The serpent spires around it roll'd--
+    Woe--woe to rider, woe to steed,
+      Whom coils as fearful e'er enfold!
+
+    "All to the awful life was done--
+    The very hue, so ghastly, won--
+    The grey, dull tint:--the labour ceased,
+    It stood--half reptile and half beast!
+    And now began the mimic chase;
+    Two dogs I sought, of noblest race,
+    Fierce, nimble, fleet, and wont to scorn
+    The wild bull's wrath and levell'd horn;
+    These, docile to my cheering cry,
+      I train'd to bound, and rend, and spring,
+    Now round the Monster-shape to fly,
+      Now to the Monster-shape to cling!
+
+    "And where their gripe the best assails,
+    The belly left unsheath'd in scales,
+    I taught the dexterous hounds to hang
+    And find the spot to fix the fang;
+    Whilst I, with lance and mailèd garb,
+    Launch'd on the beast mine Arab barb.
+    From purest race that Arab came,
+    And steeds, like men, are fired by fame.
+    Beneath the spur he chafes to rage;
+      Onwards we ride in full career--
+    I seem, in truth, the war to wage--
+      The monster reels beneath my spear!
+
+    "Albeit, when first the _destrier_[9] eyed
+    The laidly thing, it swerved aside,
+    Snorted and rear'd--and even they,
+    The fierce hounds, shrank with startled bay;
+    I ceased not, till, by custom bold,
+    After three tedious moons were told,
+    Both barb and hounds were train'd--nay, more,
+    Fierce for the fight--then left the shore!
+    Three days have fleeted since I prest
+      (Return'd at length) this welcome soil,
+    Nor once would lay my limbs to rest,
+      Till wrought the glorious crowning toil.
+
+    "For much it moved my soul to know
+    The unslack'ning curse of that grim foe.
+    Fresh rent, mens' bones lay bleach'd and bare
+    Around the hell-worm's swampy lair;
+    And pity nerved me into steel:--
+    Advice?--I had a heart to feel,
+    And strength to dare! So, to the deed.--
+    I call'd my squires--bestrode my steed,
+    And with my stalwart hounds, and by
+      Lone secret paths, we gaily go
+    Unseen--at least by human eye--
+      Against a worse than human foe!
+
+    "Thou know'st the sharp rock--steep and hoar?--
+    The abyss?--the chapel glimmering o'er?
+    Built by the Fearless Master's hand,
+    The fane looks down on all the land.
+    Humble and mean that house of prayer--
+    Yet God hath shrined a wonder there:--
+    Mother and Child, to whom of old
+    The Three Kings knelt with gifts, behold!
+    By three times thirty steps, the shrine
+      The pilgrim gains--and faint, and dim,
+    And dizzy with the height, divine
+      Strength on the sudden springs to him!
+
+    "Yawns wide within that holy steep
+    A mighty cavern dark and deep--
+    By blessed sunbeam never lit--
+    Rank foetid swamps engirdle it;
+    And there by night, and there by day,
+    Ever at watch, the fiend-worm lay,
+    Holding the Hell of its abode
+    Fast by the hallow'd House of God.
+    And when the pilgrim gladly ween'd
+      His feet had found the healing way,
+    Forth from its ambush rush'd the fiend,
+      And down to darkness dragg'd the prey.
+
+    "With solemn soul, that solemn height
+    I clomb, ere yet I sought the fight--
+    Kneeling before the cross within,
+    My heart, confessing, clear'd its sin.
+    Then, as befits the Christian knight,
+    I donn'd the spotless surplice white,
+    And, by the altar, grasp'd the spear:--
+    So down I strode with conscience clear--
+    Bade my leal squires afar the deed,
+      By death or conquest crown'd, await--
+    Leapt lightly on my lithesome steed,
+      And gave to God his soldier's fate!
+
+    "Before me wide the marshes lay--
+    Started the hounds with sudden bay--
+    Aghast the swerving charger slanting
+    Snorted--then stood abrupt and panting--
+    For curling there, in coilèd fold,
+    The Unutterable Beast behold!
+    Lazily basking in the sun.
+    Forth sprang the dogs. The fight's begun!
+    But lo! the hounds in cowering fly
+      Before the mighty poison-breath--
+    A yell, most like the jackall's cry,
+      Howl'd, mingling with that wind of death!
+
+    "No halt--I gave one cheering sound;
+    Lustily springs each dauntless hound--
+    Swift as the dauntless hounds advance,
+    Whirringly skirrs my stalwart lance--
+    Whirringly skirrs; and from the scale
+    Bounds, as a reed aslant the mail.
+    Onward--but no!--the craven steed
+    Shrinks from his lord in that dread need--
+      Smitten and scared before that eye
+    Of basilisk horror, and that blast
+      Of death, it only seeks to fly--
+    And half the mighty hope is past!
+
+    "A moment, and to earth I leapt;
+    Swift from its sheath the falchion swept;
+    Swift on that rock-like mail it plied--
+    The rock-like mail the sword defied:
+    The monster lash'd its mighty coil--
+    Down hurl'd--behold me on the soil!
+    Behold the hell-jaws gaping wide--
+    When lo! they bound--the flesh is found;
+      Upon the scaleless parts they spring!
+    Springs either hound;--the flesh is found--
+      It roars; the blood-dogs cleave and cling!
+
+    "No time to foil its fast'ning foes--
+    Light, as it writhed, I sprang, and rose;
+    The all-unguarded place explored,
+    Up to the hilt I plunged the sword--
+    Buried one instant in the blood--
+    The next, upsprang the bubbling flood!
+    The next, one Vastness spread the plain--
+    Crush'd down--the victor with the slain;
+    And all was dark--and on the ground
+      My life, suspended, lost the sun,
+    Till waking--lo my squires around--
+      And the dead foe!--my tale is done."
+
+    Then burst, as from a common breast,
+    The eager laud so long supprest--
+    A thousand voices, choral-blending,
+    Up to the vaulted dome ascending--
+    From groined roof and banner'd wall,
+    Invisible echoes answering all--
+    The very Brethren, grave and high,
+    Forget their state, and join the cry.
+    "With laurel wreaths his brows be crown'd,
+      Let throng to throng his triumph tell;
+    Hail him all Rhodes!"--the Master frown'd,
+      And raised his hand--and silence fell.
+
+    "Well," said that solemn voice, "thy hand
+    From the wild-beast hath freed the land.
+    An idol to the People be!
+    A foe our Order frowns on thee!
+    For in thy heart, superb and vain,
+    A hell-worm laidlier than the slain,
+    To discord which engenders death,
+    Poisons each thought with baleful breath!
+    That hell-worm is the stubborn Will--
+      Oh! What were man and nations worth
+    If each his own desire fulfil,
+      And law be banish'd from the earth?
+
+    "_Valour_ the Heathen gives to story--
+    _Obedience_ is the Christian's glory;
+    And on that soil our Saviour-God
+    As the meek low-born mortal trod.
+    We the Apostle-knights were sworn
+    To laws thy daring laughs to scorn--
+    Not _fame_, but _duty_ to fulfil--
+    Our noblest offering--man's wild will.
+    Vain-glory doth thy soul betray--
+      Begone--thy conquest is thy loss:
+    No breast too haughty to obey,
+      Is worthy of the Christian's cross!"
+
+    From their cold awe the crowds awaken,
+    As with some storm the halls are shaken;
+    The noble brethren plead for grace--
+    Mute stands the doom'd, with downward face;
+    And mutely loosen'd from its band
+    The badge, and kiss'd the Master's hand,
+    And meekly turn'd him to depart:
+    A moist eye follow'd, "To my heart
+    Come back, my son!"--the Master cries:
+      "Thy grace a harder fight obtains;
+    When Valour risks the Christian's prize,
+      Lo, how Humility regains!"
+
+[In the ballad just presented to the reader, Schiller designed, as he
+wrote to Goethe, to depict the old Christian chivalry--half-knightly,
+half-monastic. The attempt is strikingly successful; and, even in so
+humble a translation, the unadorned simplicity and earnest vigour of a
+great poet, enamoured of his subject, may be sufficiently visible to a
+discerning critic. "The Fight of the Dragon" appears to us the most
+spirited and nervous of all Schiller's ballads, with the single
+exception of "The Diver;" and if its interest is less intense than that
+of the matchless "Diver," and its descriptions less poetically striking
+and effective, its interior meaning or philosophical conception is at
+once more profound and more elevated. The main distinction, indeed,
+between the ancient ballad and the modern, as revived and recreated by
+Goethe and Schiller, is, that the former is a simple narrative, and the
+latter a narrative which conveys some intellectual idea--some dim, but
+important truth. The one has but the good faith of the minstrel, the
+other the high wisdom of the poet. In "The Fight of the Dragon,"
+is expressed the moral of that humility which consists in
+self-conquest--even merit may lead to vain-glory--and, after vanquishing
+the fiercest enemies without, Man has still to contend with his worst
+foe,--the pride or disobedience of his own heart. "Every one," as a
+recent and acute, but somewhat over-refining critic has remarked, "has
+more or less--his own 'fight with the Dragon,'--his own double victory
+(without and within) to achieve." The origin of this poem is to be found
+in the Annals of the Order of Malta--and the details may be seen in
+Vertot's History. The date assigned to the conquest of the Dragon is
+1342. Helion de Villeneuve was the name of the Grand Master--that of the
+Knight, Dieu-Donné de Gozon. Thevenot declares, that the head of the
+monster, (to whatever species it really belonged,) or its effigies, was
+still placed over one of the gates of the city in his time.]
+
+     [9] War-horse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.
+
+
+Having shown that the standard of Taste is in the Truth of Nature, and
+that this truth is in the mind, Sir Joshua, in the Eighth Discourse,
+proceeds to a further development of the principles of art. These
+principles, whether poetry or painting, have their foundation in the
+mind; which by its sensitive faculties and intellectual requirements,
+remodels all that it receives from the external world, vivifying and
+characterizing all with itself, and thus bringing forth into light the
+more beautiful but latent creations of nature. The "activity and
+restlessness" of the mind seek satisfaction from curiosity, novelty,
+variety, and contrast. Curiosity, "the anxiety for the future, the
+keeping the event suspended," he considers to be exclusively the
+province of poetry, and that "the painter's art is more confined, and
+has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this
+power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally
+engaged. What is done by painting must be done at one blow; curiosity
+has received at once all the satisfaction it can have." Novelty,
+variety, and contrast, however, belong to the painter. That poetry has
+this power, and operates by more extensively raising our curiosity,
+cannot be denied; but we hesitate in altogether excluding this power
+from painting. A momentary action may be so represented, as to elicit a
+desire for, and even an intimation of its event. It is true _that_
+curiosity cannot be satisfied, but it works and conjectures; and we
+suspect there is something of it in most good pictures. Take such a
+subject as the "Judgment of Solomon:" is not the "event suspended," and
+a breathless anxiety portrayed in the characters, and freely
+acknowledged by the sympathy of the spectator? Is there no mark of this
+"curiosity" in the "Cartoon of Pisa?" The trumpet has sounded, the
+soldiers are some half-dressed, some out of the water, others bathing;
+one is anxiously looking for the rising of his companion, who has just
+plunged in, and we see but his hands above the water; the very range of
+rocks, behind which the danger is shown to come, tends to excite our
+curiosity; we form conjectures of the enemy, their number, nearness of
+approach, and from among the manly warriors before us form episodes of
+heroism in the great intimated epic: and have we not seen pictures by
+Rembrandt, where "curiosity" delights to search unsatisfied and
+unsatiated into the mysteries of colour and chiaro-scuro, receding
+further as we look into an atmosphere pregnant with all uncertain
+things? We think we have not mistaken the President's meaning. Mr Burnet
+appears to agree with us: though he makes no remark upon the power of
+raising curiosity, yet it surely is raised in the very picture to which
+we presume he alludes, Raffaelle's "Death of Ananias;" the event, in
+Sapphira, is intimated and suspended. "Though," says Mr Burnet, "the
+painter has but one page to represent his story, he generally chooses
+that part which combines the most illustrative incidents with the most
+effective denouement of the event. In Raffaelle we often find not only
+those circumstances which precede it, _but its effects upon the_
+personages introduced after the catastrophe."
+
+There is, however, a natural indolence of our disposition, which seeks
+pleasure in repose, and the resting in old habits, which must not be too
+violently opposed by "variety," "reanimating the attention, which is apt
+to languish under a continual sameness;" nor by "novelty," making "more
+forcible impression on the mind than can be made by the representation
+of what we have often seen before;" nor by "contrasts," that "rouse the
+power of comparison by opposition."
+
+The mind, then, though an active principle, having likewise a
+disposition to indolence, (might we have said repose?) limits the
+quantity of variety, novelty, and contrast which it will bear;--these
+are, therefore, liable to excesses. Hence arise certain rules of art,
+that in a composition objects must not be too scattered and divided into
+many equal parts, that perplex and fatigue the eye, at a loss where to
+find the principal action. Nor must there be that "absolute unity,"
+"which, consisting of one group or mass of light only, would be as
+defective as an heroic poem without episode, or any collateral incidents
+to recreate the mind with that variety which it always requires." Sir
+Joshua instances Rembrandt and Poussin, the former as having the defect
+of "absolute unity," the latter the defect of the dispersion and
+scattering his figures without attention to their grouping. Hence there
+must be "the same just moderation observed in regard to ornaments;" for
+a certain repose must never be destroyed. Ornament in profusion, whether
+of objects or colours, does destroy it; and, "on the other hand, a work
+without ornament, instead of simplicity, to which it makes pretensions,
+has rather the appearance of poverty." "We may be sure of this truth,
+that the most ornamental style requires repose to set off even its
+ornaments to advantage." He instances, in the dialogue between Duncan
+and Banquo, Shakspeare's purpose of repose--the mention of the martlets'
+nests, and that "where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is
+delicate;" and the practice of Homer, "who, from the midst of battles
+and horrors, relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader, by
+introducing some quiet rural image, or picture of familiar domestic
+life. The writers of every age and country, where taste has begun to
+decline, paint and adorn every object they touch; are always on the
+stretch; never deviate or sink a moment from the pompous and the
+brilliant."[10]
+
+     [10] Could Sir Joshua now be permitted to visit his own
+     Academy, and our exhibitions in general, he would be startled
+     at the excess of ornament, in defiance of his rule of repose,
+     succeeding the slovenliness of his own day. Whatever be the
+     subject, history, landscape, or familiar life, it superabounds
+     both in objects and colour. In established academies, the
+     faults of genius are more readily adopted than their
+     excellences; they are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy
+     of imitation. We have, therefore, less hesitation in referring
+     the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir
+     Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more
+     injurious the delinquency. We therefore adduce as examples,
+     works of our most inventive and able artist, his "Macbeth" and
+     his "Hamlet"--they are greatly overloaded with the faults of
+     superabundance of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works
+     of great power, and such as none but a painter of high genius
+     could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and
+     where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate,
+     and even in the multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by
+     their grouping and management, he has preserved a seeming
+     moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the
+     wholeness, the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The
+     story is told, and admirably--as Sir Joshua says, "at one
+     blow." We speak of his "Sleeping Beauty." We see at once that
+     the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united
+     by that light and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too
+     prominently, the magic under whose working and whose light the
+     whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the
+     prince--there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the
+     execution of the figure that considerably dignifies the story,
+     and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it. The many
+     groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way
+     injure the simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast
+     in not undue proportion, because that simplicity is preserved.
+     Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,) and
+     chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of
+     repose, and a sunny repose, too, befitting the "Sleeping
+     Beauty." Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty and
+     danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not
+     in such subjects alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's
+     rule; we too often see portraits where the dress and
+     accessaries obtrude--there is too much lace and too little
+     expression--and our painters of views follow the fashion most
+     unaccountably--ornament is every where; we have not a town
+     where the houses are not "turned out of windows," and all the
+     furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to
+     show a pretty general bankruptcy, together with the artist's
+     own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every
+     other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging
+     from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in a turnpike
+     road.
+
+Novelty, Variety, and Contrast are required in Art, because they are the
+natural springs that move the mind to attention from its indolent
+quiescence; but having moved, their duty is performed--the mind of
+itself will do the rest; they must not act prominent parts. In every
+work there must be a simplicity which binds the whole together, as a
+whole; and whatever comes not within that girdle of the graces, is worse
+than superfluous--it draws off and distracts the attention which should
+be concentrated. Besides that simplicity which we have spoken of--and we
+have used the word in its technical sense, as that which keeps together
+and makes one thing of many parts--there is a simplicity which is best
+known by its opposite, affectation; upon this Sir Joshua enlarges.
+"Simplicity, being a negative virtue, cannot be described or defined."
+But it is possible, even in avoiding affectation, to convert simplicity
+into the very thing we strive to avoid. N. Poussin--whom, with regard to
+this virtue, he contrasts with others of the French school--Sir Joshua
+considers, in his abhorrence of the affectation of his countrymen,
+somewhat to approach it, by "what in writing would be called pedantry."
+Du Piles is justly censured for his recipe of grace and dignity. "If,"
+says he, "you draw persons of high character and dignity, they ought to
+be drawn in such an attitude that the portraits must seem to speak to
+us of themselves, and as it were to say to us, 'Stop, take notice of
+me--I am the invincible king, surrounded by majesty.' 'I am the valiant
+commander who struck terror every where,' 'I am that great minister, who
+knew all the springs of politics.' 'I am that magistrate of consummate
+wisdom and probity.'" This is indeed affectation, and a very vulgar
+notion of greatness. We are reminded of Partridge, and his admiration of
+the overacting king. All the characters in thus seeming to say, would be
+little indeed. Not so Raffaelle and Titian understood grace and dignity.
+Simplicity he holds to be "our barrier against that great enemy to truth
+and nature, affectation, which is ever clinging to the pencil, and ready
+to drop and poison every thing it touches." Yet that, "when so very
+inartificial as to seem to evade the difficulties of art, is a very
+suspicious virtue." Sir Joshua dwells much upon this, because he thinks
+there is a perpetual tendency in young artists to run into affectation,
+and that from the very terms of the precepts offered them. "When a young
+artist is first told that his composition and his attitudes must be
+contrasted; that he must turn the head contrary to the position of the
+body, in order to produce grace and animation; that his outline must be
+undulating and swelling, to give grandeur; and that the eye must be
+gratified with a variety of colours; when he is told this with certain
+animating words of spirit, dignity, energy, greatness of style, and
+brilliancy of tints, he becomes suddenly vain of his newly-acquired
+knowledge, and never thinks he can carry those rules too far. It is then
+that the aid of simplicity ought to be called in to correct the
+exuberance of youthful ardour." We may add that hereby, too, is shown
+the danger of particular and practical rules; very few of the kind are
+to be found in the "Discourses." Indeed the President points out, by
+examples from Raffaelle, the good effect of setting aside these
+academical rules. We suspect that they are never less wanted than when
+they give direction to attitudes and forms of action. He admits that, in
+order "to excite attention to the more manly, noble, and dignified
+manner," he had perhaps left "an impression too contemptuous of the
+ornamental parts of our art." He had, to use his own expression, bent
+the bow the contrary way to make it straight. "For this purpose, then,
+and to correct excess or neglect of any kind, we may here add, that it
+is not enough that a work be learned--it must be pleasing." Pretty much
+as Horace had said of poetry,
+
+    "Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, _dulcia_ sunto."
+
+To which maxim the Latin poet has unconsciously given the grace of
+rhyme--
+
+    "Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto."
+
+He again shows the danger of particular practical rules.--"It is given
+as a rule by Fresnoy, that '_the principal figure of a subject must
+appear in the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to
+distinguish it from the rest._' A painter who should think himself
+obliged strictly to follow this rule, would encumber himself with
+needless difficulties; he would be confined to great uniformity of
+composition, and be deprived of many beauties which are incompatible
+with its observance. The meaning of this rule extends, or ought to
+extend, no further than this: that the principal figure should be
+immediately distinguished at the first glance of the eye; but there is
+no necessity that the principal light should fall on the principal
+figure, or that the principal figure should be in the middle of the
+picture." He might have added that it is the very place where generally
+it ought not to be. Many examples are given; we could have wished he had
+given a plate from any one in preference to that from Le Brun. Felebein,
+in praising this picture, according to preconceived recipe, gives
+Alexander, who is in shade, the principal light. "Another instance
+occurs to me where equal liberty may be taken in regard to the
+management of light. Though the general practice is to make a large mass
+about the middle of the picture surrounded by shadow, the reverse may be
+practised, and _the spirit of the rule be preserved_." We have marked in
+italics the latter part of the sentence, because it shows that the rule
+itself must be ill-defined or too particular. Indeed, we receive with
+caution all such rules as belong to the practical and mechanical of the
+art. He instances Paul Veronese. "In the great composition of Paul
+Veronese, the 'Marriage of Cana,' the figures are for the most part in
+half shadow. The great light is in the sky; and indeed the general
+effect of this picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we
+often see in landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts:
+but those principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large
+scale, to a space containing near a hundred figures as large as life,
+and conducted, to all appearance, with as much facility, and with
+attention as steadily fixed upon _the whole together_, as if it were a
+small picture immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our
+admiration, the difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged."
+We suspect that _the rule_, when it attempts to direct beyond the words
+Sir Joshua has marked in italics, refutes itself, and shackles the
+student. Infinite must be the modes of composition, and as infinite the
+modes of treating them in light and shadow and colour. "Whatever mode of
+composition is adopted, every variety and license is allowable." All
+that is absolutely necessary is, that there be no confusion or
+distraction, no conflicting masses--in fact, that the picture tell its
+tale at once and effectually. A very good plate is given by Mr Burnet of
+the "Marriage of Cana," by Paul Veronese. Sir Joshua avoids entering
+upon rules that belong to "the detail of the art." He meets with
+combatants, as might have been expected, where he is thus particular. We
+will extract the passage which has been controverted, and to oppose the
+doctrine of which, Gainsborough painted his celebrated "Blue Boy."
+
+"Though it is not my _business_ to enter into the detail of our art, yet
+I must take this opportunity of mentioning one of the means of producing
+that great effect which we observe in the works of the Venetian
+painters, as I think it is not generally known or observed, that the
+masses of light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow
+red or yellowish white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green
+colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to
+support and set off these warm colours; and for this purpose a small
+proportion of cold colours will be sufficient. Let this conduct be
+reversed; let the light be cold, and the surrounding colours warm, as we
+often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will
+be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian, to
+make a picture splendid and harmonious." Le Brun and Carlo Maratti are
+censured as being "deficient in this management of colours." The
+"Bacchus and Ariadne," now in our National Gallery, has ever been
+celebrated for its harmony of colour. Sir Joshua supports his theory or
+rule by the example of this picture: the red of Ariadne's scarf, which,
+according to critics, was purposely given to relieve the figure from the
+sea, has a better object. "The figure of Ariadne is separated from the
+great group, and is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the
+sea, makes that quantity of cold colour which Titian thought necessary
+for the support and brilliancy of the great group; which group is
+composed, with very little exception, entirely of mellow colours. But as
+the picture in this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one
+half cold and the other warm, it was necessary to carry some of the
+mellow colours of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and
+a part of the cold into the great group; accordingly Titian gave Ariadne
+a red scarf, and to one of the Bacchantes a little blue drapery." As
+there is no picture more splendid, it is well to weigh and consider
+again and again remarks upon the cause of the brilliancy, given by such
+an authority as Sir Joshua Reynolds. With regard to his rule, even among
+artists, "adhuc sub judice lis est." He combats the common notion of
+relief, as belonging only to the infancy of the art, and shows the
+advance made by Coreggio and Rembrandt; though the first manner of
+Coreggio, as well as of Leonardo da Vinci and Georgione, was dry and
+hard. "But these three were among the first who began to correct
+themselves in dryness of style, by no longer considering relief as a
+principal object. As these two qualities, relief and fulness of effect,
+can hardly exist together, it is not very difficult to determine to
+which we ought to give the preference." "Those painters who have best
+understood the art of producing a good effect, have adopted one
+principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason--that a part may be
+sacrificed for the good of the whole. Thus, whether the masses consist
+of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact, and of
+a pleasing shape; to this end some parts may be made darker and some
+lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant." He
+instances a "Moonlight" by Rubens, now, we believe, in the possession of
+Mr Rogers, in which Rubens had given more light and more glowing colours
+than we recognize in nature,--"it might easily be mistaken, if he had
+not likewise added stars, for a fainter setting sun." We stop not to
+enquire if that harmony so praised, might not have been preserved had
+the resemblance to nature been closer. Brilliancy is produced. The fact
+is, the _practice_ of art is a system of compensation. We cannot exactly
+in all cases represent nature,--we have not the means, but our means
+will achieve what, though _particularly_ unlike, may, by itself or in
+opposition, produce similar effects. Nature does not present a varnished
+polished surface, nor that very transparency that our colours can give;
+but it is found that this transparency, in all its degrees, in
+conjunction and in opposition to opaque body of colour, represents the
+force of light and shade of nature, which is the principal object to
+attain. _The_ richness of nature is not the exact richness of the
+palette. The painter's success is in the means of compensation.
+
+This Discourse concludes with observations on the Prize pictures. The
+subject seems to have been the Sacrifice of Iphigenia. All had copied
+the invention of Timanthes, in hiding the face of Agamemnon. Sir Joshua
+seems to agree with Mr Falconet, in a note in his translation of Pliny,
+who would condemn the painter, but that he copied the idea from the
+authority of Euripides; Sir Joshua considers it at best a trick, that
+can only with success be practised once. Mr Fuseli criticises the
+passage, and assumes that the painter had better reason than that given
+by Mr Falconet. Mr Burnet has added but two or three notes to this
+Discourse--they are unimportant, with the exception of the last, wherein
+he combats Sir Joshua's theory of the cold and warm colours. He candidly
+prints an extract of a letter from Sir Thomas Lawrence, who differs with
+him. It is so elegantly written that we quote the passage. Sir Thomas
+says,--"Agreeing with you in so many points, I will venture to differ
+from you in your question with Sir Joshua. Infinitely various as nature
+is, there are still two or three truths that limit her variety, or,
+rather, that limit art in the imitation of her. I should instance for
+one the ascendency of white objects, which can never be departed from
+with impunity, and again, the union of colour with light. Masterly as
+the execution of that picture is (viz. the Boy in a blue dress,) I
+always feel a never-changing impression on my eye, that the "Blue Boy"
+of Gainsborough is a difficulty boldly combated, not conquered. The
+light blue drapery of the Virgin in the centre of the "Notte" is
+another instance; a check to the harmony of the celestial radiance round
+it." "Opposed to Sir Thomas's opinion," says Mr Burnet, "I might quote
+that of Sir David Wilkie, often expressed, and carried out in his
+picture of the 'Chelsea Pensioners' and other works." It strikes us,
+from our recollection of the "Chelsea Pensioners," that it is not at all
+a case in point; the blue there not being light but dark, and serving as
+dark, forcibly contrasting with warmer light in sky and other objects;
+the _colour_ of blue is scarcely given, and is too dark to be allowed to
+enter into the question. He adds, "A very simple method may be adopted
+to enable the student to perceive where the warm and red colours are
+placed by the great colourists, by his making a sketch of light and
+shade of the picture, and then touching in the warm colours with red
+chalk; or by looking on his palette at twilight, he will see what
+colours absorb the light, and those that give it out, and thus select
+for his shadows, colours that have the property of giving depth and
+richness." Unless the pictures are intended to be seen at twilight, we
+do not see how this can bear upon the question; if it does, we would
+notice what we have often observed, that at twilight blue almost
+entirely disappears, to such a degree that in a landscape where the blue
+has even been deep, and the sky by no means the lightest part of the
+picture, at twilight the whole landscape comes out too hard upon the
+sky, which with its colour has lost its tone, and become, with relation
+to the rest, by far too light. It is said that of all the pictures in
+the National Gallery, when seen at twilight, the Coreggios retire
+last--we speak of the two, the "Ecce Homo" and the "Venus, Mercury, and
+Cupid." In these there is no blue but in the drapery of the fainting
+mother, and that is so dark as to serve for black or mere shadow; the
+lighter blue close upon the neck is too small to affect the power of the
+picture. It certainly is a fact, that blue fades more than any colour at
+twilight, and, relatively speaking, leaves the image that contains it
+lighter. We should almost be inclined to ask the question, though with
+great deference to authority, is blue, when very light, necessarily
+cold; and if so, has it not an activity which, being the great quality
+of light, assimilates it with light, and thus takes in to itself the
+surrounding "radiance?" A very little positive warm colour, as it were
+set in blue, from whatever cause, gives it a surprising glow. We desire
+to see the theory of colours treated, not with regard to their
+corresponding harmony in their power one upon the other, nor in their
+light and shadow, but, if we may so express it, in their
+sentimentality--the effect they are capable of in moving the passions.
+We alluded to this in our last paper, and the more we consider the
+subject, the more we convinced that it is worth deeper investigation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The NINTH DISCOURSE is short, and general in its character; it was
+delivered at the opening of the Royal Academy in Somerset Place, October
+16, 1780. It is an elegant address; raises the aim of the artist; and
+gives a summary of the origin of arts and their use. "Let us for a
+moment take a short survey of the progress of the mind towards what is,
+or ought to be, its true object of attention. Man in his lowest state
+has no pleasures but those of sense, and no wants but those of appetite;
+afterwards, when society is divided into different ranks, and some are
+appointed to labour for the support of others, those whom their
+superiority sets free from labour begin to look for intellectual
+entertainments. Thus, while the shepherds were attending their flocks,
+their masters made the first astronomical observations; so music is said
+to have had its origin from a man at leisure listening to the strokes of
+a hammer. As the senses in the lowest state of nature are necessary to
+direct us to our support, when that support is once secure, there is
+danger in following them further; to him who has no rule of action but
+the gratification of the senses, plenty is always dangerous. It is
+therefore necessary to the happiness of individuals, and still more
+necessary to the security of society, that the mind should be elevated
+to the idea of general beauty, and the contemplation of general truth;
+by this pursuit the mind is always carried forward in search of
+something more excellent than it finds, and obtains its proper
+superiority over the common sense of life, by learning to feel itself
+capable of higher aims and nobler enjoyments." This is well said.
+Again.--"Our art, like all arts which address the imagination, is
+applied to a somewhat lower faculty of the mind, which approaches nearer
+to sensuality, but through sense and fancy it must make its way to
+reason. For such is the progress of thought, that we perceive by sense,
+we combine by fancy, and distinguish by reason; and without carrying our
+art out of its natural and true character, the more we purify it from
+every thing that is gross in sense, in that proportion we advance its
+use and dignity, and in proportion as we lower it to mere sensuality, we
+pervert its nature, and degrade it from the rank of a liberal art; and
+this is what every artist ought well to remember. Let him remember,
+also, that he deserves just so much encouragement in the state as he
+makes himself a member of it virtuously useful, and contributes in his
+sphere to the general purpose and perfection of society." Sir Joshua has
+been blamed by those who have taken lower views of art, in that he has
+exclusively treated of the Great Style, which neither he nor the
+academicians of his day practised; but he would have been unworthy the
+presidential chair had he taken any other line. His was a noble effort,
+to assume for art the highest position, to dignify it in its aim, and
+thus to honour and improve first his country, then all human kind. We
+rise from such passages as these elevated above all that is little.
+Those only can feel depressed who would find excuses for the lowness of
+their pursuits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TENTH DISCOURSE.--Sir Joshua here treats of Sculpture, a less
+extensive field than Painting. The leading principles of both are the
+same; he considers wherein they agree, and wherein they differ.
+Sculpture cannot, "with propriety and best effect, be applied to many
+subjects." Its object is "form and character." It has "one style
+only,"--that one style has relation only to one style of painting, the
+Great Style, but that so close as to differ only as operating upon
+different materials. He blames the sculptors of the last age, who
+thought they were improving by borrowing from the ornamental,
+incompatible with its essential character. Contrasts, and the
+littlenesses of picturesque effects, are injurious to the formality its
+austere character requires. As in painting, so more particularly in
+sculpture, that imitation of nature which we call illusion, is in no
+respect its excellence, nor indeed its aim. Were it so, the Venus di
+Medici would be improved by colour. It contemplates a higher, a more
+perfect beauty, more an intellectual than sensual enjoyment. The
+boundaries of the art have been long fixed. To convey "sentiment and
+character, as exhibited by attitude, and expression of the passions," is
+not within its province. Beauty of form alone, the object of sculpture,
+"makes of itself a great work." In proof of which are the designs of
+Michael Angelo in both arts. As a stronger instance:--"What artist,"
+says he, "ever looked at the Torso without feeling a warmth of
+enthusiasm as from the highest efforts of poetry? From whence does this
+proceed? What is there in this fragment that produces this effect, but
+the perfection of this science of abstract form?" Mr Burnet has given a
+plate of the Torso. The expectation of deception, of which few divest
+themselves, is an impediment to the judgment, consequently to the
+enjoyment of sculpture. "Its essence is correctness." It fully
+accomplishes its purpose when it adds the "ornament of grace, dignity of
+character, and appropriated expression, as in the Apollo, the Venus, the
+Laocoon, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and many others." Sir Joshua uses
+expression as will be afterwards seen, in a very limited sense. It is
+necessary to lay down perfect correctness as its essential character;
+because, as in the case of the Apollo, many have asserted the beauty to
+arise from a certain incorrectness in anatomy and proportion. He denies
+that there is this incorrectness, and asserts that there never ought to
+be; and that even in painting these are not the beauties, but defects,
+in the works of Coreggio and Parmegiano. "A supposition of such a
+monster as Grace begot by Deformity, is poison to the mind of a young
+artist." The Apollo and the Discobolus are engaged in the same
+purpose--the one watching the effect of his arrow, the other of his
+discus. "The graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and
+the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish a signal instance of the
+skill of the ancient sculptors in their nice discrimination of
+character. They are both equally true to nature, and equally admirable."
+Grace, character, and expression, are rather in form and attitude than
+in features; the general figure more presents itself; "it is there we
+must principally look for expression or character; _patuit in corpore
+vultus_." The expression in the countenances of the Laocoon and his two
+sons, though greater than in any other antique statues, is of pain only;
+and that is more expressed "by the writhing and contortion of the body
+than by the features." The ancient sculptors paid but little regard to
+features for their expression, their object being solely beauty of form.
+"Take away from Apollo his lyre, from Bacchus his thyrsus and
+vine-leaves, and from Meleager the boar's head, and there will remain
+little or no difference in their characters." John di Bologna, he tells
+us, after he had finished a group, called his friends together to tell
+him what name to give it: they called it the "Rape of the Sabines." A
+similar anecdote is told of Sir Joshua himself, that he had painted the
+head of the old man who attended him in his studio. Some one observed
+that it would make a Ugolino. The sons were added, and it became the
+well-known historical picture from Dante. He comments upon the
+ineffectual attempts of modern sculptors to detach drapery from the
+figure, to give it the appearance of flying in the air; to make
+different plans on the same bas-relievos; to represent the effects of
+perspective; to clothe in a modern dress. For the first attempt he
+reprehends Bernini, who, from want of a right conception of the province
+of sculpture, never fulfilled the promise given in his early work of
+Apollo and Daphne. He was ever attempting to make drapery flutter in the
+air, which the very massiveness of the material, stone, should seem to
+forbid. Sir Joshua does not notice the very high authority for such an
+attempt--though it must be confessed the material was not stone, still
+it was sculpture, and multitudinous are the graces of ornament, and most
+minutely described--the shield of Hercules, by Hesiod; even the noise of
+the furies' wings is affected. The drapery of the Apollo he considers to
+have been intended more for support than ornament; but the mantle from
+the arm he thinks "answers a much higher purpose, by preventing that
+dryness of effect which would inevitably attend a naked arm, extended
+almost at full length; to which we may add, the disagreeable effect
+which would proceed from the body and arm making a right angle." He
+conjectures that Carlo Maratti, in his love for drapery, must have
+influenced the sculptors of the Apostles in the church of St John
+Lateran. "The weight and solidity of stone was not to be overcome."
+
+To place figures on different plans is absurd, because they must still
+appear all equally near the eye; the sculptor has not adequate means of
+throwing them back; and, besides, the thus cutting up into minute parts,
+destroys grandeur. "Perhaps the only circumstance in which the modern
+have excelled the ancient sculptors, is the management of a single group
+in basso-relievo." This, he thinks, may have been suggested by the
+practice of modern painters. The attempt at perspective must, for the
+same reason, be absurd; the sculptor has not the means for this "humble
+ambition." The ancients represented only the elevation of whatever
+architecture they introduced into their bas-reliefs, "which is composed
+of little more than horizontal and perpendicular lines." Upon the
+attempt at modern dress in sculpture, he is severe in his censure.
+"Working in stone is a very serious business, and it seems to be scarce
+worth while to employ such durable materials in conveying to posterity a
+fashion, of which the longest existence scarcely exceeds a year;" and
+which, he might have added, the succeeding year makes ridiculous. We not
+only change our dresses, but laugh at the sight of those we have
+discarded. The gravity of sculpture should not be subject to contempt.
+"The uniformity and simplicity of the materials on which the sculptor
+labours, (which are only white marble,) prescribe bounds to his art, and
+teach him to confine himself to proportionable simplicity of design." Mr
+Burnet has not given a better note than that upon Sir Joshua's remark,
+that sculpture has but one style. He shows how strongly the ancient
+sculptors marked those points wherein the human figure differs from that
+of other animals. "Let us take, for example, the human foot; on
+examining, in the first instance, those of many animals, we perceive the
+toes either very long or very short in proportion; of an equal size
+nearly, and the claws often long and hooked inwards: now, in rude
+sculpture, and even in some of the best of the Egyptians, we find little
+attempt at giving a character of decided variation; but, on the
+contrary, we see the foot split up with toes of an equal length and
+thickness; while, in Greek sculpture, these points characteristic of man
+are increased, that the affinity to animals may be diminished. In the
+Greek marbles, the great toe is large and apart from the others, where
+the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and
+sweep round to the outside of the foot, with the greatest regularity of
+curve; the nails are short, and the toes broad at the points, indicative
+of pressure on the ground." Rigidity he considers to have been the
+character of the first epochs, changing ultimately as in the Elgin
+marbles, "from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified
+character of flesh." He thinks Reynolds "would have acknowledged the
+supremacy of beautiful nature, uncontrolled by the severe line of
+mathematical exactness," had he lived to see the Elgin marbles. "The
+outline of life, which changes under every respiration, seems to have
+undulated under the plastic mould of Phidias." This is well expressed.
+He justly animadverts upon the silly fashion of the day, in lauding the
+vulgar imitation of the worsted stockings by Thom. The subjects chosen
+were most unfit for sculpture,--their only immortality must be in Burns.
+We do not understand his extreme admiration of Wilkie; in a note on
+parallel perspective in sculpture, he adduces Raffaelle as an example of
+the practice, and closes by comparing him with Sir David Wilkie,--"known
+by the appellation of the Raffaelle of familiar life,"--men perfect
+antipodes to each other! There is a proper eulogy on Chantrey,
+particularly for his busts, in which he commonly represented the eye. We
+are most anxious for the arrival of the ancient sculpture from Lycia,
+collected and packed for Government by the indefatigable and able
+traveller, Mr Fellowes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ELEVENTH DISCOURSE is upon Genius, the particular genius of the
+painter in his power of seizing and representing nature, or his subject
+as a whole. He calls it the "genius of mechanical performance." This,
+with little difference, is enforcing what has been laid down in former
+Discourses. Indeed, as far as precepts may be required, Sir Joshua had
+already performed his task; hence, there is necessary repetition. Yet
+all is said well, and conviction perpetuates the impressions previously
+made. Character is something independent of minute detail; genius alone
+knows what constitutes this character, and practically to represent it,
+is to be a painter of genius. Though it be true that he "who does not at
+all express particulars expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice
+discrimination of minute circumstances, and a punctilious delineation of
+them, whatever excellence it may have, (and I do not mean to detract
+from it,) never did confer on the artist the character of genius." The
+impression left upon the mind is not of particulars, when it would seem
+to be so; such particulars are taken out of the subject, and are each a
+whole of themselves. Practically speaking, as we before observed, genius
+will be exerted in ascertaining how to paint the "_nothing_" in every
+picture, to satisfy with regard to detail, that neither its absence nor
+its presence shall be noticeable.
+
+Our pleasure is not in minute imitation; for, in fact, that is not true
+imitation, for it forces upon our notice that which naturally we do not
+see. We are not pleased with wax-work, which may be nearer reality; "we
+are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing ends accomplished by seemingly
+inadequate means." If this be sound, we ought to be sensible of the
+inadequacy of the means, which sets aside at once the common notion that
+art is illusion. "The properties of all objects, as far as the painter
+is concerned with them, are outline or drawing, the colour, and the
+light and shade. The drawing gives the form, the colour its visible
+quality, and the light and shade its solidity:" in every one of these
+the habit of seeing as a whole must be acquired. From this habit arises
+the power of imitating by "dexterous methods." He proceeds to show that
+the fame of the greatest painters does not rest upon their high finish.
+Raffaelle and Titian, one in drawing the other in colour, by no means
+finished highly; but acquired by their genius an expressive execution.
+Most of his subsequent remarks are upon practice in execution and
+colour, in contradistinction to elaborate finish. Vasari calls Titian,
+"giudicioso, bello, e stupendo," with regard to this power. He
+generalized by colour, and by execution. "In his colouring, he was large
+and general." By these epithets, we think Sir Joshua has admitted that
+the great style comprehends colouring. "Whether it is the human figure,
+an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however
+unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey
+sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a painter of genius." He
+condemns that high finish which softens off. "This extreme softening,
+instead of producing the effect of softness, gives the appearance of
+ivory, or some other hard substance, highly polished. The value set upon
+drawings, such as of Coreggio and Parmegiano, which are but slight, show
+how much satisfaction can be given without high finishing, or minute
+attention to particulars. "I wish you to bear in mind, that when I speak
+of a whole, I do not mean simply _a whole_ as belonging to composition,
+but _a whole_ with respect to the general style of colouring; _a whole_
+with regard to light and shade; and _a whole_ of every thing which may
+separately become the main object of a painter. He speaks of a landscape
+painter in Rome, who endeavoured to represent every individual leaf upon
+a tree; a few happy touches would have given a more true resemblance.
+There is always a largeness and a freedom in happy execution, that
+finish can never attain. Sir Joshua says above, that even "unpromising"
+subjects may be thus treated. There is a painter commonly thought to
+have finished highly, by those who do not look into his manner, whose
+dexterous, happy execution was perhaps never surpassed; the consequence
+is, that there is "a largeness," in all his pictures. We mean Teniers.
+The effect of the elaborate work that has been added to his class of
+subjects, is to make them heavy and fatiguing to the eye. He praises
+Titian for the same large manner which he had given to his history and
+portraits, applied to his landscapes, and instances the back-ground to
+the "Peter Martyr." He recommends the same practice in portrait
+painting--the first thing to be attained, is largeness and general
+effect. The following puts the truth clearly. "Perhaps nothing that we
+can say will so clearly show the advantage and excellence of this
+faculty, as that it confers the character of genius on works that
+pretend to no other merit, in which is neither expression, character,
+nor dignity, and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot
+refuse the character of genius to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese,
+without opposing the general sense of mankind, (great authorities have
+called it the triumph of painting,) or to the Altar of St Augustine at
+Antwerp, by Rubens, which equally deserves that title, and for the same
+reason. Neither of these pictures have any interesting story to support
+them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation of a great
+concourse of people at a dinner; and the subject of Rubens, if it may be
+called a subject where nothing is doing, is an assembly of various
+saints that lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those
+pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however, under the
+influence of that comprehensive faculty which I have so often
+mentioned."
+
+The power of _a whole_ is exemplified by the anecdote of a child going
+through a gallery of old portraits. She paid very little attention to
+the finishing, or naturalness of drapery, but put herself at once to
+mimic the awkward attitudes. "The censure of nature uninformed, fastened
+upon the greatest fault that could be in a picture, because it related
+to the character and management of the whole." What he would condemn is
+that substitute for deep and proper study, which is to enable the
+painter to conceive and execute every subject as a whole, and a finish
+which Cowley calls "laborious effects of idleness." He concludes this
+Discourse with some hints on method of study. Many go to Italy to copy
+pictures, and derive little advantage. "The great business of study is,
+to form a mind adapted and adequate to all times and all occasions, to
+which all nature is then laid open, and which may be said to possess the
+key of her inexhaustible riches."
+
+Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of the Monk flying from the scene of
+murder, in Titian's "Peter Martyr," showing how that great painter could
+occasionally adopt the style of Michael Angelo in his forms. In the same
+note he observes, that Sir Joshua had forgotten the detail of this
+picture, which detail is noticed and praised by Algarotti, for its
+minute discrimination of leaves and plants, "even to excite the
+admiration of a botanist."--Sir Joshua said they were not there. Mr
+Burnet examined the picture at Paris, and found, indeed, the detail, but
+adds, that "they are made out with the same hue as the general tint of
+the ground, which is a dull brown," an exemplification of the rule, "Ars
+est celare artem." Mr Burnet remarks, that there is the same minute
+detail in Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne."--He is right--we have noticed
+it, and suspected that it had lost the glazing which had subdued it. As
+it is, however, it is not important. Mr Burnet is fearful lest the
+authority of Sir Joshua should induce a habit of generalizing too much.
+He expresses this fear in another note. He says, "the great eagerness to
+acquire what the poet calls
+
+        'That voluntary style,
+    Which careless plays, and seems to mock at toil,'
+
+and which Reynolds describes as so captivating, has led many a student
+to commence his career at the wrong end. They ought to remember, that
+even Rubens founded this excellence upon years of laborious and careful
+study. His picture of himself and his first wife, though the size of
+life, exhibits all the detail and finish of Holbein." Sir Joshua nowhere
+recommends _careless_ style; on the contrary, he every where urges the
+student to laborious toil, in order that he may acquire that facility
+which Sir Joshua so justly calls captivating, and which afterwards
+Rubens himself did acquire, by studying it in the works of Titian and
+Paul Veronese; and singularly, in contradiction to his fears and all he
+would imply, Mr Burnet terminates his passage thus:--"Nor did he
+(Rubens) quit the dry manner of Otho Venius, till a contemplation of the
+works of Titian and Paul Veronese enabled him to display with rapidity
+those materials which industry had collected." It is strange to argue
+upon the abuse of a precept, by taking it at the wrong end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TWELFTH DISCOURSE recurs likewise to much that had been before laid
+down. It treats of methods of study, upon which he had been consulted by
+artists about to visit Italy. Particular methods of study he considers
+of little consequence; study must not be shackled by too much method. If
+the painter loves his art, he will not require prescribed tasks;--to go
+about which sluggishly, which he will do if he have another impulse, can
+be of little advantage. Hence would follow, as he admirably expresses
+it, "a reluctant understanding," and a "servile hand." He supposes,
+however, the student to be somewhat advanced. The boy, like other
+school-boys, must be under restraint, and learn the "Grammar and
+Rudiments" laboriously. It is not such who travel for knowledge. The
+student, he thinks, may be pretty much left to himself; if he undertake
+things above his strength, it is better he should run the risk of
+discouragement thereby, than acquire "a slow proficiency" by "too easy
+tasks." He has little confidence in the efficacy of method, "in
+acquiring excellence in any art whatever." Methodical studies, with all
+their apparatus, enquiry, and mechanical labour, tend too often but "to
+evade and shuffle off real labour--the real labour of thinking." He has
+ever avoided giving particular directions. He has found students who
+have imagined they could make "prodigious progress under some particular
+eminent master." Such would lean on any but themselves. "After the
+Rudiments are past, very little of our art can be taught by others." A
+student ought to have a just and manly confidence in himself, "or rather
+in the persevering industry which he is resolved to possess." Raffaelle
+had done nothing, and was quite young, when fixed upon to adorn the
+Vatican with his works; he had even to direct the best artists of his
+age. He had a meek and gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent
+with that manly confidence that insured him success--a confidence in
+himself arising from a consciousness of power, and a determination to
+exert it. The result is "in perpetuum."--There are, however, artists who
+have too much self-confidence, that is ill-founded confidence, founded
+rather upon a certain dexterity than upon a habit of thought; they are
+like the improvisatori in poetry; and most commonly, as Metastasio
+acknowledged of himself, had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit of
+thinking with selection. To be able to draw and to design with rapidity,
+is, indeed, to be master of the grammar of art; but in the completion,
+and in the final settlement of the design, the portfolio must again and
+again have been turned over, and the nicest judgment exercised. This
+judgment is the result of deep study and intenseness of thought--thought
+not only upon the artist's own inventions, but those of others. Luca
+Giordano and La Fage are brought as examples of great dexterity and
+readiness of invention--but of little selection; for they borrowed very
+little from others: and still less will any artist, that can distinguish
+between excellence and insipidity, ever borrow from them. Raffaelle, who
+had no lack of invention, took the greatest pains to select; and when
+designing "his greatest as well as latest works, the Cartoons," he had
+before him studies he had made from Masaccio. He borrowed from him "two
+noble figures of St Paul." The only alteration he made was in the
+showing both hands, which he thought in a principal figure should never
+be omitted. Masaccio's work was well known; Raffaelle was not ashamed to
+have borrowed. "Such men, surely, need not be ashamed of that friendly
+intercourse which ought to exist among artists, of receiving from the
+dead, and giving to the living, and perhaps to those who are yet unborn.
+The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an artist is found in the
+great works of his predecessors. 'Serpens nisi serpentem comederit, non
+fit draco.'" The fact is, the most self-sufficient of men are greater
+borrowers than they will admit, or perhaps know; their very novelties,
+if they have any, commence upon the thoughts of others, which are laid
+down as a foundation in their own minds. The common sense, which is
+called "common property," is that stock which all that have gone before
+us have left behind them; and we are but admitted to the heirship of
+what they have acquired. Masaccio Sir Joshua considers to have been "one
+of the great fathers of modern art." He was the first who gave
+largeness, and "discovered the path that leads to every excellence to
+which the art afterwards arrived." It is enough to say of him, that
+Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle,
+Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, and Pierino del Vaga, formed
+their taste by studying his works. "An artist-like mind" is best formed
+by studying the works of great artists. It is a good practice to
+consider figures in works of great masters as statues which we may take
+in any view. This did Raffaelle, in his "Sergius Paulus," from Masaccio.
+Lest there should be any misunderstanding of this sort of borrowing,
+which he justifies, he again refers to the practice of Raffaelle in this
+his borrowing from Masaccio. The two figures of St Paul, he doubted if
+Raffaelle could have improved; but "he had the address to change in some
+measure without diminishing the grandeur of their character." For a
+serene composed dignity, he has given animation suited to their
+employment. "In the same manner, he has given more animation to the
+figure of Sergius Paulus, and to that which is introduced in the picture
+of Paul preaching, of which little more than hints are given by
+Masaccio, which Raffaelle has finished. The closing the eyes of this
+figure, which in Masaccio might be easily mistaken for sleeping, is not
+in the least ambiguous in the Cartoon. His eyes, indeed are closed, but
+they are closed with such vehemence, that the agitation of a mind
+_perplexed in the extreme_ is seen at the first glance; but what is most
+extraordinary, and I think particularly to be admired, is, that the same
+idea is continued through the whole figure, even to the drapery, which
+is so closely muffled about him, that even his hands are not seen: By
+this happy correspondence between the expression of the countenance and
+the disposition of the parts, the figure appears to think from head to
+foot. Men of superior talents alone are capable of thus using and
+adapting other men's minds to their own purposes, or are able to make
+out and finish what was only in the original a hint or imperfect
+conception. A readiness in taking such hints, which escape the dull and
+ignorant, makes, in my opinion, no inconsiderable part of that faculty
+of mind which is called genius." He urges the student not even to think
+himself qualified to invent, till he is well acquainted with the stores
+of invention the world possesses; and insists that, without such study,
+he will not have learned to select from nature. He has more than once
+enforced this doctrine, because it is new. He recommends, even in
+borrowing, however, an immediate recurrence to the model, that every
+thing may be finished from nature. Hence he proceeds to give some
+directions for placing the model and the drapery--first to impress upon
+the model the purpose of the attitude required--next, to be careful not
+to alter drapery with the hand, rather trusting, if defective, to a new
+cast. There is much in being in the way of accident. To obtain the
+freedom of accident Rembrandt put on his colours with his palette-knife;
+a very common practice at the present day. "Works produced in an
+accidental manner will have the same free unrestrained air as the works
+of nature, whose particular combinations seem to depend upon accident."
+He concludes this Discourse by more strenuously insisting upon the
+necessity of ever having nature in view--and warns students by the
+example of Boucher, Director of the French Academy, whom he saw working
+upon a large picture, "without drawings or models of any kind." He had
+left off the use of models many years. Though a man of ability, his
+pictures showed the mischief of his practice. Mr Burnet's notes to this
+Discourse add little to the material of criticism; they do but reiterate
+in substance what Sir Joshua had himself sufficiently repeated. His
+object seems rather to seize an opportunity of expressing his admiration
+of Wilkie, whom he adduces as a parallel example with Raffaelle of
+successful borrowing. It appears from the account given of Wilkie's
+process, that he carried the practice much beyond Raffaelle. We cannot
+conceive any thing _very_ good coming from so very methodical a manner
+of setting to work. Would not the fire of genius be extinguished by the
+coolness of the process? "When he had fixed upon his subject, he thought
+upon _all_ pictures of that class already in existence." The after
+process was most elaborate. Now, this we should think a practice quite
+contrary to Raffaelle's, who more probably trusted to his own conception
+for the character of his picture as a whole, and whose borrowing was
+more of single figures; but, if of the whole manner of treating his
+subject, it is not likely that he would have thought of more than one
+work for his imitation. The fact is, Sir David Wilkie's pictures show
+that he did carry this practice too far--for there is scarcely a picture
+of his that does not show patches of imitations, that are not always
+congruous with each other; there is too often in one piece, a bit of
+Rembrandt, a bit of Velasquez, a bit of Ostade, or others. The most
+perfect, as a whole, is his "Chelsea Pensioners." We do not quite
+understand the brew of study fermenting an accumulation of knowledge,
+and imagination exalting it. "An accumulation of knowledge impregnated
+his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination;" this is very
+ambitious, but not very intelligible. He speaks of Wilkie attracting the
+attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider
+criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following
+passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student
+to study the great book of nature, without being biassed by what has
+been done by other painters; it is as absurd as if they would recommend
+a youth to learn astronomy by lying in the fields, and looking on the
+stars, without reference to the works of Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or of
+Newton." There is indeed a world of cant in the present day, that a man
+must do all to his own unprejudiced reason, contemning all that has been
+done before him. We have just now been looking at a pamphlet on
+Materialism (a pamphlet of most ambitious verbiage,) in which, with
+reference to all former education, we are "the slaves of prejudice;" yet
+the author modestly requires that minds--we beg his pardon, we have _no
+minds_--intellects must be _trained_ to his mode of thinking, ere they
+can arrive at the truth and the perfection of human nature. If this
+training is prejudice in one set of teachers, may it not be in another?
+We continually hear artists recommend nature without "a prejudice in
+favour of old masters." Such artists are not likely to eclipse the fame
+of those great men, the study of whose works has so long _prejudiced_
+the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows that art is not imitation, but is under
+the influence and direction of the imagination, and in what manner
+poetry, painting, acting, gardening, and architecture, depart from
+nature. However good it is to study the beauties of artists, this is
+only to know art through them. The principles of painting remain to be
+compared with those of other arts, all of them with human nature. All
+arts address themselves only to two faculties of the mind, its
+imagination and its sensibility. We have feeling, and an instantaneous
+judgment, the result of the experience of life, and reasonings which we
+cannot trace. It is safer to trust to this feeling and judgment, than
+endeavour to control and direct art upon a supposition of what ought in
+reason to be the end or means. We should, therefore, most carefully
+store first impressions. They are true, though we know not the process
+by which the first conviction is formed. Partial and after reasoning
+often serves to destroy that character, the truth of which came upon us
+as with an instinctive knowledge. We often reason ourselves into narrow
+and partial theories, not aware that "_real_ principles of _sound
+reason_, and of so much more weight and importance, are involved, and
+as it were lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment.
+Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine every thing; at this
+minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way
+to feeling." Sir Joshua again refers to the mistaken views of art, and
+taken too by not the poorest minds, "that it entirely or mainly depends
+on imitation." Plato, even in this respect, misleads by a partial
+theory. It is with "such a false view that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to
+distinguish even Raffaelle himself, whom our enthusiasm honours with the
+name divine. The same sentiment is adopted by Pope in his epitaph on Sir
+Godfrey Kneller; and he turns the panegyric solely on imitation as it is
+a sort of deception." It is, undoubtedly, most important that the world
+should be taught to honour art for its highest qualities; until this is
+done, the profession will be a degradation. So far from painting being
+imitation, he proceeds to show that "it is, and ought to be, in many
+points of view, and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external
+nature." Civilization is not the gross state of nature; imagination is
+the result of cultivation, of civilization; it is to this state of
+nature art must be more closely allied. We must not appeal for judgment
+upon art to those who have not acquired the faculty to admire. The
+lowest style of all arts please the uncultivated. But, to speak of the
+unnaturalness of art--let it be illustrated by poetry, which speaks in
+language highly artificial, and "a construction of measured words, such
+as never is nor ever was used by man." Now, as there is in the human
+mind "a sense of congruity, coherence, and consistency," which must be
+gratified; so, having once assumed a language and style not adopted in
+common discourse, "it is required that the sentiments also should be in
+the same proportion raised above common nature." There must be an
+agreement of all the parts with the whole. He recognizes the chorus of
+the ancient drama, and the recitative of the Italian opera as natural,
+under this view. "And though the most violent passions, the highest
+distress, even death itself, are expressed in singing or recitative, I
+would not admit as sound criticism the condemnation of such exhibitions
+on account of their being unnatural." "Shall reason stand in the way,
+and tell us that we ought not to like what we know we do like, and
+prevent us from feeling the full effect of this complicated exertion of
+art? It appears to us that imagination is that gift to man, to be
+attained by cultivation, that enables him to rise above and out of his
+apparent nature; it is the source of every thing good and great, we had
+almost said of every virtue. The parent of all arts, it is of a higher
+devotion; it builds and adorns temples more worthy of the great Maker of
+all, and praises Him in sounds too noble for the common intercourse and
+business of life, which demand of the most cultivated that they put
+themselves upon a lower level than they are capable of assuming. So
+far, therefore, is a servile imitation from being necessary, that
+whatever is familiar, or in any way reminds us of what we see and hear
+every day, perhaps does not belong to the higher provinces of art,
+either in poetry or painting. The mind is to be transported, as
+Shakspeare expresses it, _beyond the ignorant present_, to ages past.
+Another and a higher order of beings is supposed, and to those beings
+every thing which is introduced into the work must correspond." He
+speaks of a picture by Jan Steen, the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," wherein
+the common nature, with the silks and velvets, would make one think the
+painter had intended to burlesque his subject. "Ill taught reason" would
+lead us to prefer a portrait by Denner to one by Titian or Vandyke.
+There is an eloquent passage, showing that landscape painting should in
+like manner appeal to the imagination; we are only surprised that the
+author of this description should have omitted, throughout these
+Discourses, the greatest of all landscape painters, whose excellence he
+should seem to refer to by his language. "Like the poet, he makes the
+elements sympathize with his subject, whether the clouds roll in
+volumes, like those of Titian or Salvator Rosa--or, like those of
+Claude, are gilded with the setting sun; whether the mountains have
+hidden and bold projections, or are gently sloped; whether the branches
+of his trees shoot out abruptly in right angles from their trunks, or
+follow each other with only a gentle inclination. All these
+circumstances contribute to the general character of the work, whether
+it be of the elegant or of the more sublime kind. If we add to this the
+powerful materials of lightness and darkness, over which the artist has
+complete dominion, to vary and dispose them as he pleases--to diminish
+or increase them, as will best suit his purpose, and correspond to the
+general idea of his work; a landscape, thus conducted, under the
+influence of a poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the
+more ordinary and common views, as Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso"
+have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a picture
+would make a more forcible impression on the mind than the real scenes,
+were they presented before us." We have quoted the above passage,
+because it is wanted--we are making great mistakes in that delightful,
+and (may we not say?) that high branch of art. He pursues the same
+argument with regard to acting, and condemns the _ignorant_ praise
+bestowed by Fielding on Garrick. Not an idea of deception enters the
+mind of actor or author. On the stage, even the expression of strong
+passion must be without the natural distortion and screaming voice.
+Transfer, he observes, acting to a private room, and it would be
+ridiculous. "Quid enim deformius, quum scenam in vitam transferre?" Yet
+he gives here a caution, "that no art can be grafted with success on
+another art." "If a painter should endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp
+and parade of dress and attitude, instead of that simplicity which is
+not a greater beauty in life than it is in painting, we should condemn
+such pictures, as painted in the meanest style." What will our
+academician, Mr Maclise, say of this remark? He then adduces gardening
+in support of his theory,--"nature to advantage dressed," "beautiful and
+commodious for the recreation of man." We cannot, however, go with Sir
+Joshua, who adds, that "so dressed, it is no longer a subject for the
+pencil of a landscape painter, as all landscape painters know." It is
+certainly unlike the great landscape he has described, but not very
+unlike Claude's, nor out of the way of his pencil. We have in our mind's
+eye a garden scene by Vander Heyden, most delightful, most elegant. It
+is some royal garden, with its proper architecture, the arch, the steps,
+and balustrades, and marble walks. The queen of the artificial paradise
+is entering, and in the shade with her attendants, but she will soon
+place her foot upon the prepared sunshine. Courtiers are here and there
+walking about, or leaning over the balustrades. All is elegance--a scene
+prepared for the recreation of pure and cultivated beings. We cannot
+say the picture is not landscape. We are sure it gave us ten times more
+pleasure than ever we felt from any of our landscape views, with which
+modern landscape painting has covered the walls of our exhibitions, and
+brought into disrepute our "annuals." He proceeds to architecture, and
+praises Vanburgh for his poetical imagination; though he, with Perrault,
+was a mark for the wits of the day.[11] Sir Joshua points to the façade
+of the Louvre, Blenheim, and Castle Howard, as "the fairest ornaments."
+He finishes this admirable discourse with the following eloquent
+passage:--"It is allowed on all hands, that facts and events, however
+they may bind the historian, have no dominion over the poet or the
+painter. With us history is made to bend and conform to this great idea
+of art. And why? Because these arts, in their highest province, are not
+addressed to the gross senses; but to the desires of the mind, to that
+spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed
+and pent up by the world which is about us. Just so much as our art has
+of this, just so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it
+exhibits; and those of our artists who possessed this mark of
+distinction in the highest degree, acquired from thence the glorious
+appellation of divine.
+
+     [11] The reader will remember the supposed epitaph,
+             "Lie heavy on him, earth, for he
+              Laid many a heavy load on thee."
+
+Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse are not important to art. There is
+an amusing one on acting, that discusses the question of naturalness on
+the stage, and with some pleasant anecdotes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is chiefly occupied with the character of
+Gainsborough, and landscape painting. It has brought about him, and his
+name, a hornet's nest of critics, in consequence of some remarks upon a
+picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some
+degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has been said that Wilson and
+Gainsborough never liked each other. It is a well-known anecdote that
+Sir Joshua, at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough, adding "the
+greatest landscape painter of the age," to which Wilson, at whom the
+words were supposed to be aimed, dryly added, "and the greatest portrait
+painter too." We can, especially under circumstances, for there had been
+a coolness between the President and Gainsborough, pardon the too
+favourable view taken of Gainsborough's landscape pictures. He was
+unquestionably much greater as a portrait painter. The following account
+of the interview with Gainsborough upon his death-bed, is touching, and
+speaks well of both:--"A few days before he died he wrote me a letter,
+to express his acknowledgments for the good opinion I entertained of his
+abilities, and the manner in which (he had been informed) I always spoke
+of him; and desired that he might see me once before he died. I am aware
+how flattering it is to myself to be thus connected with the dying
+testimony which this excellent painter bore to his art. But I cannot
+prevail upon myself to suppress that I was not connected with him by any
+habits of familiarity. If any little jealousies had subsisted between
+us, they were forgotten in these moments of sincerity; and he turned
+towards me as one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who
+deserved his good opinion by being sensible of his excellence. Without
+entering into a detail of what passed at this last interview, the
+impression of it upon my mind was, that his regret at losing life was
+principally the regret of leaving his art; and more especially as he now
+began, he said, to see what his deficiencies were; which, he said, he
+flattered himself in his last works were in some measure supplied." When
+the Discourse was delivered, Raffaelle Mengs and Pompeo Batoni were
+great names. Sir Joshua foretells their fall from that high estimation.
+Andrea Sacchi, and "_perhaps_" Carlo Maratti, he considers the "ultimi
+Romanorum." He prefers "the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works
+of those regular graduates in the great historical style." He gives some
+account of the "customs and habits of this extraordinary man."
+Gainsborough's love for his art was remarkable. He was ever remarking to
+those about him any peculiarity of countenance, accidental combination
+of figures, effects of light and shade, in skies, in streets, and in
+company. If he met a character he liked, he would send him home to his
+house. He brought into his painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, &c. He
+even formed models of landscapes on his table, composed of broken
+stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which, magnified,
+became rocks, trees, and water. Most of this is the common routine of
+every artist's life; the modelling his landscapes in the manner
+mentioned, Sir Joshua himself seems to speak doubtingly about. It in
+fact shows, that in Gainsborough there was a poverty of invention; his
+scenes are of the commonest kind, such as few would stop to admire in
+nature; and, when we consider the wonderful variety that nature did
+present to him, it is strange that his sketches and compositions should
+have been so devoid of beauty. He was in the habit of painting by night,
+a practice which Reynolds recommends, and thought it must have been the
+practice of Titian and Coreggio. He might have mentioned the portrait of
+Michael Angelo with the candle in his cap and a mallet in his hand.
+Gainsborough was ambitious of attaining excellence, regardless of
+riches. The style chosen by Gainsborough did not require that he should
+go out of his own country. No argument is to be drawn from thence, that
+travelling is not desirable for those who choose other walks of
+art--knowing that "the language of the art must be learned somewhere,"
+he applied himself to the Flemish school, and certainly with advantage,
+and occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers, and Vandyke. Granting
+him as a painter great merit, Sir Joshua doubts whether he excelled most
+in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures. Few now will doubt upon the
+subject--next to Sir Joshua, he was the greatest portrait painter we
+have had, so as to be justly entitled to the fame of being one of the
+founders of the English School. He did not attempt historical painting;
+and here Sir Joshua contrasts him with Hogarth; who did so
+injudiciously. It is strange that Sir Joshua should have characterised
+Hogarth as having given his attention to "the Ridicule of Life." We
+could never see any thing ridiculous in his deep tragedies. Gainsborough
+is praised in that he never introduced "mythological learning" into his
+pictures. "Our late ingenious academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been
+guilty, like many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and
+goddesses, ideal beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to
+receive such personages. His landscapes were in reality too near common
+nature to admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in
+a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many
+figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress, and
+some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by lightning:
+had not the painter injudiciously, (as I think,) rather chosen that
+their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky
+with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the
+children of Niobe." This is the passage that gave so much offence;
+foolish admirers will fly into flame at the slightest spark--the
+question should have been, is the criticism just, not whether Sir Joshua
+had been guilty of the same error--but we like critics, the only true
+critics, who give their reason: and so did Sir Joshua. "To manage a
+subject of this kind a peculiar style of art is required; and it can
+only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we
+adopt the character of the landscape, and that too in all its parts, to
+the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult
+adventure, and requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, like that
+of Nicolo Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture alluded to, the first
+idea that presents itself is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so
+uncommon a situation as that in which Apollo is placed: for the clouds
+on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to support
+him--they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the receptacle
+of a human figure, and they do not possess, in any respect, that
+romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and which
+alone can harmonize with poetical stories." We presume Reynolds alludes
+to the best of the two Niobes by Wilson--that in the National Gallery.
+The other is villanously faulty as a composition, where loaf is piled
+upon loaf for rock and castle, and the tree is common and hedge-grown,
+for the purpose of making gates; but the other would have been a fine
+picture, not of the historical class--the parts are all common, the
+little blown about underwood is totally deficient in all form and
+character--rocks and trees, and they do not, as in a former
+discourse--Reynolds had laid down that they should--sympathize with the
+subject; then, as to the substance of the cloud, he is right--it is not
+voluminous, it is mere vapour. In the received adoption of clouds as
+supporting figures, they are, at least, pillowy, capacious, and
+round--here it is quite otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well call it a
+little Apollo, with that immense cloud above him, which is in fact too
+much a portrait of a cloud, too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject
+where the sky is not to be all in all. We do not say it is not fine and
+grand, and what you please; but it is not subordinate, it casts its
+lightning as from its own natural power, there was no need of a god's
+assistance.
+
+    "Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;"
+
+and the action does not take place in a "prepared" landscape. There is
+nothing to take us back to a fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust to
+Wilson's merits, for he calls it, notwithstanding this defect, "a very
+admirable picture;" which picture will, we suspect, in a few years lose
+its principal charm, if it has not lost it; the colour is sadly
+changing, there is now little aerial in the sky. It is said of Wilson,
+that he ridiculed the experiments of Sir Joshua, and spoke of using
+nothing but "honest linseed"--to which, however, he added varnishes and
+wax, as will easily be seen in those pictures of his which have so
+cracked--and now lose their colour. "Honest" linseed appears to have
+played him a sad trick, or he to have played a trick upon honest
+linseed. Sir Joshua, however, to his just criticism, adds the best
+precept, example--and instances two pictures, historical landscape,
+"Jacob's Dream"--which was exhibited a year or two ago in the
+Institution, Pall-Mall--by Salvator Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian
+Bourdon, "The Return of the Ark from Captivity," now in the National
+Gallery. The latter picture, as a composition, is not perhaps good--it
+is cut up into too many parts, and those parts are not sufficiently
+poetical; in its hue, it may be appropriate. The other, "Jacob's Dream"
+is one of the finest by the master--there is an extraordinary boldness
+in the clouds, an uncommon grandeur, strongly marked, sentient of
+angelic visitants. This picture has been recently wretchedly engraved in
+mezzotinto; all that is in the picture firm and hard, is in the print
+soft, fuzzy, and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats very tenderly the
+mistaken manner of Gainsborough in his late pictures, the "odd scratches
+and marks." "This chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
+kind of magic at a certain distance, assumes form, and all their parts
+seem to drop into their places, so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of
+chance and heavy negligence." The _heavy_ negligence happily describes
+the fault of the manner. It is horribly manifest in that magnitude of
+vulgarity for landscape, the "Market Cart" in our National Gallery, and
+purchased at we know not what vast sum, and presented by the governors
+of the institution to the nation. We have a very high opinion of the
+genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, with
+very few exceptions. His portraits have an air of truth never exceeded,
+and that set off with great power and artistical skill; and his rustic
+children are admirable. He stands alone, and never has had a successful
+imitator. The mock sentimentality, the affected refinement, which has
+been added to his simple style by other artists, is disgusting in the
+extreme. Gainsborough certainly studied colour with great success. He is
+both praised and blamed for a lightness of manner and effect possessed
+"to an unexampled degree of excellence;" but "the sacrifice which he
+made, to this ornament of our art, was too great." We confess we do not
+understand Sir Joshua, nor can we reconcile "the _heavy_ negligence"
+with this "lightness of manner." Mr Burnet, in one of his notes,
+compares Wilson with Gainsborough; he appears to give the preference to
+Wilson--why does he not compare Gainsborough with Sir Joshua himself?
+the rivalry should have been in portrait. There is a long note upon Sir
+Joshua's remarks upon Wilson's "Niobe." We are not surprised at
+Cunningham's "Castigation." He did not like Sir Joshua, and could not
+understand nor value his character. This is evident in his Life of the
+President. Cunningham must have had but an ill-educated classic eye when
+he asserted so grandiloquently,--"He rose at once from the tame
+insipidity of common scenery into natural grandeur and magnificence; his
+streams seem all abodes for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts for the
+muses, and his temples worthy of gods,"--a passage, we think, most
+worthy the monosyllable commonly used upon such occasions by the manly
+and simple-minded Mr Burchell. That Sir Joshua occasionally transgressed
+in his wanderings into mythology, it would be difficult to deny; nor was
+it his only transgression from his legitimate ground, as may be seen in
+his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique
+upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may
+not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the
+bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the
+drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought
+against him, it is without attention to their application in his
+critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical nor
+voluminous--faults that do not attach to the clouds, if clouds they must
+be in the picture (the finest of Sir Joshua's works) of Mrs Siddons as
+the Tragic Muse. It is not our business to enter upon the supposed fact,
+that Sir Joshua was jealous of Wilson; the one was a polished, the other
+perhaps a somewhat coarse man. We have only to see if the criticism be
+just. In this Discourse Sir Joshua has the candour to admit, that there
+were at one time jealousies between him and Gainsborough; there may have
+been between him and Wilson, but, at all events, we cannot take a just
+criticism as a proof of it, or we must convict him, and all others too,
+of being jealous of artists and writers whose works they in any manner
+censure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE.--We come now to Sir Joshua's last Discourse, in
+which the President takes leave of the Academy, reviews his
+"Discourses," and concludes with recommending the study of Michael
+Angelo.
+
+Having gone along with the President of the Academy in the pursuit of
+the principles of the art in these Discourses, and felt a portion of the
+enthusiasm which he felt, and knew so well how to impart to others, we
+come to this last Discourse, with a melancholy knowledge that it was the
+last; and reflect with pain upon that cloud which so soon interposed
+between Reynolds and at least the practical enjoyment of his art. He
+takes leave of the Academy affectionately, and, like a truth-loving man
+to the last, acknowledges the little contentions (in so softening a
+manner does he speak of the "rough hostility of Barry," and "oppositions
+of Gainsborough") which "ought certainly," says he, "to be lost among
+ourselves in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements: every
+controversy ought to be--I am persuaded will be--sunk in our zeal for
+the perfection of our common art." "My age, and my infirmities still
+more than my age, make it probable that this will be the last time I
+shall have the honour of addressing you from this place." This last
+visit seemed to be threatened with a tragical end;--the circumstance
+showed the calm mind of the President; it was characteristic of the man
+who would die with dignity, and gracefully. A large assembly were
+present, of rank and importance, besides the students. The pressure was
+great--a beam in the floor gave way with a loud crash; a general rush
+was made to the door, all indiscriminately falling one over the other,
+except the President, who kept his seat "silent and unmoved." The floor
+only sunk a little, was soon supported, and Sir Joshua recommenced his
+Discourse.
+
+    "Justum et tenacem propositi
+    Impavidum ferient ruinæ."
+
+He compliments the Academy upon the ability of the professors, speaks
+with diffidence of his power as a writer, (the world has in this respect
+done him justice;) but that he had come not unprepared upon the subject
+of art, having reflected much upon his own and the opinions of others.
+He found in the art many precepts and rules, not reconcilable with each
+other. "To clear away those difficulties and reconcile those contrary
+opinions, it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it
+may be called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea
+of nature from the more narrow and confined: that which addresses itself
+to the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye. In
+consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of our art to
+which those different truths were referred, were perceived to make so
+wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that they seemed
+scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different
+rules and regulations which presided over each department of art,
+followed of course; every mode of excellence, from the grand style of
+the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still life,
+had its due weight and value--fitted to some class or other; and nothing
+was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that
+perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some
+time experienced from the variety of styles, and the variety of
+excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope, in some
+measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for himself
+what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit." Besides the
+practice of art, the student must think, and speculate, and consider
+"upon what ground the fabric of our art is built." An artist suffers
+throughout his whole life, from uncertain, confused, and erroneous
+opinions. We are persuaded there would be fewer fatal errors were these
+Discourses more in the hands of our present artists--"Nocturnâ versate
+manu, versate diurnâ."--An example is given of the mischief of erroneous
+opinions. "I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with
+a student of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the
+qualities requisite to make a great artist, if he had suffered his taste
+and feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He
+saw and felt the excellences of the great works of art with which we
+were surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that nature
+which is so admirable in the inferior schools,--and he supposed with
+Felebien, Du Piles, and other theorists, that such an union of different
+excellences would be the perfection of art. He was not aware that the
+narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence in the works of
+those great artists, would have destroyed the grandeur of the general
+ideas which he admired, and which was indeed the cause of his
+admiration. My opinions being then confused and unsettled, I was in
+danger of being borne down by this plausible reasoning, though I
+remember I then had a dawning suspicion that it was not sound doctrine;
+and at the same time I was unwilling obstinately to refuse assent to
+what I was unable to confute." False and low views of art are now so
+commonly taken both in and out of the profession, that we have not
+hesitated to quote the above passage; the danger Sir Joshua confesses he
+was in, is common, and demands the warning. To make it more direct we
+should add, "Read his Discourses." Again, without intending to fetter
+the student's mind to a particular method of study, he urges the
+necessity and wisdom of previously obtaining the appropriated
+instruments of art, in a first correct design, and a plain manly
+colouring, before any thing more is attempted. He does not think it,
+however, of very great importance whether or not the student aim first
+at grace and grandeur before he has learned correctness, and adduces the
+example of Parmegiano, whose first public work was done when a boy, the
+"St Eustachius" in the Church of St Petronius, in Bologna--one of his
+last is the "Moses breaking the Tables," in Parma. The former has
+grandeur and incorrectness, but "discovers the dawnings of future
+greatness." In mature age he had corrected his defects, and the drawing
+of his Moses was equally admirable with the grandeur of the
+conception--an excellent plate is given of this figure by Mr Burnet. The
+fact is, the impulse of the mind is not to be too much restrained--it is
+better to give it its due and first play, than check it until it has
+acquired correctness--good sense first or last, and a love of the art,
+will generally insure correctness in the end; the impulses often
+checked, come with weakened power, and ultimately refuse to come at all;
+and each time that they depart unsatisfied, unemployed, take away with
+them as they retire a portion of the fire of genius. Parmegiano formed
+himself upon Michael Angelo: Michael Angelo brought the art to a
+"sudden maturity," as Homer and Shakspeare did theirs. "Subordinate
+parts of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow
+and progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour of
+imagination, generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty."
+Correctness of drawing and imagination, the one of mechanical genius the
+other of poetic, undoubtedly work together for perfection--"a confidence
+in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic." He expresses his
+surprise that the race of painters, before Michael Angelo, never thought
+of transferring to painting the grandeur they admired in ancient
+sculpture. "Raffaelle himself seemed to be going on very contentedly in
+the dry manner of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael Angelo had never
+appeared, the art might still have continued in the same style." "On
+this foundation the Caracci built the truly great academical Bolognian
+school; of which the first stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi." The
+Caracci called him "nostro Michael Angelo riformato." His figure of
+Polyphemus, which had been attributed to Michael Angelo in Bishop's
+"Ancient Statues," is given in a plate by Mr Burnet. The Caracci he
+considers sufficiently succeeded in the mechanical, not in "the divine
+part which addresses itself to the imagination," as did Tibaldi and
+Michael Angelo. They formed, however, a school that was "most
+respectable," and "calculated to please a greater number." The Venetian
+school advanced "the dignity of their style, by adding to their
+fascinating powers of colouring something of the strength of Michael
+Angelo." Here Sir Joshua seems to contradict his former assertion; but
+as he is here abridging, as it were, his whole Discourses, he cannot
+avoid his own observations. It was a point, however, upon which he was
+still doubtful; for he immediately adds--"At the same time it may still
+be a doubt, how far their ornamental elegance would be an advantageous
+addition to his grandeur. But if there is any manner of painting, which
+may be said to unite kindly with his (Michael Angelo's) style, it is
+that of Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours are left
+on the canvass, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from congenial
+mind, equally disdainful of vulgar criticism. He is reminded of a remark
+of Johnson's, that Pope's Homer, had it not been clothed with graces and
+elegances not in Homer, would have had fewer readers, thus justifying by
+example and authority of Johnson, the graces of the Venetian school.
+Some Flemish painters at "the great era of our art" took to their
+country "as much of this grandeur as they could carry." It did not
+thrive, but "perhaps they contributed to prepare the way for that free,
+unconstrained, and liberal outline, which was afterwards introduced by
+Rubens, through the medium of the Venetian painters." The grandeur of
+style first discovered by Michael Angelo passed through Europe, and
+totally "changed the whole character and style of design. His works
+excite the same sensation as the Epic of Homer. The Sybils, the statue
+of Moses, "come nearer to a comparison with his Jupiter, his demigods,
+and heroes; those Sybils and prophets being a kind of intermediate
+beings between men and angels. Though instances may be produced in the
+works of other painters, which may justly stand in competition with
+those I have mentioned, such as the 'Isaiah,' and 'Vision of Ezekiel,'
+by Raffaelle, the 'St Mark' of Frate Bartolomeo, and many others; yet
+these, it must be allowed, are inventions so much in Michael Angelo's
+manner of thinking, that they may be truly considered as so many rays
+which discover manifestly the centre from whence they emanated." The
+style of Michael Angelo is so highly artificial that the mind must be
+cultivated to receive it; having once received it, the mind is improved
+by it, and cannot go very far back. Hence the hold this great style has
+had upon all who are most learned in art, and upon nearly all painters
+in the best time of art. As art multiplies, false tastes will arise, the
+early painters had not so much to unlearn as modern artists. Where
+Michael Angelo is not felt, there is a lost taste to recover. Sir Joshua
+recommends young artists to follow Michael Angelo as he did the ancient
+sculptors. "He began, when a child, a copy of a mutilated Satyr's head,
+and finished in his model what was wanting in the original." So would he
+recommend the student to take his figures from Michael Angelo, and to
+change, and alter, and add other figures till he has caught the manner.
+Change the purpose, and retain the attitude, as did Titian. By habit of
+seeing with this eye of grandeur, he will select from nature all that
+corresponds with this taste. Sir Joshua is aware that he is laying
+himself open to sarcasm by his advice, but asserts the courage becoming
+a teacher addressing students: "they both must equally dare, and bid
+defiance to narrow criticism and vulgar opinion." It is the conceited
+who think that art is nothing but inspiration; and such appropriate it
+in their own estimation; but it is to be learned,--if so, the right
+direction to it is of vast importance; and once in the right direction,
+labour and study will accomplish the better aspirations of the artist.
+Michael Angelo said of Raffaelle, that he possessed not his art by
+nature but by long study. "Che Raffaelle non ebbe quest' arte da natura,
+ma per longo studio." Raffaelle and Michael Angelo were rivals, but ever
+spoke of each other with the respect and veneration they felt, and the
+true meaning of the passage was to the praise of Raffaelle; those were
+not the days when men were ashamed of being laborious,--and Raffaelle
+himself "thanked God that he was born in the same age with that
+painter."--"I feel a self-congratulation," adds Sir Joshua, "in knowing
+myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect,
+not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my
+admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last
+words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place,
+might be the name of Michael Angelo." They were his last words from the
+academical chair. He died about fourteen months after the delivery of
+this Discourse. Mr Burnet has given five excellent plates to this
+Discourse--one from Parmegiano, one from Tibaldi, one from Titian, one
+from Raffaelle, and one from Michael Angelo. Mr Burnet's first note
+repeats what we have again and again elsewhere urged, the advantage of
+establishing at our universities, Oxford and Cambridge, Professorships
+of Painting--infinite would be the advantage to art, and to the public.
+We do not despair. Mr Burnet seems to fear incorrect drawing will arise
+from some passages, which he supposes encourages it, in these
+Discourses; and fearing it, very properly endeavours to correct the
+error in a note. We had intended to conclude this paper with some few
+remarks upon Sir Joshua, his style, and influence upon art, but we have
+not space. Perhaps we may fulfil this part of our intention in another
+number of Maga.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.
+
+        Grief hath been known to turn the young head grey--
+        To silver over in a single day
+        The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime
+        Scarcely o'erpast: as in the fearful time
+        Of Gallia's madness, that discrownèd head
+        Serene, that on the accursed altar bled
+        Miscall'd of Liberty. Oh! martyr'd Queen!
+        What must the sufferings of that night have been--
+        _That one_--that sprinkled thy fair tresses o'er
+        With time's untimely snow! But now no more
+        Lovely, august, unhappy one! of thee--
+        I have to tell an humbler history;
+        A village tale, whose only charm, in sooth,
+        (If any) will be sad and simple truth.
+
+        "Mother," quoth Ambrose to his thrifty dame--
+        So oft our peasant's use his wife to name,
+        "Father" and "Master" to himself applied,
+        As life's grave duties matronize the bride--
+        "Mother," quoth Ambrose, as he faced the north,
+        With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth
+        To his day labour, from the cottage door--
+        "I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before,
+        There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton[12] roar?
+        It's brewing up down westward; and look there,
+        One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair;
+        And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on,
+        As threats, the waters will be out anon.
+        That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way--
+        Best let the young ones bide from school to-day."
+
+        "Do, mother, do!" the quick-ear'd urchins cried;
+        Two little lasses to the father's side
+        Close clinging, as they look'd from him, to spy
+        The answering language of the mother's eye.
+        _There_ was denial, and she shook her head:
+        "Nay, nay--no harm will come to them," she said,
+        "The mistress lets them off these short dark days
+        An hour the earlier; and our Liz, she says,
+        May quite be trusted--and I know 'tis true--
+        To take care of herself and Jenny too.
+        And so she ought--she's seven come first of May--
+        Two years the oldest: and they give away
+        The Christmas bounty at the school to-day."
+
+        The mother's will was law, (alas for her
+        That hapless day, poor soul!) _She_ could not err,
+        Thought Ambrose; and his little fair-hair'd Jane
+        (Her namesake) to his heart he hugg'd again,
+        When each had had her turn; she clinging so
+        As if that day she could not let him go.
+        But Labour's sons must snatch a hasty bliss
+        In nature's tend'rest mood. One last fond kiss,
+        "God bless my little maids!" the father said,
+        And cheerly went his way to win their bread.
+        Then might be seen, the playmate parent gone,
+        What looks demure the sister pair put on--
+        Not of the mother as afraid, or shy,
+        Or questioning the love that could deny;
+        But simply, as their simple training taught,
+        In quiet, plain straightforwardness of thought,
+        (Submissively resign'd the hope of play,)
+        Towards the serious business of the day.
+
+        To me there's something touching, I confess,
+        In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,
+        Seen often in some little childish face
+        Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace
+        (Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!)
+        The unnatural sufferings of the factory child,
+        But a staid quietness, reflective, mild,
+        Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes,
+        Sense of life's cares, without its miseries.
+
+        So to the mother's charge, with thoughtful brow,
+        The docile Lizzy stood attentive now;
+        Proud of her years and of imputed sense,
+        And prudence justifying confidence--
+        And little Jenny, more _demurely_ still,
+        Beside her waited the maternal will.
+        So standing hand in hand, a lovelier twain
+        Gainsb'rough ne'er painted: no--nor he of Spain,
+        Glorious Murillo!--and by contrast shown
+        More beautiful. The younger little one,
+        With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair,
+        By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair,
+        Sable and glossy as the raven's wing,
+        And lustrous eyes as dark.
+
+                               "Now, mind and bring
+        Jenny safe home," the mother said--"don't stay
+        To pull a bough or berry by the way:
+        And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast
+        Your little sister's hand, till you're quite past--
+        That plank's so crazy, and so slippery
+        (If not o'erflowed) the stepping-stones will be.
+        But you're good children--steady as old folk,
+        I'd trust ye any where." Then Lizzy's cloak,
+        A good grey duffle, lovingly she tied,
+        And amply little Jenny's lack supplied
+        With her own warmest shawl. "Be sure," said she,
+        "To wrap it round and knot it carefully
+        (Like this) when you come home; just leaving free
+        One hand to hold by. Now, make haste away--
+        Good will to school, and then good right to play."
+
+        Was there no sinking at the mother's heart,
+        When all equipt, they turn'd them to depart?
+        When down the lane, she watch'd them as they went
+        Till out of sight, was no forefeeling sent
+        Of coming ill? In truth I cannot tell:
+        Such warnings _have been sent_, we know full well,
+        And must believe--believing that they are--
+        In mercy then--to rouse--restrain--prepare.
+
+        And, now I mind me, something of the kind
+        Did surely haunt that day the mother's mind,
+        Making it irksome to bide all alone
+        By her own quiet hearth. Tho' never known
+        For idle gossipry was Jenny Gray,
+        Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay
+        At home with her own thoughts, but took her way
+        To her next neighbour's, half a loaf to borrow--
+        Yet might her store have lasted out the morrow.
+        --And with the loan obtain'd, she linger'd still--
+        Said she--"My master, if he'd had his will,
+        Would have kept back our little ones from school
+        This dreadful morning; and I'm such a fool,
+        Since they've been gone, I've wish'd them back. But then
+        It won't do in such things to humour men--
+        Our Ambrose specially. If let alone
+        He'd spoil those wenches. But it's coming on,
+        That storm he said was brewing, sure enough--
+        Well! what of that?--To think what idle stuff
+        Will come into one's head! and here with you
+        I stop, as if I'd nothing else to do--
+        And they'll come home drown'd rats. I must be gone
+        To get dry things, and set the kettle on."
+
+        His day's work done, three mortal miles and more
+        Lay between Ambrose and his cottage door.
+        A weary way, God wot! for weary wight!
+        But yet far off, the curling smoke in sight
+        From his own chimney, and his heart felt light.
+        How pleasantly the humble homestead stood,
+        Down the green lane by sheltering Shirley Wood!
+        How sweet the wafting of the evening breeze
+        In spring-time, from his two old cherry-trees
+        Sheeted with blossom! And in hot July
+        From the brown moor-track, shadowless and dry,
+        How grateful the cool covert to regain
+        Of his own _avenue_--that shady lane,
+        With the white cottage, in a slanting glow
+        Of sunset glory, gleaming bright below,
+        And jasmine porch, his rustic portico!
+
+        With what a thankful gladness in his face,
+        (Silent heart-homage--plant of special grace!)
+        At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace,
+        Would Ambrose send a loving look before;
+        Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door,
+        The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat
+        In welcome, with a more rejoicing note;
+        And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed,
+        All bristle, back, and tail, but "good at need,"
+        Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear;
+        But of all welcomes pleasantest, most dear,
+        The ringing voices, like sweet silver bells,
+        Of his two little ones. How fondly swells
+        The father's heart, as, dancing up the lane,
+        Each clasps a hand in her small hand again;
+        And each must tell her tale, and "say her say,"
+        Impeding as she leads, with sweet delay,
+        (Childhood's blest thoughtlessness!) his onward way.
+
+        And when the winter day closed in so fast,
+        Scarce for his task would dreary daylight last;
+        And in all weathers--driving sleet and snow--
+        Home by that bare, bleak moor-track must he go,
+        Darkling and lonely. Oh! the blessed sight
+        (His pole-star) of that little twinkling light
+        From one small window, thro' the leafless trees,
+        Glimmering so fitfully; no eye but his
+        Had spied it so far off. And sure was he,
+        Entering the lane, a steadier beam to see,
+        Ruddy and broad as peat-fed hearth could pour,
+        Streaming to meet him from the open door.
+        Then, tho' the blackbird's welcome was unheard--
+        Silenced by winter--note of summer bird
+        Still hail'd him from no mortal fowl alive,
+        But from the cuckoo-clock just striking five--
+        And Tinker's ear and Tinker's nose were keen--
+        Off started he, and then a form was seen
+        Dark'ning the doorway; and a smaller sprite,
+        And then another, peer'd into the night,
+        Ready to follow free on Tinker's track,
+        But for the mother's hand that held her back;
+        And yet a moment--a few steps--and there,
+        Pull'd o'er the threshold by that eager pair,
+        He sits by his own hearth, in his own chair;
+        Tinker takes post beside, with eyes that say,
+        "Master! we've done our business for the day."
+        The kettle sings, the cat in chorus purs,
+        The busy housewife with her tea-things stirs;
+        The door's made fast, the old stuff curtain drawn;
+        How the hail clatters! Let it clatter on.
+        How the wind raves and rattles! What cares he?
+        Safe housed, and warm beneath his own roof-tree,
+        With a wee lassie prattling on each knee.
+
+        Such was the hour--hour sacred and apart--
+        Warm'd in expectancy the poor man's heart.
+        Summer and winter, as his toil he plied,
+        To him and his the literal doom applied,
+        Pronounced on Adam. But the bread was sweet
+        So earn'd, for such dear mouths. The weary feet
+        Hope-shod, stept lightly on the homeward way;
+        So specially it fared with Ambrose Gray
+        That time I tell of. He had work'd all day
+        At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke
+        Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke,
+        And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that?
+        There was a treasure hidden in his hat--
+        A plaything for the young ones. He had found
+        A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round
+        For its long winter sleep; and all his thought
+        As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought
+        But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,
+        And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize,
+        When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer,
+        Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.
+
+        'Twas a wild evening--wild and rough. "I knew,"
+        Thought Ambrose, "those unlucky gulls spoke true--
+        And Gaffer Chewton never growls for nought--
+        I should be mortal 'mazed now, if I thought
+        My little maids were not safe housed before
+        That blinding hail-storm--ay, this hour and more--
+        Unless, by that old crazy bit of board,
+        They've not passed dry-foot over Shallow-ford,
+        That I'll be bound for--swollen as it must be ...
+        Well! if my mistress had been ruled by me ..."
+        But, checking the half-thought as heresy,
+        He look'd out for the Home-Star. There it shone,
+        And with a gladden'd heart he hasten'd on.
+
+        He's in the lane again--and there below,
+        Streams from the open doorway that red glow,
+        Which warms him but to look at. For his prize
+        Cautious he feels--all safe and snug it lies--
+        "Down Tinker!--down, old boy!--not quite so free--
+        The thing thou sniffest is no game for thee.--
+        But what's the meaning?--no look-out to-night!
+        No living soul a-stir!--Pray God, all's right!
+        Who's flittering round the peat-stack in such weather?
+        Mother!" you might have fell'd him with a feather
+        When the short answer to his loud--"Hillo!"
+        And hurried question--"Are they come?"--was--"No."
+
+        To throw his tools down--hastily unhook
+        The old crack'd lantern from its dusty nook,
+        And while he lit it, speak a cheering word,
+        That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,
+        Was but a moment's act, and he was gone
+        To where a fearful foresight led him on.
+        Passing a neighbour's cottage in his way--
+        Mark Fenton's--him he took with short delay
+        To bear him company--for who could say
+        What need might be? They struck into the track
+        The children should have taken coming back
+        From school that day; and many a call and shout
+        Into the pitchy darkness they sent out,
+        And, by the lantern light, peer'd all about,
+        In every road-side thicket, hole, and nook,
+        Till suddenly--as nearing now the brook--
+        Something brush'd past them. That was Tinker's bark--
+        Unheeded, he had follow'd in the dark,
+        Close at his master's heels, but, swift as light,
+        Darted before them now. "Be sure he's right--
+        He's on the track," cried Ambrose. "Hold the light
+        Low down--he's making for the water. Hark!
+        I know that whine--the old dog's found them, Mark."
+        So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on
+        Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!
+        And all his dull contracted light could show
+        Was the black void and dark swollen stream below.
+        "Yet there's life somewhere--more than Tinker's whine--
+        That's sure," said Mark. "So, let the lantern shine
+        Down yonder. There's the dog--and, hark!"
+
+                                      "Oh dear!"
+        And a low sob came faintly on the ear,
+        Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,
+        Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught
+        Fast hold of something--a dark huddled heap--
+        Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep,
+        For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd
+        By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt
+        Endways the broken plank, when it gave way
+        With the two little ones that luckless day!
+        "My babes!--my lambkins!" was the father's cry.
+        _One little voice_ made answer--"Here am I!"
+        'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouch'd, with face as white,
+        More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light,
+        Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips, drawn tight,
+        Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,
+        And eyes on some dark object underneath,
+        Wash'd by the turbid water, fix'd like stone--
+        One arm and hand stretch'd out, and rigid grown,
+        Grasping, as in the death-gripe--Jenny's frock.
+        There she lay drown'd. Could he sustain that shock,
+        The doating father? Where's the unriven rock
+        Can bide such blasting in its flintiest part
+        As that soft sentient thing--the human heart?
+
+        They lifted her from out her wat'ry bed--
+        Its covering gone, the lonely little head
+        Hung like a broken snowdrop all aside--
+        And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied,
+        Leaving _that_ free, about the child's small form,
+        As was her last injunction--"_fast_ and warm"--
+        Too well obeyed--too fast! A fatal hold
+        Affording to the scrag by a thick fold
+        That caught and pinn'd her in the river's bed,
+        While through the reckless water overhead
+        Her life-breath bubbled up.
+
+                                "She might have lived
+        Struggling like Lizzy," was the thought that rived
+        The wretched mother's heart when she knew all.
+        "But for my foolishness about that shawl--
+        And Master would have kept them back the day;
+        But I was wilful--driving them away
+        In such wild weather!"
+
+                           Thus the tortured heart,
+        Unnaturally against itself takes part,
+        Driving the sharp edge deeper of a woe
+        Too deep already. They had raised her now,
+        And parting the wet ringlets from her brow,
+        To that, and the cold cheek, and lips as cold,
+        The father glued his warm ones, ere they roll'd
+        Once more the fatal shawl--her winding-sheet--
+        About the precious clay. One heart still beat,
+        Warm'd by _his heart's_ blood. To his _only child_
+        He turn'd him, but her piteous moaning mild
+        Pierced him afresh--and now she knew him not.--
+        "Mother!"--she murmur'd--"who says I forgot?
+        Mother! indeed, indeed, I kept fast hold,
+        And tied the shawl quite close--she can't be cold--
+        But she won't move--we slipt--I don't know how--
+        But I held on--and I'm so weary now--
+        And it's so dark and cold! oh dear! oh dear!--
+        And she won't move--if daddy was but here!"
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Poor lamb--she wander'd in her mind, 'twas clear--
+        But soon the piteous murmur died away,
+        And quiet in her father's arms she lay--
+        They their dead burthen had resign'd, to take
+        The living so near lost. For her dear sake,
+        And one at home, he arm'd himself to bear
+        His misery like a man--with tender care,
+        Doffing his coat her shivering form to fold--
+        (His neighbour bearing _that_ which felt no cold,)
+        He clasp'd her close--and so, with little said,
+        Homeward they bore the living and the dead.
+
+        From Ambrose Gray's poor cottage, all that night,
+        Shone fitfully a little shifting light,
+        Above--below:--for all were watchers there,
+        Save one sound sleeper.--_Her_, parental care,
+        Parental watchfulness, avail'd not now.
+        But in the young survivor's throbbing brow,
+        And wandering eyes, delirious fever burn'd;
+        And all night long from side to side she turn'd,
+        Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,
+        With now and then the murmur--"She won't move"--
+        And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright
+        Shone on that pillow, passing strange the sight--
+        That young head's raven hair was streak'd with white!
+        No idle fiction this. Such things have been
+        We know. And _now I tell what I have seen_.
+
+        Life struggled long with death in that small frame,
+        But it was strong, and conquer'd. All became
+        As it had been with the poor family--
+        All--saving that which never more might be--
+        There was an empty place--they were but three.
+
+C.
+
+     [12] A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton
+     Bunny.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.
+
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak,
+lad? Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth,
+it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no
+issue at such capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face again.
+Prythee what, in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair Master
+Oliver?
+
+_Oliver_.--In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love
+and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a sort,
+unto my zeal.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em. I
+have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his
+devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do suspect,
+Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and nobody will
+promise or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did.
+So! because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as
+their representative in Parliament, thou art free of all men's houses,
+forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter
+for the house they have chaired thee unto than for mine. Yet I do not
+question but thou wilt be as troublesome and unruly there as here. Did I
+not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook when thou wert scarcely half the rogue
+thou art latterly grown up to? And yet wert thou immeasurably too big a
+one for it to hold.
+
+_Oliver_.--It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth
+the Lord had not touched me.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.
+
+_Oliver_.--Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill
+conditions, and that my name--even your godson's--stank in your
+nostrils.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough,
+that stank first; in my house, at least.[13] But perhaps there are worse
+maggots in stauncher mummeries.
+
+_Oliver_.--Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my
+urgency.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within
+it another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why thou shouldst
+stand before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun,
+counting the stones of the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head,
+I warrant thee. Come, put on thy beaver.
+
+_Oliver_.--Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered
+in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered
+at baptism for my good behaviour.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so
+presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to
+do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-hand
+business in the neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more have
+come under my archway.
+
+_Oliver_.--These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay in
+the hand of the potter.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in
+their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the
+wheel of these artificers; and little was left but rags when we got off.
+Sanctified folks are the cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and
+their Jordan tans and constringes us to the averdupoise of mummies.
+
+_Oliver_.--The Lord hath chosen his own vessels.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them
+anywhere on ass-back or cart, (cart preferably,) to rid our country of
+'em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we
+shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command in
+the army, and hast a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and stately piece
+of horse-flesh, I cannot but take it into my fancy that thou hast some
+commission of array or disarray to execute hereabout.
+
+_Oliver_.--With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of
+swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put back
+nor staid in anywise, as you bear testimony unto me, uncle Oliver.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Thou never art more
+pery than when it rains with thee. Wet days, among those of thy kidney,
+portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at?
+
+_Oliver_.--That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this
+work!
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--What work, prythee?
+
+_Oliver_.--I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in his loving-kindness
+having pity and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand,
+administer unto our necessities and righteously command us, _by the
+aforesaid as aforesaid_ (thus runs the commission) hither am I deputed
+(woe is me!) to levy certain fines in this county, or shire, on such as
+the Parliament in its wisdom doth style malignants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--If there is anything left about the house, never be over
+nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county or
+shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.
+
+_Oliver_.--O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be
+witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.
+
+_Oliver_.--From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose his
+servants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Then, faith! thou art his first butler.
+
+_Oliver_.--Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found worthy
+of advancement.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy
+own: he does not sniffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or
+unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for an
+hour's rest. Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest
+heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank it might: and my
+wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty near as commodious as that over-yonder at
+Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and places too! yet the
+cellar holds good.
+
+_Oliver_.--Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the other
+side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they
+are.
+
+_Oliver_.--They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I
+trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of
+tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in the
+outer court.
+
+_Oliver_.--Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the
+most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the
+sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--But who are they?
+
+_Oliver_.--The Lord knows. May-be priests, deacons, and such like.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my
+mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your
+behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-door. With your
+permission, or without it, I shall take the liberty to invite them to
+partake of my poor hospitality.
+
+_Oliver_.--But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances whereby
+it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure--not mine--not
+mine--but my milk must not flow for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--You may enter the house or remain where you are at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,[14] Oliver! (but God will not
+surely let this be,) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of
+doubtful fidelity in the service of the body.
+
+_Oliver_.--Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been
+taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in
+asking your worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the
+_men-at-belly_ under the custody of the _men-at-arms_? This pestilence,
+like unto one I remember to have read about in some poetry of Master
+Chapman's,[15] began with the dogs and the mules, and afterwards crope
+up into the breasts of men.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not
+let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting
+down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their
+colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
+
+_Oliver_.--Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or his Saints; no, not even
+stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth against
+those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they raise not
+up their voices to cry for our deliverance.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in college
+halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought hither?
+
+_Oliver_.--They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
+and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which,
+unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but
+simply to undertake awhile the heavier office of burser for them, to
+cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring of their plate; and to
+lay a list thereof, with a few specimens, before those who fight the
+fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abasement of the proud
+and the chastisement of worldlymindedness, may rejoice.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings.
+But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty
+and jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing
+a jocularity. Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who
+lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering
+and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant,
+but they were not all hypocritical; they had not always "_the Lord_" in
+their mouths.
+
+_Oliver_.--According to their own notions, they might have had at an
+outlay of a farthing.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out as
+any thing else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little the
+grimmer and sourer.
+
+But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
+hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and so
+lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.
+
+_Oliver_.--I alway bow submissively before the judgment of mine elders;
+and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with greater
+wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas! those
+collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if you
+measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
+challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
+earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision. Thus
+far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us forbearance and
+self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil spirit moving them
+thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most wisely, might have been
+useful and peaceful, and had formerly been so. Why then did they gird
+the sword of strife about their loins against the children of Israel? By
+their own declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies the
+most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully, and in the
+name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they? Instead of
+surrendering it like honest and conscientious men, they attacked me and
+my people on horseback, with syllogisms and centhymemes, and the Lord
+knows with what other such gimcracks, such venemous and rankling old
+weapons as those who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to
+lay aside. Learning should not make folks mockers--should not make folks
+malignants--should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for
+them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galloon. Tankards and wassil-bowls had
+stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt them.
+
+_Oliver_.--We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--How can these learned societies raise the money you exact
+from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
+
+_Oliver_.--In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
+college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed
+Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
+or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
+metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
+lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
+bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
+Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
+sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
+with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Well--at last thou hast some mercy.
+
+_Oliver_ (_aloud_.)--Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclan! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up behind
+you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you at the
+country-places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable
+that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office
+of discharging the account. If there be any spare beds at the inns,
+allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same--they being used to lie
+softly; and be not urgent that more than three lie in each--they being
+mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and unreproved any light bubble of
+pride or impetuosity, seeing that they have not alway been accustomed to
+the service of guards and ushers. The Lord be with ye!--Slow trot! And
+now, uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no longer your loving-kindness. I
+kiss you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and
+gratefully do I accept of your invitation to dine and lodge with you,
+albeit the least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. After the
+refreshment of needful food, more needful prayer, and that sleep which
+descendeth on the innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak
+I proceed on my journey Londonward.
+
+_Sir Oliver_ (_aloud_.)--Ho, there! (_To a servant_.)--Let dinner be
+prepared in the great diningroom; let every servant be in waiting, each
+in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed upon the
+table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the side-board: a
+gentleman by descent--a stranger, has claimed my hospitality. (_Servant
+goes_.)
+
+Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.
+
+     [13] See Forster's Life of Cromwell.
+
+     [14] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
+     possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting
+     Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has produced from its
+     first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon,
+     Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that
+     attended these leviathans through the intellectual deep. Newton
+     was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh,
+     Spenser, Hooker, Elliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney,
+     Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime; and
+     several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
+
+     [15] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CALEB STUKELY.
+
+PART XI.
+
+SAINTS AND SINNERS.
+
+
+The history of my youth is the history of my life. My contemporaries
+were setting out on their journey when my pilgrimage was at an end. I
+had drained the cup of experience before other men had placed it to
+their lips. The vicissitudes of all seasons occurred in one, and, before
+my spring had closed, I had felt the winter's gloominess and cold. The
+scattered and separated experiences that diversify and mark the passage
+of the "threescore years and ten," were collected and thrust into the
+narrow period of my nonage. Within that boundary, existence was
+condensed. It was the time of action and of suffering. I have passed
+from youth to maturity and decline gently and passively; and now, in the
+cool and quiet sunset, I repose, connected with the past only by the
+adhering memories that will not be excluded from my solitude. I have
+gathered upon my head the enduring snow of age; but it has settled there
+in its natural course, with no accompaniment of storm and tempest. I
+look back to the land over which I have journeyed, and through which I
+have been conveyed to my present humble resting-place, and I behold a
+broad extent of plain, spreading from my very feet, into the hazy
+distance, where all is cloud, mountain, tumult, and agitation. Heaven be
+praised, I can look back with gratitude, chastened and informed!
+
+Amongst all the startling and stirring events that crowded into the
+small division of time to which I refer, none had so confounded,
+perplexed, alarmed, and grieved me, as the discovery of Mr Clayton's
+criminality and falsehood. There are mental and moral concussions,
+which, like physical shocks, stun and stupify with their suddenness and
+violence. This was one of them. Months after I had been satisfied of his
+obliquity, it was difficult to _realize_ the conviction that truth and
+justice authoritatively demanded. When I thought of the minister--when
+his form presented itself to my mind's eye, as it did, day after day,
+and hour after hour, it was impossible to contemplate it with the
+aversion and distaste which were the natural productions of his own base
+conduct. I could see nothing but the figure and the lineaments of him,
+whose eloquence had charmed, whose benevolent hand had nourished and
+maintained me. There are likewise, in this mysterious state of life,
+paroxysms and intervals of disordered consciousness, which memory
+refuses to acknowledge or record; the epileptic's waking dream is
+one--an unreal reality. And similar to this was my impression of the
+late events. They lacked substantiality. Memory took no account of them,
+discarded them, and would connect the present only with the bright
+experience she had treasured up, prior to the dark distempered season. I
+could not hate my benefactor. I could not efface the image, which months
+of apparent love had engraven on my heart.
+
+Thrust from Mr Clayton's chapel, and unable to obtain admission
+elsewhere, I felt how insecure was my tenure of office. I prepared
+myself for dismissal, and hoped that, when the hour arrived, I should
+submit without repining. In the meanwhile, I was careful in the
+performance of every duty, and studious to give no cause, not the
+remotest, for complaint or dissatisfaction. It was not long, however,
+before signs of an altered state of things presented themselves to view.
+A straw tells which way the wind blows, and wisps began to fly in all
+directions. I found at length that I could do nothing right. To-day I
+was too indolent; to-morrow, too officious:--now I was too much of a
+gentlemen; and now not half gentlemanly enough. The hardest infliction
+to bear was the treatment of my new friend and colleague--of him who had
+given me kind warning and advice, when mischief was only threatening,
+but who, on the first appearance of trouble, took alarm, and deserted my
+side. The moment that he perceived my inevitable fate, he decided upon
+leaving me alone to fight my hard battle. At first he spoke to me with
+shyness and reserve; afterwards coolly, and soon, he said nothing at
+all. Sometimes, perhaps, if we were quite alone, and there was no chance
+whatever of discovery, he would venture half a word or so upon the
+convenient subject of the weather; but these occasions were very rare.
+If a superior were present, hurricanes would not draw a syllable from
+his careful lips; and, under the eye of the stout and influential Mr
+Bombasty, it was well for me if frowns and sneers were the only
+exhibitions of rudeness on the part of my worldly and far-seeing friend.
+Ah, Jacob Whining! With all your policy and sagacious selfishness, you
+found it difficult to protract your own official existence a few months
+longer. He had hardly congratulated himself upon the dexterity which had
+kept him from being involved in my misfortunes, before _he_ fell under
+the ban of _his_ church, like me was persecuted, and driven into the
+world a branded and excommunicated outcast. Mr Whining, however, who had
+learnt much in the world, and more in his _connexion_, was a cleverer
+and more fortunate man than this friend and coadjutor. He retired with
+his experience into Yorkshire, drew a small brotherhood about him, and
+in a short time became the revered and beloved founder of the numerous
+and far-spread sect of _Whiningtonians_!
+
+It was just a fortnight after my expulsion from the _Church_, that
+matters were brought to a crisis as far as I was concerned, by the
+determined tone and conduct of the gentleman at the head of our society.
+Mr Bombasty arrived one morning at the office, in a perturbed and
+anxious state, and requested my attendance in his private room. I waited
+upon him. Perspiration hung about his fleshy face--he wiped it off, and
+then began:
+
+"Young man," said he, "this won't do at all."
+
+"What, sir?" I asked.
+
+"Come, don't be impudent. You are done for, I can tell you."
+
+"How, sir?" I enquired. "What have I done?"
+
+"Where are the subscriptions that were due last Saturday?"
+
+"Not yet collected, sir."
+
+"What money have you belonging to the society?"
+
+"Not a sixpence, sir."
+
+"Young man," continued the lusty president in a solemn voice, "you are
+in a woeful state; you are living in the world without _a security_."
+
+"What is the matter, sir."
+
+"Matter!" echoed the gentleman.--"Matter with a man that has lost his
+security! Are you positive you have got no funds about you? Just look
+into your pocket, my friend, and make sure."
+
+"I have nothing, sir. Pray, tell me what I have done?"
+
+"Young man, holding the office that I hold, feeling as I feel, and
+knowing what I know, it would be perfect madness in me to have any thing
+to do with a man who has been given over by his security. Don't you
+understand me? Isn't that very good English? Mr Clayton will have
+nothing more to say to you. The society gives you warning."
+
+"May I not be informed, sir, why I am so summarily dismissed?"
+
+"Why, my good fellow, what is the matter with you? You seem remarkably
+stupid this morning. I can't beat about the bush with you. You must go."
+
+"Without having committed a fault?" I added, mournfully.
+
+"Sir," said the distinguished president, looking libraries at me, "when
+one mortal has become security for another mortal, and suddenly annuls
+and stultifies his bond, to say that the other mortal has committed a
+_fault_ is just to call brandy--_water_. Sir," continued Mr Bombasty,
+adjusting his India cravat, "that man has perpetrated a crime--a crime
+_primy facey--exy fishio_."
+
+I saw that my time was come, and I said nothing.
+
+"If," said Mr Bombasty, "you had lost your intellect, I am a voluntary
+contributor, and could have got you chains and a keeper in Bedlam. If
+you had broken a limb, I am a life-governor, and it would have been a
+pleasure to me to send you to the hospital. But you may as well ask me
+to put life into a dead man, as to be of service to a creature who has
+lost his security. You had better die at once. It would be a happy
+release. I speak as a friend."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said I.
+
+"I hear complaints against you, but I don't listen to them. Every thing
+is swallowed up in one remarkable fact. Your security has let you down.
+You must go about your business. I speak as the president of this
+Christian society, and not, I hope, without the feelings of a man. The
+treasurer will pay your salary immediately, and we dispense with your
+services."
+
+"What am I to do?" I asked, half aloud.
+
+"Just the best you can," answered the gentleman. "The audience is at an
+end."
+
+Mr Bombasty said no more, but drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box of
+enormous dimensions. From it he grasped between his thumb and finger a
+moderate handful of stable-smelling dust. His nose and India
+handkerchief partook of it in equal shares, and then he rang his bell
+with presidential dignity, and ordered up his customary lunch of chops
+and porter. A few hours afterwards I was again upon the world, ready to
+begin the fight of life anew, and armed with fifteen guineas for the
+coming struggle. Mr Clayton had kept his word with me, and did not
+desert me until I was once more fairly on the road to ruin.
+
+One of the first consequences of my unlooked-for meeting with the
+faithful Thompson, was the repayment of the five shillings which he had
+so generously spared me when I was about to leave him for Birmingham,
+without as many pence in my scrip. During my absence, however, fortune
+had placed my honest friend in a new relation to a sum of this value.
+Five shillings were not to him, as before, sixty pence. The proprietor
+of the house in which he lived, and which he had found it so difficult
+to let out to his satisfaction, had died suddenly, and had thought
+proper to bequeath to his tenant the bulk of his property, amounting,
+perhaps, to five thousand pounds. Thompson, who was an upholsterer by
+trade, left the workshop in which he was employed as journeyman
+immediately, and began to work upon his own account. He was a prosperous
+and a thriving man when I rejoined him. His manner was, as the reader
+has seen, kind and straightforward as ever, and the only change that his
+wealth had wrought in him, was that which gold may be supposed to work a
+heart alive to its duties, simple and honest in its intentions, and
+lacking only the means to make known its strong desire of usefulness.
+His generosity had kept pace with his success, his good wishes
+outstripped both. His home was finer, yet scarcely more sightly and
+happier than the one large room, which, with its complement of ten
+children, sire and dame, had still a nook for the needy and friendless
+stranger. The old house had been made over for a twelvemonth to the
+various tenants, free of all charge. At the end of that period it was
+the intention of Thompson to pull it down, and build a better in its
+place. A young widow, with her three orphans, lodged on the attic floor,
+and the grateful prayers of the four went far to establish the buoyancy
+of the landlord's spirit, and to maintain the smile that seldom departed
+from his manly cheek. Well might the poor creature, whom I once visited
+in her happy lodging, talk of the sin of destroying so comfortable a
+residence, and feel assured, that "let them build a palace, they would
+never equal the present house, or make a sleeping-room where a body
+might rest so peacefully and well." Thompson's mode of life had scarcely
+varied. He was not idle amongst his men. When labour was suspended, he
+was with his children; another had been added to the number, and there
+were now eleven to relieve him of the superabundant profits created in
+the manufactory. Mrs Thompson was still a noble housewife, worthy of her
+husband. All was care, cleanliness, and economy at home. Griping stint
+would never have been tolerated by the hospitable master, and virtuous
+plenty only was admitted by the prudent wife. Had there been a oneness
+in the religious views of this good couple, _Paradise_ would have been a
+word fit to write beneath the board that made known to men John
+Thompson's occupation; but this, alas! was wanting to complete a scene
+that otherwise looked rather like perfection. The great enemy of man
+seeks in many ways to defeat the benevolent aims of Providence. Thompson
+had remained at home one Sunday afternoon to smoke a friendly pipe with
+an old acquaintance, when he should have gone to church. His wife set
+out alone. Satan took advantage of her husband's absence, drew her to
+chapel, and made her--a _dissenter_. This was Thompson's statement of
+the case, and severer punishment, he insisted, had never been inflicted
+on a man for Sabbath-breaking.
+
+When I was dismissed by Mr Bombasty, it was a natural step to walk
+towards the abode of the upholsterer. I knew his hour for supper, and
+his long hour after that for ale, and pipe, and recreation. I was not in
+doubt as to my welcome. Mrs Thompson had given me a general invitation
+to supper, "because," she said, "it did Thompson good to chat after a
+hard day's work;" and the respected Thompson himself had especially
+invited me to the long hour afterwards, "because," he added, "it did the
+ale and 'baccy good, who liked it so much better to go out of this here
+wicked world in company." About seven o'clock in the evening I found
+myself under their hospitable roof, seated in the room devoted to the
+general purposes of the house. It was large, and comfortably furnished.
+The walls were of wainscot, painted white, and were graced with two
+paintings. One, a family group, consisting of Thompson, wife, and eight
+children, most wretchedly executed, was the production of a slowly
+rising artist, a former lodger of my friend's, who had contrived to
+compound with his easy landlord for two years and three quarters' rent,
+with this striking display of his ability. Thompson was prouder of this
+picture than of the originals themselves, if that were possible. The
+design had been his own, and had cost him, as he was ready and even
+anxious to acknowledge, more time and trouble than he had ever given
+before, or meant to give again, to any luxury in life. The artist, as I
+was informed, had endeavoured to reduce to form some fifty different
+schemes that had arisen in poor Thompson's brain, but had failed in
+every one, so difficult he found it to introduce the thousand and one
+effects that the landlord deemed essential to the subject. His first
+idea had been to bring upon the canvass every feature of his life from
+boyhood upwards. This being impracticable, he wished to bargain for at
+least the workshop and the private residence. The lodgers, he thought,
+might come into the background well, and the tools, peeping from a
+basket in the corner, would look so much like life and nature. The
+upshot of his plans was the existing work of art, which Thompson
+considered matchless, and pronounced "dirt cheap, if he had even given
+the fellow a seven years' lease of the entire premises." The situations
+were striking certainly. In the centre of the picture were two high
+chairs, on which were seated, as grave as judges, the heads of the
+establishment. They sat there, drawn to their full height, too dignified
+to look at one another, and yet displaying a fond attachment, by a
+joining of the hands. The youngest child had clambered to the father's
+knee, and, with a chisel, was digging at his nose, wonderful to say,
+without disturbing the stoic equanimity that had settled on the father's
+face. This was the favourite son. Another, with a plane larger than
+himself, was menacing the mother's knee. The remaining six had each a
+tool, and served in various ways to effect most artfully the beloved
+purpose of the vain upholsterer's heart--viz. the introduction of the
+entire workshop. The second painting in the centre of the opposite wall,
+represented Mr Clayton. The likeness was a failure, and the colours were
+coarse and glaring; but there needed no instruction to know that the
+carefully framed production attempted to portray the unenviable man,
+who, in spite of his immorality and shameless life, was still revered
+and idolized by the blind disciples who had taken him for their guide.
+This portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar property. There were no other
+articles of _virtu_ in the spacious apartment; but cleanliness and
+decorum bestowed upon it a grace, the absence of which no idle
+decoration could supply. Early as the hour was, a saucepan was on the
+fire, whose bubbling water was busy with the supper that at half-past
+eight must meet the assault of many knives and forks. John Thompson and
+two sons--the eldest--were working in the shop. They had been there with
+little intermission since six that morning. The honest man was fond of
+work; so was he of his children--yes, dearly fond of _them_, and they
+must share with him the evening meal; and he must have them all about
+him; and he must help them all, and see them eat, and look with manly
+joy and pride upon the noisy youngsters, for whom his lusty arm had
+earned the bread that came like manna to him--so wholesome and so sweet!
+Three girls, humbly but neatly dressed, the three first steps of this
+great human ladder, were seated at a table administering to the
+necessities of sundry shirts and stockings that had suffered sensibly in
+their last week's struggle through the world. _They_ were indeed a
+picture worth the looking at. You grew a better man in gazing on their
+innocence and industry. What a lesson stole from their quiet and
+contented looks, their patient perseverance, their sweet unity! How
+shining smooth the faces, how healthy, and how round, and how impossible
+it seemed for wrinkles ever to disturb the fine and glossy surface!
+Modesty never should forsake the humble; the bosom of the lowly born
+should be her home. Here she had enshrined herself, and given to
+simplicity all her dignity and truth. They worked and worked on; who
+should tell which was the most assiduous--which the fairest--which the
+most eager and successful to increase the happiness of all! And turn to
+Billy there, that half-tamed urchin! that likeness in little of his
+sire, rocking not so much against his will, as against conviction, the
+last of all the Thompsons--a six months' infant in the wicker cradle.
+How, obedient to his mother's wish, like a little man at first, he rocks
+with all his might, and then irregularly, and at long intervals--by fits
+and starts--and ceases altogether very soon, bobbing his curly head, and
+falling gently into a deep mesmeric sleep. The older lads are making
+wooden boats, and two, still older, stand on either side their mother. A
+book is in the hands of each, full of instruction and fine learning. It
+was the source of all their knowledge, the cause of all their earliest
+woes. Good Mrs Thompson had been neglected as a child, and was
+enthusiastic in the cause of early education. Sometimes they looked into
+the book, but oftener still they cast attentive eyes upon the fire, as
+if "the book of knowledge fair" was there displayed, and not a noisy
+saucepan, almost unable to contain itself for joy of the cod's head and
+shoulders, that must be ready by John Thompson's supper time. The whole
+family were my friends--with the boys I was on terms of warmest
+intimacy, and smiles and nods, and shouts and cheers, welcomed me
+amongst them.
+
+"Now, close your book, Bob," said the mother, soon after I was seated,
+"and, Alec, give me yours. Put your hands down, turn from the fire, and
+look up at me, dears. What is the capital of Russia?"
+
+"The Birman empire," said Alec, with unhesitating confidence.
+
+"The Baltic sea," cried Bob, emulous and ardent.
+
+"Wait--not so fast; let me see, my dears, which of you is right."
+
+Mrs Thompson appealed immediately to her book, after a long and private
+communication with which, she emphatically pronounced both wrong.
+
+"Give us a chance, mother," said Bob in a wheedling tone, (Bob knew his
+mother's weaknesses.) "Them's such hard words. I don't know how it is,
+but I never can remember 'em. Just tell us the first syllable--oh, do
+now--please."
+
+"Oh, I know now!" cried Alec. "It's something with a G in it."
+
+"Think of the apostles, dears. What are the names of the apostles?"
+
+"Why, there's Moses," began Bob, counting on his fingers, "and there's
+Sammywell, and there's Aaron, and Noah's ark"----
+
+"Stop, my dear," said Mrs Thompson, who was very busy with her manual,
+and contriving a method of rendering a solution of her question easy.
+"Just begin again. I said--who was Peter--no, not that--who was an
+apostle?"
+
+"Oh, I know now!" cried Alec again, (Alec was the sharp boy of the
+family.) "It's Peter. Peter's the capital of Russia."
+
+"No, not quite my dear. You are very warm--very warm indeed, but not
+quite hot. Try again."
+
+"Paul," half murmured Robert, with a reckless hope of proving right.
+
+"No, Peter's right; but there's something else. What has your father
+been taking down the beds for?"
+
+There was a solemn silence, and the three industrious sisters blushed
+the faintest blush that could be raised upon a maiden's cheek.
+
+"To rub that stuff upon the walls," said the ready Alec.
+
+"Yes, but what was it to kill?" continued the instructress.
+
+"The fleas," said Bob.
+
+"Worse than that, my dear."
+
+"Oh, I know now," shrieked Alec, for the third time. "_Petersbug's_ the
+capital of Russia."
+
+Mrs Thompson looked at me with pardonable vanity and triumph, and I
+bestowed upon the successful students a few comfits which I had
+purchased on my road for my numerous and comfit-loving friends. The mere
+sight of this sweet "reward of merit" immediately inspired the two boys
+at work upon the boats with a desire for knowledge, and especially for
+learning the capitals of countries, that was most agreeable to
+contemplate. The lesson was continued, more to my amusement, I fear,
+than the edification of the pupils. The boys were unable to answer a
+single question until they had had so many _chances_, and had become so
+very _hot_, that not to have answered at length would have bordered on
+the miraculous. The persevering governess was not displeased at this,
+for she would not have lost the opportunity of displaying her own skill
+in metaphorical illustration, for a great deal, I am very sure. The
+clock struck eight; there was a general movement. The three sisters
+folded their work, and lodged it carefully in separate drawers. The
+eldest then produced the table-cloth, knives, forks, and spoons. The
+second exhibited bibs and pinafores; and the third brought from their
+hiding-places a dozen modest chairs, and placed them round the table.
+Bob assured the company "he was _so_ hungry;" Alec said, "so was he;"
+and the boatmen, in an under tone, settled what should be done with the
+great cod's eyes, which, they contended, were the best parts of the
+fish, and "shouldn't they be glad if father would give 'em one a-piece."
+The good woman must enquire, of course, how nearly the much-relished
+dainty had reached the critical and interesting state when it became
+most palatable to John Thompson; for John Thompson was an epicure, "and
+must have his little bits of things done to a charm, or not at all."
+Half-past eight had struck. The family were bibbed and pinafored; the
+easy coat and slippers were at the fire, and warmed through and
+through--it was a season of intenseness. "Here's father!" shouted Alec,
+and all the bibs and pinafores rushed like a torrent to the door. Which
+shall the father catch into his ready arms, which kiss, which hug, which
+answer?--all are upon him; they know their playmate, their companion,
+and best friend; they have hoarded up, since the preceding night, a
+hundred things to say, and now they have got their loving and attentive
+listener. "Look what I have done, father," says the chief boatman, "Tom
+and I together." "Well done, boys!" says the father--and Tom and he are
+kissed. "I have been _l_ocking baby," lisps little Billy, who, in
+return, gets rocked himself. "Father, what's the capital of Russia?"
+shrieks Alec, tugging at his coat. "What do you mean, you dog?" is the
+reply, accompanied by a hearty shake of his long flaxen hair.
+"Petersburg," cry Tom and Alec both, following him to the hearth, each
+one endeavouring to relieve him of his boots as soon as he is seated
+there. The family circle is completed. The flaky fish is ready, and
+presented for inspection. The father has served them all, even to little
+Billy--their plates are full and smoking. "Mother" is called upon to ask
+a blessing. She rises, and assumes the looks of Jabez Buster--twenty
+blessings might be asked and granted in half the time she takes--so
+think and look Bob, Alec, and the boatmen; but at length she pauses--the
+word is given, and further ceremony is dispensed with. In childhood,
+supper is a thing to look forward to, and to _last_ when it arrives; but
+not in childhood, any more than in old age, can sublunary joys endure
+for ever. The meal is finished. A short half-hour flies, like lightning,
+by. The children gather round their father; and in the name of all, upon
+his knees, he thanks his God for all the mercies of the day. Thompson is
+no orator. His heart is warm; his words are few and simple. The three
+attendant graces take charge of their brethren, detach them from their
+father's side, and conduct them to their beds. Happy father! happy
+children! May Providence be merciful, and keep the grim enemy away from
+your fireside! Let him not come now in the blooming beauty and the
+freshness of your loves! Let him not darken and embitter for ever the
+life that is still bright, beautiful, and glorious in the power of
+elevating and sustaining thought that leads beyond it. Let him wait the
+matured and not unexpected hour, when the shock comes, not to crush, to
+overwhelm, and to annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and to encourage;
+not to alarm and stagger the untaught spirit, but to bring to the
+subdued and long-tried soul its last lesson on the vanity and
+evanescence of its early dreams!
+
+It is half-past nine o'clock. Thompson, his wife, and two eldest boys
+are present, and, for the first time, I have an opportunity to make
+known the object of my visit.
+
+"And so they have turned you off," said Thompson, when I had finished.
+"And who's surprised at that? Not I, for one. Missus," continued he,
+turning to his wife, "why haven't you got a curtain yet for that ere
+pictur? I can't abear the sight of it."
+
+Mrs Thompson looked plaintively towards the painting, and heaved a sigh.
+
+"Ah, dear good man! He has got his enemies," said she.
+
+"Mrs Thompson!" exclaimed her husband, "I have done with that good man
+from this day for'ards; and I do hope, old 'ooman, that you'll go next
+Sunday to church with me, as we used to do afore you got that pictur
+painted."
+
+"It's no good talking, Thompson," answered the lady, positively and
+firmly. "I can't sit under a cold man, and there's an end of it."
+
+"There, that's the way you talk, missus."
+
+"Why, you know, Thompson, every thing in the church is cold."
+
+"No, not now, my dear--they've put up a large stove. You'll recollect
+you haven't been lately."
+
+"Besides, do you think I can sit in a place of worship, and hear a man
+say, '_Let us pray_,' in the middle of the service, making a fool of
+one, as if we hadn't been praying all the time? As that dear and
+persecuted saint says, (turning to the picture,) it's a common assault
+to our understandings."
+
+"Now, Polly, that's just always how you go off. If you'd only listen to
+reason, that could all be made out right in no time. The clergyman
+doesn't mean to say, _let us pray_, because he hasn't been praying
+afore;--what he means is--we have been praying all this time, and so
+we'll go on praying again--no, not again exactly--but don't leave off.
+That isn't what I mean either. Let me see, _let us pray_. Oh, yes!
+Why--stay. Where is it he does say, _let us pray_? There, I say,
+Stukely, you know it all much better than I do. Just make it right to
+the missus."
+
+"It is not difficult," said I.
+
+"Oh no, Mr Stukely, I daresay not!" added Mrs Thompson, interrupting me.
+"Mr Clayton says, Satan has got his janysarries abroad, and has a reason
+for every thing. It is very proper to say, too, I suppose, that it is an
+_imposition_ when the bishops ordain the ministers? What a word to make
+use of. It's truly frightful!"
+
+"Well, I'm blessed," exclaimed Thompson, "if I don't think you had
+better hold your tongue, old girl, about impositions; for sich oudacious
+robbers as your precious brothers is, I never come across, since I was
+stopped that ere night, as we were courting, on Shooter's Hill. It's a
+system of imposition from beginning to end."
+
+"Look to your Bible, Thompson; what does that say? Does that tell
+ministers to read their sermons? There can't be no truth and right
+feeling when a man puts down what he's going to say; the vital warmth is
+wanting, I'm sure. And then to read the same prayers Sunday after
+Sunday, till a body gets quite tired at hearing them over and over
+again, and finding nothing new! How can you improve an occasion if you
+are tied down in this sort of way."
+
+"Did you ever see one of the brothers eat, Stukely?" asked Thompson,
+avoiding the main subject. "Don't you ask one of them to dinner--that's
+all. That nice boy Buster ought to eat for a wager. I had the pleasure
+of his company to dinner one fine afternoon. I don't mean to send him
+another invitation just yet, at all events."
+
+"Yes," proceeded the fair, but stanch nonconformist; "what does the
+Bible say, indeed! 'Take no thought of what you should say.' Why, in the
+church, I am told they are doing nothing else from Monday morning to
+Saturday night but writing the sermon they are going to read on the
+Sabbath. To _read_ a sermon! What would the apostles say to that?"
+
+"Why, didn't you tell me, my dear, that the gentleman as set for that
+pictur got all his sermons by heart before he preached 'em?"
+
+"Of course I did--but that's a very different thing. Doesn't it all pour
+from him as natural as if it had come to him that minute? He doesn't
+fumble over a book like a schoolboy. His beautiful eyes, I warrant you,
+ain't looking down all the time, as if he was ashamed to hold 'em up.
+Isn't it a privilege to see his blessed eyes rolling all sorts of ways;
+and don't they speak wolumes to the poor benighted sinner? Besides,
+don't tell me, Thompson; we had better turn Catholics at once, if we are
+to have the minister dressing up like the Pope of Rome, and all the rest
+of it."
+
+"You are the gal of my heart," exclaimed the uxorious Thompson; "but I
+must say you have got some of the disgracefulest notions out of that ere
+chapel as ever I heard on. Why, it's only common decency to wear a dress
+in the pulpit; and I believe in my mind, that that's come down to us
+from time immemorable, like every thing else in human natur. What's your
+opinion, Stukely?"
+
+"Yes; and what's your opinion, Mr Stukely," added the lady immediately,
+"about calling a minister of the gospel--a _priest_? Is that
+Paperistical or not?"
+
+"That isn't the pint, Polly," proceeded John. "We are talking about the
+silk dress now. Let's have that out first."
+
+"And then the absolution"----
+
+"No, Poll. Stick to the silk dress."
+
+"Ah, Thompson, it's always the way!" continued the mistress of the
+house, growing red and wroth, and heedless of the presence of the
+eager-listening children; "it's always the way. Satan is ruining of you.
+You'll laugh at the elect, and you'll not find your mistake out till
+it's too late to alter. Mr Clayton says, that the Establishment is the
+hothouse of devils; and the more I see of its ways, the more I feel he
+is right. Thompson, you are in the sink of iniquity."
+
+"Come, I can't stand no more of this!" exclaimed Thompson, growing
+uneasy in his chair, but without a spark of ill-humour. "Let's change
+the topic, old 'ooman; I'm sure it can't do the young un's any good to
+hear this idle talk. Let's teach 'em nothing at all, if we can't larn
+'em something better than wrangling about religion. Now, Jack," he
+continued, turning to his eldest boy, "what is the matter with you? What
+are you sitting there for with your mouth wide open?"
+
+"What's the meaning of Paperist, father?" asked the boy, who had been
+long waiting to propose the question.
+
+"What's that to you, you rascal?" was the reply; "mind your own
+business, my good fellow, and leave the Paperist to mind his'n; that's
+your father's maxim, who got it from his father before him. You'll learn
+to find fault with other people fast enough without my teaching you. I
+tell you what, Jack, if you look well after yourself, you'll find little
+time left to bother about others. If your hands are ever idle--recollect
+you have ten brothers and sisters about you. Look about you--you are the
+oldest boy--and see what you can do for them. Do you mind that?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Very well, old chap. Then just get out the bottle, and give your father
+something to coax the cod down. Poll, that fish won't settle."
+
+The long hour was beginning. That bottle was the signal. A gin and water
+nightcap, on this occasion, officiated for the ale. Jack and his brother
+received a special invitation to a sip or two, which they at once
+unhesitatingly accepted. The sturdy fellows shook their father and
+fellow-labourer's hand, and were not loth to go to rest. Their mother
+was their attendant. The ruffle had departed from her face. It was as
+pleasant as before. She was but half a dissenter. So Thompson thought
+when he called her back again, and bade his "old 'ooman give her hobby
+one of her good old-fashioned busses, and think no more about it."
+
+Thompson and I were left together.
+
+"And what do you mean to do, sir, now?" was his first question.
+
+"I hardly know." I answered.
+
+"Of course, you'll cut the gang entirely--that's a nat'ral consequence."
+
+"No, Thompson, not at present. I must not seem so fickle and inconstant.
+I must not seem so to myself. I joined this sect not altogether without
+deliberation. I must have further proof of the unsoundness of its
+principles. A few of its professors have been faithless even to their
+own position. Of what religious profession may not the same be said? I
+will be patient, and examine further."
+
+"I was a-thinking," said Thompson, musingly, "I was a-thinking, 'till
+you've got something else to do----but no, never mind, you won't like
+that."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why, I was thinking about the young un's. They're shocking back'ard in
+their eddication, and, between you and me, the missus makes them
+back'arder. I don't understand the way she has got of larning 'em at
+all. I don't want to make scholards of 'em. Nobody would but a fool.
+Bless 'em, they'll have enough to do to get their bread with sweating
+and toiling, without addling their brains about things they can't
+understand. But it is a cruelty, mind you, for a parent to hinder his
+child from reading his Bible on a Sunday afternoon, and to make him
+stand ashamed of himself before his fellow workman when he grows up, and
+finds that he can't put _paid_ to a bill on a Saturday night. The boys
+should all know how to read and write, and keep accounts, and a little
+summut of human nature. This is what I wants to give 'em, and nobody
+should I like better to put it into 'em than you, my old friend, if
+you'd just take the trouble 'till you've got something better to do."
+
+"Thompson," I answered instantly, "I will do it with pleasure. I ought
+to have made the offer. It did not occur to me. I shall rejoice to repay
+you, in this trifling way, for all your good feeling and kindness."
+
+"Oh no!" answered my friend, "none of that. We must have an
+understanding. Don't you think I should have asked the question, if I
+meant to sneak out in that dirty sort of way. No, that won't do. It's
+very kind of you, but we must make all that right. We sha'n't quarrel, I
+dare say. If you mean you'll do it, I have only just a word or two to
+say before you begin."
+
+"I shall be proud to serve you, Thompson, and on any terms you please."
+
+"Well, it is a serving me--I don't deny it--but, mind you, only till you
+have dropped into something worth your while. What I wish to say is as
+this: As soon as ever my missus hears of what you are going to do, I
+know as well what she'll be at as I know what I am talking of now.
+She'll just be breaking my heart to have the boys larned French. Now,
+I'd just as soon bind 'em apprentice to that ere Clayton. I've seen too
+much of that ere sort of thing in my time. I'm as positive as I sit
+here, that when a chap begins to talk French he loses all his English
+spirit, and feels all over him as like a mounseer as possible. I'm sure
+he does. I've seen it a hundred times, and that I couldn't a-bear.
+Besides, I've been told that French is the language the thieves talk,
+and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll
+excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must
+say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the
+pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the
+company you have kept. You are--it's the only fault you have got--you
+are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn 'em.
+That's all I have to say, and we'll talk of the pay some other time."
+
+At this turn of the conversation, Thompson insisted upon my lighting a
+pipe and joining him in the gin and water. We smoked for many minutes in
+silence. My friend had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had drawn the table
+nearer to his warm and hospitable fire. A log of wood was burning slowly
+and steadily away, and a small, bright--very bright--copper kettle
+overlooked it from the hob. My host had fixed his feet upon the
+fender--the unemployed hand was in his corduroys. His eyes were three
+parts closed, enjoying what from its origin may be called--a pure
+tobacco-born soliloquy. The smoke arose in thin white curls from the
+clay cup, and at regular periods stole blandly from the corner of his
+lips. The silent man was blessed. He had been happy at his work; he had
+grown happier as the sun went down; his happiness was ripening at the
+supper table; _now_, half-asleep and half-awake--half conscious and half
+dreaming--wholly free from care, and yet not free from pregnant
+thought--the labourer had reached the summit of felicity, and was at
+peace--intensely.
+
+A few evenings only had elapsed after this interesting meeting, before
+I was again spending a delicious hour or two with the simple-hearted and
+generous upholsterer. There was something very winning in these moments
+snatched and secured from the hurricane of life, and passed in thorough
+and undisturbed enjoyment. My friend, notwithstanding that he had
+engaged my services, and was pleased to express his satisfaction at the
+mode in which I rendered them, was yet alive to my interests, and too
+apprehensive of injuring them by keeping me away from loftier
+employment. He did not like my being _thrown out_ of the chapel,
+especially after he had heard my determination not to forsake
+immediately the sect to which I had attached myself. He was indifferent
+to his own fate. His worldly prospects could not be injured by his
+expulsion; on the contrary, he slyly assured me that "his neighbours
+would begin to think better of him, and give him credit for having
+become an honester and more trustworthy man." But with regard to myself
+it was a different thing. I should require "a character" at some time or
+another, and there was a body of men primed and ready to vilify and
+crush me. He advised me, whilst he acknowledged it was a hard thing to
+say, and "it went agin him to do it," to apply once more respectfully
+for my dismission. "It won't do," he pertinently said, "to bite your
+nose off to be revenged on your tongue." I was certainly in a mess, and
+must get out of it in the best way that I could. Buster and Tomkins had
+great power in _the Church_, and if I represented my case to either or
+both of them, he did hope they might be brought to consent not to injure
+me, or stand in the way of my getting bread. "In a quarrel," he said, in
+conclusion, "some one must give in. I was a young man, and had my way to
+make, and though he should despise his-self if he recommended me to do
+any thing mean and dirty in the business, yet, he thought, as the father
+of a numerous family, he ought to advise me to be civil, and to do the
+best for myself in this unfortunate dilemmy."
+
+I accepted his advice, and determined to wait upon the dapper deacon. I
+was physically afraid to encounter Buster, not so much on account of
+what I had seen of his spiritual pretension, as of what I had heard of
+his domestic behaviour. It was not a very difficult task to obtain from
+Mrs Thompson the secret history of many of her highly privileged
+acquaintances and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful degree, the
+peculiar virtue of her amiable sex, and to communicate secrets,
+delivered to her in strictest confidence, and imparted by her again with
+equal caution and provisory care, was the choicest recreation of her
+well employed and useful life. It was through this lady that I was
+favoured with a glance into the natural heart of Mr Buster; or into what
+he would himself have called, with a most unfilial disgust, "HIS OLD
+MAN." It appeared that, like most great _actors_, he was a very
+different personage before and behind the curtain. Kings, who are
+miserable and gloomy through the five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who
+must needs die at the end of it, are your merriest knaves over a tankard
+at the Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool shall be the dullest dog that
+ever spoiled mirth with sour and discontented looks. Jabez Buster, his
+employment being over at Mr Clayton's theatre, his dress thrown aside,
+his mask put by, was not to be recognised by his nearest friend. This is
+the perfection of art. A greater tyrant on a small scale, with limited
+means, never existed than the saintly Buster when his character was
+done, and he found himself again in the bosom of his family. Unhappy
+bosom was it, and a sad flustration did his presence, nine times out of
+ten, produce there. He had four sons, and a delicate creature for a
+wife, born to be crushed. The sons were remarkable chiefly for their
+hypocrisy, which promised, in the fulness of time, to throw their
+highly-gifted parent's far into the shade; and, secondarily, for their
+persecution of their helpless and indulgent mother. They witnessed and
+approved so much the success of Jabez in this particular, that during
+his absence they cultivated the affectionate habit until it became a
+kind of second nature, infinitely more racy and agreeable than the
+primary. In proportion to their deliberate oppression of their mother
+was their natural dread and terror of their father. Mrs Thompson
+pronounced it "the shockingest thing in this world to be present when
+the young blue-beards were worryting their mother's soul out with
+saying, '_I sha'n't_' and '_I won't_' to every thing, and swearing
+'_they'd tell their father this_,' '_and put him up to that, and then
+wouldn't he make a jolly row about it_,' with hollering out for nothing
+at all, only to frighten the poor timid cretur, and then making a
+holabaloo with the chairs, or perhaps falling down, roaring and kicking,
+just to drive the poor thing clean out of her wits, on purpose to laugh
+at her for being so taken in. Well, but it was a great treat, too," she
+added, "to hear, in the midst of all this, Buster's heavy foot in the
+passage, and to see what a scrimmage there was at once amongst all the
+young hypocrites. How they all run in different directions--one to the
+fire--one to the table--one out at the back-door--one any where he
+could--all of 'em as silent as mice, and afeard of the very eye of the
+blacksmith, who knew, good man, how to keep every man Jack of 'em in
+order, and, if a word didn't do, wasn't by no means behind hand with
+blows. Buster," she continued, "had his faults like other men, but he
+was a saint if ever there was one. To be sure he did like to have his
+own way at home, and wasn't it natural? And if he was rather overbearing
+and cruel to his wife, wasn't that, she should like to know, Satan
+warring with the new man, and sometimes getting the better of it? And if
+he was, as Thompson had hinted, rayther partial to the creature, and
+liked good living, what was this to the purpose? it was an infirmity
+that might happen to the best Christian living. Nobody could say that he
+wasn't a renewed man, and a chosen vessel, and faithful to his call. A
+man isn't a backslider because he's carnally weak, and a man isn't a
+saint because he's moral and well-behaved. 'Good works,' Mr Clayton
+said, 'was filthy rags,' and so they were. To be sure, between
+themselves, there were one or two things said about Buster that she
+couldn't approve of. For instance, she had been told--but _this_ was
+quite in confidence, and really must _not_ go further--that he
+was--that--that, in fact, he was overtaken now and then with liquor, and
+then the house could hardly hold him, he got so furious, and, they did
+say, used such horrid language. But, after all, what was this? If a
+man's elected, he is not so much the worse. Besides, if one listened to
+people, one might never leave off. She had actually heard, she wouldn't
+say from whom, that Buster very often kept out late at night--sometimes
+didn't come home at all, and sometimes did at two o'clock in the
+morning, very hungry and ill-tempered, and then forced his poor wife out
+of bed, and made the delicate and shivering creature light a fire, cook
+beefsteaks, go into the yard for beer, and wait upon him till he had
+even eat every morsel up. She for one would never believe all this,
+though Mrs Buster herself had told her every word with tears in her
+eyes, and in the greatest confidence; so she trusted I wouldn't repeat
+it, as it wouldn't look well in her to be found out telling other
+people's secrets." Singular, perhaps, to say, the tale did not go
+further. I kept the lady's secret, and at the same time declined to
+approach Mr Jabez Buster in the character of a suppliant. If his
+advocate and panegyrist had nothing more to say for him, it could not be
+uncharitable to conclude that the pretended saint was as bold a sinner
+as ever paid infamous courtship to religion, and as such was studiously
+to be avoided. I turned my attention from him to Tomkins. There was no
+grossness about him, no brutality, no abominable vice. In the hour of my
+defeat and desertion, he had extended to me his sympathy, and, more in
+sorrow than in anger, I am convinced he voted for my expulsion from the
+church when he found that his vote, and twenty added to it, would not
+have been sufficient to protect me. He could not act in opposition to
+the wishes of his friend and patron, Mr Clayton, but very glad would he
+have been, as every word and look assured me, to meet the wishes of us
+both, had that been practicable. If the great desire of Jehu Tomkins'
+heart could have been gratified, he never would have been at enmity with
+a single soul on earth. He was a soft, good-natured, easy man; most
+desirous to be let alone, and not uneasily envious or distressed to see
+his neighbours jogging on, so long as he could do his own good stroke of
+business, and keep a little way before them. Jehu was a Liberal too--in
+politics and in religion--in every thing, in fact, but the one small
+article of _money_, and here, I must confess, the good dissenter
+dissented little from the best of us. He was a stanch Conservative in
+matters connected with the _till_. For his private life it was
+exemplary--at least it looked so to the world, and the world is
+satisfied with what it sees. Jehu was attentive to his business--yes,
+very--and a business life is not monotonous and dull, if it be relieved,
+as it was in this case, by dexterous arts, that give an interest and
+flavour to the commonest pursuits. Sometimes a customer would die--a
+natural state of things, but a great event for Jehu. First, he would
+"improve the occasion" to the surviving relatives--condole and pray with
+them. Afterwards he would _improve_ it to himself, in his own little
+room, at night, when all the children were asleep, and no one was awake
+but Mrs Tomkins and himself. Then he would get down his ledger, and turn
+to the deceased's account--
+
+    "----How _long_ it is thou see'st,
+    And he would gaze 'till it became _much longer_;"
+
+"For who could tell whether six shirts or twelve were bought in July
+last, and what could be the harm of making those eight handkerchiefs a
+dozen? He was a strange old gentleman; lived by himself--and the books
+might be referred to, and speak boldly for themselves." Yes, cunning
+Jehu, so they might, with those interpolations and erasures that would
+confound and overcome a lawyer. When customers did not die, it was
+pastime to be dallying with the living. In adding up a bill with haste,
+how many times will four and four make _nine_? They generally did with
+Jehu. The best are liable to errors. It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had
+hundreds at command, and the accident was amended. How easy is it
+sometimes to give no bill at all! How very easy to apply, a few months
+afterwards, for second payment; how much more easy still to pocket it
+without a word; or, if discovered and convicted, to apologize without a
+blush for the _mistake_! No, Jehu Tomkins, let me do you justice--this
+is not so easy--it requires all your zeal and holy intrepidity to reach
+this pitch of human frailty and corruption. With regard to the domestic
+position of my interesting friend, it is painful to add, that the less
+that is said about it the better. In vain was his name in full, painted
+in large yellow letters, over the shop front. In vain was _Bot. of Jehu
+Tomkins_ engraven on satin paper, with flourishes innumerable beneath
+the royal arms; he was no more the master of his house than was the
+small boy of the establishment, who did the dirty work of the place for
+nothing a-week and the broken victuals. If Jehu was deacon abroad, he
+was taught to acknowledge an _arch_deacon at home--one to whom he was
+indebted for his success in life, and for reminding him of that
+agreeable fact about four times during every day of his existence. I was
+aware of this delicate circumstance when I ventured to the
+linen-draper's shop on my almost hopeless mission; but, although I had
+never spoken to Mrs Tomkins, I had often seen her in the chapel, and I
+relied much on the feeling and natural tenderness of the female heart.
+The respectable shop of Mr Tomkins was in Fleet Street. The
+establishment consisted of Mrs Tomkins, _première_; Jehu,
+under-secretary; and four sickly-looking young ladies behind the
+counter. It is to be said, to the honour of Mrs Tomkins, that she
+admitted no young woman into her service whose character was not
+_decided_, and whose views were not very clear. Accordingly, the four
+young ladies were members of the chapel. It is pleasing to reflect,
+that, in this well-ordered house of business, the ladies took their
+turns to attend the weekly prayer meetings of the church. Would that I
+might add, that they were _not_ severally met on these occasions by
+their young men at the corner of Chancery Lane, and invariably escorted
+by them some two or three miles in a totally opposite direction. Had Mrs
+Tomkins been born a man, it is difficult to decide what situation she
+would have adorned the most. She would have made a good man of
+business--an acute lawyer--a fine casuist--a great divine. Her
+attainments were immense; her self-confidence unbounded. She was a woman
+of middle height, and masculine bearing. She was not prepossessing,
+notwithstanding her white teeth and large mouth, and the intolerable
+grin that a customer to the amount of a halfpenny and upwards could
+bring upon her face under any circumstances, and at any hour of the day.
+Her complexion might have been good originally. Red blotches scattered
+over her cheek had destroyed its beauty. She wore a modest and becoming
+cap, and a gold eyeglass round her neck. She was devoted to
+money-making--heart and soul devoted to it during business hours. What
+time she was not in the shop, she passed amongst dissenting ministers,
+spiritual brethren, and deluded sinners. It remains to state the fact,
+that, whilst a customer never approached the lady without being repelled
+by the offensive smirk that she assumed, no dependent ever ventured near
+her without the fear of the scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully,
+when she pleased) upon her dark and inauspicious brow. What wonder that
+little Jehu was crushed into nothingness, behind his own counter, under
+the eye of his own wife!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES.
+
+PART II.
+
+
+In our last, we had occasion to speak sharply of that class of our
+aristocratic youth known by the name of fast fellows, and it may be
+thought that we characterized their foibles rather pointedly, and
+tinctured our animadversions with somewhat of undue asperity. This
+charge, however, can be made with no ground of reason or justice: the
+fact is, we only lashed the follies for which that class of men are
+pre-eminent, but left their vices in the shade, in the hope that the
+_raw_ we have already established, will shame the fast fellows into a
+sense of the proprieties of conduct due to themselves and their station.
+
+The misfortune is, that these fast fellows forget, in the pursuit of
+their favourite follies, that the mischief to society begins only with
+themselves: that man is naturally a servile, imitative animal; and that
+he follows in the track of a great name, as vulgar muttons run at the
+heels of a belwether. The poison of fashionable folly runs comparatively
+innocuous while it circulates in fashionable veins; but when vulgar
+fellows are innoculated with the virus, it becomes a plague, a moral
+small-pox, distorting, disfiguring the man's mind, pockpitting his small
+modicum of brains, and blinding his mind's eye to the supreme contempt
+his awkward vagaries inspire.
+
+The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly in the spread of their servile
+imitation of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly profligacy at
+second-hand; and perhaps this is the worst trait in their character, for
+it is at once malicious and unwise: malicious, because the contemplation
+of humanity, degraded by bad example in high station, should rather be a
+source of secret shame than of devilish gratification: unwise, because
+their example is a discredit to their order, and a danger. To posses
+birth, fashion, station, wealth, power, is title enough to envy, and
+handle sufficient for scandal. How much stronger becomes that title--how
+much longer that handle--when men, enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it,
+not using, but abusing their good fortune!
+
+We should not have troubled our heads with the fast fellows at all, if
+it were not absolutely essential to the full consideration of our
+subject, widely to sever the prominent classes of fashionable life, and
+to have no excuse for continuing in future to confound them. We have now
+done with the fast fellows, and shall like them the more the less we
+hear of them.
+
+
+
+CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS.
+
+
+The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable or aristocratic life, comprises those who
+think that, in the nineteenth century, other means must be taken to
+preserve their order in its high and responsible position than those
+which, in dark ages, conferred honour upon the tallest or the bravest.
+They think, and think wisely, that the only method of keeping above the
+masses, in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further into
+the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting, in a fair
+neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth, their purer blood, and
+urging the generous contest for fame, regardless of the allurements of
+pleasure, or the superior advantages of fortune. In truth, we might
+ask, what would become of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they
+came, as a body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their
+black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of
+Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the
+platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these
+harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there
+was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that
+there is better.
+
+We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families, a few men of
+original, commanding, and powerful intellect; many respectable in most
+departments of intellectual rivalry; many more laborious, hard-working
+men; and about the same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed,
+conceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the same
+given number of those commonly called the educated classes. We refer you
+to the aristocracies of other countries, and we think we may safely say,
+that we have more men of that class, in this country, who devote
+themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its
+pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the
+responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think
+they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of
+birth and fortune--who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less
+prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they
+feel, with the poet:
+
+    "At heros, et decus, et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
+    Vix ea nostra voco."
+
+It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that
+the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at
+twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this
+undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man
+in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast
+ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.
+
+This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling
+themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the
+natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one
+way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent
+in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter
+the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by
+virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they
+must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest
+and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy
+responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the
+burden of responsible power.
+
+One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in
+public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of
+the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the
+aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed,
+is yet oftener bestowed without any desert whatever; and that title to
+admiration and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and
+suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the illustrious
+dead to the undistinguished living.
+
+Without giving a catalogue _raisonné_ of the slow fellows, (we use the
+term not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction to the others,)
+we may observe that, besides the public service in which the great names
+are sufficiently known, you have poets, essayists, dramatists,
+astronomers, geologists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than
+all, philanthropists. In compliment to human nature, we take the liberty
+merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart and Lord Ashley. The
+works of the slow fellows, especially their poetry, indicate in a
+greater or less degree the social position of the authors; seldom or
+never deficient in good taste, and not without feeling, they lack power
+and daring. The smooth style has their preference, and their verses
+smack of the school of Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not that, in poetry
+or prose, we can point out one of our slow fellows of the present day
+rising above judicious mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that the most
+daring and original of our noble authors have, in their day, been fast
+fellows; it is only necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.
+
+
+Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to intellect in a
+small way. These patronize a drawing-master, not to learn to draw, but
+to learn to talk of drawing; they also study the _Penny Magazine_ and
+other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London
+University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as
+far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of
+fashionable _screws_, they take care never to subscribe to any thing.
+They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the
+confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every
+thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the
+evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people _can_ eat
+those hot lunches. They take constitutional walks and Cockle's pills;
+and, by virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always
+consulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a guinea. They
+talk of music, of which they know something--of books, of which they
+know little--and of pictures, of which they know less; they have always
+read "the last novel," which is as much as they can well carry; they
+know literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House, but,
+if they meet them in Park Lane, look as if they never saw them before;
+they are very peevish, have something to say against every man, and
+always say the worst first; they are very quiet in their manner, almost
+sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows; they
+treat their inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, "honest
+friend," "my good man," and so on, but have very little heart, and less
+spirit.
+
+They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They
+are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their
+pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows
+ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to
+annoy him, talking of the "autumnal tints," and "the gilding of the
+western hemisphere;" if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a
+root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it
+is a great curiosity in _his line_; if an entomologist, they are sure to
+send him away "with a flea in his ear." If he affects poetry, the fast
+fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from _Bell's Life_,
+Scroggins's poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree,
+or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist
+upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a
+thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren,
+not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "_gagging_," and
+genteel people "_quizzing_," but with a seriousness and gravity that
+heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly
+ridiculous.
+
+It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows,
+that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who
+glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be
+distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against
+it all their lives; but so it is;--the compensating power that rules
+material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is
+given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it.
+Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be
+surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great
+names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule)
+are plebeian.
+
+
+
+OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER.
+
+
+In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the
+present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common
+butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
+
+They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their
+inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress
+of rational liberty, and of----but, in short, you have only to glance
+over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the
+horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England.
+
+The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too
+broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it
+exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim
+lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity
+as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of
+thought or action, especially in state affairs.
+
+Since our late lamented friends, the Whigs, have gone to enjoy a
+virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in
+politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days--no quackery, no
+mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot
+fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and
+now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst _quondam_ leaders of
+the Treasury Benech--now that the camp-followers have followed the
+leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have nobody to
+laugh at; and, like our departed friends, have too little of the
+statesman to be serious about serious matters.
+
+With regard to the aristocracy in their public capacity, this is the way
+we always look at them.
+
+In the first place, they govern us through the tolerance of public
+opinion, as men having station, power, property, much to lose, and
+little comparatively to gain--men who have put in bail to a large amount
+for their good behaviour: and, in the second place, they govern us,
+because really and truly there are so many outrageously discordant
+political quacks, desirous of taking our case in hand, that we find it
+our interest to entrust our public health to an accomplished physician,
+even although he charges a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure a
+perfect cure with a box of pills costing thirteenpence-halfpenny. There
+can be no doubt whatever, that the most careful men are the men who have
+most to care for: he that has a great deal to lose, will think twice,
+where he that has nothing to lose, will not think at all: and the
+government of this vast and powerful empire, we imagine, with great
+deference, must require a good deal of thinking. In a free press, we
+have a never-dying exponent of public opinion, a perpetual advocate of
+rational liberty, and a powerful engine for the exposure, which is
+ultimately the redress, of wrong: and although this influential member
+of our government receives no public money, nor is called right
+honourable, nor speaks in the House, yet in fact and in truth it has a
+seat in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous occasions, a voice of thunder.
+
+That the aristocracy of power should be in advance of public opinion, is
+not in the nature of things, and should no more be imputed as a crime to
+them, than to us not to run when we are not in a hurry: they cannot, as
+a body, move upwards, because they stand so near the top, that dangerous
+ambition is extinguished; and it is hardly to be expected that, as a
+body, they should move downwards, unless they find themselves supported
+in their position upon the right of others, in which case we have always
+seen that, although they descend gradually, they descend at last.
+
+This immobility of our aristocracy is the origin of the fixity of our
+political institutions, which has been, is, and will continue to be, the
+great element of our pre-eminence as a nation: it possesses a force
+corrective and directive, and at once restrains the excess, while it
+affords a point of resistance, to the current of the popular will. And
+this immobility, it should never be forgotten, is owing to that very
+elevation so hated and so envied: wanting which the aristocracy would be
+subject to the vulgar ambitions, vulgar passions, and sordid desires of
+meaner aspirants after personal advantage and distinction. It is a
+providential blessing, we firmly believe, to a great nation to possess a
+class, by fortune and station, placed above the unseemly contentions of
+adventurers in public life: looked up to as men responsible without hire
+for the public weal, and, without sordid ambitions of their own,
+solicitous to preserve it: looked up to, moreover, as examples of that
+refinement of feeling, jealous sense of honour, and manly independence,
+serving as detersives of the grosser humours of commercial life, and
+which, filtering through the successive _strata_ of society, clarify and
+purify in their course, leaving the very dregs the cleaner for their
+passage.
+
+A body thus by habit and constitution opposed to innovation, and
+determined against the recklessness of inconsiderate reforms, has
+furnished a stock argument to those who delight in "going a-head" faster
+than their feet, which are the grounds of their arguments, can carry
+them. We hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks in the way of
+legislative improvements, and, with greater propriety of metaphor,
+likened to drags upon the wheel of progressive reform; and so on,
+through all the regions of illustration, until we are in at the death of
+the metaphor. How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this
+anti-progressive barrier, to the concentration and deepening of the
+flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt
+altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too
+eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which
+gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and reckless
+enthusiasm, and the dregs of agitation, quietly to subside; and, for all
+that, bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with
+accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the
+barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time, only
+to withdraw when the time for interposition is past, we should live in a
+vortex of revolution and counter-revolution. Our whole time, and our
+undivided energies, would be employed in acting hastily, and repenting
+at leisure; in repining either because our biennial revolutions went too
+far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the
+unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with
+adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with
+every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would
+follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and
+trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in
+the eyes of the world what France now is--a people ready to sacrifice
+every solid advantage, every gradual, and therefore permanent,
+improvement, every ripening fruit that time and care, and the sunshine
+of peace only can mature, to a genius for revolution.
+
+This turbulent torrent of headlong reform, to-day flooding its banks,
+to-morrow dribbling in a half-dry channel, the aristocracy of power
+collects, concentrates, and converts into a power, even while it
+circumscribes it, and represses. So have we seen a mountain stream
+useless in summer, dangerous in winter, now a torrent now a puddle,
+wasting its unprofitable waters in needless brawling; let a barrier be
+opposed to its downward course, let it be dammed up, let a point of
+resistance be afforded where its waters may be gathered together, and
+regulated, you find it turned to valuable account, acting with men's
+hands, becoming a productive labourer, and contributing its time and its
+industry to advance the general sum of rational improvement.
+
+From the material to the moral world you may always reason by analogy.
+If you study the theory of revolutions, you will not fail to observe
+that, wherever, in constructing your barrier, you employ ignorant
+engineers, who have not duly calculated the depth and velocity of the
+current; whenever you raise your dam to such a height that no flood will
+carry away the waste waters; whenever you talk of finality to the
+torrent, saying, thus long shalt thou flow, and no longer; whenever you
+put upon your power a larger wheel than it can turn--you are slowly but
+surely preparing for that flood which will overwhelm your work, destroy
+your mills, your dams, and your engines; in a word, you are the remote
+cause of a revolution.
+
+This is the danger into which aristocracies of power are prone to fall:
+the error of democracies is, to delight in the absolutism of liberty;
+but thus it is with liberty itself, that true dignity of man, that
+parent of all blessings: absolute and uncontrolled, a tyranny beyond the
+power to endure itself, the worst of bad masters, a fool who is his own
+client; restrained and tempered, it becomes a wholesome discipline, a
+property with its rights and its duties, a sober responsibility,
+bringing with it, like all other responsibilities, its pleasures and its
+cares; not a toy to be played with, nor even a jewel to be worn in the
+bonnet, but a talent to be put out to interest, and enjoyed in the
+unbroken tranquillity of national thankfulness and peace.
+
+Another defect in the aristocracy of power is, the narrow sphere of
+their sympathies, extending only to those they know, and are familiar
+with; that is to say, only as far as the circumference of their own
+limited circle. This it is that renders them keenly apprehensive of
+danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which
+menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are
+comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles
+along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to
+the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from
+above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their
+position, and there to establish themselves in permanent security.
+
+As a remedy for this short-sightedness, the result of their isolated
+position, the aristocracy of power is always prompt to borrow from the
+aristocracy of talent that assistance in the practical working of its
+government which it requires; they are glad to find safe men among the
+people to whom they can delegate the cares of office, the annoyances of
+patronage, and the odium of power; and, the better to secure these men,
+they are always ready to lift them among themselves, to identify them
+with their exclusive interests, and to give them a permanent
+establishment among the nobles of the land.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS.
+
+
+Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of
+fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their
+manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint;
+staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with
+elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out
+of doors _in cuerpo_, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided
+military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they
+indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that
+these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man
+of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops
+the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as
+an "unsafe" fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our
+men of fashion originate any thing _outré_, or likely to attract
+attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to
+scrupulosity.
+
+Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than
+ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well
+dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a
+Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered
+pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it
+fits him--not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been
+born in it.
+
+There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an
+unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has
+always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the
+artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have
+seen--coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long
+credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the
+world--coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter,
+spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary
+foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly
+executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!
+
+Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into
+the _atelier_ of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in
+his hand, to order such a coat! _Order_ such a coat, forsooth! order a
+Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat--we say it with the
+generous indignation of a free Briton--is one of the exclusive
+privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!
+
+The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited
+approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which
+those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision
+we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age,
+or poverty of customers, _vested_ the office of trouser-cutter and coat
+architect in the same functionary, coats were without _soul_, and
+"inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said,
+"ridiculous exceedingly." In our day, on the contrary, we have attained
+to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give
+expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for
+life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.
+
+The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the
+excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in
+nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which
+people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West
+End fashionable _artistes_ in riding coats, in dress coats, in
+cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers
+of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third
+gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a
+barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other
+men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion
+turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards'
+and of Foot Guards' jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives
+these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a
+marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style
+of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not
+shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these
+disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which
+latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one
+gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of
+box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring,
+which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James's,
+within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a
+high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their
+vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays
+his tailors' bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of
+insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill;
+in a word, to make it pounds--"Excuse me, sir," said Snip, "but pray,
+let _us_ not talk of pounds--pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but
+artists, sir, _artists_ are always remunerated with guineas!"
+
+To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose
+peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in
+tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of
+elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire,
+extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is
+deficient in aught, the accessorial _toggery_, such as hats, boots,
+_choker_, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this
+department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as
+ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never
+see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan
+beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by
+no means allowable latitude of brim--besides, borrowing the fashion of a
+hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is
+with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and
+leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion:
+content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or
+behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man
+of fashion sedulously escheweth--a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a
+gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a
+four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of
+the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk
+worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
+putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of
+rain, has "taken the shine out of it."
+
+In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher
+Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are
+never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think
+their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of
+the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see
+him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days
+proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling
+along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to
+the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been
+attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and
+he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for
+stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want
+that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well
+tied _choker_. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the
+pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical
+investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment.
+A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a
+cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display
+gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than
+wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of
+a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming _choker, fine_ if
+you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour
+harmonizing with his residual _toggery_: this he ties with an easy,
+unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford
+men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not
+know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement
+of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a
+laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the
+principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these,
+as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher
+departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this
+important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the
+bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both
+the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying
+their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as
+possible.
+
+Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be
+sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese
+Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone,
+or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost
+not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever
+make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of
+his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below
+his waistband, as much as to say, "_if you only knew what a watch I have
+inside_!" Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he
+wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they
+are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.
+
+A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double
+stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like
+himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men
+of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take
+care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair
+a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the
+thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose
+kids, and desire to see no more of them.
+
+If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not
+put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the
+ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose
+completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays
+he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as
+possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by
+the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt
+cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by
+supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a
+pleasing contrast with that portion of the original _chemise_, vainly
+attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
+stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at
+the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
+wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a
+sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.
+
+A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble
+inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half
+shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his
+clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly
+_propre_, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:"
+he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the
+same, and has never been other than he now appears.
+
+You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the
+man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I
+will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
+_degagé_, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou
+mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
+will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you
+plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in "topping
+the part."
+
+We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
+into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of
+fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving
+to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto:
+just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall
+merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered
+the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more
+properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human
+species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his
+father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention
+to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional
+dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best _artistes_,
+seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken
+heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating
+propriety of toggery--not at all: the whole secret consists in _never
+paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor_!
+
+Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three
+suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those
+who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand,
+for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to
+consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only
+from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring
+under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible
+depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain,
+and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy
+collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time
+must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to
+them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of
+shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
+walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure.
+They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling
+against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so
+much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the
+proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful
+indifference.
+
+But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never
+thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which
+the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of
+the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon
+themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants,
+the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest
+infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the
+people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be
+victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace
+and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home
+to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which
+you have not the most remote idea of paying for, _in secula seculorum_.
+So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies,
+when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather
+pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow
+you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The
+innate cruelty of the human animal is gratified, and the idea of a
+tailor's suffering is never conceived by a customer without involuntary
+cachinnation. Not only is he denied the attribute of integral
+manhood--which even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys--but that
+principle which induces a few men of enthusiastic temperament to pay
+debts, is always held a fault when applied to the bills of tailors. And,
+what is a curious and instructive fact in the natural history of London
+fashionable tailors, and altogether unnoticed by the Rev. Leonard
+Jenyns, in his _Manual of British Vertebrate Animals_, if you go to one
+of these gentlemen, requesting him to "execute," and professing your
+readiness to pay his bill on demand or delivery, he will be sure to give
+your order to the most scurvy botch in his establishment, put in the
+worst materials, and treat you altogether as a person utterly
+unacquainted with the usages of polite society. But if, on the contrary,
+you are recommended to him by Lord Fly-by-night, of Denman Priory--if
+you give a thundering order, and, instead of offering to pay for it,
+pull out a parcel of bill-stamps, and _promise_ fifty per cent for a few
+hundreds down, you will be surprised to observe what delight will
+express itself in the radiant countenance of your victim: visions of
+cent per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams of bonds with penalties, and
+all those various shapes in which security delights to involve the
+extravagant, rise flatteringly before the inward eye of the man of
+shreds and patches. By these transactions with the great, he becomes
+more and more a man, less and less a tailor; instead of cutting patterns
+and taking measures, he flings the tailoring to his foreman, becoming
+first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to peers of
+the realm.
+
+With a few more of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the
+gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A
+gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military
+man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as
+possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon
+horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who
+always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts higher than a
+threepenny stride on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a gentleman ever wear
+a _moustache_, unless he belongs to one of the regiments of hussars, or
+the household cavalry, who alone are ordered to display that ornamental
+exuberance. Foreigners, military or non-military, are recognized as
+wearing hair on the upper lip with propriety, as is the custom of their
+country. But no gentleman here thinks of such a thing, any more than he
+would think of sporting the uniform of the Tenth Hussars.
+
+There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the
+_moustache_, which they clip and cut _à la Vandyk_: this is useful, as
+affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an
+ass--the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like
+an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair,
+exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like
+an ourang-outang as possible.
+
+Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the
+gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better
+sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and
+behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not
+the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more
+nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and
+gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba
+or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.
+
+In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale
+the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for
+however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed
+when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more
+disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.
+
+Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar
+_habitat_: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the
+hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he
+venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on
+business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in
+Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James's.
+
+
+OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.
+
+     "Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare,
+     taste, high life and the musical glasses."--_Vicar of
+     Wakefield_.
+
+We will venture to assert, that in the course of these essays on the
+aristocracies of London life, we have never attempted to induce any of
+our readers to believe that there was any cause for him to regret,
+whatever condition of life it had pleased Providence to place him in, or
+to suppose, for one moment, that reputable men, though in widely
+different circumstances, are not equally reputable. We have studiously
+avoided portraying fashionable life according to the vulgar notions,
+whether depreciatory or panegyrical. We have shown that that class is
+not to be taken and treated of as an integral quantity, but to be
+analyzed as a component body, wherein is much sterling ore and no little
+dross. We have shown by sufficient examples, that whatever in our eyes
+makes the world of fashion really respectable, is solely owing to the
+real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever
+contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the
+misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible.
+
+Of the former, the example is of infinite value to society, in refining
+its tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed ease, which, if not
+true politeness, is its true substitute; and, of the latter, the
+mischief done to society is enhanced by the multitude of low people
+ready to imitate their vices, inanities, and follies.
+
+Pretenders to fashion, who hang upon the outskirts of fashionable
+society, and whose lives are a perpetual but unavailing struggle to jump
+above their proper position, are horrid nuisances; and they abound,
+unfortunately, in London.
+
+In a republic, where practical equality is understood and acted upon,
+this pretension would be intolerable; in an aristocratic state of
+society, with social gradations pointedly defined and universally
+recognized, it is merely ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the
+pretenders, it is a source of much and deserved misery and isolation.
+
+There are ten thousand varying shades and degrees of this pretension,
+from the truly fashionable people who hanker after the _exclusives_, or
+seventh heaven of high life, down to the courier out of place, who, in a
+pot-house, retails Debrett by heart, and talks of lords, and dukes, and
+earls, as of his particular acquaintance, and how and where he met them
+when on his travels.
+
+The _exclusives_ are a queer set, some of them not by any means people
+of the best pretensions to lead the _ton_. Lady L---- and Lady B---- may
+be very well as patronesses of Almack's; but what do you say to Lady
+J----, a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in money, keeping her shop by
+deputy in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill? Almack's, as every body
+knows who has been there, or who has talked with any observing _habitué_
+of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in
+somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least
+effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men,
+and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes
+they wear: yet, by mere dint of difficulty, by the simple circumstance
+of making admission to this assembly a matter of closeting, canvassing,
+balloting, black-balling, and so forth, people of much better fashion
+than many of the exclusives make it a matter of life and death to have
+their admission secured. Admission to Almack's is to a young _débutante_
+of fashion as great an object as a seat at the Privy Council Board to a
+flourishing politician: your _ton_ is stamped by it, you are of the
+exclusive _set_, and, by virtue of belonging to that set, every other is
+open to you as a matter of course, when you choose to condescend to
+visit it. The room in which Almack's balls are held we need not
+describe, because it has been often described before, and because the
+doorkeeper, any day you choose to go to Duke Street, St James's, will be
+too happy to show it you for sixpence; but we will give you in his own
+words, all the information we could contrive to get from a man of the
+highest fashion, who is a subscriber.
+
+"Why, I really don't know," said he, "that I have any thing to tell you
+about Almack's, except that all that the novel-writers say about it is
+ridiculous nonsense: the lights are good, the refreshments not so good,
+the music excellent; the women dress well, dance a good deal, and talk
+but little. There is a good deal of envy, jealousy, and criticism of
+faces, figures, fortunes, and pretensions: one, or at most two, of the
+balls in a season are pleasant; the others _slow_ and very dull. The
+point of the thing seems to be, that people of rank choose to like it
+because it stamps a set, and low people talk about it because they
+cannot by any possibility know any thing about it."
+
+Such is Almack's, of which volumes have been spun, of most effete and
+lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid appetites of the pretenders to
+fashion.
+
+We must not omit to inform our rural readers, that no conventional rank
+gives any one in London a patent of privilege in truly fashionable
+society. An old baronet shall be exclusive, when a young peer shall have
+no fashionable society at all: a lord is by no means necessarily a man
+in what the fashionable sets call good society: we have many lords who
+are not men of fashion, and many men of fashion who are not lords.
+
+Professional peers, whether legal, naval, or military, bishops, judges,
+and all that class of men who attain by talents, interest, and good
+fortune, or all, or any of these, a lofty social position, have no more
+to do with the exclusive or merely fashionable sets than you or I. A man
+may be a barrister in full practice to-day, an attorney-general
+to-morrow, a chief-justice the day after with a peerage: yet his wife
+and daughter visit the same people, and are visited by the same people,
+that associated with them before. If men of fashion know them, it is
+because they have business to transact or favours to seek for, or
+because it is part of their system to keep up a qualified intimacy with
+all whom they think proper to lift to their own level: but this intimacy
+is only extended by the man of birth to the man of talent. His family do
+not become people of fashion until the third or fourth generation: he
+remains the man of business, the useful, working, practical,
+brains-carrying man that he was; and his family, if they are wise, seek
+not to become the familiars of the old aristocracy, and if they are
+foolish, become the most unfortunate pretenders to fashion. They are too
+near to be pleasant; and the gulf which people of hereditary fashion
+place between is impassable, even though they flounder up to their necks
+in servile mud.
+
+It is the same with baronets, M.P.'s, and all that sort of people. These
+handles to men's names go down very well in the country, where it is
+imagined that a baronet or an M.P. is, _ex officio_, a man of
+consequence, and that, rank being equal, consequence is also equal. In
+London, on the contrary, people laugh at the idea of a man pluming
+himself upon such distinctions without a difference: in town we have
+baronets of all sorts--the "Heathcotes, and such large-acred men," Sir
+Watkyn, and the territorial baronetage: then we have the Hanmers, and
+others of undoubted fashion, to which their patent is the weakest of
+their claims: then we have the military, naval, and medical baronet:
+descending, through infinite gradations, we come down to the
+tallow-chandling, the gin-spinning, the banking, the pastry-cooking
+baronetage.
+
+What is there, what can there be, in common with these widely severed
+classes, save that they equally enjoy _Sir_ at the head and _Bart_. at
+the tail of their sponsorial and patronymic appellations? Do you think
+the landed Bart. knows any more of the medical Bart. than that, when he
+sends for the other to attend his wife, he calls him generally "doctor,"
+and seldom Sir James: or that the military Bart. does not much like the
+naval Bart.? and do not all these incongruous Barts. shudder at the bare
+idea of been seen on the same side of the street with a gin-spinning,
+Patent-British-Genuine-Foreign-Cognac Brandy-making Bart.? and do not
+each and every one of these Barts. from head to tail, even including the
+last-mentioned, look down with immeasurable disdain upon the poor Nova
+Scotia baronets, who move heaven and earth to get permission to wear a
+string round their necks, and a badge like the learned fraternity of
+cabmen?
+
+Then as to the magic capitals M.P., which provincial people look upon as
+embodying in the wearer the concentrated essence of wisdom, eloquence,
+personal distinction, and social eminence. Who, in a country town, on a
+market day, has not seen tradesmen cocking their eye, apprentices
+glowering through the shop front, and ladies subdolously peeping behind
+the window-shutter to catch a glimpse of the "member for our town," and,
+having seen him, think they are rather happier then they were before?
+The greatest fun in the world is to go to a _cul-de-sac_ off a dirty
+lane near Palace Yard, called Manchester Buildings, a sort of senatorial
+pigeon-house, where the meaner fry of houseless M.P.'s live, each in his
+one pair, two pair, three pair, as the case may be, and give a postman's
+knock at every door in rapid succession. In a twinkling, the "collective
+wisdom" of Manchester Buildings and the Midland Counties poke out their
+heads. Cobden appears on the balcony; Muntz glares out of a second
+floor, like a live bear in a barber's window; Wallace of Greenock comes
+to the door in a red nightcap; and a long "tail" of the other immortals
+of a session. You may enjoy the scene as much as you please; but when
+you hear one or two of the young Irish patriotic "mimbers" floundering
+from the attics, the wisest course you can take will be incontinently to
+"mizzle." These men, however, have one redeeming quality--that they
+live in Manchester Buildings, and don't care who knows it; they are out
+of fashion, and don't care who are in; they are minding their business,
+and not hanging at the skirts of people ever ready and willing to kick
+them off.
+
+Then there are the "dandy" M.P.'s, who ride hack-horses, associate with
+fashionable actresses, and hang about the clubs. Then there is the
+chance or accidental M.P., who has been elected he hardly knows how or
+when, and wonders to find himself in Parliament. Then there is the
+desperate, adventuring, ear-wigging M.P., whose hope of political
+existence, and whose very livelihood, depend upon getting or continuing
+in place. Then there is the legal M.P., with one eye fixed on the
+Queen's, the other squinting at the Treasury Bench. Then there is the
+lounging M.P., who is usually the scion of a noble family, and who comes
+now and then into the House, to stare vacantly about, and go out again.
+Then there is the military M.P., who finds the House an agreeable
+lounge, and does not care to join his regiment on foreign service. Then
+there is the bustling M.P. of business, the M.P. of business without
+bustle, and the independent country gentleman M.P., who wants nothing
+for himself or any body else, and who does not care a turnip-top for the
+whole lot of them.
+
+The aggregate distinction, as a member of Parliament, is totally sunk in
+London. It is the man, and not the two letters after his name, that any
+body whose regard is worth the having in the least regard. There are
+M.P.s never seen beyond the exclusive set, except on a committee of the
+House, and then they know and speak to nobody save one of themselves.
+There are other M.P.s that you will find in no society except Tom
+Spring's or Owen Swift's, at the Horse-shoe in Litchborne Street.
+
+These observations upon baronets and M.P.s may be extended upwards to
+the peerage, and downwards to the professional, commercial, and all
+other the better classes. Every man hangs, like a herring, by his own
+tail; and every class would be distinct and separate, but that the
+pretenders to fashion, like some equivocal animals in the chain of
+animated nature, connect these different classes by copying
+pertinaciously the manners, and studying to adopt the tastes and habits
+of the class immediately above them.
+
+Of pretenders to fashion, perhaps the most successful in their imitative
+art are the
+
+SHEENIES.--By this term, as used by men of undoubted _ton_ with
+reference to the class we are about to consider, you are to understand
+runagate Jews rolling in riches, who profess to love roast pork above
+all things, who always eat their turkey with sausages, and who have
+_cut_ their religion for the sake of dangling at the heels of
+fashionable Christians. These people are "swelling" upon the profits of
+the last generation in St Mary Axe or Petticoat Lane. The founders of
+their families have been loan-manufacturers, crimps, receivers of stolen
+goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers and sweaters, rag-merchants,
+and the like, and conscientious Israelites; but their children, not
+having fortitude to abide by their condition, nor right principle to
+adhere to their sect, come to the west end of the town, and, by right of
+their money, make unremitting assaults upon the loose fish of
+fashionable society, who laugh at, and heartily despise them, while they
+are as ashes in the mouths of the respectable members of the persuasion
+to which they originally belonged.
+
+HEAVY SWELLS are another very important class of pretenders to fashion,
+and are divided into civil and military. Professional men, we say it to
+their honour, seldom affect the heavy swell, because the feeblest
+glimmerings of that rationality of thinking which results from among the
+lowest education, preserves them from the folly of the attempt, and, in
+preserving from folly, saves them from the self-reproaching misery that
+attends it. Men of education or of common sense, look upon pretension to
+birth, rank, or any thing else to which they have no legitimate claim,
+as little more than moral forgery; it is with them an uttering base
+coin upon false pretences. It is generally the wives and families of
+professional men who are afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which
+we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of
+gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the
+son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a
+marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains,
+deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and
+bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He
+is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he is--never so
+completely in his element as when acting the thing he is not, nor can
+ever be. He spends his life in jumping, like a cat, at shadows on the
+wall. He has day and night dreams of people, who have not the least idea
+that such a man is in existence, and he comes in time, by mere dint of
+thinking of nobody else, to think that he is one of them. He acquaints
+himself with the titles of lords, as other men do those of books, and
+then boasts largely of the extent of his acquaintance.
+
+Let us suppose that he is an officer of a hard-fighting,
+foreign-service, neglected infantry regiment. This, which to a soldier
+would be an honest pride, is the shame of the Heavy Military Swell. His
+chief business in life, next to knowing the names and faces of lords, is
+concealing from you the corps to which he has the dishonour, he thinks,
+to belong. He talks mightily of the service, of hussars and light
+dragoons; but when he knows that you know better, when you poke him hard
+about the young or old buffs, or the dirty half-hundred, he whispers in
+your ear that "my fellows," as he calls them, are very "fast," and that
+they are "all known in town, very well known indeed"--a piece of
+information you will construe in the case of the heavy swell to mean,
+better known than trusted.
+
+When he is on full pay, the heavy swell is known to the three old women
+and five desperate daughters who compose good society in country
+quarters. He affects a patronizing air at small tea-parties, and is
+wonderfully run after by wretched un-idea'd girls, that is, by ten girls
+in twelve; he is eternally striving to get upon the "staff," or anyhow
+to shirk his regimental duty; he is a whelp towards the men under his
+command, and has a grand idea of spurs, steel scabbards, and flogging;
+to his superiors he is a spaniel, to his brother officers an intolerable
+ass; he makes the mess-room a perfect hell with his vanity, puppyism,
+and senseless bibble-babble.
+
+On leave, or half-pay, he "mounts mustaches," to help the hussar and
+light-dragoon idea, or to delude the ignorant into a belief that he may
+possibly belong to the household cavalry. He hangs about doors of
+military clubs, with a whip in his hand; talks very loud at the "Tiger"
+or the "Rag and famish," and never has done shouting to the waiter to
+bring him a "Peerage;" carries the "Red Book" and "Book of Heraldry" in
+his pocket; sees whence people come, and where they go, and makes them
+out somehow; in short, he is regarded with a thrill of horror by people
+of fashion, fast or slow, civil or military.
+
+The Civil Heavy Swell affects fashionable curricles, and enjoys all the
+consideration a pair of good horses can give. He rides a blood bay in
+Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is detected by galloping, or some other
+solecism; his dress and liveries are always overdone, the money shows on
+every thing about him. He has familiar abbreviations for the names of
+all the fast men about town; calls this Lord "Jimmy," 'tother Chess, a
+third Dolly, and thinks he knows them; keeps an expensive mistress,
+because "Jimmy" and Chess are supposed to do the same, and when he is
+out of the way, his mistress has some of the fast fellows to supper, at
+the heavy swell's expense. He settles the point whether claret is to be
+drank from a jug or black bottle, and retails the merits of a _plateau_
+or _epergne_ he saw, when last he dined with a "fellow" in Belgrave
+Square.
+
+The _Foreigneering_ Heavy Swell has much more spirit, talent, and
+manner, than the home-grown article; but he is poor in a like ratio, and
+is therefore obliged to feather his nest by denuding the pigeon tribe of
+their metallic plumage. He is familiarly known to all the fast fellows,
+who _cut_ him, however, as soon as they marry, but is not accounted good
+_ton_ by heads of families. He is liked at the Hells and Clubs, where he
+has a knack of distinguishing himself without presumption or
+affectation. He is a dresser by right divine, and dresses ridiculously.
+The fashionable fellows affect loudly to applaud his taste, and laugh to
+see the vulgar imitate the foreigneering swell. He is the idol of
+equivocal women, and condescends to patronize unpresentable
+gentility-mongers. He is not unhappy at heart, like the indigenous heavy
+swell, but enjoys his intimacy with the fast fellows, and uses it.
+
+There is an infallible test we should advise you to apply, whenever you
+are bored to desperation by any of these heavy swells. When he talks of
+"my friend, the Duke of Bayswater," ask him, in a quiet tone, where he
+last met the _Duchess_. If he says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl of) is
+an honest good fellow, enquire whether he prefers Lady Mary or Lady
+Seraphina Serpentine. This drops him like a shot--he can't get over it.
+
+It is a rule in good society that you know the set only when you know
+the women of that set; however you may work your way among the men,
+whatever you may do at the Hells and Clubs, goes for nothing--the
+_women_ stamp you counterfeit or current, and--
+
+     "Not to know _them_, argues yourself unknown."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EYRE'S CABUL.
+
+
+     The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat
+     and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842; with a
+     Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan. By Lieutenant Vincent
+     Eyre, Bengal Artillery, late Deputy-Commissary of Ordnance at
+     Cabul. London: John Murray.
+
+This is the first connected account that has appeared of the military
+disasters that befell the British army at Cabul--by far the most signal
+reverse our arms have ever sustained in Asia. The narrative is full of a
+deep and painful interest, which becomes more and more intense as we
+approach the closing catastrophe. The simple detail of the daily
+occurrences stirs up our strongest feelings of indignation, pity; scorn,
+admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any
+attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and
+gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is
+highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion
+both of his head and of his heart.
+
+That a British army of nearly six thousand fighting men--occupying a
+position chosen and fortified by our own officers, and having
+possession, within two miles of this fortified cantonment, of a strong
+citadel commanding the greater part of the town of Cabul, a small
+portion only of whose population rose against us at the commencement of
+the revolt--should not only have made no vigorous effort to crush the
+insurrection; but that it should ultimately have been driven by an
+undisciplined Asiatic mob, destitute of artillery, and which never
+appears to have collected in one place above 10,000 men, to seek safety
+in a humiliating capitulation, by which it surrendered the greater part
+of its artillery, military stores, and treasure, and undertook to
+evacuate the whole country on condition of receiving a safe conduct from
+the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they placed, and could place, no
+reliance; and finally, that, of about 4500 armed soldiers and twelve
+thousand camp-followers, many of whom were also armed, who set out from
+Cabul, only one man, and he wounded, should have arrived at Jellalabad;
+is an amount of misfortune so far exceeding every rational anticipation
+of evil, that we should have been entitled to assume that these
+unparalleled military disasters arose from a series of unparalleled
+errors, even if we had not had, as we now have, the authority of Lord
+Ellenborough for asserting the fact.
+
+But every nation, and more particularly the British nation, is little
+inclined to pardon the men under whose command any portion of its army
+or of its navy may have been beaten. Great Britain, reposing entire
+confidence in the courage of her men, and little accustomed to see them
+overthrown, is keenly jealous of the reputation of her forces; and, as
+she is ever prompt to reward military excellence and success, she heaps
+unmeasured obloquy on those who may have subjected her to the
+degradation of defeat. When our forces have encountered a reverse, or
+even when the success has not been commensurate with the hopes that had
+been indulged; the public mind has ever been prone to condemn the
+commanders; and wherever there has been reason to believe that errors
+have been committed which have led to disaster, there has been little
+disposition to make any allowances for the circumstances of the case, or
+for the fallibility of man; but, on the contrary, the nation has too
+often evinced a fierce desire to punish the leaders for the
+mortification the country has been made to endure.
+
+This feeling may tend to elevate the standard of military character, but
+it must at the same time preclude the probability of calm or impartial
+examination, so far as the great body of the nation is concerned; and it
+is therefore the more obviously incumbent on those who, from a more
+intimate knowledge of the facts, or from habits of more deliberate
+investigation, are not carried away by the tide of popular indignation
+and invective, to weigh the circumstances with conscientious caution,
+and to await the result of judicial enquiry before they venture to
+apportion the blame or even to estimate its amount.
+
+     "The following notes," says Lieutenant Eyre in his preface,
+     "were penned to relieve the monotony of an Affghan prison,
+     while yet the events which they record continued fresh in my
+     memory. I now give them publicity, in the belief that the
+     information which they contain on the dreadful scenes lately
+     enacted in Affghanistan, though clothed in a homely garb, will
+     scarcely fail to be acceptable to many of my countrymen, both
+     in India and England, who may be ignorant of the chief
+     particulars. The time, from the 2d November 1841, on which day
+     the sudden popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to the 13th
+     January 1842, which witnessed the annihilation of the last
+     small remnant of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was one
+     continued tragedy. The massacre of Sir Alexander Burnes and his
+     associates,--the loss of our commissariat fort--the defeat of
+     our troops under Brigadier Shelton at Beymaroo--the treacherous
+     assassination of Sir William Macnaghten, our envoy and
+     minister--and lastly, the disastrous retreat and utter
+     destruction of a force consisting of 5000 fighting men and
+     upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,--are events which will
+     assuredly rouse the British Lion from his repose, and excite an
+     indignant spirit of enquiry in every breast. Men will not be
+     satisfied, in this case, with a bare statement of the facts,
+     but they will doubtless require to be made acquainted with the
+     causes which brought about such awful effects. We have lost six
+     entire regiments of infantry, three companies of sappers, a
+     troop of European horse-artillery, half the mountain-train
+     battery, nearly a whole regiment of regular cavalry, and four
+     squadrons of irregular horse, besides a well-stocked magazine,
+     which _alone_, taking into consideration the cost of transport
+     up to Cabul, may be estimated at nearly a million sterling.
+     From first to last, not less than 104 British officers have
+     fallen: their names will be found in the Appendix. I glance but
+     slightly at the _political_ events of this period, not having
+     been one of the initiated; and I do not pretend to enter into
+     _minute_ particulars with regard to even our _military_
+     transactions, more especially those not immediately connected
+     with the sad catastrophe which it has been my ill fortune to
+     witness, and whereof I now endeavour to portray the leading
+     features. In these notes I have been careful to state only what
+     I know to be undeniable facts. I have set down nothing on mere
+     hearsay evidence, nor any thing which cannot be attested by
+     living witnesses or by existing documentary evidence. In
+     treating of matters which occurred under my personal
+     observation, it has been difficult to avoid _altogether_ the
+     occasional expression of my own individual opinion: but I hope
+     it will be found that I have made no observations bearing hard
+     on men or measures, that are either uncalled for, or will not
+     stand the test of future investigation."
+
+After the surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan, there remained in Affghanistan
+no chief who possessed a dominant power or influence that made him
+formidable to the government of Shah Shoojah, or to his English allies;
+and the kingdom of Cabul seemed to be gradually, though slowly,
+subsiding into comparative tranquillity. In the summer of the year 1841,
+the authority of the sovereign appears to have been acknowledged in
+almost every part of his dominions. A partial revolt of the Giljyes was
+speedily suppressed by our troops. The Kohistan, or more correctly,
+Koohdaman of Cabul, a mountainous tract, inhabited by a warlike people,
+over whom the authority of the governments of the country had long been
+imperfect and precarious, had submitted, or had ceased to resist. A
+detachment from the British force at Kandahar, after defeating Akter
+Khan, who had been instigated by the Vezeer of Herat to rebel, swept the
+country of Zemindawer, drove Akter Khan a fugitive to Herat, received
+the submission of all the chiefs in that part of the kingdom, and
+secured the persons of such as it was not thought prudent to leave at
+large in those districts.
+
+The Shah's authority was not believed to be so firmly established, that
+both Sir William Macnaghten, the British envoy at Cabul, who had
+recently been appointed governor of Bombay, and Sir Alexander Burnes, on
+whom the duties of the envoy would have devolved on Sir W. Macnaghten's
+departure, thought that the time had arrived when the amount of the
+British force in Affghanistan, which was so heavy a charge upon the
+revenues of India, might with safety be reduced, and General Sale's
+brigade was ordered to hold itself in readiness to march to Jellalabad,
+on its route to India.
+
+Even at this time, however, Major Pottinger, the political agent in
+Kohistan, including, we presume, the Koohdaman, thought the force at his
+disposal too small to maintain the tranquillity of the district; and the
+chiefs of the valley of Nijrow, or Nijrab, a valley of Kohistan Proper,
+had not only refused to submit, but had harboured the restless and
+disaffected who had made themselves obnoxious to the Shah's government.
+But although Major Pottinger had no confidence in the good feelings of
+the people of his own district to the government, and even seems to have
+anticipated insurrection, no movement of that description had yet taken
+place.
+
+Early in September, however, Captain Hay, who was with a small force in
+the Zoormut valley, situated nearly west from Ghuznee and south from
+Cabul, having been induced by the representations of Moollah Momin--the
+collector of the revenues, who was a Barikzye, and a near relation of
+one of the leaders of the insurrection, in which he afterwards himself
+took an active part--to move against a fort in which the murderers of
+Colonel Herring were said to have taken shelter, the inhabitants
+resisted his demands, and fired upon the troops. His force was found
+insufficient to reduce it, and he was obliged to retire; a stronger
+force was therefore sent, on the approach of which the people fled to
+the hills, and the forts they had evacuated were blown up. This
+occurrence was not calculated seriously to disturb the confident hopes
+that were entertained of the permanent tranquillity of the country; but
+before the force employed upon that expedition had returned to Cabul, a
+formidable insurrection had broken out in another quarter.
+
+     "Early in October," says Lieutenant Eyre, "three Giljye chiefs
+     of note suddenly quitted Cabul, after plundering a rich cafila
+     at Tezeen, and took up a strong position in the difficult
+     defile of Khoord-Cabul, about ten miles from the capital, thus
+     blocking up the pass, and cutting off our communication with
+     Hindostan. Intelligence had not very long previously been
+     received that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the ex-ruler
+     Dost Mahomed Khan, had arrived at Bameean from Khooloom, for
+     the supposed purpose of carrying on intrigues against the
+     Government. It is remarkable that he is nearly connected by
+     marriage with Mahomed Shah Khan and Dost Mahomed Khan, also
+     Giljyes, who almost immediately joined the above-mentioned
+     chiefs. Mahomed Akber had, since the deposition of his father,
+     never ceased to foster feelings of intense hatred towards the
+     English nation; and, though often urged by the fallen ruler to
+     deliver himself up, had resolutely preferred the life of a
+     houseless exile to one of mean dependence on the bounty of his
+     enemies. It seems, therefore, in the highest degree probable
+     that this hostile movement on the part of the Eastern Giljyes
+     was the result of his influence over them, combined with other
+     causes which will be hereafter mentioned."
+
+The other causes here alluded to, appear to be "the deep offence given
+to the Giljyes by the ill-advised reduction of their annual stipends, a
+measure which had been forced upon Sir William Macnaghten by Lord
+Auckland. This they considered, and with some show of justice, as a
+breach of faith on the part of our Government."
+
+We presume that it is not Mr Eyre's intention to assert that this
+particular measure was ordered by Lord Auckland, but merely that the
+rigid economy enforced by his lordship, led the Envoy to have recourse
+to this measure as one of the means by which the general expenditure
+might be diminished.
+
+Formidable as this revolt of the Giljyes was found to be, we are led to
+suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten and Sir A. Burnes were misled,
+probably by the Shah's government, very greatly to underrate its
+importance and its danger. The force under Colonel Monteath,[16] which
+in the first instance was sent to suppress it, was so small that it was
+not only unable to penetrate into the country it was intended to
+overawe or to subdue, but it was immediately attacked in its camp,
+within ten miles of Cabul, and lost thirty-five sepoys killed and
+wounded.
+
+     [16] 35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.
+
+Two days afterwards, the 11th October, General Sale marched from Cabul
+with H.M.'s 13th light infantry, to join Colonel Monteath's camp at
+Bootkhak; and the following morning the whole proceeded to force the
+pass of Khoord-Cabul, which was effected with some loss. The 13th
+returned through the pass to Bootkhak, suffering from the fire of
+parties which still lurked among the rocks. The remainder of the brigade
+encamped at Khoord-Cabul, at the further extremity of the defile. In
+this divided position the brigade remained for some days, and both camps
+had to sustain night attacks from the Affghans--"that on the 35th native
+infantry being peculiarly disastrous, from the treachery of the Affghan
+horse, who admitted the enemy within their lines, by which our troops
+were exposed to a fire from the least suspected quarter. Many of our
+gallant sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus met their death."
+
+On the 20th October, General Sale, having been reinforced, marched to
+Khoord-Cabul; "and about the 22d, the whole force there assembled, with
+Captain Macgregor, political agent, marched to Tezeen, encountering much
+determined opposition on the road."
+
+"By this time it was too evident that the whole of the Eastern Giljyes
+had risen in one common league against us." The treacherous proceedings
+of their chief or viceroy, Humza Khan, which had for some time been
+suspected, were now discovered, and he was arrested by order of Shah
+Shoojah.
+
+     "It must be remarked," says Lieutenant Eyre, "that for some
+     time previous to these overt acts of rebellion, the always
+     strong and ill-repressed personal dislike of the Affghans
+     towards Europeans, had been manifested in a more than usually
+     open manner in and about Cabul. Officers had been insulted and
+     attempts made to assassinate them. Two Europeans had been
+     murdered, as also several camp-followers; but these and other
+     signs of the approaching storm had unfortunately been passed
+     over as mere ebullitions of private angry feeling. This
+     incredulity and apathy is the more to be lamented, as it was
+     pretty well known that on the occasion of the _shub-khoon_, or
+     first night attack on the 35th native infantry at Bootkhak, a
+     large portion of our assailants consisted of the armed
+     retainers of the different men of consequence in Cabul itself,
+     large parties of whom had been seen proceeding from the city to
+     the scene of action on the evening of the attack, and
+     afterwards returning. Although these men had to pass either
+     through the heart or round the skirts of our camp at Seeah
+     Sung, it was not deemed expedient even to question them, far
+     less to detain them.
+
+     "On the 26th October, General Sale started in the direction of
+     Gundamuk, Captain Macgregor having half-frightened,
+     half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs into what proved to
+     have been a most hollow truce."
+
+On the same day, the 37th native infantry, three companies of the Shah's
+sappers under Captain Walsh, and three guns of the mountain train under
+Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps towards Cabul, where the sappers,
+pushing on, arrived unopposed; but the rest of the detachment was
+attacked on the 2d November--on the afternoon of which day, Major
+Griffiths, who commanded it, received orders to force his way to Cabul,
+where the insurrection had that morning broken out. His march through
+the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul, was one continued conflict; but
+the gallantry of his troops, and the excellence of his own dispositions,
+enabled him to carry the whole of his wounded and baggage safe to the
+cantonments at Cabul, where he arrived about three o'clock on the
+morning of the 3d November, followed almost to the gates by about 3000
+Giljyes.
+
+The causes of the insurrection in the capital are not yet fully
+ascertained, or, if ascertained, they have not been made public.
+Lieutenant Eyre does not attempt to account for it; but he gives us the
+following memorandum of Sir W. Macnaghten's, found, we presume, amongst
+his papers after his death:--
+
+     "The immediate cause of the outbreak in the capital was a
+     seditious letter addressed by Abdoollah Khan to several chiefs
+     of influence at Cabul, stating that it was the design of the
+     Envoy to seize and send them all to London! The principal
+     rebels met on the previous night, and, relying on the
+     inflammable feelings of the people of Cabul, they pretended
+     that the King had issued an order to put all infidels to death;
+     having previously forged an order from him for our destruction,
+     by the common process of washing out the contents of a genuine
+     paper, with the exception of the seal, and substituting their
+     own wicked inventions."
+
+But this invention, though it was probably one of the means employed by
+the conspirators to increase the number of their associates, can hardly
+be admitted to account for the insurrection. The arrival of Akber Khan
+at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes, the previous flight of their
+chiefs from Cabul, and the almost simultaneous attack of our posts in
+the Koohdaman, (called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,) on the 3d
+November--the attack of a party conducting prisoners from Candahar to
+Ghuznee--the immediate interruption of every line of communication with
+Cabul--and the selection of the season of the year the most favourable
+to the success of the insurrection, with many other less important
+circumstances, combine to force upon us the opinion, that the intention
+to attack the Cabul force, so soon as it should have become isolated by
+the approach of winter, had been entertained, and the plan of operations
+concerted, for some considerable time before the insurrection broke out.
+That many who wished for its success may have been slow to commit
+themselves, is to be presumed, and that vigorous measures might, if
+resorted to on the first day, have suppressed the revolt, is probable;
+but it can hardly be doubted that we must look far deeper, and further
+back, for the causes which united the Affghan nation against us.
+
+The will of their chiefs and spiritual leaders--fanatical zeal, and
+hatred of the domination of a race whom they regarded as infidels--may
+have been sufficient to incite the lower orders to any acts of violence,
+or even to the persevering efforts they made to extirpate the English.
+In their eyes the contest would assume the character of a religious
+war--of a crusade; and every man who took up arms in that cause, would
+go to battle with the conviction that, if he should be slain, his soul
+would go at once to paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy of the
+faith, he thereby also secured to himself eternal happiness. But the
+chiefs are not so full of faith; and although we would not altogether
+exclude religious antipathy as an incentive, we may safely assume that
+something more immediately affecting their temporal and personal
+concerns must with them, or at least with the large majority, have been
+the true motives of the conspiracy--of their desire to expel the English
+from their country. Nor is it difficult to conceive what some of these
+motives may have been. The former sovereigns of Affghanistan, even the
+most firmly-established and the most vigorous, had no other means of
+enforcing their commands, than by employing the forces of one part of
+the nation to make their authority respected in another; but men who
+were jealous of their own independence as chiefs, were not likely to aid
+the sovereign in any attempt to destroy the substantial power, the
+importance, or the independence of their class; and although a
+refractory chief might occasionally, by the aid of his feudal enemies,
+be taken or destroyed, and his property plundered, his place was filled
+by a relation, and the order remained unbroken. The Affghan chiefs had
+thus enjoyed, under their native governments, an amount of independence
+which was incompatible with the system we introduced--supported as that
+system was by our military means. These men must have seen that their
+own power and importance, and even their security against the caprices
+of their sovereign, could not long be preserved--that they were about to
+be subjected as well as governed--to be deprived of all power to resist
+the oppressions of their own government, because its will was enforced
+by an army which had no sympathy with the nation, and which was
+therefore ready to use its formidable strength to compel unqualified
+submission to the sovereign's commands.
+
+The British army may not have been employed to enforce any unjust
+command--its movements may have been less, far less, injurious to the
+countries through which it passed than those of an Affghan army would
+have been, and its power in the moment of success may have been far less
+abused; but still it gave a strength to the arm of the sovereign, which
+was incompatible with the maintenance of the pre-existing civil and
+social institutions or condition of the country, and especially of the
+relative positions of the sovereign and the noble. In the measures we
+adopted to establish the authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted to
+carry out a system of government which could only have been made
+successful by a total revolution in the social condition of the people,
+and in the relative positions of classes; and as these revolutions are
+not effected in a few years, the attempt failed.[17]
+
+     [17] The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no
+     doubt, have been carried through by an overwhelming military
+     force, if the country had been worth the cost; but if it was
+     not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it
+     appears to us that the native government was far too much
+     interfered with--that the British envoy, the British officers
+     employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army,
+     stood too much between the Shah and his subjects--that we were
+     forming a government which it would be impossible to work in
+     our absence, and creating a state of things which, the longer
+     it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which
+     our interference could be dispensed with.
+
+But if the predominance of our influence and of our military power, and
+the effects of the system we introduced, tended to depress the chiefs,
+it must have still more injuriously affected or threatened the power of
+the priesthood.
+
+This we believe to have been one of the primary and most essential
+causes of the revolt--this it was that made the insurrection spread with
+such rapidity, and that finally united the whole nation against us. With
+the aristocracy and the hierarchy of the country, it must have been but
+a question of courage and of means--a calculation of the probability of
+success; and as that probability was greatly increased by the results of
+the first movement at Cabul, and by the inertness of our army after the
+first outbreak, all acquired courage enough to aid in doing what all had
+previously desired to see done.
+
+But if there be any justice in this view of the state of feeling in
+Affghanistan, even in the moments of its greatest tranquillity, it is
+difficult to account for the confidence with which the political
+authorities charged with the management of our affairs in that country
+looked to the future, and the indifference with which they appear to
+have regarded what now must appear to every one else to have been very
+significant, and even alarming, intimations of dissaffection in Cabul,
+and hostility in the neighbouring districts.
+
+But it is time we should return to Lieutenant Eyre, whose narrative of
+facts is infinitely more attractive than any speculations we could
+offer.
+
+     "At an early hour this morning, (2d November 1841,) the
+     startling intelligence was brought from the city, that a
+     popular outbreak had taken place; that the shops were all
+     closed; and that a general attack had been made on the houses
+     of all British officers residing in Cabul. About 8 A.M., a
+     hurried note was received by the Envoy in cantonments from Sir
+     Alexander Burnes, stating that the minds of the people had been
+     strongly excited by some mischievous reports, but expressing a
+     hope that he should succeed in quelling the commotion. About 9
+     A.M., however, a rumour was circulated, which afterwards proved
+     but too well founded, that Sir Alexander had been murdered, and
+     Captain Johnson's treasury plundered. Flames were now seen to
+     issue from that part of the city where they dwelt, and it was
+     too apparent that the endeavour to appease the people by quiet
+     means had failed, and that it would be necessary to have
+     recourse to stronger measures. The report of firearms was
+     incessant, and seemed to extend through the town from end to
+     end.
+
+     "Sir William Macnaghten now called upon General Elphinstone to
+     act. An order was accordingly sent to Brigadier Shelton, then
+     encamped at Seeah Sung, about a mile and a half distant from
+     cantonments, to march forthwith to the _Bala Hissar_, or _royal
+     citadel_, where his Majesty Shah Shoojah resided, commanding a
+     large portion of the city, with the following troops:--viz. one
+     company of H.M. 44th foot; a wing of the 54th regiment native
+     infantry, under Major Ewart; the 6th regiment Shah's infantry,
+     under Captain Hopkins; and four horse-artillery guns, under
+     Captain Nicholl; and on arrival there, to act according to his
+     own judgment, after consulting with the King.
+
+     "The remainder of the troops encamped at Seeah Sung were at the
+     same time ordered into cantonments: viz. H.M. 44th foot, under
+     Lieutenant-Colonel Mackerell; two horse-artillery guns, under
+     Lieutenant Waller; and Anderson's irregular horse. A messenger
+     was likewise dispatched to recall the 37th native infantry from
+     Khoord-Cabul without delay. The troops at this time in
+     cantonments were as follows: viz. 5th regiment native infantry,
+     under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver; a wing of 54th native
+     infantry; five six-pounder field guns, with a detachment of the
+     Shah's artillery, under Lieutenant Warburton; the Envoy's
+     body-guard; a troop of Skinner's horse, and another of local
+     horse, under Lieutenant Walker; three companies of the Shah's
+     sappers, under Captain Walsh; and about twenty men of the
+     Company's sappers, attached to Captain Paton,
+     assistant-quartermaster-general.
+
+     "Widely spread and formidable as this insurrection proved to be
+     afterwards, it was at first a mere insignificant ebullition of
+     discontent on the part of a few desperate and restless men,
+     which military energy and promptitude ought to have crushed in
+     the bud. Its commencement was an attack by certainly not 300
+     men on the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and Captain
+     Johnson, paymaster to the Shah's force; and so little did Sir
+     Alexander himself apprehend serious consequences, that he not
+     only refused, on its first breaking out, to comply with the
+     earnest entreaties of the wuzeer to accompany him to the Bala
+     Hissar, but actually forbade his guard to fire on the
+     assailants, attempting to check what he supposed to be a mere
+     riot, by haranguing the attacking party from the gallery of his
+     house. The result was fatal to himself; for in spite of the
+     devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed his guard, and
+     that of the paymaster's office and treasury on the opposite
+     side of the street, who yielded their trust only with their
+     latest breath, the latter were plundered, and his two
+     companions, Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal European
+     regiment, and his brother, Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay
+     army, were massacred, in common with every man, woman, and
+     child found on the premises, by these bloodthirsty miscreants.
+     Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six men with his own hand,
+     before he was shot down.
+
+     "The King, who was in the Bala Hissar, being somewhat startled
+     by the increasing number of the rioters, although not at the
+     time aware, so far as we can judge, of the assassination of Sir
+     A. Burnes, dispatched one of his sons with a number of his
+     immediate Affghan retainers, and that corps of Hindoostanees
+     commonly called Campbell's regiment, with two guns, to restore
+     order: no support, however, was rendered to these by our
+     troops, whose leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the
+     intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable of adopting
+     more than the most puerile defensive measures. Even Sir William
+     Macnaghten seemed, from a note received at this time from him
+     by Captain Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he therein
+     expressed his perfect confidence as to the speedy and complete
+     success of Campbell's Hindoostanees in putting an end to the
+     disturbance. Such, however, was not the case; for the enemy,
+     encouraged by our inaction, increased rapidly in spirit and
+     numbers, and drove back the King's guard with great slaughter,
+     the guns being with difficulty saved.
+
+     "It must be understood that Captain Trevor lived at this time
+     with his family in a strong _bourge_ or tower, situated by the
+     river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter, which, on the west, is
+     wholly distinct from the remainder of the city. Within
+     musket-shot, on the opposite side of the river, in the
+     direction of the strong and populous village of Deh Affghan, is
+     a fort of some size, then used as a godown, or storehouse, by
+     the Shah's commissariat, part of it being occupied by Brigadier
+     Anquetil, commanding the Shah's force. Close to this fort,
+     divided by a narrow watercourse, was the house of Captain
+     Troup, brigade-major of the Shah's force, perfectly defensible
+     against musketry. Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain Troup had
+     gone out on horseback early in the morning towards cantonments,
+     and were unable to return; but the above fort and house
+     contained the usual guard of sepoys; and in a garden close at
+     hand, called the _Yaboo-Khaneh_, or lines of the
+     baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of the Shah's sappers
+     and miners, and a party of Captain Ferris's juzailchees.
+     Captain Trevor's tower was capable of being made good against a
+     much stronger force than the rebels at this present time could
+     have collected, had it been properly garrisoned.
+
+     "As it was, the Hazirbash,[18] or King's lifeguards, were,
+     under Captain Trevor, congregated round their leader, to
+     protect him and his family; which duty, it will be seen, they
+     well performed under very trying circumstances. For what took
+     place in this quarter I beg to refer to a communication made to
+     me at my request by Captain Colin Mackenzie,[19] assistant
+     political agent at Peshawur, who then occupied the godown
+     portion of the fort above mentioned, which will be found
+     hereafter.[20]
+
+     "I have already stated that Brigadier Shelton was, early in the
+     day, directed to proceed with part of the Seeah Sung force to
+     occupy the Bala Hissar, and, if requisite, to lead his troops
+     against the insurgents. Captain Lawrence, military secretary to
+     the Envoy, was at the same time sent forward to prepare the
+     King for that officer's reception. Taking with him four
+     troopers of the body-guard, he was galloping along the main
+     road, when, shortly after crossing the river, he was suddenly
+     attacked by an Affghan, who, rushing from behind a wall, made a
+     desperate cut at him with a large two-handed knife. He
+     dexterously avoided the blow by spurring his horse on one side;
+     but, passing onwards, he was fired upon by about fifty men,
+     who, having seen his approach, ran out from the Lahore gate of
+     the city to intercept him. He reached the Bala Hissar safe,
+     where he found the King apparently in a state of great
+     agitation, he having witnessed the assault from the window of
+     his palace. His Majesty expressed an eager desire to conform to
+     the Envoy's wishes in all respects in this emergency.
+
+     "Captain Lawrence was still conferring with the King, when
+     Lieutenant Sturt, our executive engineer, rushed into the
+     palace, stabbed in three places about the face and neck. He had
+     been sent by Brigadier Shelton to make arrangements for the
+     accommodation of the troops, and had reached the gate of the
+     _Dewan Khaneh_, or hall of audience, when the attempt at his
+     life was made by some one who had concealed himself there for
+     that purpose, and who immediately effected his escape. The
+     wounds were fortunately not dangerous, and Lieutenant Sturt was
+     conveyed back to cantonments in the King's own palanquin, under
+     a strong escort. Soon after this Brigadier Shelton's force
+     arrived; but the day was suffered to pass without any thing
+     being done demonstrative of British energy and power. The
+     murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation of public and
+     private property, was perpetrated with impunity within a mile
+     of our cantonment, and under the very walls of the Bala Hissar.
+
+     "Such an exhibition on our part taught the enemy their
+     strength--confirmed against us those who, however disposed to
+     join in the rebellion, had hitherto kept aloof from prudential
+     motives, and ultimately encouraged the nation to unite as one
+     man for our destruction.
+
+     "It was, in fact, the crisis of all others calculated to test
+     the qualities of a military commander. Whilst, however, it is
+     impossible for an unprejudiced person to approve the military
+     dispositions of this eventful period, it is equally our duty to
+     discriminate. The most _responsible_ party is not always the
+     most culpable. It would be the height of injustice to a most
+     amiable and gallant officer not to notice the long course of
+     painful and wearing illness, which had materially affected the
+     nerves, and probably even the intellect, of General
+     Elphinstone; cruelly incapacitating him, so far as he was
+     personally concerned, from acting in this sudden emergency with
+     the promptitude and vigour necessary for our preservation.
+
+     "Unhappily, Sir William Macnaghten at first made light of the
+     insurrection, and, by his representations as to the general
+     feeling of the people towards us, not only deluded himself, but
+     misled the General in council. The unwelcome truth was soon
+     forced upon us, that in the whole Affghan nation we could not
+     reckon on a single friend.
+
+     "But though no active measures of aggression were taken, all
+     necessary preparations were made to secure the cantonment
+     against attack. It fell to my own lot to place every available
+     gun in position round the works. Besides the guns already
+     mentioned, we had in the magazine 6 nine-pounder iron guns, 3
+     twenty-four pounder howitzers, 1 twelve-pounder ditto, and 3
+     5-1/2-inch mortars; but the detail of artillerymen fell very
+     short of what was required to man all these efficiently,
+     consisting of only 80 Punjabees belonging to the Shah, under
+     Lieutenant Warburton, very insufficiently instructed, and of
+     doubtful fidelity."
+
+     [18] Affghan horse.
+
+     [19] The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about
+     seventy juzailchees or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers,
+     who had been left in the town in charge of the wives and
+     children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the
+     cantonments by that gallant party, who fought their way from
+     the heart of the town.
+
+     [20] "I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me
+     with the rest of the manuscript. I have not struck out the
+     reference, because there is hope that it still exists, and may
+     yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else
+     from Captain Mackenzie's pen will be regretted by all who read
+     his other communication, the account of the Envoy's
+     murder.--EDITOR."
+
+The fortified cantonment occupied by the British troops was a quadrangle
+of 1000 yards long by 600 broad, with round flanking bastions at each
+corner, every one of which was commanded by some fort or hill. To one
+end of this work was attached the Mission compound and enclosure, about
+half as large as the cantonment, surrounded by a simple wall. This space
+required to be defended in time of war, and it rendered the whole of one
+face of the cantonment nugatory for purposes of defence. The profile of
+the works themselves was weak, being in fact an ordinary field-work. But
+the most strange and unaccountable circumstance recorded by Lieutenant
+Eyre respecting these military arrangements, is certainly the fact, that
+the commissariat stores, containing whatever the army possessed of food
+or clothing, was not within the circuit of these fortified cantonments,
+but in a detached and weak fort, the gate of which was commanded by
+another building at a short distance. Our author thus sums up his
+observations on these cantonments:--
+
+     "In fact, we were so hemmed in on all sides, that, when the
+     rebellion became general, the troops could not move out a dozen
+     paces from either gate without being exposed to the fire of
+     some neighbouring hostile fort, garrisoned, too, by marksmen
+     who seldom missed their aim. The country around us was likewise
+     full of impediments to the movements of artillery and cavalry,
+     being in many places flooded, and every where closely
+     intersected by deep water-cuts.
+
+     "I cannot help adding, in conclusion, that almost all the
+     calamities that befell our ill-starred force may be traced more
+     or less to the defects of our position; and that our cantonment
+     at Cabul, whether we look to its situation or its construction,
+     must ever be spoken of as a disgrace to our military skill and
+     judgment."
+
+_Nov_. 3.--The 37th native infantry arrived in cantonments, as
+previously stated.
+
+     "Early in the afternoon, a detachment under Major Swayne,
+     consisting of two companies 5th native infantry, one of H.M.
+     44th, and two H.A. guns under Lieutenant Waller, proceeded out
+     of the western gate towards the city, to effect, if possible, a
+     junction at the Lahore gate with a part of Brigadier Shelton's
+     force from the Bala Hissar. They drove back and defeated a
+     party of the enemy who occupied the road near the Shah Bagh,
+     but had to encounter a sharp fire from the Kohistan gate of the
+     city, and from the walls of various enclosures, behind which a
+     number of marksmen had concealed themselves, as also from the
+     fort of Mahmood Khan, commanding the road along which they had
+     to pass. Lieutenant Waller and several sepoys were wounded.
+     Major Swayne, observing the whole line of road towards the
+     Lahore gate strongly occupied by some Affghan horse and
+     juzailchees, and fearing that he would be unable to effect the
+     object in view with so small a force unsupported by cavalry,
+     retired into cantonments. Shortly after this, a large body of
+     the rebels having issued from the fort of Mahmood Khan, 900
+     yards southeast of cantonments, extended themselves in a line
+     along the bank of the river, displaying a flag; an iron
+     nine-pounder was brought to bear on them from our southeast
+     bastion, and a round or two of shrapnell caused them to seek
+     shelter behind some neighbouring banks, whence, after some
+     desultory firing on both sides, they retired.
+
+     "Whatever hopes may have been entertained, up to this period,
+     of a speedy termination to the insurrection, they began now to
+     wax fainter every hour, and an order was dispatched to the
+     officer commanding at Candahar to lose no time in sending to
+     our assistance the 16th and 43d regiments native infantry,
+     (which were under orders for India,) together with a troop of
+     horse-artillery and half a regiment of cavalry; an order was
+     likewise sent off to recall General Sale with his brigade from
+     Gundamuk. Captain John Conolly, political assistant to the
+     Envoy, went into the Bala Hissar early this morning, to remain
+     with the King, and to render every assistance in his power to
+     Brigadier Shelton."
+
+On this day Lieutenants Maule and Wheeler were murdered at Kahdarrah in
+Koohdaman; the Kohistan regiment of Affghans which they commanded,
+offering no resistance to the rebels. The two officers defended
+themselves resolutely for some time, but fell under the fire of the
+enemy. Lieutenant Maule had been warned of his danger by a friendly
+native, but refused to desert his post.
+
+On this day also Lieutenant Rattray, Major Pottinger's assistant, was
+treacherously murdered at Lughmanee, during a conference to which he had
+been invited, and within sight of the small fort in which these two
+gentlemen resided. This act was followed by a general insurrection in
+Kohistan and Koohdaman, which terminated in the destruction of the
+Goorkha regiment at Charikar, and the slaughter of all the Europeans in
+that district except Major Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, both
+severely wounded, who, with one sepoy and one or two followers,
+succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Affghan parties, who were
+patrolling the roads for the purpose of intercepting them, and at length
+arrived in cantonments, having actually passed at night through the town
+and bazars of Cabul. For the details of this interesting and afflicting
+episode in Mr Eyre's narrative, we must refer our readers to the work
+itself. Major Pottinger appears on this occasion to have exhibited the
+same high courage and promptitude and vigour in action, and the same
+resources in difficulty, that made him conspicuous at Herat, and
+Lieutenant Haughton was no unworthy companion of such a man.
+
+     "_November_ 4.--The enemy having taken strong possession of the
+     _Shah Bagh_, or King's Garden, and thrown a garrison into the
+     fort of Mahomed Shereef, nearly opposite the bazar, effectually
+     prevented any communication between the cantonment and
+     commissariat fort, the gate of which latter was commanded by
+     the gate of the Shah Bagh on the other side of the road.
+
+     "Ensign Warren of the 5th native infantry at this time occupied
+     the commissariat fort with 100 men, and having reported that he
+     was very hard pressed by the enemy, and in danger of being
+     completely cut off, the General, either forgetful or unaware at
+     the moment of the important fact, that upon the possession of
+     this fort we were entirely dependent for provisions, and
+     anxious only to save the lives of men whom he believed to be in
+     imminent peril, hastily gave directions that a party under the
+     command of Captain Swayne, of H.M.'s 44th regiment, should
+     proceed immediately to bring off Ensign Warren and his garrison
+     to cantonments, abandoning the fort to the enemy. A few minutes
+     previously an attempt to relieve him had been made by Ensign
+     Gordon, with a company of the 37th native infantry and eleven
+     camels laden with ammunition; but the party were driven back,
+     and Ensign Gordon killed. Captain Swayne now accordingly
+     proceeded towards the spot with two companies of H.M.'s 44th;
+     scarcely had they issued from cantonments ere a sharp and
+     destructive fire was poured upon them from Mahomed Shereef's
+     fort which, as they proceeded, was taken up by the marksmen in
+     the Shah Bagh, under whose deadly aim both officers and men
+     suffered severely; Captains Swayne and Robinson of the 44th
+     being killed, and Lieutenants Hallahan, Evans, and Fortye
+     wounded in this disastrous business. It now seemed to the
+     officer, on whom the command had devolved, impracticable to
+     bring off Ensign Warren's party without risking the
+     annihilation of his own, which had already sustained so rapid
+     and severe a loss in officers; he therefore returned forthwith
+     to cantonments. In the course of the evening another attempt
+     was made by a party of the 5th light cavalry; but they
+     encountered so severe a fire from the neighbouring enclosures
+     as obliged them to return without effecting their desired
+     object, with the loss of eight troopers killed and fourteen
+     badly wounded. Captain Boyd, the assistant commissary-general,
+     having meanwhile been made acquainted with the General's
+     intention to give up the fort, hastened to lay before him the
+     disastrous consequences that would ensue from so doing. He
+     stated that the place contained, besides large supplies of
+     wheat and attah, all his stores of rum, medicine, clothing,
+     &c., the value of which might be estimated at four lacs of
+     rupees; that to abandon such valuable property would not only
+     expose the force to the immediate want of the necessaries of
+     life, but would infallibly inspire the enemy with tenfold
+     courage. He added that we had not above two days' supply of
+     provisions in cantonments, and that neither himself nor Captain
+     Johnson of the Shah's commissariat had any prospect of
+     procuring them elsewhere under existing circumstances. In
+     consequence of this strong representation on the part of
+     Captain Boyd, the General sent immediate orders to Ensign
+     Warren to hold out the fort to the last extremity. (Ensign
+     Warren, it must be remarked, denied having received this note.)
+     Early in the night a letter was received from him to the effect
+     that he believed the enemy were busily engaged in mining one of
+     the towers, and that such was the alarm among the sepoys that
+     several of them had actually made their escape over the wall to
+     cantonments; that the enemy were making preparations to burn
+     down the gate; and that, considering the temper of his men, he
+     did not expect to be able to hold out many hours longer, unless
+     reinforced without delay. In reply to this he was informed
+     that he would be reinforced by two A.M.
+
+     "At about nine o'clock P.M., there was an assembly of staff and
+     other officers at the General's house, when the Envoy came in
+     and expressed his serious conviction, that unless Mahomed
+     Shereef's fort were taken that very night, we should lose the
+     commissariat fort, or at all events be unable to bring out of
+     it provisions for the troops. The disaster of the morning
+     rendered the General extremely unwilling to expose his officers
+     and men to any similar peril; but, on the other hand, it was
+     urged that the darkness of the night would nullify the enemy's
+     fire, who would also most likely be taken unawares, as it was
+     not the custom of the Affghans to maintain a very strict watch
+     at night. A man in Captain Johnson's employ was accordingly
+     sent out to reconnoitre the place. He returned in a few minutes
+     with the intelligence that about twenty men were seated outside
+     the fort near the gate, smoking and talking; and, from what he
+     overheard of their conversation, he judged the garrison to be
+     very small, and unable to resist a sudden onset. The debate was
+     now resumed, but another hour passed and the General could not
+     make up his mind. A second spy was dispatched, whose report
+     tended to corroborate what the first had said. I was then sent
+     to Lieutenant Sturt, the engineer, who was nearly recovered
+     from his wounds, for his opinion. He at first expressed himself
+     in favour of an immediate attack, but, on hearing that some of
+     the enemy were on the watch at the gate, he judged it prudent
+     to defer the assault till an early hour in the morning: this
+     decided the General, though not before several hours had
+     slipped away in fruitless discussion.
+
+     "Orders were at last given for a detachment to be in readiness
+     at four A.M. at the Kohistan gate; and Captain Bellew,
+     deputy-assistant quartermaster-general, volunteered to blow
+     open the gate; another party of H.M.'s 44th were at the same
+     time to issue by a cut in the south face of the rampart, and
+     march simultaneously towards the commissariat fort, to
+     reinforce the garrison. Morning had, however, well dawned ere
+     the men could be got under arms; and they were on the point of
+     marching off, when it was reported that Ensign Warren had just
+     arrived in cantonments with his garrison, having evacuated the
+     fort. It seems that the enemy had actually set fire to the
+     gate; and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect of a reinforcement,
+     and expecting the enemy every moment to rush in, led out his
+     men by a hole which he had prepared in the wall. Being called
+     upon in a public letter from the assistant adjutant-general to
+     state his reasons for abandoning his post, he replied that he
+     was ready to do so before a court of enquiry, which he
+     requested might be assembled to investigate his conduct; it was
+     not, however, deemed expedient to comply with his request.
+
+     "It is beyond a doubt that our feeble and ineffectual defence
+     of this fort, and the valuable booty it yielded, was the first
+     _fatal_ blow to our supremacy at Cabul, and at once determined
+     those chiefs--and more particularly the Kuzzilbashes--who had
+     hitherto remained neutral, to join in the general combination
+     to drive us from the country."
+
+"_Nov_. 5.--It no sooner became generally known that the commissariat
+fort, upon which we were dependent for supplies, had been abandoned,
+than one universal feeling of indignation pervaded the garrison. Nor can
+I describe," says Lieutenant Eyre, "the impatience of the troops, but
+especially of the native portion, to be led out for its recapture--a
+feeling that was by no means diminished by seeing the Affghans crossing
+and re-crossing the road between the commissariat fort and the gate of
+the _Shah Bagh_, laden with the provisions upon which had depended our
+ability to make a protracted defence."
+
+That the whole commissariat should have been deposited in a detached
+fort is extraordinary and inexcusable, but that the garrison of that
+fort should not have been reinforced, is even more unintelligible; and
+that a sufficient force was not at once sent to succour and protect it
+when attacked, is altogether unaccountable. General Elphinstone was
+disabled by his infirmities from efficiently discharging the duties that
+had devolved upon him, but he appears to have been ready to act upon the
+suggestion of others. What then were his staff about?--some of them are
+said to have had little difficulty or delicacy in urging their own views
+upon their commander. Did they not suggest to him in time the
+importance, the necessity, of saving the commissariat at all hazards?
+
+At the suggestion of Lieutenant Eyre, it was determined to attempt the
+capture of Mahomed Shereef's fort by blowing open the gate, Mr Eyre
+volunteering to keep the road clear for the storming party with the
+guns. "The General agreed; a storming party under Major Swayne, 6th
+native infantry, was ordered; the powder bags were got ready, and at
+noon we issued from the western gate." "For twenty minutes the guns were
+worked under a very sharp fire from the fort;" but "Major Swayne,
+instead of rushing forward with his men as had been agreed, had in the
+mean time remained stationary, under cover of the wall by the
+road-side." The General, seeing that the attempt had failed, recalled
+the troops into cantonments.
+
+"_Nov_. 6.--It was now determined to take the fort of Mahomed Shereef by
+regular breach and assault." A practicable breach was effected, and a
+storming party composed of one company H.M. 44th, under Ensign Raban,
+one ditto 5th native infantry, under Lieutenant Deas, and one ditto 37th
+native infantry, under Lieutenant Steer, the whole commanded by Major
+Griffiths, speedily carried the place. "Poor Raban was shot through the
+heart when conspicuously waving a flag on the summit of the breach."
+
+As this fort adjoined the Shah Bagh, it was deemed advisable to dislodge
+the enemy from the latter if possible. This was partially effected, and,
+had advantage been taken of the opportunity to occupy the buildings of
+the garden gateway, "immediate re-possession could have been taken of
+the commissariat fort opposite, which had not yet been emptied of half
+its contents."
+
+In the mean time, our cavalry were engaged in an affair with the enemy's
+horse, in which we appear to have had the advantage. "The officers
+gallantly headed their men, and encountered about an equal number of the
+enemy who advanced to meet them. A hand-to-hand encounter took place,
+which ended in the Affghan horse retreating to the plain, leaving the
+hill in our possession. In this affair, Captain Anderson personally
+engaged and slew the brother in-law of Abdoolah Khan."
+
+But the Affghans collected from various quarters; the juzailchees,[21]
+under Captain Mackenzie, were driven with great loss from the Shah Bagh
+which they had entered; and a gun which had been employed to clear that
+enclosure was with difficulty saved. Our troops having been drawn up on
+the plain, remained prepared to receive an attack from the enemy, who
+gradually retired as the night closed in.
+
+     [21] Affghan riflemen.
+
+_Nov_. 8.--An attempt was made by the enemy to mine a tower of the fort
+that had been taken, which they could not have done had the gate of the
+Shah Bagh been occupied. The chief cause of anxiety now was the empty
+state of the granary. Even with high bribes and liberal payment, the
+Envoy could not procure sufficient for daily consumption. The plan of
+the enemy now was to starve us out, and the chiefs exerted all their
+influence to prevent our being supplied.
+
+_Nov_. 9.--The General's weak state of health rendered it necessary to
+relieve him from the command of the garrison, and at the earnest request
+of the Envoy, Brigadier Shelton was summoned from the Bala Hissar, "in
+the hope that, by heartily co-operating with the Envoy and General, he
+would strengthen their hands and rouse the sinking confidence of the
+troops. He entered cantonments this morning, bringing with him one H.A.
+gun, one mountain-train ditto, one company H.M.'s 44th, the Shah's 6th
+infantry, and a small supply of attah (flour.)"
+
+     "_November_ 10.--Henceforward Brigadier Shelton bore a
+     conspicuous part in the drama, upon the issue of which so much
+     depended. He had, however, from the very first, seemed to
+     despair of the force being able to hold out the winter at
+     Cabul, and strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to
+     Jellalabad.
+
+     "This sort of despondency proved, unhappily, very infectious.
+     It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers, and
+     was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of
+     _croakers_ in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious
+     looks and dismal prophecies being encountered every where. The
+     severe losses sustained by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on
+     the 4th instant, had very much discouraged the men of that
+     regiment; and it is a lamentable fact that some of those
+     European soldiers, who were naturally expected to exhibit to
+     their native brethren in arms an example of endurance and
+     fortitude, were among the first to loose confidence, and give
+     vent to feelings of discontent at the duties imposed on them.
+     The evil seed, once sprung up, became more and more difficult
+     to eradicate, showing daily more and more how completely
+     demoralizing to the British soldier is the very idea of a
+     retreat.
+
+     "Sir William Macnaghten and his suite were altogether opposed
+     to Brigadier Shelton in this matter, it being in his (the
+     Envoy's) estimation a duty we owed the Government to retain our
+     post, at whatsoever risk. This difference of opinion, on a
+     question of such vital importance, was attended with unhappy
+     results, inasmuch as it deprived the General, in his hour of
+     need, of the strength which unanimity imparts, and produced an
+     uncommunicative and disheartening reserve in an emergency which
+     demanded the freest interchange of counsel and ideas."
+
+On the morning of this day, large parties of the enemy's horse and foot
+occupied the heights to the east and to the west of the cantonments,
+which, it was supposed, they intended to assault. No attack was made;
+but "on the eastern quarter, parties of the enemy, moving down into the
+plain, occupied all the forts in that direction. ... At this time, not
+above two days' provisions remained in garrison; and it was very clear,
+that unless the enemy were quickly driven out from their new possession,
+we should soon be completely hemmed in on all sides." At the Envoy's
+urgent desire, he taking the entire responsibility on himself, the
+General ordered a force, under Brigadier Shelton, to storm the
+Rikabashee fort, which was within musket-shot of the cantonments, and
+from which a galling fire had been poured into the Mission compound by
+the Affghans. About noon, the troops assembled at the eastern gate; a
+storming party of two companies from each regiment taking the lead,
+preceded by Captain Bellew, who hurried forward to blow open the
+gate--but missing the gate, he blew open a small wicket, through which
+not more than two or three men could enter abreast, and these in a
+stooping posture. A sharp fire was kept up from the walls, and many of
+the bravest fell in attempting to force their entrance through the
+wicket; but Colonel Mackerell of the 44th, and Lieutenant Bird of the
+Shah's 6th infantry, with a handful of Europeans and a few sepoys,
+forced their way in--the garrison fled through the gate which was at the
+opposite side, and Colonel Mackerell and his little party closed it,
+securing the chain with a bayonet; but, at this moment, some Affghan
+horse charged round the corner--the cry of cavalry was raised--"the
+Europeans gave way simultaneously with the sepoys--a bugler of the 6th
+infantry, through mistake, sounded the retreat--and it became for a
+time, a scene of _sauve qui peut_." In vain did the officers endeavour
+to rally the men, and to lead them back to the rescue of their
+commanding-officer and their comrades; only one man, private Stewart of
+the 44th, listened to the appeal and returned.
+
+"Let me here (says Lieutenant Eyre) do Brigadier Shelton justice: his
+acknowledged courage redeemed the day." After great efforts, at last he
+rallied them--again advancing to the attack, again they faltered. A
+third time did the Brigadier bring on his men to the assault, which now
+proved successful; but while this disgraceful scene was passing outside
+the fort, the enemy had forced their way into it, and had cut to pieces
+Colonel Mackerell and all his little party, except Lieutenant Bird, who,
+with one sepoy, was found in a barricaded apartment, where these two
+brave men had defended themselves till the return of the troops, killing
+above thirty of the enemy by the fire of their two muskets.
+
+Our loss on this occasion was not less than 200 killed and wounded; but
+the results of this success, though dearly purchased, were important.
+Four neighbouring forts were immediately evacuated by the enemy, and
+occupied by our troops: they were found to contain 1400 maunds of grain,
+of which about one-half was removed into cantonments immediately; but
+Brigadier Shelton not having thought it prudent to place a guard for the
+protection of the remainder, it was carried off during the night by the
+Affghans. "Permanent possession was, however, taken of the Rikabashee
+and Zoolfikar forts, and the towers of the remainder were blown up on
+the following day."
+
+It cannot fail to excite surprise, that these forts, which do not seem
+to have been occupied by the enemy till the 10th, were not either
+occupied or destroyed by the British troops before that day.
+
+_Nov_. 13.--The enemy appeared in great force on the western heights,
+where, having posted two guns, they fired into cantonments with
+considerable precision. At the entreaty of the Envoy, it was determined
+to attack them--a force, under Brigadier Shelton, moved out for that
+purpose--the advance, under Major Thain, ascended the hill with great
+gallantry; "but the enemy resolutely stood their ground at the summit of
+the ridge, and unflinchingly received the discharge of our musketry,
+which, strange to say, even at the short range of ten or twelve yards,
+did little or no execution."
+
+The fire of our guns, however, threw the Affghans into confusion. A
+charge of cavalry drove them up the hill, and the infantry advancing,
+carried the height, the enemy retreating along the ridge, closely
+followed by our troops, and abandoning their guns to us; but, owing to
+the misconduct of the troops, only one of them was carried away, the men
+refusing to advance to drag off the other, which was therefore spiked by
+Lieutenant Eyre, with the aid of one artilleryman.
+
+     "This was the last success our arms were destined to
+     experience. Henceforward it becomes my weary task to relate a
+     catalogue of errors, disasters, and difficulties, which,
+     following close upon each other, disgusted our officers,
+     disheartened our soldiers, and finally sunk us all into
+     irretrievable ruin, as though Heaven itself, by a combination
+     of evil circumstances, for its own inscrutable purposes, had
+     planned our downfall.
+
+     "_November 16th_.--The impression made by the enemy by the
+     action of the 13th was so far salutary, that they did not
+     venture to annoy us again for several days. Advantage was taken
+     of this respite to throw magazine supplies from time to time
+     into the Bala Hissar, a duty which was ably performed by
+     Lieutenant Walker, with a resalah of irregular horse, under
+     cover of night. But even in this short interval of comparative
+     rest, such was the wretched construction of the cantonment,
+     that the mere ordinary routine of garrison duty, and the
+     necessity of closely manning our long line of rampart both by
+     day and night, was a severe trial to the health and patience of
+     the troops; especially now that the winter began to show
+     symptoms of unusual severity. There seemed, indeed, every
+     probability of an early fall of snow, to which all looked
+     forward with dread, as the harbinger of fresh difficulties and
+     of augmented suffering.
+
+     "These considerations, and the manifest superiority of the Bala
+     Hissar as a military position, led to the early discussion of
+     the expediency of abandoning the cantonment, and consolidating
+     our forces in the above-mentioned stronghold. The Envoy himself
+     was, from the first, greatly in favour of this move, until
+     overruled by the many objections urged against it by the
+     military authorities; to which, as will be seen by a letter
+     from him presently quoted, he learned by degrees to attach some
+     weight himself; but to the very last it was a measure that had
+     many advocates, and I venture to state my own firm belief that,
+     had we at this time moved into the Bala Hissar, Cabul would
+     have been still in our possession.
+
+     "But Brigadier Shelton having firmly set his face against the
+     movement from the first moment of its proposition, all serious
+     idea of it was gradually abandoned, though it continued to the
+     very last a subject of common discussion."
+
+"_Nov_. 18. Accounts were this day received from Jellalabad, that
+General Sale, having sallied from the town, had repulsed the enemy with
+considerable loss.... The hope of his return has tended much to support
+our spirits; our disappointment was therefore great, to learn that all
+expectation of aid from that quarter was at an end. Our eyes were now
+turned towards the Kandahar force as our last resource though an advance
+from that quarter seemed scarcely practicable so late in the year."
+
+The propriety of attacking Mahomed Khan's fort, the possession of which
+would have opened an easy communication with the Bala Hissar, was
+discussed; but, on some sudden objection raised by Lieutenant Sturt of
+the engineers, the project was abandoned.
+
+On the 19th, a letter was addressed by the Envoy to the General, the
+object of which seems not to be very apparent. He raises objections to a
+retreat either to Jellalabad or to the Bala Hissar, and expresses a
+decided objection to abandon the cantonment under any circumstances, if
+food can be procured; but, nevertheless, it is sufficiently evident
+that his hopes of successful resistance had even now become feeble, and
+he refers to the possibility that succours may arrive from Kandahar, or
+that "something might turn up in our favour."
+
+The village of Beymaroo, (or Husbandless, from a beautiful virgin who
+was nursed there,) within half a mile of the cantonments, had been our
+chief source of supply, to which the enemy had in some measure put a
+stop by occupying it every morning. It was therefore determined to
+endeavour to anticipate them by taking possession of it before their
+arrival. For this purpose, a party moved out under Major Swayne of the
+5th native infantry; but the Major, "it would seem, by his own account,
+found the village already occupied, and the entrance blocked up in such
+a manner that he considered it out of his power to force a passage." It
+does not appear that the attempt was made. Later in the day there was
+some skirmishing in the plain, in the course of which Lieutenant Eyre
+was wounded.
+
+"It is worthy of note that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the late
+Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan, arrived in Cabul this night (22d Nov.) from
+Bameean. This man was destined to exercise an evil influence over our
+future fortunes. The crisis of our struggle was already nigh at hand."
+
+"_Nov_. 23.--This day decided the fate of the Cabul force." It had been
+determined by a council, at the special recommendation of the Envoy,
+that a force under Brigadier Shelton should storm the village of
+Beymaroo, and maintain the hill above it against any numbers of the
+enemy that might appear. At two A.M., the troops[22] moved out of
+cantonments, ascended the hill by the gorge, dragging up the gun, and
+moved along the ridge to a point overlooking the village. A sharp fire
+of grape created great confusion, and it was suggested by Captain Bellew
+and others to General Shelton, to storm the village, while the evident
+panic of the enemy lasted. To this the Brigadier did not accede.
+
+     [22] Five companies 44th; six companies 5th native infantry;
+     six companies 37th native infantry; 100 sappers; 2-1/2
+     squadrons cavalry; one gun.
+
+When day broke, the enemy, whose ammunition had failed, were seen
+hurrying from the village--not 40 men remained. A storming party, under
+Majors Swayne and Kershaw, was ordered to carry the village; but Major
+Swayne missed the gate, which was open, and arrived at a barricaded
+wicket, which he had no means of forcing. Major Swayne was wounded, and
+lost some men, and was ultimately recalled. Leaving a reserve of three
+companies of the 37th native infantry, under Major Kershaw, at the point
+overhanging Beymaroo, the Brigadier moved back with the rest of the
+troops and the gun to the part of the hill which overlooked the gorge.
+It was suggested to raise a sungar or breastwork to protect the troops,
+for which purpose the sappers had been taken out, but it was not done.
+Immense numbers of the enemy, issuing from the city, had now crowned the
+opposite hill--in all, probably 10,000 men. Our skirmishers were kept
+out with great difficulty, and chiefly by the exertions and example of
+Colonel Oliver. The remainder of the troops were formed into two
+squares, and the cavalry drawn up _en masse_ immediately in their rear,
+and all suffered severely--the vent of the only gun became too hot to be
+served. A party of cavalry under Lieutenant Walker was recalled to
+prevent its destruction, and a demonstration of the Affghan cavalry on
+our right flank, which had been exposed by the recall of Lieutenant
+Walker, was repulsed by a fire of shrapnell, which mortally wounded a
+chief of consequence. The enemy surrounded the troops on three sides.
+The men were faint with fatigue and thirst--the Affghan skirmishers
+pressed on, and our's gave way. The men could not be got to charge
+bayonets. The enemy made a rush at the guns, the cavalry were ordered to
+charge, but would not follow their officers. The first square and the
+cavalry gave way, and were with difficulty rallied behind the second
+square, leaving the gun in the hands of the enemy, who immediately
+carried off the limber and horses. News of Abdoolah Khan's wound spread
+amongst the Affghans, who now retired. Our men resumed courage, and
+regained possession of the gun; and fresh ammunition having arrived from
+cantonments, it again opened on the enemy: but our cavalry would not
+act, and the infantry were too much exhausted and disheartened to make a
+forward movement, and too few in number. The whole force of the enemy
+came on with renewed vigour--the front of the advanced square had been
+literally mowed down, and most of the gallant artillerymen had fallen.
+The gun was scarcely limbered up preparatory to retreat, when a rush
+from the Ghazees broke the first square. All order was at an end, the
+entreaties and commands of the officers were unheeded, and an utter rout
+ensued down the hill towards the cantonments, the enemy's cavalry making
+a fearful slaughter among the unresisting fugitives. The retreat of
+Major Kershaw's party was cut off, and his men were nearly all
+destroyed. The mingled tide of flight and pursuit seemed to be about to
+enter the cantonments together; but the pursuers were checked by the
+fire of the Shah's 5th infantry and the juzailchees, and by a charge of
+a fresh troop of cavalry under Lieutenant Hardyman, and fifteen or
+twenty of his own men rallied by Lieutenant Walker, who fell in that
+encounter. Osman Khan, too, a chief whose men were amongst the foremost,
+voluntarily halted them and drew them off, "which may be reckoned,
+indeed, (says Lieutenant Eyre,) the chief reason why _all_ of our people
+who on that day went forth to battle were not destroyed." The gun and
+the second limber which had arrived from the cantonments, in attempting
+to gallop down hill, was overturned and lost. "Our loss was
+tremendous--the greater part of the wounded, including Colonel Oliver,
+having been left in the field, where they were miserably cut to
+pieces."[23]
+
+     [23] In Mr Eyre's observations on this disastrous affair, he
+     enumerates six errors, which he says must present themselves to
+     the most unpractised military eye. "The first, and perhaps the
+     most fatal mistake of all, was the taking only one gun;" but he
+     admits that there was only one gun ready, and that, if the
+     Brigadier had waited for the second, he must have postponed the
+     enterprise for a day. This would probably have been the more
+     prudent course.
+
+     The second error was, that advantage was not taken of the panic
+     in the village, to storm it at once in the dark; but it appears
+     from his own account, that there were not more than forty men
+     remaining in the village when it was attacked, after daylight,
+     and that the chief cause of the failure of that attack, was
+     Major Swayne's having missed the gate, a misfortune which was,
+     certainly, at least as likely to have occurred in the dark.
+
+     The third was, that the sappers were not employed to raise a
+     breastwork for the protection of the troops. This objection
+     appears to be well founded.
+
+     The fourth was, that the infantry were formed into squares, to
+     resist the distant fire of infantry, on ground over which no
+     cavalry could have charged with effect. It appears to be so
+     utterly unintelligible that any officer should have been guilty
+     of so manifest an absurdity, that the circumstances seem to
+     require further elucidation; but that the formation was
+     unfortunate, is sufficiently obvious.
+
+     Fifthly, that the position chosen for the cavalry was
+     erroneous; and sixthly, that the retreat was too long deferred.
+     Both these objections appear to be just.
+
+Thus terminated in disaster the military struggle at Cabul, and then
+commenced that series of negotiations not less disastrous, which led to
+the murder of the Envoy, to the retreat of the army, and to its ultimate
+annihilation. In Lieutenant Eyre's account of their military operations,
+we look in vain for any evidence of promptitude, vigour, or decision,
+skill or judgment, in the commanders; and we have abundant evidence of a
+lamentable want of discipline and proper spirit in the troops,
+especially amongst the Europeans. Instances of high personal courage and
+gallantry amongst the officers are numerous, and they always will be,
+when the occasion requires them; but if the facts of this narrative had
+been given without the names, no man would have recognised in it the
+operations of a British army.
+
+     "_Nov_. 24.--Our troops (says Eyre) had now lost all
+     confidence; and even such of the officers as had hitherto
+     indulged the hope of a favourable turn in our affairs, began at
+     last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our
+     future fate. Our force resembled a ship in danger of wrecking
+     among rocks and shoals, for want of an able pilot to guide it
+     safely through them. Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the
+     helm of affairs been grasped by a hand competent to the
+     important task, we might perhaps have steered clear of
+     destruction; but, in the absence of any such deliverer, it was
+     but too evident that Heaven alone could save us by some
+     unforeseen interposition. The spirit of the men was gone; the
+     influence of the officers over them declined daily; and that
+     boasted discipline, which alone renders a handful of our troops
+     superior to an irregular multitude, began fast to disappear
+     from among us. The enemy, on the other hand, waxed bolder every
+     day and every hour; nor was it long ere we got accustomed to be
+     bearded with impunity from under the very ramparts of our
+     garrison.
+
+     "Never were troops exposed to greater hardships and dangers;
+     yet, sad to say, never did soldiers shed their blood with less
+     beneficial result than during the investment of the British
+     lines at Cabul."
+
+Captain Conolly now wrote from the Bala Hissar, urging an immediate
+retreat thither; "but the old objections were still urged against the
+measure by Brigadier Shelton and others," though several of the chief
+military, and all the political officers, approved of it. Shah Shoojah
+was impatient to receive them.
+
+The door to negotiation was opened by a letter to the Envoy from Osman
+Khan Barukzye, a near relation of the new king, Nuwab Mahomed Zuman
+Khan, who had sheltered Captain Drummond in his own house since the
+first day of the outbreak. He took credit to himself for having checked
+the ardour of his followers on the preceding day, and having thus saved
+the British force from destruction; he declared that the chiefs only
+desired we should quietly evacuate the country, leaving them to govern
+it according to their own rules, and with a king of their own choosing.
+The General, on being referred to, was of opinion that the cantonments
+could not be defended throughout the winter, and approved of opening a
+negotiation on the basis of the evacuation of the country. On the 27th,
+two deputies were sent by the assembled chiefs to confer with Sir W.
+Macnaghten; but the terms they proposed were such as he could not
+accept. The deputies took leave of the Envoy, with the exclamation, that
+"we should meet again in battle." "We shall at all events meet," replied
+Sir William, "at the day of judgment."
+
+At night the Envoy received a letter, proposing "that we should deliver
+up Shah Shoojah and all his family--lay down our arms, and make an
+unconditional surrender--when they might, perhaps, be induced to spare
+our lives, and allow us to leave the country on condition of never
+returning."
+
+The Envoy replied, "that these terms were too dishonourable to be
+entertained for a moment; and that, if they were persisted in, he must
+again appeal to arms, leaving the result to the God of battles."
+
+Active hostilities were not renewed till the 1st of December, when a
+desperate effort was made by the enemy to gain possession of the Bala
+Hissar; but they were repulsed by Major Ewart with considerable
+slaughter. On the 4th, they cannonaded the cantonment from the Beymaroo
+hills, but did little mischief, and at night they made an unsuccessful
+attempt on Mahomed Shereef's fort. On the 5th, they completed, without
+opposition, the destruction of the bridge over the Cabul river. On the
+6th, the garrison of Mahomed Shereef's fort disgracefully abandoned it,
+the men of the 44th apparently being the first to fly; and a garrison of
+the same regiment, in the bazar village, was with difficulty restrained
+from following their example. On the 7th, this post of honour was
+occupied by the 37th native infantry; the 44th, who had hitherto been
+intrusted with it, being no longer considered worthy to retain it.
+
+It is but justice to Mr Eyre to give in his own words some remarks which
+he has thought it right to make, with reference to what he has recorded
+of the conduct of that unhappy regiment:--
+
+     "In the course of this narrative, I have been compelled by
+     stern truth to note down facts nearly affecting the honour and
+     interests of a British regiment. It may, or rather I fear it
+     must, inevitably happen, that my unreserved statements of the
+     Cabul occurrences will prove unacceptable to many, whose
+     private or public feelings are interested in glossing over or
+     suppressing the numerous errors committed and censures
+     deservedly incurred. But my heart tells me that no paltry
+     motives of rivalry or malice influence my pen; rather a sincere
+     and honest desire to benefit the public service, by pointing
+     out the rocks on which our reputation was wrecked, the means by
+     which our honour was sullied, and our Indian empire endangered,
+     as a warning to future actors in similar scenes. In a word, I
+     believe that more good is likely to ensue from the publication
+     of the whole unmitigated truth, than from a mere garbled
+     statement of it. A kingdom has been lost--an army slain;--and
+     surely, if I can show that, had we been but true to ourselves,
+     and had vigorous measures been adopted, the result might have
+     been widely different, I shall have written an instructive
+     lesson to rulers and subjects, to generals and armies, and
+     shall not have incurred in vain the disapprobation of the
+     self-interested or the proud."
+
+The Envoy having again appealed to the General, again received an
+answer, stating the impossibility of holding out, and recommending that
+the Envoy should lose no time in entering into negotiations. This letter
+was countersigned by Brigadiers Shelton and Anquetil, and Colonel
+Chambers.
+
+On the 11th December, the Envoy, accompanied by Captains Lawrence,
+Trevor, and Mackenzie, and a few troopers, went out by agreement to meet
+the chiefs on the plain towards the Seah Sung hills. A conciliatory
+address from the Envoy was met by professions of personal esteem and
+approbation of the views he had laid before them, and of gratitude for
+the manner in which the Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan had been treated. The
+Envoy then read to them a sketch of the proposed treaty, which was to
+the following effect:--
+
+     "That the British should evacuate Affghanistan, including
+     Candahar, Ghuznee, Cabul, Jellalabad, and all the other
+     stations absolutely within the limits of the country so called;
+     that they should be permitted to return not only unmolested to
+     India, but that supplies of every description should be
+     afforded them in their road thither, certain men of consequence
+     accompanying them as hostages; that the Ameer Dost Mahomed
+     Khan, his family, and every Affghan now in exile for political
+     offences, should be allowed to return to their country; that
+     Shah Shoojah and his family should be allowed the option of
+     remaining at Cabul, or proceeding with the British troops to
+     Loodiana, in either case receiving from the Affghan Government
+     a pension of one lac of rupees per annum; that means of
+     transport, for the conveyance of our baggage, stores, &c.,
+     including that required by the royal family, in case of their
+     adopting the latter alternative, should be furnished by the
+     existing Affghan Government: that an amnesty should be granted
+     to all those who had made themselves obnoxious on account of
+     their attachment to Shah Shoojah and his allies, the British;
+     that all prisoners should be released; that no British force
+     should be ever again sent into Affghanistan, unless called for
+     by the Affghan government, between whom and the British nation
+     perpetual friendship should be established on the sure
+     foundation of mutual good offices."
+
+After some objections on the part of Mahomed Akber Khan, the terms were
+agreed to, and it was further arranged that provisions should be
+supplied to our troops, and that they should evacuate the cantonment in
+three days.
+
+Preparations were immediately commenced for the retreat. Arms were
+ordered to be distributed from the stores, now about to be abandoned, to
+some of the camp-followers, and such of the soldiers as might require
+them; and a disgraceful scene of confusion and tumult followed, which
+showed the fearful extent to which the army was disorganized.
+
+The troops in the Bala Hissar were moved into cantonments, not without a
+foretaste of what they had to expect on their march to Jellalabad, under
+the safe conduct of Akber Khan.
+
+The demands of the chiefs now rose from day to day. They refused to
+supply provisions until we should further assure them of our sincerity,
+by giving up every fort in the immediate vicinity of the cantonment. The
+troops were accordingly withdrawn, the forts were immediately occupied
+by the Affghans, and the cantonment thus placed at their mercy. On the
+18th, the promised cattle for carriage had not yet been supplied, and a
+heavy fall of snow rendered the situation of the troops more desperate.
+On the 19th, the Envoy wrote an order for the evacuation of Ghuznee. On
+the 20th, the Envoy had another interview with the chiefs, who now
+demanded that a portion of the guns and ammunition should be given up.
+This also was agreed to. At this stage of the proceedings, Lieutenant
+Sturt of the engineers proposed to the General to break off the treaty,
+and march forthwith to Jellalabad; but the proposal was not approved.
+The arrangements for giving effect to the treaty were still carried on;
+and the Envoy again met Akber Khan and Osman Khan on the plain, when
+Captains Conolly and Airey were given up as hostages, and the Envoy sent
+his carriage and horses, and a pair of pistols, as presents to Akber
+Khan, who further demanded an Arab horse, the property of Captain Grant,
+assistant adjutant-general:--
+
+     "Late in the evening of the 22d December," (says Capt.
+     Mackenzie, in a letter to Lieut. Eyre,) "Capt. James Skinner,
+     who, after having been concealed in Cabul during the greater
+     part of the siege, had latterly been the guest of Mahomed
+     Akber, arrived in cantonments, accompanied by Mahomed Sudeeq
+     Khan, a first cousin of Mahomed Akber, and by Sirwar Khan, the
+     Arhanee merchant, who, in the beginning of the campaign, had
+     furnished the army with camels, and who had been much in the
+     confidence of Sir A. Burnes, being, in fact, one of our
+     stanchest friends. The two latter remained in a different
+     apartment, while Skinner dined with the Envoy. During dinner,
+     Skinner jestingly remarked that he felt as if laden with
+     combustibles, being charged with a message from Mahomed Akber
+     to the Envoy of a most portentous nature.
+
+     "Even then I remarked that the Envoy's eye glanced eagerly
+     towards Skinner with an expression of hope. In fact, he was
+     like a drowning man catching at straws. Skinner, however,
+     referred him to his Affghan companions, and after dinner the
+     four retired into a room by themselves. My knowledge of what
+     there took place is gained from poor Skinner's own relation, as
+     given during my subsequent captivity with him in Akber's house.
+     Mahomed Sudeeq disclosed Mahomed Akber's proposition to the
+     Envoy, which was, that the following day Sir William should
+     meet him (Mahomed Akber) and a few of his immediate friends,
+     viz. the chiefs of the Eastern Giljyes, outside the
+     cantonments, when a final agreement should be made, so as to be
+     fully understood by both parties; that Sir William should have
+     a considerable body of troops in readiness, which, on a given
+     signal, were to join with those of Mahomed Akber and the
+     Giljyes, assault and take Mahmood Khan's fort, and secure the
+     person of Ameenoolah. At this stage of the proposition Mahomed
+     Sudeeq signified that, for a certain sum of money, the head of
+     Ameenoolah should be presented to the Envoy; but from this Sir
+     William shrunk with abhorrence, declaring that it was neither
+     his custom nor that of his country to give a price for blood.
+     Mahomed Sudeeq then went on to say, that, after having subdued
+     the rest of the khans, the English should be permitted to
+     remain in the country eight months longer, so as to save their
+     _purdah_, (veil, or credit,) but that they were then to
+     evacuate Affghanistan, as if of their own accord; that Shah
+     Shoojah was to continue king of the country, and that Mahomed
+     Akber was to be his wuzeer. As a further reward for his
+     (Mahomed Akber's) assistance, the British Government were to
+     pay him thirty lacs of rupees, and four lacs of rupees per
+     annum during his life! To this extraordinary and wild proposal,
+     Sir William gave ear with an eagerness which nothing can
+     account for but the supposition, confirmed by many other
+     circumstances, that his strong mind had been harassed until it
+     had in some degree lost its equipoise; and he not only assented
+     fully to these terms, but actually gave a Persian paper to that
+     effect, written in his own hand, declaring as his motives that
+     it was not only an excellent opportunity to carry into effect
+     the real wishes of Government--which were to evacuate the
+     country with as much credit to ourselves as possible--but that
+     it would give England time to enter into a treaty with Russia,
+     defining the bounds beyond which neither were to pass in
+     Central Asia. So ended this fatal conference, the nature and
+     result of which, contrary to his usual custom, Sir William
+     communicated to none of those who, on all former occasions,
+     were fully in his confidence, viz. Trevor, Lawrence, and
+     myself. It seemed as if he feared that we might insist on the
+     impracticability of the plan, which he must have studiously
+     concealed from himself. All the following morning his manner
+     was distracted and hurried, in a way that none of us had ever
+     before witnessed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "After breakfast, Trevor, Lawrence, and myself were summoned to
+     attend the Envoy during his conference with Mahomed Akber Khan.
+     I found him alone, when, for the first time, he disclosed to me
+     the nature of the transaction he was engaged in. I immediately
+     warned him that it was a plot against him. He replied hastily,
+     'A plot! let me alone for that--trust me for that!' and I
+     consequently offered no further remonstrance. Sir William then
+     arranged with General Elphinstone that the 54th regiment, under
+     Major Ewart, should be held in readiness for immediate service.
+     The Shah's 6th, and two guns, were also warned."
+
+Sir W. Macnaghten, halting the troopers of the escort, advanced about
+500 or 600 yards from the eastern rampart of the cantonment, and there
+awaited Akber Khan and his party:--
+
+     "Close by where some hillocks, on the further side of which
+     from the cantonment a carpet was spread where the snow lay
+     least thick, and there the khans and Sir William sat down to
+     hold their conference. Men talk of presentiment; I suppose it
+     was something of the kind which came over me, for I could
+     scarcely prevail upon myself to quit my horse. I did so,
+     however, and was invited to sit down among the Sirdars. After
+     the usual salutations, Mahomed Akber commenced business by
+     asking the Envoy if he was perfectly ready to carry into effect
+     the proposition of the preceding night? The Envoy replied, 'Why
+     not?' My attention was then called off by an old Affghan
+     acquaintance of mine, formerly chief of the Cabul police, by
+     name Gholam Moyun-ood-deen. I rose from my recumbent posture,
+     and stood apart with him conversing. I afterwards remembered
+     that my friend betrayed much anxiety as to where my pistols
+     were, and why I did not carry them on my person. I answered,
+     that although I wore my sword for form, it was not necessary to
+     be armed _cap-à-pie_. His discourse was also full of
+     extravagant compliments, I suppose for the purpose of lulling
+     me to sleep. At length my attention was called off from what he
+     was saying, by observing that a number of men, armed to the
+     teeth, had gradually approached to the scene of conference, and
+     were drawing round in a sort of circle. This Lawrence and
+     myself pointed out to some of the chief men, who affected at
+     first to drive them off with whips; but Mahomed Akber observed,
+     that it was of no consequence, as they were in the secret. I
+     again resumed my conversation with Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, when
+     suddenly I heard Mahomed Akber call out, 'Begeer, begeer,'
+     (seize! seize!) and, turning round, I saw him grasp the Envoy's
+     left hand, with an expression in his face of the most
+     diabolical ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who laid hold of
+     the Envoy's right hand. They dragged him in a stooping posture
+     down the hillock; the only words I heard poor Sir William utter
+     being, 'Az barae Khooda' (for God's sake!) I saw his face,
+     however, and it was full of horror and astonishment. I did not
+     see what became of Trevor, but Lawrence was dragged past me by
+     several Affghans, whom I saw wrest his weapons from him. Up to
+     this moment I was so engrossed in observing what was taking
+     place, that I actually was not aware that my own right arm was
+     mastered, that my urbane friend held a pistol to my temple, and
+     that I was surrounded by a circle of Ghazees, with drawn swords
+     and cocked juzails. Resistance was in vain, so, listening to
+     the exhortations of Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, which were enforced
+     by the whistling of divers bullets over my head, I hurried
+     through the snow with him to the place where his horse was
+     standing, being despoiled _en route_ of my sabre, and narrowly
+     escaping divers attempts made on my life. As I mounted behind
+     my captor, now my energetic defender, the crowd increased
+     around us, the cries of 'Kill the Kafir' became more vehement,
+     and, although we hurried on at a fast canter, it was with the
+     utmost difficulty Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, although assisted by
+     one or two friends or followers, could ward off and avoid the
+     sword-cuts aimed at me, the rascals being afraid to fire lest
+     they should kill my conductor. Indeed he was obliged to wheel
+     his horse round once, and taking off his turban, (the last
+     appeal a Mussulman can make,) to implore them for God's sake to
+     respect the life of his friend. At last, ascending a slippery
+     bank, the horse fell. My cap had been snatched off, and I now
+     received a heavy blow on the head from a bludgeon, which
+     fortunately did not quite deprive me of my senses. I had
+     sufficient sense left to shoot a-head of the fallen horse,
+     where my protector with another man joined me, and clasping me
+     in their arms, hurried me towards the wall of Mahomed Khan's
+     fort. How I reached the spot where Mahomed Akber was receiving
+     the gratulations of the multitude I know not, but I remember a
+     fanatic rushing on me, and twisting his hand in my collar until
+     I became exhausted from suffocation. I must do Mahomed Akber
+     the Justice to say, that, finding the Ghazees bent on my
+     slaughter, even after I had reached his stirrup, he drew his
+     sword and laid about him right manfully, for my conductor and
+     Meerza Bàoodeen Khan were obliged to press me up against the
+     wall, covering me with their own bodies, and protesting that no
+     blow should reach me but through their persons.
+
+     "Pride, however, overcame Mahomed Akber's sense of courtesy,
+     when he thought I was safe, for he then turned round to me, and
+     repeatedly said, in a tone of triumphant derision, 'Shuma
+     moolk-i-ma me geered!' (_You'll_ seize my country, will
+     you!)--he then rode off, and I was hurried towards the gate of
+     the fort. Here new dangers awaited me, for Moolah Momin, fresh
+     from the slaughter of poor Trevor, who was killed riding close
+     behind me--Sultan Jan having the credit of having given him the
+     first sabre-cut--stood here with his followers, whom he
+     exhorted to slay me, setting them the example by cutting
+     fiercely at me himself. Fortunately a gun stood between us, but
+     still he would have effected his purpose, had not Mahomed Shah
+     Khan at that instant, with some followers, come to my
+     assistance. These drew their swords in my defence, the chief
+     himself throwing his arm round my neck, and receiving on his
+     shoulder a cut aimed by Moollah Momin at my head. During the
+     bustle I pushed forward into the fort, and was immediately
+     taken to a sort of dungeon, where I found Lawrence safe, but
+     somewhat exhausted by his hideous ride and the violence he had
+     sustained, although unwounded. Here the Giljye chiefs, Mahomed
+     Shah Khan, and his brother Dost Mahomed Khan, presently joined
+     us, and endeavoured to cheer up our flagging spirits, assuring
+     us that the Envoy and Trevor were not dead, but on the contrary
+     quite well. They stayed with us during the afternoon, their
+     presence being absolutely necessary for our protection. Many
+     attempts were made by the fanatics to force the door to
+     accomplish our destruction. Others spit at us and abused us
+     through a small window, through which one fellow levelled a
+     blunderbuss at us, which was struck up by our keepers and
+     himself thrust back. At last Ameenoollah made his appearance,
+     and threatened us with instant death. Some of his people most
+     officiously advanced to make good his word, until pushed back
+     by the Giljye chiefs, who remonstrated with this iniquitous old
+     monster, their master, whom they persuaded to relieve us from
+     his hateful presence. During the afternoon, a human hand was
+     held up in mockery to us at the window. We said that it had
+     belonged to an European, but were not aware at the time that it
+     was actually the hand of the poor Envoy. Of all the Mahomedans
+     assembled in the room discussing the events of the day, one
+     only, an old moollah, openly and fearlessly condemned the acts
+     of his brethren, declaring that the treachery was abominable,
+     and a disgrace to Islam. At night they brought us food, and
+     gave us each a postheen to sleep on. At midnight we were
+     awakened to go to the house of Mahomed Akber in the city.
+     Mahomed Shah Khan then, with the meanness common to all
+     Affghans of rank, robbed Lawrence of his watch, while his
+     brother did me a similar favour. I had been plundered of my
+     rings and every thing else previously, by the understrappers.
+
+     "Reaching Mahomed Akber's abode, we were shown into the room
+     where he lay in bed. He received us with great outward show of
+     courtesy, assuring us of the welfare of the Envoy and Trevor,
+     but there was a constraint in his manner for which I could not
+     account. We were shortly taken to another apartment, where we
+     found Skinner, who had returned, being on parole, early in the
+     morning. Doubt and gloom marked our meeting, and the latter was
+     fearfully deepened by the intelligence which we now received
+     from our fellow-captive of the base murder of Sir William and
+     Trevor. He informed us that the head of the former had been
+     carried about the city in triumph. We of course spent a
+     miserable night. The next day we were taken under a strong
+     guard to the house of Zuman Khan, where a council of the Khans
+     were being held. Here we found Captains Conolly and Airey, who
+     had some days previously been sent to the hurwah's house as
+     hostage for the performance of certain parts of the treaty
+     which was to have been entered into. A violent discussion took
+     place, in which Mahomed Akber bore the most prominent part. We
+     were vehemently accused of treachery, and every thing that was
+     bad, and told that the whole of the transactions of the night
+     previous had been a trick of Mahomed Akber, and Ameenoollah, to
+     ascertain the Envoy's sincerity. They declared that they would
+     now grant us no terms, save on the surrender of the whole of
+     the married families as hostages, all the guns, ammunition, and
+     treasure. At this time Conolly told me that on the preceding
+     day the Envoy's head had been paraded about in the court-yard;
+     that his and Trevor's bodies had been hung up in the public
+     bazar, or _chouk_; and that it was with the greatest difficulty
+     that the old hurwah, Zuman Khan, had saved him and Airey from
+     being murdered by a body of fanatics, who had attempted to rush
+     into the room where they were. Also, that previous to the
+     arrival of Lawrence, Skinner, and myself, Mahomed Akber had
+     been relating the events of the preceding day to the _Jeerga_
+     or council, and that he had unguardedly avowed having, while
+     endeavouring to force the Envoy either to mount on horseback or
+     to move more quickly, _struck_ him; and that, seeing Conolly's
+     eyes fastened upon him with an expression of intense
+     indignation, he had altered the phrase and said, 'I mean I
+     _pushed_ him.' After an immense deal of gabble, a proposal for
+     a renewal of the treaty, not, however, demanding all the guns,
+     was determined to be sent to the cantonments, and Skinner,
+     Lawrence, and myself were marched back to Akber's house,
+     enduring _en route_ all manner of threats and insults. Here we
+     were closely confined in an inner apartment, which was indeed
+     necessary for our safety. That evening we received a visit from
+     Mahomed Akber, Sultan Jan, and several other Affghans. Mahomed
+     Akber exhibited his double-barrelled pistols to us, which he
+     had worn the previous day, requesting us to put their locks to
+     rights, something being amiss. _Two of the barrels had been
+     recently discharged_, which he endeavoured in a most confused
+     way to account for by saying, that he had been charged by a
+     havildar of the escort, and had fired both barrels at him. Now
+     all the escort had run away without even attempting to charge,
+     the only man who advanced to the rescue having been a Hindoo
+     Jemadar of Chuprassies, who was instantly cut to pieces by the
+     assembled Ghazees. This defence he made without any accusation
+     on our part, betraying the anxiety of a liar to be believed. On
+     the 26th, Captain Lawrence was taken to the house of
+     Ameenoollah, whence he did not return to us. Captain Skinner
+     and myself remained in Akber's house until the 30th. During
+     this time we were civilly treated, and conversed with numbers
+     of Affghan gentlemen who came to visit us. Some of them
+     asserted that the Envoy had been murdered by the unruly
+     soldiery. Others could not deny that Akber himself was the
+     assassin. For two or three days we had a fellow-prisoner in
+     poor Sirwar Khan, who had been deceived throughout the whole
+     matter, and out of whom they were then endeavouring to screw
+     money. He, of course, was aware from his countrymen, that not
+     only had Akber committed the murder, but that he protested to
+     the Ghazees that he gloried in the deed. On one occasion a
+     moonshee of Major Pottinger, who had escaped from Charekhar,
+     named Mohun Beer, came direct from the presence of Mahomed
+     Akber to visit us. He told us that Mahomed Akber had begun to
+     see the impolicy of having murdered the Envoy, which fact he
+     had just avowed to him, shedding many tears, either of
+     pretended remorse or of real vexation at having committed
+     himself. On several occasions Mahomed Akber personally, and by
+     deputy, besought Skinner and myself to give him advice as to
+     how he was to extricate himself from the dilemma in which he
+     was placed, more than once endeavouring to excuse himself for
+     not having effectually protected the Envoy, by saying that Sir
+     William had drawn a sword-stick upon him. It seems that
+     meanwhile the renewed negotiations with Major Pottinger, who
+     had assumed the Envoy's place in cantonments, had been brought
+     to a head; for on the night of the 30th, Akber furnished me
+     with an Affghan dress, (Skinner already wore one,) and sent us
+     both back to cantonments. Several Affghans, with whom I fell in
+     afterwards, protested to me that they had seen Mahomed Akber
+     shoot the Envoy with his own hand; amongst them Meerza Báoodeen
+     Khan, who, being an old acquaintance, always retained a
+     sneaking kindness for the English.
+
+     "I am, my dear Eyre, yours very truly,
+
+     "C. MACKENZIE.
+
+     "Cabul, 29th July, 1842."
+
+The negotiations were now renewed by Major Pottinger, who had been
+requested by General Elphinstone to assume the unenviable office of
+political agent and adviser.
+
+     "The additional clauses in the treaty now proposed for our
+     renewed acceptance were--1st. That we should leave behind our
+     guns, excepting six. 2nd. That we should immediately give up
+     all our treasures. 3d. That the hostages should be all
+     exchanged for married men, with their wives and families. The
+     difficulties of Major Pottinger's position will be readily
+     perceived, when it is borne in mind that he had before him the
+     most conclusive evidence of the late Envoy's ill-advised
+     intrigue with Mahomed Akber Khan, in direct violation of that
+     very treaty which was now once more tendered for
+     consideration."
+
+A sum of fourteen lacs of rupees, about L.140,000, was also demanded,
+which was said to be payable to the several chiefs on the promise of the
+late Envoy.
+
+Major Pottinger, at a council of war convened by the General, "declared
+his conviction that no confidence could be placed in any treaty formed
+with the Affghan chiefs; that, under such circumstances, to bind the
+hands of the Government by promising to evacuate the country, and to
+restore the deposed Ameer, and to waste, moreover, so much public money
+merely to save our own lives and property, would be inconsistent with
+the duty we owed to our country and the Government we served; and that
+the only honourable course would be, either to hold out at Cabul, or to
+force our immediate retreat to Jellalabad."
+
+"This however, the officers composing the council, one and all declared
+to be impracticable, owing to the want of provisions, the surrender of
+the surrounding forts, and the insuperable difficulties of the road at
+the present season." The new treaty was therefore, forthwith accepted.
+The demand of the chiefs, that married officers with their families
+should be left as hostages, was successfully resisted. Captains
+Drummond, Walsh, Warburton, and Webb, were accepted in their place, and
+on the 29th went to join Captains Conolly and Airey at the house of
+Nuwab Zuman Khan. Lieutenant Haughton and a portion of the sick and
+wounded, were sent into the city, and placed under the protection of the
+chiefs. "Three of the Shah's guns, with the greater portion of our
+treasure, were made over during the day, much to the evident disgust of
+the soldiery." On the following day, "the remainder of the sick went
+into the city, Lieutenant Evans, H.M. 44th foot, being placed in
+command, and Dr Campbell, 54th native infantry, with Dr Berwick of the
+mission, in medical charge of the whole. Two more of the Shah's guns
+were given up. It snowed hard the whole day."
+
+"_January_ 5.--Affairs continued in the same unsettled state to this
+date. The chiefs postponed our departure from day to day on various
+pretexts.... Numerous cautions were received from various well-wishers,
+to place no confidence in the professions of the chiefs, who had sworn
+together to accomplish our entire destruction."
+
+It is not our intention to offer any lengthened comments on these
+details. They require none. The facts, if they be correctly stated,
+speak for themselves; and, for reasons already referred to, we are
+unwilling to anticipate the result of the judicial investigation now
+understood to be in progress. This much, however, we may be permitted to
+say, that the traces of fatal disunion amongst ourselves will, we fear,
+be made every where apparent. It is notorious that Sir William
+Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes were on terms the reverse of
+cordial. The Envoy had no confidence in the General. The General was
+disgusted with the authority the Envoy had assumed, even in matters
+exclusively military--and, debilitated by disease, was unable always to
+assert his authority even in his own family. The arrival of General
+Shelton in the cantonments does not appear to have tended to restore
+harmony, cordiality, or confidence, or even to have revived the drooping
+courage of the troops, or to have renovated the feelings of obedience,
+and given effect to the bonds of discipline, which had been too much
+relaxed. But, even after admitting all these things, much more still
+remains to be explained before we can account for all that has
+happened--before we can understand how the political authorities came to
+reject every evidence of approaching danger, and therefore to be quite
+unprepared for it when it came. Why no effort was made on the first day
+to put down the insurrection: Why, in the arrangements for the defence
+of the cantonments, the commisariat fort was neglected, and the other
+forts neither occupied nor destroyed: Why almost every detachment that
+was sent out was too small to effect its object: Why, with a force of
+nearly six thousand men, we should never on any one occasion have had
+two thousand in the field, and, as in the action at Beymaroo, only one
+gun: Why so many orders appear to have been disregarded; why so few were
+punctually obeyed.
+
+     "At last the fatal morning dawned (the 6th January) which was
+     to witness the departure of the Cabul force from the
+     cantonments in which it had endured a two months' siege.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Dreary indeed was the scene over which, with drooping spirits
+     and dismal forebodings, we had to bend our unwilling steps.
+     Deep snow covered every inch of mountain and plain with one
+     unspotted sheet of dazzling whiteness; and so intensely bitter
+     was the cold, as to penetrate and defy the defences of the
+     warmest clothing."
+
+Encumbered with baggage, crowded with 12,000 camp-followers, and
+accompanied by many helpless women and children, of all ranks and of all
+ages--with misery before, and death behind, and treachery all around
+them--with little hope of successful resistance if attacked, without
+tents enough to cover them, and without food or fuel for the march, 4500
+fighting men, with nine guns, set out on this march of death.
+
+At 9 A.M. the advance moved out, but was delayed for upwards of an hour
+at the river, having found the temporary bridge incomplete; and it was
+noon ere the road was clear for the main column, which, with its long
+train of loaded camels, continued to pour out of the gate until the
+evening, by which time thousands of Affghans thronged the area of the
+cantonment rending the air with exulting cries, and committing every
+kind of atrocity. Before the rearguard commenced its march it was night;
+but by the light of the burning buildings the Affghan marksmen laid
+Lieut. Hardyman, and fifty rank and file, lifeless on the snow. The
+order of march was soon lost; scores of sepoys and camp-followers sat
+down in despair to perish, and it was 2 A.M. before the rearguard
+reached the camp at Bygram, a distance of five miles. Here all was
+confusion; different regiments, with baggage, camp-followers, camels,
+and horses, mixed up together. The cold towards morning became more
+intense, and thousands were lying on the bare snow, without shelter,
+fire, or food. Several died during the night, amongst whom was an
+European conductor; and the proportion of those who escaped without
+frostbites was small. Yet this was but the _beginning_ of sorrows.
+
+_January 7th_.--At 8 A.M. the force moved on in the same inextricable
+confusion. Already nearly half the sepoys, from sheer inability to keep
+their ranks, had joined the crowd of non-combatants. The rearguard was
+attacked, and much baggage lost, and one of the guns having been
+overturned, was taken by the Affghans, whose cavalry charged into the
+very heart of the column.
+
+Akber Khan said, that the force had been attacked because it had marched
+contrary to the wish of the chiefs. He insisted that it should halt, and
+promised to supply food, forage, and fuel for the troops, but demanded
+six more hostages, which were given. These terms having been agreed to,
+the firing ceased for the present, and the army encamped at Bootkhak,
+where the confusion was indescribable. "Night again," says Lieutenant
+Eyre, "closed over us, with its attendant horrors--starvation, cold,
+exhaustion, death."
+
+At an early hour on the 8th the Affghans commenced firing into the camp;
+and as they collected in considerable numbers, Major Thain led the 44th
+to attack them. In this business the regiment behaved with a resolution
+and gallantry worthy of British soldiers. Again Akber Khan demanded
+hostages. Again they were given, and again the firing ceased. This seems
+to prove that Akber Khan had the power, if he had chosen to exert it, to
+restrain those tribes. Once more the living mass of men and animals was
+put in motion. The frost had so crippled the hands and feet of the
+strongest men, as to prostrate their powers and to incapacitate them for
+service.
+
+The Khoord-Cabul pass, which they were about to enter, is about five
+miles long, shut in by lofty hills, and by precipices of 500 or 600 feet
+in height, whose summits approach one another in some parts to within
+about fifty or sixty yards. Down the centre dashed a torrent, bordered
+with ice, which was crossed about eight-and-twenty times.
+
+While in this dark and narrow gorge, a hot fire was opened upon the
+advance, with whom were several ladies, who, seeing no other chance of
+safety, galloped forwards, "running the gauntlet of the enemy's bullets,
+which whizzed in hundreds about their ears, until they were fairly out
+of the pass. Providentially the whole escaped, except Lady Sale, who was
+slightly wounded in the arm." Several of Akber Khan's chief adherents
+exerted themselves in vain to restrain the Giljyes; and as the crowd
+moved onward into the thickest of the fire, the slaughter was fearful.
+Another horse-artillery gun was abandoned, and the whole of its
+artillerymen slain, and some of the children of the officers became
+prisoners. It is supposed that 3000 souls perished in the pass, amongst
+whom were many officers.
+
+     "On the force reaching Khoord-Cabul, snow began to fall, and
+     continued till morning. Only four small tents were saved, of
+     which one belonged to the General: two were devoted to the
+     ladies and children, and one was given up to the sick; but an
+     immense number of poor wounded wretches wandered about the camp
+     destitute of shelter, and perished during the night. Groans of
+     misery and distress assailed the ear from all quarters. We had
+     ascended to a still colder climate than we had left behind, and
+     we were without tents, fuel, or food: the snow was the only bed
+     for all, and of many, ere morning, it proved the
+     _winding-sheet_. It is only marvellous that any should have
+     survived that fearful night!
+
+     "_January 9th_.--Another morning dawned, awakening thousands to
+     increased misery; and many a wretched survivor cast looks of
+     envy at his comrades, who lay stretched beside him in the
+     quiet sleep of death. Daylight was the signal for a renewal of
+     that confusion which attended every movement of the force."
+
+Many of the troops and followers moved without orders at 8 A.M., but
+were recalled by the General, in consequence of an arrangement with
+Akber Khan. "This delay, and prolongation of their sufferings in the
+snow, of which one more march would have carried them clear, made a very
+unfavourable impression on the minds of the native soldiery, who now,
+for the first time, began very generally to entertain the idea of
+deserting." And it is not to be wondered at, that the instinct of
+self-preservation should have led them to falter in their fealty when
+the condition of the whole army had become utterly hopeless.
+
+Akber Khan now proposed that the ladies and children should be made over
+to his care; and, anxious to save them further suffering, the General
+gave his consent to the arrangement, permitting their husbands and the
+wounded officers to accompany them.
+
+     "Up to this time scarcely one of the ladies had tasted a meal
+     since leaving Cabul. Some had infants a few days old at the
+     breast, and were unable to stand without assistance. Others
+     were so far advanced in pregnancy, that, under ordinary
+     circumstances, a walk across a drawing-room would have been an
+     exertion; yet these helpless women, with their young families,
+     had already been obliged to rough it on the backs of camels,
+     and on the tops of the baggage yaboos: those who had a horse to
+     ride, or were capable of sitting on one, were considered
+     fortunate indeed. Most had been without shelter since quitting
+     the cantonment--their servants had nearly all deserted or been
+     killed--and, with the exception of Lady Macnaghten and Mrs
+     Trevor, they had lost all their baggage, having nothing in the
+     world left but the clothes on their backs; _those_, in the case
+     of some of the invalids, consisted of _night dresses_ in which
+     they had started from Cabul in their litters. Under such
+     circumstances, a few more hours would probably have seen some
+     of them stiffening corpses. The offer of Mahomed Akber was
+     consequently their only chance of preservation. The husbands,
+     better clothed and hardy, would have infinitely preferred
+     taking their chance with the troops; but where is the man who
+     would prefer his own safety, when he thought he could by his
+     presence assist and console those near and dear to him?
+
+     "It is not, therefore, wonderful, that from persons so
+     circumstanced the General's proposal should have met with
+     little opposition, although it was a matter of serious doubt
+     whether the whole were not rushing into the very jaws of death,
+     by placing themselves at the mercy of a man who had so lately
+     imbrued his hands in the blood of a British envoy, whom he had
+     lured to destruction by similar professions of peace and
+     good-will."
+
+Anticipating an attack, the troops paraded to repel it, and it was now
+found that the 44th mustered only 100 files, and the native infantry
+regiments about sixty each. "The promises of Mahomed Akber to provide
+food and fuel were unfulfilled, and another night of starvation and cold
+consigned more victims to a miserable death."
+
+_January_ 10.--At break of day all was again confusion, every one
+hurrying to the front, and dreading above all things to be left in the
+rear. The Europeans were the only efficient men left, the Hindostanees
+having suffered so severely from the frost in their hands and feet, that
+few could hold a musket, much less pull a trigger. The enemy had
+occupied the rocks above the gorge, and thence poured a destructive fire
+upon the column as it slowly advanced. Fresh numbers fell at every
+volley. The sepoys, unable to use their arms, cast them away, and, with
+the followers, fled for their lives.
+
+     "The Affghans now rushed down upon their helpless and
+     unresisting victims sword in hand, and a general massacre took
+     place. The last small remnant of the native infantry regiments
+     were here scattered and destroyed; and the public treasure,
+     with all the remaining baggage, fell into the hands of the
+     enemy. Meanwhile, the advance, after pushing through the Tungee
+     with great loss, had reached Kubbur-i-Jubbar, about five miles
+     a-head, without more opposition. Here they halted to enable the
+     rear to join, but, from the few stragglers who from time to
+     time came up, the astounding truth was brought to light, that
+     of all who had that morning marched from Khoord-Cabul they were
+     almost the sole survivors, nearly the whole of the main and
+     rear columns having been cut off and destroyed. About 50
+     horse-artillerymen, with one twelve-pounder howitzer, 70 files
+     H.M.'s 44th, and 150 cavalry troopers, now composed the whole
+     Cabul force; but, notwithstanding the slaughter and dispersion
+     that had taken place, the camp-followers still formed a
+     considerable body."
+
+Another remonstrance was now addressed to Akber Khan. He declared, in
+reply, his inability to restrain the Giljyes. As the troops entered a
+narrow defile at the foot of the Huft Kotul, they found it strewn with
+the dead bodies of their companions. A destructive fire was maintained
+on the troops from the heights on either side, and fresh numbers of dead
+and wounded lined the course of the stream. "Brigadier Shelton commanded
+the rear with a few Europeans, and but for his persevering energy and
+unflinching fortitude in repelling the assailants, it is probable the
+whole would have been there sacrificed." They encamped in the Tezeen
+valley, having lost 12,000 men since leaving Cabul; fifteen officers had
+been killed and wounded in this day's march.
+
+After resting three hours, they marched, under cover of the darkness, at
+seven P.M. Here the last gun was abandoned, and with it Dr Cardew, whose
+zeal and gallantry had endeared him to the soldiers; and a little
+further on Dr Duff was left on the road in a state of utter exhaustion.
+
+     "Bodies of the neighbouring tribes were by this time on the
+     alert, and fired at random from the heights, it being
+     fortunately too dark for them to aim with precision; but the
+     panic-stricken camp-followers now resembled a herd of startled
+     deer, and fluctuated backwards and forwards, _en masse_, at
+     every shot, blocking up the entire road, and fatally retarding
+     the progress of the little body of soldiers who, under
+     Brigadier Shelton, brought up the rear.
+
+     "At Burik-àb a heavy fire was encountered by the hindmost from
+     some caves near the road-side, occasioning fresh disorder,
+     which continued all the way to Kutter-Sung, where the advance
+     arrived at dawn of day, and awaited the junction of the rear,
+     which did not take place till 8 A.M."
+
+_January_ 11.-- ...
+
+     "From Kutter-Sung to Jugdulluk it was one continued conflict;
+     Brigadier Shelton, with his brave little band in the rear,
+     holding overwhelming numbers in check, and literally performing
+     wonders. But no efforts could avail to ward off the withering
+     fire of juzails, which from all sides assailed the crowded
+     column, lining the road with bleeding carcasses. About three
+     P.M. the advance reached Jugdulluk, and took up its position
+     behind some ruined walls that crowned a height by the
+     road-side. To show an imposing front, the officers extended
+     themselves in line, and Captain Grant, assistant
+     adjutant-general, at the same moment received a wound in the
+     face. From this eminence they cheered their comrades under
+     Brigadier Shelton in the rear, as they still struggled their
+     way gallantly along every foot of ground, perseveringly
+     followed up by their merciless enemy, until they arrived at
+     their ground. But even here rest was denied them; for the
+     Affghans, immediately occupying two hills which commanded the
+     position, kept up a fire from which the walls of the enclosure
+     afforded but a partial shelter.
+
+     "The exhausted troops and followers now began to suffer greatly
+     from thirst, which they were unable to satisfy. A tempting
+     stream trickled near the foot of the hill, but to venture down
+     to it was certain death. Some snow that covered the ground was
+     eagerly devoured, but increased, instead of alleviating, their
+     sufferings. The raw flesh of three bullocks, which had
+     fortunately been saved, was served out to the soldiers, and
+     ravenously swallowed."
+
+About half-past three Akber Khan sent for Capt. Skinner, who promptly
+obeyed the call, hoping still to effect some arrangement for the
+preservation of those who survived. The men now threw themselves down,
+hoping for a brief repose, but the enemy poured volleys from the heights
+into the enclosures in rapid succession. Captain Bygrave, with about
+fifteen brave Europeans, sallied forth, determined to drive the enemy
+from the heights or perish in the attempt. They succeeded; but the
+enemy, who had fled before them, returned and resumed their fatal fire.
+At five P.M. Captain Skinner returned with a message from Akber Khan,
+requesting the presence of the General at a conference, and demanding
+Brigadier Shelton and Capt. Johnson as hostages for the surrender of
+Jellalabad. The troops saw the departure of these officers with despair,
+feeling assured that these treacherous negotiations "were preparatory to
+fresh sacrifices of blood." The General and his companions were received
+with every outward token of kindness, and they were supplied with food,
+but they were not permitted to return. The Sirdar put the General off
+with promises; and at seven P.M. on the 12th, firing being heard, it was
+ascertained that the troops, impatient of further delay, had actually
+moved off. Before their departure Captain Skinner had been treacherously
+shot. They had been exposed during the whole day to the fire of the
+enemy--"sally after sally had been made by the Europeans, bravely led by
+Major Thain, Captain Bygrave, and Lieutenants Wade and Macartney, but
+again and again the enemy returned to worry and destroy. Night came, and
+all further delay in such a place being useless, the whole sallied
+forth, determined to pursue the route to Jellalabad at all risks."
+
+The sick and the wounded were necessarily abandoned to their fate. For
+some time the Giljyes seemed not to be on the alert; but in the defile,
+at the top of the rise, further progress was obstructed by barriers
+formed of prickly trees. This caused great delay, and "a terrible fire
+was poured in from all quarters--a massacre even worse than that of the
+Tunga Tarikee[24] commenced, the Affghans rushing in furiously upon the
+pent-up crowd of troops and followers, and committing wholesale
+slaughter. A miserable remnant managed to clear the barriers. Twelve
+officers, amongst whom was Brigadier Anquetil, were killed. Upwards of
+forty others succeeded in pushing through, about twelve of whom, being
+pretty well mounted, rode on a-head of the rest with the few remaining
+cavalry, intending to make the best of their way to Jellalabad."
+
+     [24] Strait of Darkness.
+
+The country now became more open--the Europeans dispersed, in small
+parties under different officers. The Giljyes were too much occupied in
+plundering the dead to pursue them, but they were much delayed by the
+amiable anxiety of the men to carry on their wounded comrades. The
+morning of the 13th dawned as they approached Gundamuk, revealing to the
+enemy the insignificance of their numerical strength; and they were
+compelled, by the vigorous assaults of the Giljyes, to take up a
+defensive position on a height to the left of the road, "where they
+made a resolute stand, determined to sell their lives at the dearest
+possible price. At this time they could only muster about twenty
+muskets." An attempt to effect an amicable arrangement terminated in a
+renewal of hostilities, and "the enemy marked off man after man, and
+officer after officer, with unerring aim. Parties of Affghans rushed up
+at intervals to complete the work of extermination, but were as often
+driven back by the still dauntless handful of invincibles. At length,
+all being wounded more or less, a final onset of the enemy, sword in
+hand, terminated the unequal struggle and completed the dismal tragedy."
+Captain Souter, who was wounded, and three or four privates, were spared
+and led away captive. Major Griffiths and Captain Blewitt, having
+descended to confer with the enemy, had been previously led off. Of the
+twelve officers who had gone on in advance eleven were destroyed, and Dr
+Brydon alone of the whole Cabul force reached Jellalabad.
+
+"Such was the memorable retreat of the British army from Cabul, which,
+viewed in all its circumstances--in the military conduct which preceded
+and brought about such a consummation, the treachery, disaster, and
+suffering which accompanied it--is, perhaps, without a parallel in
+history."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.
+
+
+Since the day when Lord Auckland, by his famous proclamation in October
+1838, "directed the assemblage of a British force for service across the
+Indus," we have never ceased to denounce the invasion and continued
+occupation of Affghanistan as equally unjust and impolitic[25]--unjust,
+as directed against a people whose conduct had afforded us no legitimate
+grounds of hostility, and against a ruler whose only offence was, that
+he had accepted[26] the proffer from another quarter of that support and
+alliance which we had denied to his earnest entreaty--and impolitic, as
+tending not only to plunge us into an endless succession of ruinous and
+unprofitable warfare, but to rouse against us an implacable spirit of
+enmity, in a nation which had hitherto shown every disposition to
+cultivate amicable relations with our Anglo-Indian Government. In all
+points, our anticipations have been fatally verified. After more than
+two years consumed in unavailing efforts to complete the reduction of
+the country, our army of occupation was at last overwhelmed by the
+universal and irresistible outbreak of an indignant and fanatic
+population; and the restored monarch, Shah-Shoojah, ("whose popularity
+throughout Affghanistan had been proved to the Governor-general by the
+strong and unanimous testimony of the best authorities") perished, as
+soon as he lost the protection of foreign bayonets, by the hands of his
+outraged countrymen.[27]
+
+     [25] See the articles "Persia, Affghanistan, and India," in
+     Jan. 1839--"Khiva, Central Asia, and Cabul," in April
+     1840--"Results of our Affghan Conquests," in Aug.
+     1841--"Affghanistan and India," in July 1842.
+
+     [26] It now seems even doubtful whether the famous letter of
+     Dost Mohammed to the Emperor of Russia, which constituted the
+     _gravamen_ of the charge against him, was ever really written,
+     or at least with his concurrence.--_Vide_ "Report of the
+     Colonial Society on the Affghan War," p. 35.
+
+     [27] The particulars of Shah-Shoojah's fate, which were unknown
+     when we last referred to the subject, have been since
+     ascertained. After the retreat of the English from Cabul, he
+     remained for some time secluded in the Bala-Hissar, observing
+     great caution in his intercourse with the insurgent leaders;
+     but he was at length prevailed upon, by assurances of loyalty
+     and fidelity, (about the middle of April,) to quit the
+     fortress, in order to head an army against Jellalabad. He had
+     only proceeded, however, a short distance from the city, when
+     his litter was fired upon by a party of musketeers placed in
+     ambush by a Doorauni chief named Soojah-ed-Dowlah; and the king
+     was shot dead on the spot. Such was the ultimate fate of a
+     prince, the vicissitudes of whose life almost exceed the
+     fictions of romance, and who possessed talents sufficient, in
+     more tranquil times, to have given _éclat_ to his reign. During
+     his exile at Loodiana, he composed in Persian a curious
+     narrative of his past adventures, a version of part of which
+     appears in the 30th volume of the _Asiatic Journal_.
+
+The tottering and unsubstantial phantom of a _Doorauni kingdom_ vanished
+at once and for ever--and the only remaining alternative was, (as we
+stated the case in our number of last July,) "either to perpetrate a
+second act of violence and national injustice, by reconquering
+Affghanistan _for the vindication_ (as the phrase is) _of our military
+honour_, and holding it without disguise as a province of our empire--or
+to make the best of a bad bargain, by contenting ourselves with the
+occupation of a few posts on the frontier, and leaving the unhappy
+natives to recover, without foreign interference, from the dreadful
+state of anarchy into which our irruption has thrown them." Fortunately
+for British interests in the East, the latter course has been adopted.
+After a succession of brilliant military triumphs, which, in the words
+of Lord Ellenborough's recent proclamation, "have, in one short
+campaign, avenged our late disasters upon every scene of past
+misfortune," the evacuation of the country has been directed--not,
+however, before a fortunate chance had procured the liberation of _all_
+the prisoners who had fallen into the power of the Affghans in January
+last; and ere this time, we trust, not a single British regiment remains
+on the bloodstained soil of Affghanistan.
+
+The proclamation above referred to,[28] (which we have given at length
+at the conclusion of this article,) announcing these events, and
+defining the line of policy in future to be pursued by the Anglo-Indian
+Government, is in all respects a remarkable document. As a specimen of
+frankness and plain speaking, it stands unique in the history of
+diplomacy; and, accordingly, both its matter and its manner have been
+made the subjects of unqualified censure by those scribes of the
+Opposition press who, "content to dwell in forms for ever," have
+accustomed themselves to regard the mystified protocols of Lord
+Palmerston as the models of official style. The _Morning Chronicle_,
+with amusing ignorance of the state of the public mind in India,
+condemns the Governor-general for allowing it to become known to the
+natives that the abandonment of Affghanistan was in consequence of a
+change of policy! conceiving (we suppose) that our Indian subjects would
+otherwise have believed the Cabul disasters to have formed part of the
+original plan of the war, and to have veiled some purpose of inscrutable
+wisdom; while the _Globe_, (Dec. 3,) after a reluctant admission that
+"the policy itself of evacuating the country _may be wise_," would fain
+deprive Lord Ellenborough of the credit of having originated this
+decisive step, by an assertion that "we have discovered no proof that a
+permanent possession of the country beyond the Indus was contemplated by
+his predecessor." It would certainly have been somewhat premature in
+Lord Auckland to have announced his ultimate intentions on this point
+while the country in question was as yet but imperfectly subjugated, or
+when our troops were subsequently almost driven out of it; but the views
+of the then home Government, from which it is to be presumed that Lord
+Auckland received his instructions, were pretty clearly revealed in the
+House of Commons on the 10th of August last, by one whose authority the
+_Globe_, at least, will scarcely dispute--by Lord Palmerston himself.
+To prevent the possibility of misconstruction, we quote the words
+attributed to the late Foreign Secretary. After drawing the somewhat
+unwarrantable inference, from Sir Robert Peel's statement, "that no
+immediate withdrawal of our troops from Candahar and Jellalabad was
+contemplated," that an order had at one time been given for the
+abandonment of Affghanistan, he proceeds--"I do trust that her Majesty's
+Government will not carry into effect, either immediately or at _any_
+future time, the arrangement thus contemplated. It was all very well
+when we were in power, and it was suited to party purposes, to run down
+any thing we had done, and to represent as valueless any acquisition on
+which we may have prided ourselves--it was all very well to raise an
+outcry against the Affghan expedition, and to undervalue the great
+advantages which the possession of the country was calculated to afford
+us--but I trust the Government will rise above any consideration of that
+sort, and that they will give the matter their fair, dispassionate, and
+deliberate consideration. I must say, I never was more convinced of any
+thing in the whole course of my life--and I may be believed when I speak
+my earnest conviction--that the most important interests of this
+country, both commercial and political, would be sacrificed, if we were
+to sacrifice the military possession of the country of Eastern
+Affghanistan." Is it in the power of words to convey a clearer
+admission, that the pledge embodied in Lord Auckland's manifesto--"to
+withdraw the British army as soon as the independence and integrity of
+Affghanistan should be secured by the establishment of the Shah"--was in
+fact mere moonshine: and the real object of the expedition was the
+conquest of a country advantageously situated for the defence of our
+Indian frontier against (as it now appears) an imaginary invader? Thus
+Napoleon, in December 1810, alleged "the necessity, in consequence of
+the new order of things which has arisen, of new guarantees for the
+security of my empire," as a pretext for that wholesale measure of
+territorial spoliation in Northern Germany, which, from the umbrage it
+gave Russia, proved ultimately the cause of his downfall: but it was
+reserved for us of the present day, to hear a _British_ minister avow
+and justify a violent and perfidious usurpation on the plea of political
+expediency. It must indeed be admitted that, in the early stages of the
+war, the utter iniquity of the measure met with but faint reprobation
+from any party in the state: the nation, dazzled by the long-disused
+splendours of military glory, was willing, without any very close
+enquiry, to take upon trust all the assertions so confidently put forth
+on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah, the hostile machinations of Dost
+Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian
+Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than
+once previously referred) "_the reconstruction of the social edifice_"
+in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were
+at best, have been utterly dissipated by this undisguised declaration of
+Lord Palmerston, that the real object of the war was to seize and hold
+the country on our own account, the attempt of the _Globe_ to claim for
+Lord Auckland the credit of having from the first contemplated a measure
+thus vehemently protested against and disclaimed by the late official
+leader of his party, is rather too barefaced to be passed over without
+comment.
+
+     [28] It is singular that this proclamation was issued on the
+     fourth anniversary of Lord Auckland's "Declaration" of Oct. 1,
+     1838; and from the same place, Simla.
+
+Without, however, occupying ourselves further in combating the attacks
+of the Whig press on this proclamation, which may very well be left to
+stand on its own merits, we now proceed to recapitulate the course of
+the events which have, in a few months, so completely changed the aspect
+of affairs beyond the Indus. When we took leave, in July last, of the
+subject of the Affghan campaign, we left General Pollock, with the force
+which had made its way through the Khyber Pass, still stationary at
+Jellalabad, for want (as it was said) of camels and other means of
+transport: while General Nott, at Candahar, not only held his ground,
+but victoriously repulsed in the open field the Affghan _insurgents_,
+(as it is the fashion to call them,) who were headed by the prince
+Seifdar-Jung, son of Shah Shoojah! and General England, after his
+repulse on the 28th of March at the Kojuck Pass, remained motionless at
+Quettah. The latter officer (in consequence, as it is said, of
+peremptory orders from General Nott to meet him on a given day at the
+further side of the Pass) was the first to resume active operations; and
+on the 28th of April, the works at Hykulzie in the Kojuck, which had
+been unaccountably represented on the former occasion as most formidable
+defences,[29] were carried without loss or difficulty, and the force
+continued its march uninterrupted to Candahar. The fort of
+Khelat-i-Ghiljie, lying about halfway between Candahar and Ghazni, was
+at the sane time gallantly and successfully defended by handful of
+Europeans and sepoys, till relieved by the advance of a division from
+Candahar, which brought off the garrison, and razed the fortifications
+of the place. Girishk, the hereditary stronghold of the Barukzye chiefs,
+about eighty miles west of Candahar, was also dismantled and abandoned;
+and all the troops in Western Affghanistan were thus concentrated under
+the immediate command of General Nott, whose success in every encounter
+with the Affghans continued to be so decisive, that all armed opposition
+disappeared from the neighbourhood of Candahar; and the prince
+Seifdar-Jung, despairing of the cause, of which he had perhaps been from
+the first not a very willing supporter, came in and made his submission
+to the British commander.
+
+     [29] "The fieldworks _believed to be described_ in the despatch
+     as 'consisting of a succession of breastworks, improved by a
+     ditch and abattis--the latter being filled with thorns,' turned
+     out to be a paltry stone wall, with a cut two feet deep, and of
+     corresponding width, to which the designation of ditch was most
+     grossly misapplied.... A score or two of active men might have
+     completed the work in a few days."--(Letter quoted in the
+     _Asiatic Journal_, Sept., p. 107.) On whom the blame of these
+     misrepresentations should be laid--whether on the officer who
+     reconnoitred the ground, or on the general who wrote the
+     despatch--does not very clearly appear: yet the political agent
+     at Quettah was removed from his charge, for not having given
+     notice of the construction in his vicinity of works which are
+     now proved to have had no existence!
+
+During the progress of these triumphant operations in Western
+Affghanistan, General Pollock still lay inactive at Jellalabad; and some
+abortive attempts were made to negotiate with the dominant party at
+Cabul for the release of the prisoners taken the preceding winter. Since
+the death of Shah-Shoojah, the throne had been nominally filled by his
+third son, Futteh-Jung, the only one of the princes who was on the spot;
+but all the real power was vested, with the rank of vizier, in the hands
+of Akhbar Khan, who had not only possessed himself of the Bala-Hissar
+and the treasure of the late king, but had succeeded in recruiting the
+forces of the Affghan league, by a reconciliation with Ameen-ullah
+Khan,[30] the original leader of the outbreak, with whom he had formerly
+been at variance. All efforts, however, to procure the liberation of the
+captives, on any other condition than the liberation of Dost Mohammed,
+and the evacuation of Affghanistan by the English, (as hostages for
+which they had originally been given,) proved fruitless; and at length,
+after more than four months' delay, during which several sharp affairs
+had taken place with advanced bodies of the Affghans, General Pollock
+moved forward with his whole force, on the 20th of August, against
+Cabul. This city had again in the mean time become a scene of tumult and
+disorder--the Kizilbashes or Persian inhabitants, as well as many of the
+native chiefs, resisting the exactions of Akhbar Khan; who, at last,
+irritated by the opposition to his measures, imprisoned the titular
+shah, Futteh-Jung, in the Bala-Hissar; whence he succeeded after a time
+in escaping, and made his appearance, in miserable plight, (Sept. 1,) at
+the British headquarters at Futtehabad, between Jellalabad and
+Gundamuck. The advance of the army was constantly opposed by detached
+bodies of the enemy, and several spirited skirmishes took place:--till,
+on the 13th of September, the main Affghan force, to the number of
+16,000 men, under Akhbar Khan and other leaders, was descried on the
+heights near Tazeen, (where the slaughter of our troops had taken place
+in January,) at the entrance of the formidable defiles called the
+Huft-Kothul, or Seven Passes. It is admitted on all hands that in this
+last struggle, (as they believed, for independence,) the Affghans fought
+with most distinguished gallantry, frequently charging sword in hand
+upon the bayonets; but their irregular valour eventually gave way before
+the discipline of their opponents, and a total rout took place. The
+chiefs fled in various directions, "abandoning Cabul to the _avengers of
+British wrongs_," who entered the city in triumph on the 15th, and
+hoisted the British colours on the Bala-Hissar. The principal point now
+remaining to be effected was the rescue of the prisoners whom Akhbar
+Khan had carried off with him in his flight, with the intention (as was
+rumoured) of transporting them into Turkestan; but from this peril they
+were fortunately delivered by the venality of the chief to whose care
+they had been temporarily intrusted; and on the 21st they all reached
+the camp in safety, with the exception of Captain Bygrave, who was also
+liberated, a few days later, by the voluntary act of Akhbar himself.[31]
+
+     [30] It was this chief whose betrayal or destruction Sir
+     William McNaghten is accused, on the authority of General
+     Elphinstone's correspondence, of having meditated, on the
+     occasion when he met with his own fate. We hope, for the honour
+     of the English name, that the memory of the late Resident at
+     Cabul may be cleared from this heavy imputation; but he
+     certainly cannot be acquitted of having, by his wilful
+     blindness and self-sufficiency, contributed to precipitate the
+     catastrophe to which he himself fell a victim. In proof of this
+     assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the tenor of his
+     remarks on the letter addressed to him by Sir A. Burnes on the
+     affairs of Cabul, August 7, 1840, which appeared some time
+     since in the _Bombay Times_, and afterwards in the _Asiatic
+     Journal_ for October and November last.
+
+     [31] The kindness and humanity which these unfortunate
+     _detenus_ experienced from first to last at the hands of
+     Akhbar, reflect the highest honour on the character of this
+     chief, whom it has been the fashion to hold up to execration as
+     a monster of perfidy and cruelty. As a contrast to this conduct
+     of the Affghan _barbarians_, it is worth while to refer to
+     Colonel Lindsay's narrative of his captivity in the dungeons of
+     Hyder and Tippoo, which has recently appeared in the _Asiatic
+     Journal_, September, December, 1842.
+
+General Nott, meanwhile, in pursuance of his secret orders from the
+Supreme Government, had been making preparations for abandoning
+Candahar; and, on the 7th and 8th of August, the city was accordingly
+evacuated, both by his corps and by the division of General England--the
+Affghan prince, Seifdar-Jung, being left in possession of the place. The
+routes of the two commanders were now separated. General England, with
+an immense train of luggage, stores, &c., directed his march through the
+Kojuck Pass to Quettah, which he reached with little opposition;--while
+Nott, with a more lightly-equipped column, about 7000 strong, advanced
+by Khelat-i-Ghiljie against Ghazni. This offensive movement appears to
+have taken the Affghans at first by surprise; and it was not till he
+arrived within thirty-eight miles of Ghazni that General Nott found his
+progress opposed (August 30) by 12,000 men under the governor,
+Shams-o-deen Khan, a cousin of Mohammed Akhbar. The dispersion of this
+tumultuary array was apparently accomplished (as far as can be gathered
+from the extremely laconic despatches of the General) without much
+difficulty; and, on the 6th of September, after a sharp skirmish in the
+environs, the British once more entered Ghazni. In the city and
+neighbouring villages were found not fewer than 327 sepoys of the former
+garrison, which had been massacred to a man (according to report)
+immediately after the surrender; but notwithstanding this evidence of
+the moderation with which the Affghans had used their triumph, General
+Nott, (in obedience, as is said, to the _positive tenor of his
+instructions_,) "directed the city of Ghazni, with the citadel and the
+whole of its works, to be destroyed;" and this order appears, from the
+engineer's report, to have been rigorously carried into effect. The mace
+of Mamood Shah Ghaznevi, the first Moslem conqueror of Hindostan, and
+the famous sandal-wood portals of his tomb, (once the gates of the great
+Hindoo temple at Somnaut,[32]) were carried off as trophies: the ruins
+of Ghazni were left as a monument of British vengeance; and General Nott,
+resuming his march, and again routing Shams-o-deen Khan at the defiles
+of Myden, effected his junction with General Pollock, on the 17th of
+September, at Cabul; whence the united corps, together mustering 18,000
+effective men, were to take the route for Hindostan through the Punjab
+early in October.
+
+     [32] The value still attached by the Hindoos to these relics
+     was shown on the conclusion of the treaty, in 1832, between
+     Shah-Shoojah and Runjeet Singh, previous to the Shah's last
+     unaided attempt to recover his throne; in which their
+     restoration, in case of his success, was an express
+     stipulation.
+
+Such have been the principal events of the brief but brilliant campaign
+which has concluded the Affghan war, and which, if regarded solely in a
+military point of view, must be admitted to have amply vindicated the
+lustre of the British arms from the transient cloud cast on them by the
+failures and disasters of last winter.
+
+The Affghan tragedy, however, may now, we hope, be considered as
+concluded, so far as related to our own participation in its crimes and
+calamities; but for the Affghans themselves, "left to create a
+government in the midst of anarchy," there can be at present little
+chance of even comparative tranquillity, after the total dislocation of
+their institutions and internal relations by the fearful torrent of war
+which has swept over the country. The last atonement now in our power to
+make, both to the people and the ruler whom we have so deeply injured,
+as well as the best course for our own interests, would be at once to
+release Dost Mohammed from the unmerited and ignominious confinement to
+which he has been subjected in Hindostan, and to send him back in honour
+to Cabul; where his own ancient partisans, as well as those of his son,
+would quickly rally round him; and where his presence and accustomed
+authority might have some effect in restraining the crowd of fierce
+chiefs, who will be ready to tear each other to pieces as soon as they
+are released from the presence of the _Feringhis_. There would thus be
+at least a possibility of obtaining a nucleus for the re-establishment
+of something like good order; while in no other quarter does there
+appear much prospect of a government being formed, which might be either
+"approved by the Affghans themselves," or "capable of maintaining
+friendly relations with neighbouring states." If the accounts received
+may be depended upon, our troops had scarcely cleared the Kojuck Pass,
+on their way from Candahar to the Indus, when that city became the scene
+of a contest between the Prince Seifdar-Jung and the Barukzye chiefs in
+the vicinity; and though the latter are said to have been worsted in the
+first instance, there can be little doubt that our departure will be the
+signal for the speedy return of the quondam _Sirdars_, or rulers of
+Candahar, (brothers of Dost Mohammed,) who have found an asylum in
+Persia since their expulsion in 1839, but who will scarcely neglect so
+favourable an opportunity for recovering their lost authority. Yet
+another competitor may still, perhaps, be found in the same quarter--one
+whose name, though sufficiently before the public a few years since, has
+now been almost forgotten in the strife of more mighty interests. This
+is Shah Kamran of Herat, the rumours of whose death or dethronement
+prove to have been unfounded, and who certainly would have at this
+moment a better chance than he has ever yet had, for regaining at least
+Candahar and Western Affghanistan. He was said to be on the point of
+making the attempt after the repulse of the Persians before Herat, just
+before our adoption of Shah-Shoojah; and his title to the crown is at
+least as good as that of the late Shah, or any of his sons. It will be
+strange if this prince, whose danger from Persia was the original
+pretext for crossing the Indus, should be the only one of all the
+parties concerned, whose condition underwent no ultimate change, through
+all the vicissitudes of the tempest which has raged around him.
+
+Nor are the elements of discord less abundant and complicated on the
+side of Cabul. The defeat of Tazeen will not, any more than the
+preceding ones, have annihilated Akhbar Khan and his confederate
+chiefs:--they are still hovering in the Kohistan, and will doubtless
+lose no time in returning to Cabul as soon as the retreat of the English
+is ascertained. It is true that the civil wars of the Affghans, though
+frequent, have never been protracted or sanguinary:--like the
+Highlanders, as described by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, "though they may
+quarrel among themselves, and gie ilk ither ill names, and may be a
+slash wi' a claymore, they are sure to join in the long run against a'
+civilized folk:"--but it is scarcely possible that so many conflicting
+interests, now that the bond of common danger is removed, can be
+reconciled without strife and bloodshed. It is possible, indeed, that
+Futteh-Jung (whom the last accounts state to have remained at Cabul when
+our troops withdrew, in the hope of maintaining himself on the musnud,
+and who is said to be the most acceptable to the Affghans of the four
+sons[33] of Shah-Shoojah) may be allowed to retain for a time the title
+of king; but he had no treasure and few partizans; and the rooted
+distaste of the Affghans for the titles and prerogatives of royalty is
+so well ascertained, that Dost Mohammed, even in the plenitude of his
+power, never ventured to assume them. All speculations on these points,
+however, can at present amount to nothing more than vague conjecture;
+the troubled waters must have time to settle, before any thing can be
+certainly prognosticated as to the future destinies of Affghanistan.
+
+     [33] The elder of these princes, Timour, who was governor of
+     Candahar during the reign of his father, has accompanied
+     General England to Hindostan, preferring, as he says, the life
+     of a private gentleman under British protection to the perils
+     of civil discord in Affghanistan. Of the second,
+     Mohammed-Akhbar, (whose mother is said to be sister of Dost
+     Mohammed,) we know nothing;--Futteh-Jung is the third, and was
+     intended by Shah-Shoojah for his successor;--Seifdar-Jung, now
+     at Candahar, is the youngest.
+
+The kingdom of the Punjab will now become the barrier between
+Affghanistan and our north-western frontier in India; and it is said
+that the Sikhs, already in possession of Peshawer and the rich plain
+extending to the foot of the Khyber mountains, have undertaken in future
+to occupy the important defiles of this range, and the fort of
+Ali-Musjid, so as to keep the Affghans within bounds. It seems to us
+doubtful, however, whether they will be able to maintain themselves
+long, unaided, in this perilous advanced post: though the national
+animosity which subsists between them and the Affghans is a sufficient
+pledge of their good-will for the service--and their co-operation in the
+late campaign against Cabul has been rendered with a zeal and
+promptitude affording a strong contrast to their lukewarmness at the
+beginning of the war, when they conceived its object to be the
+re-establishment of the monarchy and national unity of their inveterate
+foes. But the vigour of the Sikh kingdom, and the discipline and
+efficiency of their troops, have greatly declined in the hands of the
+present sovereign, Shere Singh, who, though a frank and gallant soldier,
+has little genius for civil government, and is thwarted and overborne in
+his measures by the overweening power of the minister, Rajah Dhian
+Singh, who originally rose to eminence by the favour of Runjeet. At
+present, our information as to the state of politics in the Punjab is
+not very explicit, the intelligence from India during several months,
+having been almost wholly engrossed by the details of the campaign in
+Affghanistan; but as far as can be gathered from these statements, the
+country has been brought, by the insubordination of the troops, and the
+disputes of the Maharajah and his Minister, to a state not far removed
+from anarchy. It is said that the fortress of Govindghur, where the vast
+treasures amassed by Runjeet are deposited, has been taken possession
+of by the malecontent faction, and that Shere Singh has applied for the
+assistance of our troops to recover it; and the _Delhi Gazette_ even
+goes so far as to assert that this prince, "disgusted with the perpetual
+turmoil in which he is embroiled, and feeling his incapacity of ruling
+his turbulent chieftains, is willing to cede his country to us, and
+become a pensioner of our Government." But this announcement, though
+confidently given, we believe to be at least premature. That the Punjab
+must inevitably, sooner or later, become part of the Anglo-Indian
+empire, either as a subsidiary power, like the Nizam, or directly, as a
+province, no one can doubt; but its incorporation at this moment, in the
+teeth of our late declaration against any further extension of
+territory, and at the time when the Sikhs are zealously fulfilling their
+engagements as our allies, would be both injudicious and unpopular in
+the highest degree. An interview, however, is reported to have been
+arranged between Lord Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which is to take
+place in the course of the ensuing summer, and at which some definitive
+arrangements will probably be entered into, on the future political
+relations of the two Governments.[34]
+
+     [34] The war in Tibet, to which we alluded in July last,
+     between the followers of the Sikh chief Zorawur Singh and the
+     Chinese, is still in progress--and the latter are said to be on
+     the point of following up their successes by an invasion of
+     Cashmeer. As we are now at peace with the Celestial Empire, our
+     mediation may be made available to terminate the contest.
+
+The only permanent accession of territory, then, which will result from
+the Affghan war, will consist in the extension of our frontier along the
+whole course of the Sutlej and Lower Indus--"the limits which nature
+appears to have assigned to the Indian empire"--and in the altered
+relations with some of the native states consequent on these
+arrangements. As far as Loodeana, indeed, our frontier on the Sutlej has
+long been well established, and defined by our recognition of the Sikh
+kingdom on the opposite bank;--but the possessions of the chief of
+Bhawulpoor, extending on the left bank nearly from Loodeana to the
+confluence of the Sutlej with the Indus, have hitherto been almost
+exempt from British interference;[35] as have also the petty Rajpoot
+states of Bikaneer, Jesulmeer, &c., which form oases in the desert
+intervening between Scinde and the provinces more immediately under
+British control. These, it is to be presumed, will now be summarily
+taken under the _protection_ of the Anglo-Indian Government:--but more
+difficulty will probably be experienced with the fierce and imperfectly
+subdued tribes of Scindians and Belooches, inhabiting the lower valley
+of the Indus;--and, in order to protect the commerce of the river, and
+maintain the undisputed command of its course, it will be necessary to
+retain a sufficient extent of vantage-ground on the further bank, and to
+keep up in the country an amount of force adequate to the effectual
+coercion of these predatory races. For this purpose, a _place d'armes_
+has been judiciously established at Sukkur, a town which, communicating
+with the fort of Bukkur on an island of the Indus, and with Roree on the
+opposite bank, effectually secures the passage of the river; and the
+ports of Kurrachee and Sonmeani on the coast, the future marts of the
+commerce of the Indus, have also been garrisoned by British troops.
+
+     [35] Bhawulpoor is so far under British protection, that it was
+     saved from the arms of the Sikhs by the treaty with Runjeet
+     Singh, which confined him to the other bank of the Sutlej; but
+     it has never paid allegiance to the British Government. Its
+     territory is of considerable extent, stretching nearly 300
+     miles along the river, by 100 miles average breadth; but great
+     part of the surface consists of sandy desert.
+
+
+It has long since been evident[36] that Scinde, by that _principle of
+unavoidable expansion_ to which we had so often had occasion to refer,
+must eventually have been absorbed into the dominions of the Company;
+but the process by which it at last came into our hands is so curious a
+specimen of our Bonapartean method of dealing with reluctant or
+refractory neutrals, that we cannot pass it altogether without notice.
+Scinde, as well as Beloochistan, had formed part of the extensive empire
+subdued by Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Doorani monarchy; but in the
+reign of his indolent son Timour, the Affghan yoke was shaken off by the
+_Ameers_, or chiefs of the Belooch family of Talpoor, who, fixing their
+residences respectively at Hydrabad, Meerpoor, and Khyrpoor, defied all
+the efforts of the kings of Cabul to reduce them to submission, though
+they more than once averted an invasion by the promise of tribute. It
+has been rumoured that Shah-Shoojah, during his long exile, made
+repeated overtures to the Cabinet of Calcutta for the cession of his
+dormant claims to the _suzerainté_ of Scinde, in exchange for an
+equivalent, either pecuniary or territorial; but the representations of
+a fugitive prince, who proposed to cede what was not in his possession,
+were disregarded by the rulers of India; and even in the famous
+manifesto preceding the invasion of Affghanistan, Lord Auckland
+announced, that "a guaranteed independence, on favourable conditions,
+would be tendered to the Ameers of Scinde." On the appearance of our
+army on the border, however, the Ameers demurred, not very unreasonably,
+to the passage of this formidable host; and considerable delay ensued,
+from the imperfect information possessed by the British commanders of
+the amount of resistance to be expected; but at last the country and
+fortress were forcibly occupied; the seaport of Kurrachee (where alone
+any armed opposition was attempted) was bombarded and captured by our
+ships of war; and a treaty was imposed at the point of the bayonet on
+the Scindian rulers, by virtue of which they paid a contribution of
+twenty-seven laks of rupees (nearly £300,000) to the expenses of the
+war, under the name of arrears of tribute to Shah-Shoojah,
+acknowledging, at the same time, the supremacy, _not of Shah-Shoojah_,
+but of the English Government! The tolls on the Indus were also
+abolished, and the navigation of the river placed, by a special
+stipulation, wholly under the control of British functionaries. Since
+this summary procedure, our predominance in Scinde has been undisturbed,
+unless by occasional local commotions; but the last advices state that
+the whole country is now "in an insurrectionary state;" and it is fully
+expected that an attempt will erelong be made to follow the example of
+the Affghans, and get rid of the intrusive _Feringhis_; in which case,
+as the same accounts inform us, "the Ameers will be sent as
+state-prisoners to Benares, and the territory placed wholly under
+British administration."
+
+     [36] So well were the Scindians aware of this, that Burnes,
+     when ascending the Indus, on his way to Lahore in 1831,
+     frequently heard it remarked, "Scinde is now gone, since the
+     English have seen the river, which is the road to its
+     conquest."
+
+But whatever may be thought of the strict legality of the conveyance, in
+virtue of which Scinde has been converted into an integral part of our
+Eastern empire, its geographical position, as well as its natural
+products, will render it a most valuable acquisition, both in a
+commercial and political point of view. At the beginning of the present
+century, the East-India Company had a factory at Tatta, (the Pattala of
+the ancients,) the former capital of Scinde, immediately above the Delta
+of the Indus; but their agents were withdrawn during the anarchy which
+preceded the disruption of the Doorani monarchy. From that period till
+the late occurrences, all the commercial intercourse with British India
+was maintained either by land-carriage from Cutch, by which mode of
+conveyance the opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast quantities of which are
+exported in this direction) chiefly found its way into Scinde and
+Beloochistan; or by country vessels of a peculiar build, with a
+disproportionately lofty poop, and an elongated bow instead of a
+bowsprit, which carried on an uncertain and desultory traffic with
+Bombay and some of the Malabar ports. To avoid the dangerous sandbanks
+at the mouths of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation through
+the winding streams of the Delta, (the course of which, as in the
+Mississippi, changes with every inundation,) they usually discharged
+their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence they were transported sixty miles
+overland to Tatta, and there embarked in flat-bottomed boats on the main
+stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen miles N.W. from the Pittee, or
+western mouth of the Indus, and Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the
+territory of Lus, between forty and fifty miles further in the same
+direction, are the only harbours of import in the long sea-coast of
+Beloochistan; and the possession of them gives the British the undivided
+command of a trade which, in spite of the late disasters, already
+promises to become considerable; while the interposition of the now
+friendly state of Khelat[37] between the coast and the perturbed tribes
+of Affghanistan, will secure the merchandise landed here a free passage
+into the interior. The trade with these ports deserves, indeed, all the
+fostering care of the Indian Government; since they must inevitably be,
+at least for some years to come, the only inlet for Indian produce into
+Beloochistan, Cabul, and the wide regions of Central Asia beyond them.
+The overland carrying trade through Scinde and the Punjab, in which
+(according to M. Masson) not less than 6500 camels were annually
+employed, has been almost annihilated--not only by the confusion arising
+from the war, but from the absolute want of means of transport, from the
+unprecedented destruction of the camels occasioned by the exigencies of
+the commissariat, &c. The rocky defiles of Affghanistan were heaped with
+the carcasses of these indispensable animals, 50,000 of which (as is
+proved by the official returns) perished in this manner in the course of
+three years; and some years must necessarily elapse before the chasm
+thus made in the numbers of the species throughout North-western India
+can be supplied. The immense expenditure of the Army of Occupation, at
+the same time, brought such an influx of specie into Affghanistan, as
+had never been known since the sack of Delhi by Ahmed Shah
+Doorani--while the traffic with India being at a stand-still for the
+reasons we have just given, the superfluity of capital thus produced was
+driven to find an outlet in the northern markets of Bokhara and
+Turkestan. The consequence of this has been, that Russian manufactures
+to an enormous amount have been poured into these regions, by way of
+Astrakhan and the Caspian, to meet this increasing demand; and the value
+of Russian commerce with Central Asia, which (as we pointed out in April
+1840, p. 522) had for many years been progressively declining, was
+doubled during 1840 and 1841, (_Bombay Times_, April 2, 1842,) and is
+believed to be still on the increase! The opening of the navigation of
+the Indus, with the exertions of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce to
+establish depots on its course, and to facilitate the transmission of
+goods into the surrounding countries, has already done much for the
+restoration of traffic in this direction, in spite of the efforts of the
+Russian agents in the north to keep possession of the opening thus
+unexpectedly afforded them; but it cannot be denied that the "great
+enlargement of our field of commerce," so confidently prognosticated by
+Lord Palmerston, from "the great operations undertaken in the countries
+lying west of the Indus," has run a heavy risk of being permanently
+diverted into other channels, by the operation of the causes detailed
+above.
+
+     [37] Khelat (more properly Khelat-i-Nussear Khan, "the citadel
+     of Nussear Khan," by whom it was strongly fortified in 1750,)
+     is the principal city and fortress of the Brahooes or Eastern
+     Baloochee, and the residence of their chief. It had never been
+     taken by any of the Affghan kings, and had even opposed a
+     successful resistance to the arms of Ahmed Shah;--but on
+     November 13, 1839, it was stormed by an Anglo-Indian force
+     under General Wiltshire, and the Khan Mihrab was slain sword in
+     hand, gallantly fighting to the last at the entrance of his
+     zenana. The place, however, was soon after surprised and
+     recaptured by the son of the fallen chief, Nussear Khan, who,
+     though again expelled, continued to maintain himself with a few
+     followers in the mountains, and at last effected an
+     accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud.
+     He has since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary
+     fidelity; and as his fears of compulsory vassalage to the
+     nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at an end, he
+     appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian
+     chief converted into a firm friend and ally.
+
+Before we finally dismiss the subject of the Affghan war and its
+consequences, we cannot overlook one feature in the termination of the
+contest, which is of the highest importance, as indicating a return to a
+better system than that miserable course of reduction and parsimony,
+which, for some years past, has slowly but surely been alienating the
+attachment, and breaking down the military spirit, of our native army.
+We refer to the distribution, by order of Lord Ellenborough, of badges
+of honorary distinction, as well as of more substantial rewards, in the
+form of augmented allowances,[38] &c., to the sepoy corps which have
+borne the brunt of the late severe campaign. Right well have these
+honours and gratuities been merited; nor could any measure have been
+better timed to strengthen in the hearts of the sepoys the bonds of the
+_Feringhi salt_, to which they have so long proved faithful. The policy,
+as well as the justice, of holding out every inducement which may rivet
+the attachment of the native troops to our service, obvious as it must
+appear, has in truth been of late too much neglected;[39] and it has
+become at this juncture doubly imperative, both from the severe and
+unpopular duty in which a considerable portion of the troops have
+recently been engaged, and from the widely-spread disaffection which has
+lately manifested itself in various quarters among the native
+population. We predicted in July, as the probable consequence of our
+reverses in Affghanistan, some open manifestation of the spirit of
+revolt constantly smouldering among the various races of our subjects in
+India, but the prophecy had already been anticipated by the event. The
+first overt resistance to authority appeared in Bhundelkund, a wild and
+imperfectly subjugated province in the centre of Hindostan, inhabited by
+a fierce people called Bhoondelahs. An insurrection, in which nearly all
+the native chiefs are believed to be implicated, broke out here early
+in April; and a desultory and harassing warfare has since been carried
+on in the midst of the almost impenetrable jungles and ravines which
+overspread the district. The Nawab of Banda and the Bhoondee Rajah, a
+Moslem and a Hindoo prince, respectively of some note in the
+neighbourhood of the disturbed tracts, have been placed under
+surveillance at Allahabad as the secret instigators of these movements,
+"which," (says the _Agra Ukhbar_) "appear to have been regularly
+organized all over India, the first intimation of which was the Nawab of
+Kurnool's affair"--whose deposition we noticed in July. The valley of
+Berar, also, in the vicinity of the Nizam's frontier, has been the scene
+of several encounters between our troops and irregular bands of
+insurgents; and the restless Arab mercenaries in the Dekkan are still in
+arms, ready to take service with any native ruler who chooses to employ
+them against the _Feringhis_. In the northern provinces, the aspect of
+affairs is equally unfavourable. The Rohillas, the most warlike and
+nationally-united race of Moslems in India, have shown alarming symptoms
+of a refractory temper, fomented (as it has been reported) by the
+disbanded troopers of the 2d Bengal cavalry,[40] (a great proportion of
+whom were Rohillas,) and by Moslem deserters from the other regiments in
+Affghanistan, who have industriously magnified the amount of our
+losses--a pleasing duty, in which the native press, as usual, has
+zealously co-operated. One of the newspapers printed in the Persian
+language at Delhi, recently assured its readers that, at the forcing of
+the Khyber Pass, "six thousand Europeans fell under the sharp swords of
+the Faithful"--with other veracious intelligence, calculated to produce
+the belief that the campaign must inevitably end, like the preceding, in
+the defeat and extermination of the whole invading force. The fruits of
+these inflammatory appeals to the pride and bigotry of the Moslems, is
+thus painted in a letter from Rohilcund, which we quote from that
+excellent periodical the _Asiatic Journal_ for September:--"The
+Mahomedans throughout Rohilcund hate us to a degree only second to what
+the Affghans do, their interest in whose welfare they can scarcely
+conceal.... There are hundreds of heads of tribes, all of whom would
+rise to a man on what they considered a fitting opportunity, which they
+are actually thirsting after. A hint from their moolahs, and the display
+of the green flag, would rally around it every Mussulman. In March last,
+the population made no scruple of declaring that the _Feringhi raj_
+(English rule) was at an end; and some even disputed payment of the
+revenue, saying it was probable they should have to pay it again to
+another Government! They have given out a report that Akhbar Khan has
+disbanded his army for the present, in order that his men may visit
+their families; but in the cold weather, when our troops will be
+weakened and unfit for action, he will return with an overwhelming
+force, aided by every Mussulman as far as Ispahan, when they will
+annihilate our whole force and march straight to Delhi, and ultimately
+send us to our ships. The whole Mussulman population, in fact, are
+filled with rejoicing and _hope_ at our late reverses."
+
+     [38] By a general order, issued from Simla October 4, all
+     officers and soldiers, of whatever grade, who took part in the
+     operations about Candahar, the defence of Khelat-i-Ghiljie, the
+     recapture of Ghazni or Cabul, or the forcing of the Khyber
+     Pass, are to receive a silver medal with appropriate
+     inscriptions--a similar distinction having been previously
+     conferred on the defenders of Jellalabad. _What is at present
+     the value of the Order of the Doorani Empire_, with its showy
+     decorations of the first, second, and third classes, the last
+     of which was so rightfully spurned by poor Dennie?
+
+     [39] The following remarks of the _Madras United Service
+     Gazette_, though intended to apply only to the Secunderabad
+     disturbances, deserve general attention at present:--"We
+     attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for
+     their European officers to _a diminished inclination for the
+     service_, the duties whereof have of late years increased in
+     about the same proportion that its advantages have been
+     reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than
+     double the work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;...
+     and the infantry sepoy's garrison guard-work has been for years
+     most fatiguing at every station, from the numerical strength of
+     the troops being quite inadequate to the duties.... These
+     several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a
+     distaste for the service, which has been augmented by the
+     stagnant state of promotion, caused by the reductions in 1829,
+     when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the cavalry,
+     native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became
+     supernumerary, thus effectually closing the door of promotion
+     to the inferior grades for years to come. Hopeless of
+     advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less
+     attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as
+     careless of a service which no longer held out any prospect of
+     promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline were not
+     altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of
+     corporal punishment; and from the promulgation of that
+     ill-judged order may be dated the decided change for the worse
+     which has taken place in the character of the native soldiery."
+
+     [40] This corps, it will be remembered, was broken for its
+     misconduct in the battle of Purwan-Durrah, against Dost
+     Mohammed, November 2, 1840.
+
+It may be said that we are unnecessarily multiplying instances, and that
+these symptoms of local fermentation are of little individual
+importance; but nothing can be misplaced which has a tendency to dispel
+the universal and unaccountable error which prevails in England, as to
+the _popularity of our sway in India_. The signs of the times are
+tolerably significant--and the apprehensions of a coming commotion which
+we expressed in July, as well as of the quarter in which it will
+probably break out, are amply borne out by the language of the
+best-informed publications of India. "That the seeds of discontent" says
+the _Delhi Gazette_--"have been sown by the Moslems, and have partially
+found root among the Hindoos, is more than conjecture"--and the
+warnings of the _Agra Ukhbar_ are still more unequivocal. "Reports have
+reached Agra that a general rise will erelong take place in the Dekkan.
+There have already been several allusions made to a very extensive
+organization among the native states[41] against the British power, the
+resources of which will, no doubt, be stretched to the utmost during the
+ensuing cold season. Disaffection is wide and prevalent, and when our
+withdrawal from Affghanistan becomes known, it will ripen into open
+insurrection. With rebellion in Central India, and famine in Northern,
+Government have little time to lose in collecting their energies to meet
+the crisis." The increase of means which the return of the army from
+Affghanistan will place at the disposal of the Governor-General, will
+doubtless do much in either overawing or suppressing these
+insurrectionary demonstrations; but even in this case the snake will
+have been only "scotched, not killed;" and the most practical and
+effectual method of rendering such attempts hopeless for the future,
+will be the replacing the Indian army on the same efficient footing, as
+to numbers and composition, on which it stood before the ill-judged
+measures of Lord William Bentinck. The energies of the native troops
+have been heavily tasked, and their fidelity severely tried, during the
+Affghan war; and though they have throughout nobly sustained the high
+character which they had earned by their past achievements, the
+experiment on their endurance should not be carried too far. Many of the
+errors of past Indian administrations have already been remedied by Lord
+Ellenborough; and we cannot refrain from the hope, that the period of
+his Government will not be suffered to elapse without a return to the
+old system on this point also--the vital point on which the stability of
+our empire depends.
+
+     [41] The Nawab of Arcot, one of the native princes, whose
+     fidelity is now strongly suspected, assured the Resident, in
+     his reply to the official communication of the capture of
+     Ghazni in 1839, that from his excessive joy at the triumph of
+     his good friend the Company, his bulk of body had so greatly
+     increased that he was under the necessity of providing himself
+     with a new wardrobe--his garments having become too strait for
+     his unbounded stomach! A choice specimen of oriental bombast.
+
+Such have been the consequences, as far as they have hitherto been
+developed, to the foreign and domestic relations of our Eastern empire,
+of the late memorable Affghan war. In many points, an obvious parallel
+may be drawn between its commencement and progress, and that of the
+invasion of Spain by Napoleon. In both cases, the territory of an
+unoffending people was invaded and overrun, in the plenitude of (as was
+deemed by the aggressors) irresistible power, on the pretext, in each
+case, that it was necessary to anticipate an ambitious rival in the
+possession of a country which might be used as a vantage ground against
+us. In both cases, the usurpation was thinly veiled by the elevation of
+a pageant-monarch to the throne; till the invaded people, goaded by the
+repeated indignities offered to their religious and national pride, rose
+_en masse_ against their oppressors at the same moment in the capital
+and the provinces, and either cut them off, or drove them to the
+frontier. In each case the intruders, by the arrival of reinforcements,
+regained for a time their lost ground; and if our Whig rulers had
+continued longer at the helm of affairs, the parallel might have become
+complete throughout. The strength and resources of our Indian empire
+might have been drained in the vain attempt to complete the subjugation
+of a rugged and impracticable country, inhabited by a fierce and bigoted
+population; and an "Affghan _ulcer_." (to use the ordinary phrase of
+Napoleon himself in speaking of the Spanish war) might have corroded the
+vitals, and undermined the fabric, of British domination in the East.
+Fortunately, however, for our national welfare and our national
+character, better counsels are at length in the ascendant. The triumphs
+which have again crowned our arms, have not tempted our rulers to resume
+the perfidious policy which their predecessors, in the teeth of their
+own original declarations, have now openly avowed, by "retaining
+military possession of the countries west of the Indus;" and the candid
+acknowledgement of the error committed in the first instance, affords
+security against the repetition of such acts of wanton aggression, and
+for adherence to the pacific policy now laid down. The ample resources
+of India have yet in a great measure to be explored and developed, and
+it is impossible to foresee what results may be attained, when (in the
+language of the _Bombay Times_) "wisdom guides for good and worthy ends,
+that resistless energy which madness has wasted on the opposite. We now
+see that, even with Affghanistan as a broken barrier, Russia dares not
+move her finger against us--that with seventeen millions sterling thrown
+away, we are able to recover all our mischances, if relieved from the
+rulers and the system which imposed them upon us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The late proclamation of Lord Ellenborough has been so frequently
+referred to in the foregoing pages, that for the sake of perspicuity we
+subjoin it in full.
+
+"Secret Department, Simla,
+
+"Oct. 1, 1842.
+
+"The Government of India directed its army to pass the Indus, in order
+to expel from Affghanistan a chief believed to be hostile to British
+interests, and to replace upon his throne a sovereign represented to be
+friendly to those interests, and popular with his former subjects.
+
+"The chief believed to be hostile became a prisoner, and the sovereign
+represented to be popular was replaced upon his throne; but after events
+which brought into question his fidelity to the Government by which he
+was restored, he lost, by the hands of an assassin, the throne he had
+only held amidst insurrections, and his death was preceded and followed
+by still existing anarchy.
+
+"Disasters, unparalleled in their extent, unless by the errors in which
+they originated, and by the treachery by which they were completed, have
+in one short campaign been avenged upon every scene of past misfortune;
+and repeated victories in the field, and the capture of the cities and
+citadels of Ghazni and Cabul, have again attached the opinion of
+invincibility to the British arms.
+
+"The British army in possession of Affghanistan will now be withdrawn to
+the Sutlej.
+
+"The Governor-General will leave it to the Affghans themselves to create
+a government amidst the anarchy which is the consequence of their
+crimes.
+
+"To force a sovereign upon a reluctant people, would be as inconsistent
+with the policy, as it is with the principles, of the British
+Government, tending to place the arms and resources of that people at
+the disposal of the first invader, and to impose the burden of
+supporting a sovereign without the prospect of benefit from his
+alliance.
+
+"The Governor-General will willingly recognize any government approved
+by the Affghans themselves, which shall appear desirous and capable of
+maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring states.
+
+"Content with the limits nature appears to have assigned to its empire,
+the Government of India will devote all its efforts to the establishment
+and maintenance of general peace, to the protection of the sovereigns
+and chiefs its allies, and to the prosperity and happiness of its own
+faithful subjects.
+
+"The rivers of the Punjab and the Indus, and the mountainous passes and
+the barbarous tribes of Affghanistan, will be placed between the British
+army and an enemy from the west, if indeed such an enemy there can be,
+and no longer between the army and its supplies.
+
+"The enormous expenditure required for the support of a large force in a
+false military position, at a distance from its own frontier and its
+resources, will no longer arrest every measure for the improvement of
+the country and of the people.
+
+"The combined army of England and of India, superior in equipment, in
+discipline, in valour, and in the officers by whom it is commanded, to
+any force which can be opposed to it in Asia, will stand in unassailable
+strength upon its own soil, and for ever, under the blessing of
+Providence, preserve the glorious empire it has won, in security and in
+honour.
+
+"The Governor-General cannot fear the misconstruction of his motives in
+thus frankly announcing to surrounding states the pacific and
+conservative policy of his Government.
+
+"Affghanistan and China have seen at once the forces at his disposal,
+and the effect with which they can be applied.
+
+"Sincerely attached to peace for the sake of the benefits it confers
+upon the people, the Governor-General is resolved that peace shall be
+observed, and will put forth the whole power of the British Government
+to coerce the state by which it shall be infringed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
+
+
+There are few things more painful connected with the increase of years
+in an established periodical like our own, than to observe how "friend
+after friend departs," to witness the gradual thinning of the ranks of
+its contributors by death, and the departure, from the scene, of those
+whose talents or genius had contributed to its early influence and
+popularity. Many years have not elapsed since we were called on to
+record the death of the upright and intelligent publisher, to whose
+energy and just appreciation of the public taste, its origin and success
+are in a great degree to be ascribed. On the present occasion another of
+these melancholy memorials is required of us; the accomplished author of
+"Cyril Thornton," whose name and talents had been associated with the
+Magazine from its commencement, is no more. He died at Pisa on the 7th
+December last.
+
+Mr Hamilton exhibited a remarkable union of scholarship, high breeding,
+and amiability of disposition. To the habitual refinement of taste which
+an early mastery of the classics had produced, his military profession
+and intercourse with society had added the ease of the man of the world,
+while they had left unimpaired his warmth of feeling and kindliness of
+heart. Amidst the active services of the Peninsular and American
+campaigns, he preserved his literary tastes; and, when the close of the
+war restored him to his country, he seemed to feel that the peaceful
+leisure of a soldier's life could not be more appropriately filled up
+than by the cultivation of literature. The characteristic of his mind
+was rather a happy union and balance of qualities than the possession of
+any one in excess; and the result was a peculiar composure and
+gracefulness, pervading equally his outward deportment and his habits of
+thought. The only work of fiction which he has given to the public
+certainly indicates high powers both of pathetic and graphic
+delineation; but the qualities which first and most naturally attracted
+attention, were rather his excellent judgment of character, at once just
+and generous, his fine perception and command of wit and quiet humour,
+rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into satire or sarcasm, and the
+refinement, taste, and precision with which he clothed his ideas,
+whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous or
+extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society and in
+taste.
+
+Of his contributions to this Magazine it would be out of place here to
+speak, further than to say that they indicated a wide range and
+versatility of talent, embraced both prose and verse, and were
+universally popular. "Cyril Thornton," which appeared in 1827, instantly
+arrested public attention and curiosity, even in an age eminently
+fertile in great works of fiction. With little of plot--for it pursued
+the desultory ramblings of military life through various climes--it
+possessed a wonderful truth and reality, great skill in the observation
+and portraiture of original character, and a peculiar charm of style,
+blending freshness and vivacity of movement with classic delicacy and
+grace. The work soon became naturally and justly popular, having reached
+a second edition shortly after publication: a third edition has recently
+appeared. The "Annals of the Peninsular Campaign" had the merit of clear
+narration, united with much of the same felicity of style; but the size
+of the work excluded that full development and picturesque detail which
+were requisite to give individuality to its pictures. His last work was
+"Men and Manners in America," of which two German and one French
+translations have already appeared; a work eminently characterized by a
+tone of gentlemanly feeling, sagacious observation, just views of
+national character and institutions, and their reciprocal influence, and
+by tolerant criticism; and which, so far from having been superseded by
+recent works of the same class and on the same subject, has only risen
+in public estimation by the comparison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., by Various
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., 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. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: July 30, 2004 [EBook #13062]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page scans provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>NO. CCCXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1843. VOL. LIII.</h2>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s1">ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s2">POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.&mdash;NO. V.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s3">REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s4">THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s5">IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s6">CALEB STUKELY. PART XI.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s7">THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART II.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s8">EYRE'S CABUL.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s9">THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328s10">DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.</a></li>
+  <li><a href="#bw328-footnotes">[FOOTNOTES]</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h3>EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.</h3>
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page141" id="page141" title="141"></a>
+<a name="bw328s1" id="bw328s1"></a><h2>ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.</h2>
+
+<p>If any doubt could exist as to the nature
+of the loss which the premature
+death of Dr Arnold has inflicted on
+the literature of his country, the perusal
+of the volume before us must be
+sufficient to show how great, how serious,
+nay, all circumstances taken together,
+we had almost said how irreparable,
+it ought to be considered.
+Recently placed in a situation which
+gave his extraordinary faculties as a
+teacher still wider scope than they
+before possessed, at an age when the
+vivacity and energy of a commanding
+intellect were matured, not chilled, by
+constant observation and long experience&mdash;gifted
+with industry to collect,
+with sagacity to appreciate, with
+skill to arrange the materials of history&mdash;master
+of a vivid and attractive
+style for their communication and display&mdash;eminent,
+above all, for a degree
+of candour and sincerity which gave
+additional value to all his other endowments&mdash;what
+but leisure did Dr
+Arnold require to qualify him for a
+place among our most illustrious authors?
+Under his auspices, we might
+not unreasonably have hoped for
+works that would have rivalled those
+of the great continental writers in
+depth and variety of research; in
+which the light of original and contemporaneous
+documents would be
+steadily flung on the still unexplored
+portions of our history; and that
+Oxford would have balanced the fame
+of Schl&ouml;sser and Thierry and Sismondi,
+by the labours of a writer peculiarly,
+and, as this volume proves,
+most affectionately her own.</p>
+
+<p>The first Lecture in the present
+volume is full of striking and original
+remarks, delivered with a delightful
+simplicity; which, since genius has become
+rare among us, has almost disappeared
+from the conversation and
+writings of Englishmen. Open the
+pages of Herodotus, or Xenophon, or
+C&aelig;sar, and how plain, how unpretending
+are the preambles to their immortal
+works&mdash;in what exquisite proportion
+does the edifice arise, without
+apparent effort, without ostentatious
+struggle, without, if the allusion may
+be allowed, the sound of the axe or
+hammer, till &quot;the pile stands fixed
+her stately height&quot; before us&mdash;the just
+admiration of succeeding ages! But
+our modern <i>filosofastri</i> insist upon
+stunning us with the noise of their
+machinery, and blinding us with the
+dust of their operations. They will
+not allow the smallest portion of their
+vulgar labours to escape our notice.
+They drag us through the chaos of
+sand and lime, and stone and bricks,
+which they have accumulated, hoping
+that the magnitude of the preparation
+may atone for the meanness of the performance.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page142" id="page142" title="142"></a>Very different from this
+is the style of Dr Arnold. We will
+endeavour to exhibit a just idea of his
+views, so far as they regard the true
+character of history, the manner in
+which it should be studied, and the
+events by which his theory is illustrated.
+To study history as it should be
+studied, much more to write history
+as it should be written, is a task which
+may dignify the most splendid abilities,
+and occupy the most extended life.</p>
+
+<p>Lucian in one of his admirable
+treatises, ridicules those who imagine
+that any one who chooses may sit
+down and write history as easily as
+he would walk or sleep, or perform
+any other function of nature,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Thought, to the man that never thinks, may seem<br /></span>
+<span>As natural as when asleep to dream.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From the remarks of this greatest
+of all satirists, it is manifest that, in
+his days, history had been employed,
+as it has in ours, for the purposes of
+slander and adulation. He selects
+particularly a writer who compared,
+in his account of the Persian wars,
+the Roman emperor to Achilles, his
+enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian
+had lived in the present day, he would
+have discovered that the race of such
+writers was not extinguished. He
+might have found ample proofs that
+the detestable habit still prevails of
+interweaving the names of our contemporaries
+among the accounts of
+former centuries, and thus corrupting
+the history of past times into a means
+of abuse and flattery for the present.
+This is to degrade history into the
+worst style of a Treasury pamphlet,
+or a daily newspaper. It is a fault almost
+peculiar to this country.</p>
+
+<p>We are told in one of these works,
+for instance, that the &quot;tones of Sir
+W. Follett's voice are silvery&quot;&mdash;a proposition
+that we do not at all intend
+to dispute; nor would it be easy to
+pronounce any panegyric on that
+really great man in which we should
+not zealously concur; but can it be
+necessary to mention this in a history
+of the eighteenth century? Or can
+any thing be more trivial or offensive,
+or totally without the shadow of justification,
+than this forced allusion to
+the &quot;ignorant present time,&quot; in the
+midst of what ought to be an unbiassed
+narrative of events that affected
+former generations? We do not know
+whether the author of this ingenious
+allusion borrowed the idea from the
+advertisements in which our humbler
+artists recommend their productions
+to vulgar notice; or whether it is the
+spontaneous growth of his own happy
+intellect: but plagiarized or original,
+and however adapted it may be to
+the tone and keeping of his work, its
+insertion is totally irreconcilable with
+the qualities that a man should possess
+who means to instruct posterity.
+When gold is extracted from lead, or
+silver from tin, such a writer may become
+an historian. &quot;Forget,&quot; says
+Lucian, &quot;the present, look to future
+ages for your reward; let it be said
+of you that you are high-spirited, full
+of independence, that there is nothing
+about you servile or fulsome.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Modern history is now exclusively
+to be considered. Modern history,
+separated from the history of Greece
+and Rome, and the annals of barbarous
+emigration, by the event which
+above all others has influenced, and
+continues still to influence, after so
+many centuries, the fate of Europe&mdash;the
+fall of the Western Empire&mdash;the
+boundary line which separates modern
+from ancient history, is not ideal and
+capricious, but definite and certain.
+It can neither be advanced nor carried
+back. Modern history displays a
+national life still in existence. It commences
+with that period in which the
+great elements of separate national
+existence now in being&mdash;race, language,
+institutions, and religion&mdash;can
+be traced in simultaneous operation.
+To the influences which pervaded the
+ancient world, another, at first scarcely
+perceptible, for a time almost predominant,
+and even now powerful and
+comprehensive, was annexed. In the
+fourth century of the Christian era, the
+Roman world comprised Christianity,
+Grecian intellect, Roman jurisprudence&mdash;all
+the ingredients, in short,
+of modern history, except the Teutonic
+element. It is the infusion of this
+element which has changed the quality
+of the compound, and leavened the
+whole mass with its peculiarities. To
+this we owe the middle ages, the law
+of inheritance, the spirit of chivalry,
+and the feudal system, than which no
+cause more powerful ever contributed
+to the miseries of mankind. It filled
+Europe not with men but slaves; and
+the tyranny under which the people
+groaned was the more intolerable, as it
+<a class="pagenum" name="page143" id="page143" title="143"></a>was wrought into an artificial method,
+confirmed by law, established by inveterate
+custom, and even supported
+by religion. In vain did the nations
+cast their eyes to Rome, from whom
+they had a right to claim assistance,
+or at least sympathy and consolation.
+The appeal was useless. The living
+waters were tainted in their source.
+Instead of health they spread abroad
+infection&mdash;instead of giving nourishment
+to the poor, they were the narcotics
+which drenched in slumber the
+consciences of the rich. Wretched
+forms, ridiculous legends, the insipid
+rhetoric of the Fathers, were the substitutes
+for all generous learning. The
+nobles enslaved the body; the hierarchy
+put its fetters on the soul. The
+growth of the public mind was checked
+and stunted and the misery of Europe
+was complete. The sufferer was taught
+to expect his reward in another world;
+their oppressor, if his bequests were
+liberal, was sure of obtaining consolation
+in this, and the kingdom of God
+was openly offered to the highest bidder.
+But to the causes which gave
+rise to this state of things, we must
+trace our origin as a nation.</p>
+
+<p>With the Britons whom C&aelig;sar conquered,
+though they occupied the surface
+of our soil, we have, nationally
+speaking, no concern; but when the
+white horse of Hengist, after many a
+long and desperate struggle, floated in
+triumph or in peace from the Tamar
+to the Tweed, our existence as a nation,
+the period to which we may refer
+the origin of English habits, language,
+and institutions, undoubtedly begins.
+So, when the Franks established themselves
+west of the Rhine, the French
+nation may be said to have come into
+being. True, the Saxons yielded to
+the discipline and valour of a foreign
+race; true, the barbarous hordes of
+the Elbe and the Saal were not the
+ancestors, as any one who travels in
+the south of France can hardly fail to
+see, of the majority of the present nation
+of the French: but the Normans
+and Saxons sprang from the same
+stock, and the changes worked by
+Clovis and his warriors were so vast
+and durable, (though, in comparison
+with their conquered vassals, they
+were numerically few,) that with
+the invasion of Hengist in the one
+case, and the battle of Poictiers in the
+other, the modern history of both
+countries may not improperly be said
+to have begun. To the student of
+that history, however, one consideration
+must occur, which imparts to the
+objects of his studies an interest emphatically
+its own. It is this: he has
+strong reason to believe that all the
+elements of society are before him.
+It may indeed be true that Providence
+has reserved some yet unknown tribe,
+wandering on the banks of the Amour
+or of the Amazons, as the instrument
+of accomplishing some mighty purpose&mdash;humanly
+speaking, however,
+such an event is most improbable.
+To adopt such an hypothesis, would
+be in direct opposition to all the analogies
+by which, in the absence of
+clearer or more precise motives, human
+infirmity must be guided. The
+map of the world is spread out before
+us; there are no regions which we
+speak of in the terms of doubt and
+ignorance that the wisest Romans applied
+to the countries beyond the Vistula
+and the Rhine, when in Lord
+Bacon's words &quot;the world was altogether
+home-bred.&quot; When Cicero
+jested with Trebatius on the little importance
+of a Roman jurist among
+hordes of Celtic barbarians, he little
+thought that from that despised country
+would arise a nation, before the
+blaze of whose conquests the splendour
+of Roman Empire would grow
+pale; a nation which would carry
+the art of government and the enjoyment
+of freedom to a perfection, the
+idea of which, had it been presented
+to the illustrious orator, stored as his
+mind was with all the lore of Grecian
+sages, and with whatever knowledge
+the history of his own country
+could supply, would have been
+consigned by him, with the glorious
+visions of his own Academy, to the
+shady spaces of an ideal world. Had
+he, while bewailing the loss of that
+freedom which he would not survive,
+disfigured as it was by popular tumult
+and patrician insolence&mdash;had he
+been told that a figure far more faultless
+was one day to arise amid the unknown
+forests and marshes of Britain,
+and to be protected by the rude hands
+of her barbarous inhabitants till it
+reached the full maturity of immortal
+loveliness&mdash;the eloquence of Cicero
+himself would have been silenced, and,
+whatever might have been the exultation
+of the philosopher, the pride of
+the Roman would have died within
+him. But we can anticipate no similar
+<a class="pagenum" name="page144" id="page144" title="144"></a>revolution. The nations by which
+the world is inhabited are known to
+us; the regions which they occupy are
+limited; there are no fresh combinations
+to count upon, no reserves upon
+which we can depend;&mdash;there is every
+reason to suppose that, in the great
+conflict with physical and moral evil,
+which it is the destiny of man to wage,
+the last battalion is in the field.</p>
+
+<p>The course to be adopted by the student
+of modern history is pointed out in
+the following pages; and the remarks
+of Dr Arnold on this subject are
+distinguished by a degree of good sense
+and discrimination which it is difficult
+to overrate. Vast indeed is the difference
+between ancient and modern annals,
+as far as relates to the demand
+upon the student's time and attention.
+Instead of sailing upon a narrow channel,
+the shores of which are hardly
+ever beyond his view, he launches out
+upon an ocean of immeasurable extent,
+through which the greatest skill
+and most assiduous labour are hardly
+sufficient to conduct him&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere c&oelig;lo,<br /></span>
+<span>Nec meminisse vi&aelig;, medi&acirc; Palinurus in und&acirc;.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Instead of a few great writers, the
+student is beset on all sides by writers
+of different sort and degree, from the
+light memorialist to the great historian;
+instead of two countries, two
+hemispheres are candidates for his
+attention; and history assumes a variety
+of garbs, many of which were
+strangers to her during the earlier
+period of her existence. To the careful
+study of many periods of history,
+not extending over any very wide
+portion of time, the labour of a tolerably
+long life would be inadequate.
+The unpublished Despatches of Cardinal
+Granvelle at Besan&ccedil;on, amount
+to sixty volumes. The archives of
+Venice (a mine, by the way, scarcely
+opened) fill a large apartment. For
+printed works it may be enough to
+mention the Benedictine editions and
+Munatoris Annals, historians of the
+dark and middle ages, relating to two
+countries only, and two periods. All
+history, therefore, however insatiable
+may be the intellectual <i>boulimia</i> that
+devours him, can never be a proper object
+of curiosity to any man. It is
+natural enough that the first effect
+produced by this discovery on the
+mind of the youthful student should
+be surprise and mortification; nor is it
+before the conviction that his researches,
+to be valuable, must be limited,
+forces itself upon him, that he concentrates
+to some particular period,
+and perhaps to some exclusive object,
+the powers of his undivided attention.
+When he has thus put an end to his
+desultory enquiries, and selected the
+portion of history which it is his purpose
+to explore, his first object should
+be to avail himself of the information
+which other travellers in the same regions
+have been enabled to collect.
+Their mistakes will teach him caution;
+their wanderings will serve to keep
+him in the right path. Weak and
+feeble as he may be, compared with
+the first adventurers who have visited
+the mighty maze before him, yet he
+has not their difficulties to encounter,
+nor their perils to apprehend. The
+clue is in his hands which may lead
+him through the labyrinth in which
+it has been the lot of so many master-spirits
+to wander&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And find no end, in boundless mazes lost.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it is time to hear Dr Arnold:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;To proceed, therefore, with our supposed
+student's course of reading. Keeping
+the general history which he has been
+reading as his text, and getting from it
+the skeleton, in a manner, of the future
+figure, he must now break forth excursively
+to the right and left, collecting richness
+and fulness of knowledge from the
+most various sources. For example, we
+will suppose that where his popular historian
+has mentioned that an alliance was
+concluded between two powers, or a
+treaty of peace agreed upon, he first of all
+resolves to consult the actual documents
+themselves, as they are to be found in
+some one of the great collections of European
+treaties, or, if they are connected
+with English history, in Rymer's <i>F&oelig;dera</i>.
+By comparing the actual treaty with his
+historian's report of its provisions, we
+get, in the first place, a critical process of
+some value, inasmuch as the historian's
+accuracy is at once tested: but there are
+other purposes answered besides. An
+historian's report of a treaty is almost always
+an abridgement of it; minor articles
+will probably be omitted, and the rest
+condensed, and stripped of all their formal
+language. But our object now being
+to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is
+possible, the very life of the period which
+we are studying, minute particulars help
+<a class="pagenum" name="page145" id="page145" title="145"></a>us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration
+of titles, and the specification of
+towns and districts in their legal style,
+help to realize the time to us, if it be only
+from their very particularity. Every common
+history records the substance of the
+treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the
+succession to the crown of France was
+given to Henry V. But the treaty in
+itself, or the English version of it which
+Henry sent over to England to be proclaimed
+there, gives a far more lively impression
+of the triumphant state of the
+great conqueror, and the utter weakness
+of the poor French king, Charles VI.,
+in the ostentatious care taken to provide
+for the recognition of his formal title during
+his lifetime, while all real power is
+ceded to Henry, and provision is made
+for the perpetual union hereafter of the
+two kingdoms under his sole government.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have named treaties as the first class
+of official instruments to be consulted, because
+the mention of them occurs unavoidably
+in every history. Another class of
+documents, certainly of no less importance,
+yet much less frequently referred to by
+popular historians, consists of statutes, ordinances,
+proclamations, acts, or by whatever
+various names the laws of each particular
+period happen to be designated. <i>That
+the Statute Book has not been more habitually
+referred to by writers on English
+history</i>, has always seemed to me
+a matter of surprise. Legislation has not
+perhaps been so busy in every country as
+it has been with us; yet every where, and
+in every period, it has done something.
+Evils, real or supposed, have always existed,
+which the supreme power in the nation
+has endeavoured to remove by the provisions
+of law. And under the name of
+laws I would include the acts of councils,
+which form an important part of the history
+of European nations during many
+centuries; provincial councils, as you are
+aware, having been held very frequently,
+and their enactments relating to local and
+particular evils, so that they illustrate history
+in a very lively manner. Now, in
+these and all the other laws of any given
+period, we find in the first place, from
+their particularity, a great additional help
+towards becoming familiar with the times
+in which they were passed; we learn the
+names of various officers, courts, and
+processes; and these, when understood,
+(and I suppose always the habit of reading
+nothing without taking pains to understand
+it,) help us, from their very number,
+to realize the state of things then existing;
+a lively notion of any object depending on
+our clearly seeing some of its parts, and
+the more we people it, so to speak, with
+distinct images, the more it comes to
+resemble the crowded world around us.
+But in addition to this benefit, which I
+am disposed to rate in itself very highly,
+every thing of the nature of law has a
+peculiar interest and value, <i>because it is
+the expression of the deliberate mind of
+the supreme government of society</i>; and
+as history, as commonly written, records
+so much of the passionate and unreflecting
+part of human nature, we are bound in
+fairness to acquaint ourselves with its
+calmer and better part also.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The inner life of a nation will be
+determined by its end, that end being
+the security of its highest happiness,
+or, as it is &quot;conceived and expressed
+more piously, a setting forth of God's
+glory by doing his appointed work.&quot;
+The history of a nation's internal life
+is the history of its institutions and its
+laws. Here, then, it is that we shall
+find the noblest lessons of history;
+here it is that we must look for the
+causes, direct and indirect, which have
+modified the characters, and decided
+the fate of nations. To this imperishable
+possession it is that the philosopher
+appeals for the corroboration of
+his theory, as it is to it also that the
+statesman ought to look for the regulation
+of his practice. Religion, property,
+science, commerce, literature,
+whatever can civilize and instruct
+rude mankind, whatever can embellish
+life in its more advanced condition,
+even till it exhibit the wonders of
+which it is now the theatre, may be
+referred to this subject, and are comprised
+under this denomination. The
+importance of history has been the
+theme of many a pen, but we question
+whether it has ever been more beautifully
+described than in the following
+passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Enough has been said, I think, to
+show that history contains no mean treasures;
+that, as being the biography of a
+nation, it partakes of the richness and variety
+of those elements which make up a
+nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness
+in the final cause of all human thought
+and action, God's glory and man's perfection,
+that is the measure of the greatness
+of history. Whatever there is of variety
+and intense interest in human nature, in
+its elevation, whether proud as by nature,
+or sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering,
+whether blessed or unblessed, a
+martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
+reverses, in its varied adventures, in its
+yet more varied powers, its courage and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page146" id="page146" title="146"></a>its patience, its genius and its wisdom,
+its justice and its love, that also is the
+measure of the interest and variety of history.
+The treasures indeed are ample,
+but we may more reasonably fear whether
+we may have strength and skill to win
+them.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In passing we may observe, after
+Dr Arnold, that the most important
+bearing of a particular institution
+upon the character of a nation is not
+always limited to the effect which is
+most obvious; few who have watched
+the proceedings in our courts of justice
+can doubt that, in civil cases, the
+interference of a jury is often an obstacle,
+and sometimes an insurmountable
+obstacle, to the attainment of justice.
+Dr Arnold's remarks on this subject
+are entitled to great attention:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The effect,&quot; he says, &quot;of any particular
+arrangement of the judicial power, is seen
+directly in the greater or less purity with
+which justice is administered; but there is
+a further effect, and one of the highest
+importance, in its furnishing to a greater
+or less portion of the nation one of the
+best means of moral and intellectual culture&mdash;the
+opportunity, namely, of exercising
+the functions of a judge. I mean,
+that to accustom a number of persons to
+the intellectual exercise of attending to,
+and weighing, and comparing evidence, and
+to the moral exercise of being placed in a
+high and responsible situation, invested
+with one of God's own attributes, that of
+judgment, and having to determine with
+authority between truth and falsehood,
+right and wrong, is to furnish them with
+very high means of moral and intellectual
+culture&mdash;in other words, it is providing
+them with one of the highest kinds of
+education. And thus a judicial constitution
+may secure a pure administration of
+justice, and yet fail as an engine of national
+cultivation, where it is vested in the
+hands of a small body of professional men,
+like the old French parliament. While,
+on the other hand, it may communicate
+the judicial office very widely, as by our
+system of juries, and thus may educate, if
+I may so speak, a very large portion of
+the nation, but yet may not succeed in
+obtaining the greatest certainty of just
+legal decisions. I do not mean that our
+jury system does not succeed, but it is
+conceivable that it should not. So, in
+the same way, different arrangements of
+the executive and legislative powers should
+be always regarded in this twofold aspect&mdash;as
+effecting their direct objects, good
+government and good legislation; and as
+educating the nation more or less extensively,
+by affording to a greater or less
+number of persons practical lessons in
+governing and legislating.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>History is an account of the common
+purpose pursued by some one of
+the great families of the human race.
+It is the biography of a nation; as
+the history of a particular sect, or a
+particular body of men, describes the
+particular end which the sect or body
+was instituted to pursue, so history,
+in its more comprehensive sense, describes
+the paramount object which
+the first and sovereign society&mdash;the
+society to which all others are
+necessarily subordinate&mdash;endeavours to attain.
+According to Dr Arnold, a
+nation's life is twofold, external and
+internal. Its external life consists
+principally in wars. &quot;Here history
+has been sufficiently busy. The wars
+of the human race have been recorded
+when every thing else has perished.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold
+justly observes, is calculated to contract
+and enfeeble the understanding.
+It is a pedantic love of detail, with an
+indifference to the result, for which
+alone it can be considered valuable.
+It is the mistake, into which men
+are perpetually falling, of the means
+for the end. There are people to
+whom the tragedies of Sophocles
+are less precious than the Scholiast
+on Lycophron, and who prize the
+speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because
+they may fling light on the dress
+of an Athenian citizen. The same
+tendency discovers itself in other pursuits.
+Oxen are fattened into plethoras
+to encourage agriculture, and men
+of station dress like grooms, and bet
+like blacklegs, to keep up the breed
+of horses. It is true that such evils
+will happen when agriculture is encouraged,
+and a valuable breed of
+horses cherished; but they are the
+consequences, not the cause of such a
+state of things. So the disciples of
+the old philosophers drank hemlock to
+acquire pallid countenances&mdash;but they
+are as far from obtaining the wisdom
+of their masters by this adventitious
+resemblance, as the antiquarian is
+from the historian. To write well
+about the past, we must have a vigorous
+and lively perception of the present.
+This, says Dr Arnold, is the
+merit of Mitford. It is certainly the
+only one he possesses; a person more
+totally unqualified for writing history
+at all&mdash;to say nothing of the history of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page147" id="page147" title="147"></a>Greece&mdash;it is difficult for us, aided as
+our imagination may be by the works
+of our modern writers, to conceive.
+But Raleigh, whom he quotes afterwards,
+is indeed a striking instance of
+that combination of actual experience
+with speculative knowledge which
+all should aim at, but which it seldom
+happens that one man in a generation
+is fortunate enough to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>From the sixteenth century, the
+writers of history begin to assume a
+different character from that of their
+predecessors. During the middle ages,
+the elements of society were fewer and
+less diversified. Before that time the
+people were nothing. Popes, emperors,
+kings, nobles, bishops, knights,
+are the only materials about which
+the writer of history cared to know or
+enquire. Perhaps some exception to
+this rule might be found in the historians
+of the free towns of Italy; but
+they are few and insignificant. After
+that period, not only did the classes
+of society increase, but every class
+was modified by more varieties of
+individual life. Even within the last
+century, the science of political economy
+has given a new colouring to
+the thoughts and actions of large
+communities, as the different opinions held
+by its votaries have multiplied them into
+distinct and various classes. Modern
+historians, therefore, may be
+divided into two classes; the one describing
+a state of society in which the
+elements are few; the other the times
+in which they were more numerous.
+As a specimen of the first order, he
+selects Bede. Bede was born in 674,
+fifty years after the flight of Mahomet
+from Mecca. He died in 755, two or
+three years after the victory of Charles
+Martel over the Saracens. His ecclesiastical
+history, in five books, describes
+the period from Augustine's arrival in
+Kent, 597.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Arnold's dissertation on Bede
+involves him in the discussion of a
+question on which much skill and ability
+have been exercised. We allude
+to the question of miracles. &quot;The
+question,&quot; says he, &quot;in Bede takes
+this form&mdash;What credit is to be attached
+to the frequent stories of miracles
+or wonders which occur in his
+narrative?&quot; He seizes at once upon
+the difficulty, without compromise or
+evasion. He makes a distinction
+between a wonder and a miracle: &quot;to
+say that all recorded wonders are false,
+from those recorded by Herodotus to
+the latest reports of animal magnetism,
+would be a boldness of assertion
+wholly unjustifiable.&quot; At the same
+time he thinks the character of Bede,
+added to the religious difficulty, may
+incline us to limit miracles to the
+earliest times of Christianity, and refuse
+our belief to all which are reported
+by the historians of subsequent
+centuries. He then proceeds to consider
+the questions which suggest
+themselves when we read Matthew
+Paris, or still more, any of the French,
+German, or Italian historians of the
+same period:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The thirteenth century contains in it,
+at its beginning, the most splendid period
+of the Papacy, the time of Innocent the
+Third; its end coincides with that great
+struggle between Boniface the Eighth and
+Philip the Fair, which marks the first
+stage of its decline. It contains the reign
+of Frederick the Second, and his long
+contest with the popes in Italy; the foundation
+of the orders of friars, Dominican
+and Franciscan; the last period of the
+crusades, and the age of the greatest glory
+of the schoolmen. Thus, full of matters of
+interest as it is, it will yet be found that
+all its interest is more or less connected
+with two great questions concerning the
+church; namely, the power of the priesthood
+in matters of government and in
+matters of faith; the merits of the contest
+between the Papacy and the kings of
+Europe; the nature and character of that
+influence over men's minds which affected
+the whole philosophy of the period, the
+whole intellectual condition of the Christian
+world.&quot;&mdash;P. 138.</p></div>
+
+<p>The pretensions and corruptions of
+the Church are undoubtedly the chief
+object to which, at this period, the attention
+of the reader must be attracted.
+&quot;Is the church system of Innocent
+III. in faith or government the
+system of the New Testament?&quot; Is the
+difference between them inconsiderable,
+such as may be accounted for by
+the natural progress of society, or does
+the rent extend to the foundation?
+&quot;The first century,&quot; says Dr Arnold,
+&quot;is to determine our judgment of the
+second and of all subsequent centuries.
+It will not do to assume that the
+judgment must be interpreted by the
+very practices and opinions, the merits
+of which it has to try.&quot; As a specimen
+of the chroniclers, he selects
+Philip de Comines, almost the last
+great writer of his class. In him is
+<a class="pagenum" name="page148" id="page148" title="148"></a>exemplified one of the peculiar distinctions
+of attaching to modern history the
+importance of attending to genealogies.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;For instance, Comines records the marriage
+of Mary, duchess of Burgundy, daughter
+and sole heiress of Charles the Bold, with
+Maximilian, archduke of Austria. This
+marriage, conveying all the dominions of
+Burgundy to Maximilian and his heirs, established
+a great independent sovereign
+on the frontiers of France, giving to him
+on the north, not only the present kingdoms
+of Holland and Belgium, but large
+portions of what is now French territory,
+the old provinces of Artois and French
+Flanders, French Hainault and French
+Luxemburg; while on the east it gave
+him Franche Comt&eacute;, thus yielding him a
+footing within the Jura, on the very banks
+of the Sa&ocirc;ne. Thence ensued in after
+ages, when the Spanish branch of the
+house of Austria had inherited this part
+of its dominions&mdash;the long contests
+which deluged the Netherlands with
+blood, the campaigns of King William
+and Luxembourg, the nine years of efforts,
+no less skilful than valiant, in which
+Marlborough broke his way through the
+fortresses of the iron frontier. Again,
+when Spain became in a manner French
+by the accession of the House of Bourbon,
+the Netherlands reverted once more to
+Austria itself; and from thence the powers
+of Europe advanced, almost in our own
+days, to assail France as a republic; and
+on this ground, on the plains of Fleurus,
+was won the first of those great victories
+which, for nearly twenty years, carried the
+French standards triumphantly over Europe.
+Thus the marriage recorded by
+Comines has been working busily down to
+our very own times: it is only since the
+settlement of 1814, and that more recent
+one of 1830, that the Netherlands have
+ceased to be effected by the union of
+Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian
+of Austria&quot;&mdash;P. 148.</p></div>
+
+<p>Again, in order to understand the
+contest which Philip de Comines records
+between a Frenchman and a
+Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
+must go back to the dark and bloody
+page in the annals of the thirteenth
+century, which relates the extinction
+of the last heir of the great Swabian
+race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of
+Anjou, the fit and unrelenting instrument
+of Papal hatred&mdash;the dreadful
+expiation of that great crime by the
+Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of
+the House of Anjou in Sicily, the
+crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna,
+the new contest occasioned by
+her adoption&mdash;all these events must
+be known to him who would understand
+the expedition of Charles
+VIII. The following passage is an admirable
+description of the reasons which
+lend to the pages of Philip de Comines
+a deep and melancholy interest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The Memoirs of Philip de Comines
+terminate about twenty years before the
+Reformation, six years after the first voyage
+of Columbus. They relate, then, to
+a tranquil period immediately preceding a
+period of extraordinary movement; to the
+last stage of an old state of things, now on
+the point of passing away. Such periods,
+the lull before the burst of the hurricane,
+the almost oppressive stillness which
+announces the eruption, or, to use Campbell's
+beautiful image&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>are always, I think, full of a very deep interest.
+But it is not from the mere force
+of contrast with the times that follow, nor
+yet from the solemnity which all things
+wear when their dissolution is fast approaching&mdash;the
+interest has yet another
+source; our knowledge, namely, that in
+that tranquil period lay the germs of the
+great changes following, taking their shape
+for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly,
+while all wore an outside of unconsciousness.
+We, enlightened by experience,
+are impatient of this deadly slumber;
+we wish in vain that the age could
+have been awakened to a sense of its condition,
+and taught the infinite preciousness
+of the passing hour. And as, when a man
+has been cut off by sudden death, we are
+curious to know whether his previous
+words or behaviour indicated any sense of
+his coming fate, so we examine the records
+of a state of things just expiring, anxious
+to observe whether, in any point, there
+may be discerned an anticipation of the
+great future, or whether all was blindness
+and insensibility. In this respect, Comines'
+Memoirs are striking from their perfect
+unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
+ages had been already sounded, yet Comines
+has no other notions than such as
+they had tended to foster; he describes
+their events, their characters, their relations,
+as if they were to continue for centuries.
+His remarks are such as the
+simplest form of human affairs gives birth
+to; he laments the instability of earthly
+fortune, as Homer notes our common mortality,
+or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue
+between Solon and Cr&oelig;sus, when
+the philosopher assured the king, that to
+be rich was not necessarily to be happy.
+But, resembling Herodotus in his simple
+morality, he is utterly unlike him in another
+point; for whilst Herodotus speaks
+freely and honestly of all men, without respect
+<a class="pagenum" name="page149" id="page149" title="149"></a>of persons, Philip de Comines praises
+his master Louis the Eleventh as one of
+the best of princes, although he witnessed
+not only the crimes of his life, but the miserable
+fears and suspicions of his latter
+end, and has even faithfully recorded them.
+In this respect Philip de Comines is in no
+respect superior to Froissart, with whom
+the crimes committed by his knights and
+great lords never interfere with his general
+eulogies of them: the habit of deference
+and respect was too strong to be
+broken, and the facts which he himself relates
+to their discredit, appear to have
+produced on his mind no impression.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>We now enter upon a period which
+may be called the modern part of modern
+history, the more complicated
+period, in contradistinction to the
+more simple state of things which, up
+to this moment, has occupied the student's
+attention. It is impossible to
+read, without deep regret, the passage
+in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention&mdash;&quot;if
+life and health be spared
+him, to enter into minute details;
+selecting some one country as the principal
+subject of his enquiries, and illustrating
+the lessons of history for the
+most part from its particular experience.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He proceeds, however, to the performance
+of the task immediately before
+him. After stating that the great
+object, the <span lang="el" title="teleiotaton telos">&tau;&epsilon;&lambda;&epsilon;&iota;&omicron;&tau;&alpha;&tau;&omicron;&nu; &tau;&epsilon;&lambda;&omicron;&sigmaf;</span>, of history
+is that which most nearly touches the
+inner life of civilized man, he pauses
+for a while at the threshold before
+he enters into the sanctuary, and undoubtedly
+some external knowledge
+is requisite before we penetrate into
+its recesses: we want some dwelling-place,
+as it were, for the mind, some
+local habitation in which our ideas
+may be arranged, some topics that
+may be firmly grasped by the memory,
+and on which the understanding may
+confidently rest; and thus it is that
+geography, even with a view to other
+purposes, must engross, in the first
+instance, a considerable share of our
+attention. The sense in which Dr
+Arnold understands a knowledge of
+geography, is explained in the following
+luminous and instructive commentary:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;I said that geography held out one
+hand to geology and physiology, while she
+held out the other to history. In fact,
+geology and physiology themselves are
+closely connected with history. For instance,
+what lies at the bottom of that
+question which is now being discussed
+every where, the question of the corn-laws,
+but the geological fact that England is
+more richly supplied with coal-mines than
+any other country in the world? what has
+given a peculiar interest to our relations
+with China, but the physiological fact,
+that the tea-plant, which is become so necessary
+to our daily life, has been cultivated
+with equal success in no other climate
+or country? what is it which threatens the
+permanence of the union between the northern
+and southern states of the American
+confederacy, but the physiological fact, that
+the soil and climate of the southern states
+render them essentially agricultural, while
+those of the northern states, combined
+with their geographical advantages as to
+sea-ports, dispose them no less naturally
+to be manufacturing and commercial?
+The whole character of a nation may be
+influenced by its geology and physical geography.
+But for the sake of its mere
+beauty and liveliness, if there were no
+other consideration, it would be worth our
+while to acquire this richer view of geography.
+Conceive only the difference between
+a ground-plan and a picture. The
+mere plan geography of Italy gives us its
+shape, as I have observed, and the position of
+its towns; to these it may add a semicircle
+of mountains round the northern boundary
+to represent the Alps, and another
+long line stretching down the middle of the
+country to represent the Apennines. But
+let us carry on this a little further, and
+give life and meaning and harmony to
+what is at present at once lifeless and confused.
+Observe, in the first place, how the
+Apennine line, beginning from the southern
+extremity of the Alps, runs across
+Italy to the very edge of the Adriatic, and
+thus separates naturally the Italy proper of
+the Romans, from Cisalpine Gaul. Observe
+again, how the Alps, after running
+north and south, where they divide Italy
+from France, turn then away to the eastward,
+running almost parallel to the
+Apennines, till they too touch the head of
+the Adriatic, on the confines of Istria.
+Thus between these two lines of mountains
+there is enclosed one great basin or plain;
+enclosed on three sides by mountains, open
+only on the east to the sea. Observe how
+widely it spreads itself out, and then see
+how well it is watered. One great river
+flows through it in its whole extent, and
+this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
+descending towards it on either side, from
+the Alps on the one side, and from the
+Apennines on the other. Who can wonder
+that this large and rich and well-watered
+plain should be filled with flourishing
+cities, or that it should have been contended
+for so often by successive invaders?
+<a class="pagenum" name="page150" id="page150" title="150"></a>Then descending into Italy proper, we
+find the complexity of its geography quite
+in accordance with its manifold political
+division. It is not one simple central
+ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of
+level country on either side between it and
+the sea, nor yet is it a chain rising immediately
+from the sea on one side, like the
+Andes in South America, and leaving
+room, therefore, on the other side for
+wide plains of table-land, and rivers with
+a sufficient length of course to become at
+last great and navigable. It is a back-bone
+thickly set with spines of unequal length,
+some of them running out at regular distances
+parallel to each other, but others
+twisted so strangely that they often run
+for a long way parallel to the back-bone,
+or main ridge, and interlace with one
+another in a maze almost inextricable.
+And, as if to complete the disorder, in
+those spots where the spines of the Apennines,
+being twisted round, run parallel to
+the sea and to their own central chain,
+and thus leave an interval of plain between
+their bases and the Mediterranean, volcanic
+agency has broken up the space thus
+left with other and distinct groups of hills
+of its own creation, as in the case of Vesuvius,
+and of the Alban hills near Rome.
+Speaking generally then, Italy is made up
+of an infinite multitude of valleys pent in
+between high and steep hills, each forming
+a country to itself, and cut off by natural
+barriers from the others. Its several
+parts are isolated by nature, and no art of
+man can thoroughly unite them. Even
+the various provinces of the same kingdom
+are strangers to each other; the Abruzzi
+are like an unknown world to the inhabitants
+of Naples, insomuch, that when two
+Neapolitan naturalists, not ten years since,
+made an excursion to visit the Majella, one
+of the highest of the central Apennines,
+they found there many medicinal plants
+growing in the greatest profusion, which
+the Neapolitans were regularly in the habit
+of importing from other countries, as
+no one suspected their existence within
+their own kingdom. Hence arises the
+romantic character of Italian scenery: the
+constant combination of a mountain outline
+and all the wild features of a mountain
+country, with the rich vegetation of a
+southern climate in the valleys. Hence
+too the rudeness, the pastoral simplicity,
+and the occasional robber habits, to be
+found in the population; so that to this day
+you may travel in many places for miles
+together in the plains and valleys without
+passing through a single town or village;
+for the towns still cluster on the mountain
+sides, the houses nestling together on some
+scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them
+and sinking down abruptly below them,
+the very 'congesta manu pr&aelig;ruptis oppida
+saxis' of Virgil's description, which he
+even then called 'antique walls,' because
+they had been the strongholds of the prim&aelig;val
+inhabitants of the country, and
+which are still inhabited after a lapse of so
+many centuries, nothing of the stir and
+movement of other parts of Europe having
+penetrated into these lonely valleys, and
+tempted the people to quit their mountain
+fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling
+in the plain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been led on further than I intended,
+but I wished to give an example of
+what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
+of geography, which brings the whole
+character of a country before our eyes,
+and enables us to understand its influence
+upon the social and political condition of
+its inhabitants. And this knowledge, as
+I said before, is very important to enable
+us to follow clearly the external revolutions
+of different nations, which we want to comprehend
+before we penetrate to what has
+been passing within.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>This introductory discussion is followed
+by a rapid sketch of the different
+struggles for power and independence
+in Europe during the three last
+centuries. The general tendency of
+this period has been to consolidate
+severed nations into great kingdoms;
+but this tendency has been checked
+when the growth of any single power
+has become excessive, by the combined
+efforts of other European nations.
+Spain, France, England, and Austria,
+all in their turns have excited the
+jealousy of their neighbours, and have
+been attacked by their confederate
+strength. But in 1793 the peace of
+Europe was assailed by an enemy still
+more dangerous and energetic&mdash;still
+more destructive&mdash;we doubt whether
+in the English language a more vivid
+description is to be found of the evil,
+its progress, and its termination, than
+Dr Arnold has given in the following
+passage:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Ten years afterwards there broke out
+by far the most alarming danger of universal
+dominion, which had ever threatened
+Europe. The most military people in
+Europe became engaged in a war for their
+very existence. Invasion on the frontiers,
+civil war and all imaginable horrors raging
+within, the ordinary relations of life went
+to wreck, and every Frenchman became a
+soldier. It was a multitude numerous
+as the hosts of Persia, but animated by the
+courage and skill and energy of the old
+Romans. One thing alone was wanting,
+that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
+<a class="pagenum" name="page151" id="page151" title="151"></a>wanted, to enable them to conquer the
+world&mdash;a general and a ruler like himself.
+There was wanted a master hand to restore
+and maintain peace at home, and to
+concentrate and direct the immense military
+resources of France against her foreign
+enemies. And such an one appeared in
+Napoleon. Pacifying La Vend&eacute;e, receiving
+back the emigrants, restoring the
+church, remodelling the law, personally
+absolute, yet carefully preserving and
+maintaining all the great points which the
+nation had won at the Revolution, Napoleon
+united in himself, not only the power,
+but the whole will of France; and that
+power and will were guided by a genius
+for war such as Europe had never seen
+since C&aelig;sar. The effect was absolutely
+magical. In November 1799, he was made
+First Consul; he found France humbled
+by defeats, his Italian conquests lost, his
+allies invaded, his own frontier threatened.
+He took the field in May 1800, and in June
+the whole fortune of the war was changed,
+and Austria driven out of Lombardy by the
+victory of Marengo. Still the flood of
+the tide rose higher and higher, and every
+successive wave of its advance swept away
+a kingdom. Earthly state has never
+reached a prouder pinnacle than when
+Napoleon, in June 1812, gathered his army
+at Dresden&mdash;that mighty host, unequalled
+in all time, of 450,000, not men merely,
+but effective soldiers, and there received
+the homage of subject kings. And now,
+what was the principal adversary of this
+tremendous power? by whom was it
+checked, and resisted, and put down? By
+none, and by nothing, but the direct and
+manifest interposition of God. I know of
+no language so well fitted to describe that
+victorious advance to Moscow, and the
+utter humiliation of the retreat, as the
+language of the prophet with respect to
+the advance and subsequent destruction of
+the host of Sennacherib. 'When they
+arose early in the morning, behold they
+were all dead corpses,' applies almost literally
+to that memorable night of frost, in
+which twenty thousand horses perished, and
+the strength of the French army was
+utterly broken. Human instruments, no
+doubt, were employed in the remainder of
+the work; nor would I deny to Germany
+and to Prussia the glories of the year
+1813, nor to England the honour of her
+victories in Spain, or of the crowning victory
+of Waterloo. But at the distance of
+thirty years, those who lived in the time of
+danger and remember its magnitude, and
+now calmly review what there was in human
+strength to avert it, must acknowledge,
+I think, beyond all controversy, that the
+deliverance of Europe from the dominion
+of Napoleon was effected neither by Russia,
+nor by Germany, nor by England, but
+by the hand of God alone.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The question, whether some races
+of men possess an inherent superiority
+over others, is mooted by Dr Arnold,
+in his dissertation on military science.
+Without laying down any universal
+rule, it may be stated that such a
+superiority can be predicated of no
+European nation. Frederick the Great
+defeated the French at Rosbach, as
+easily as Napoleon overcame the Prussians
+at Jena. If Marlborough was
+uniformly successful, William III.
+was always beaten by Luxembourg,
+and the Duke of Cumberland by
+D'Etr&eacute;es and Saxe. It seems, therefore,
+a fair inference, that no civilized
+European nation possesses over its
+neighbours that degree of superiority
+which greater genius in the general,
+or greater discipline in the troops of
+its antagonists, will not be sufficient
+to counteract. The defeat of the
+Vend&eacute;ans in France, by the soldiers
+of the garrison of Mentz; and the
+admirable conduct of our own Sepoys
+under British generals, are, no doubt,
+strong instances to show the prodigious
+importance of systematic discipline.
+Still, we cannot quite coincide
+with Dr Arnold's opinion on this
+subject. We are quite ready to admit&mdash;who,
+indeed, for a moment
+would deny?&mdash;in military as well as
+in all other subjects, the value of professional
+attainments and long experience.
+We cannot, however, consider
+them superior to those great
+qualities of our nature which discipline
+may regulate and embellish, but
+which it can never destroy or supersede.
+As every man is bound to form
+his own opinion on religious matters,
+though he may not be a priest, every
+man is obliged to defend his country
+when invaded, though he may not be
+a soldier. Nor can the miseries which
+such a state of things involves, furnish
+any argument against its necessity.
+All war must be attended with misfortunes,
+which freeze the blood and
+make the soul sick in their contemplation;
+but these very misfortunes
+deter those who wield the reins of
+empire from appealing wantonly to
+its determination. The resistance of
+Saragossa was not the less glorious, it
+does not the less fire the heart of every
+reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
+because it was not conducted
+<a class="pagenum" name="page152" id="page152" title="152"></a>according to the strict forms of military
+tactics, because citizens and even
+women participated in its fame. The
+inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish
+nation for its oppressor&mdash;which wore
+down the French armies, which no
+severities, no violence, no defeat,
+could subdue&mdash;will be, as long as time
+shall last, a terrible lesson to ambitious
+conquerors. They will learn that
+there is in the fury of an insulted nation
+a danger which the most exquisite
+military combinations cannot remove,
+which the most perfectly served artillery
+cannot sweep away, before which
+all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
+lines of fortification in the world are
+useless&mdash;and compared with which the
+science of the commander is pedantry,
+and strategy but a word. They will
+discover that something more than
+mechanical power, however great&mdash;something
+more than the skill of the
+practised officer, or the instinct of well-trained
+soldiers, are requisite for success&mdash;where
+every plain is a Marathon,
+and every valley a Thermopyl&aelig;.</p>
+
+<p>Would to God that the same reproach
+urged against the Spanish nation&mdash;that
+they defended their native
+soil irregularly&mdash;that they fought like
+freemen rather than like soldiers&mdash;that
+they transgressed the rules of war by
+defending one side of a street while
+the artillery of the enemy, with its
+thousand mouths, was pouring death
+upon them from the other&mdash;that they
+struggled too long, that they surrendered
+too late, that they died too
+readily, could have been applied to
+Poland&mdash;one fearful instance of success
+would have been wanting to encourage
+the designs of despotism!</p>
+
+<p>Some of the rights of war are next
+considered&mdash;that of sacking a town
+taken by assault, and of blockading a
+town defended, not by the inhabitants,
+but by a military garrison&mdash;are next
+examined;&mdash;in both these cases the
+penalty falls upon the innocent. The
+Homeric description of a town taken
+by assault, is still applicable to modern
+warfare:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p><span lang="el" title="andras men kteinoysi, polin de te pyr amathynei">&alpha;&nu;&delta;&rho;&alpha;&sigmaf; &mu;&epsilon;&nu;
+&kappa;&tau;&epsilon;&iota;&nu;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigma;&iota;, &pi;&omicron;&lambda;&iota;&nu; &delta;&epsilon; &tau;&epsilon; &pi;&upsilon;&rho; &alpha;&mu;&alpha;&theta;&upsilon;&nu;&epsilon;&iota;</span><br />
+<span lang="el" title="tekna de t' alloi agoysi, bathyz&ocirc;noys te gynaikas.">&tau;&epsilon;&kappa;&nu;&alpha; &delta;&epsilon; &tau;' &alpha;&lambda;&lambda;&omicron;&iota;
+&alpha;&gamma;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigma;&iota;, &beta;&alpha;&theta;&upsilon;&zeta;&omega;&nu;&omicron;&upsilon;&sigmaf; &tau;&epsilon; &gamma;&upsilon;&nu;&alpha;&iota;&kappa;&alpha;&sigmaf;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>The unhappy fate of Genoa is thus
+beautifully related&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Some of you, I doubt not, remember
+Genoa; you have seen that queenly city
+with its streets of palaces, rising tier above
+tier from the water, girdling with the long
+lines of its bright white houses the
+vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of
+which is marked by a huge natural mole of
+rock, crowned by its magnificent lighthouse
+tower. You remember how its
+white houses rose out of a mass of fig and
+olive and orange trees, the glory of its old
+patrician luxury. You may have observed
+the mountains, behind the town, spotted
+at intervals by small circular low towers;
+one of which is distinctly conspicuous
+where the ridge of the hills rises to its
+summit, and hides from view all the country
+behind it. Those towers are the forts
+of the famous lines, which, curiously resembling
+in shape the later Syracusan walls
+enclosing Epipal&aelig;, converge inland from
+the eastern and western extremities of
+the city, looking down&mdash;the western line
+on the valley of the Polcevera, the eastern,
+on that of the Bisagno&mdash;till they meet,
+as I have said, on the summit of the mountains,
+where the hills cease to rise from
+the sea, and become more or less of a
+table land, running off towards the interior,
+at the distance, as well as I remember,
+of between two and three miles from the
+outside of the city. Thus a very large
+open space is enclosed within the lines,
+and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming
+a vast intrenched camp, holding not
+so much a garrison as an army. In the
+autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven
+the French out of Lombardy and Piedmont;
+their last victory of Fossano or
+Genola had won the fortress of Coni or
+Cunco, close under the Alps, and at the
+very extremity of the plain of the Po;
+the French clung to Italy only by their
+hold of the Riviera of Genoa&mdash;the narrow
+strip of coast between the Apennines
+and the sea, which extends from the frontiers
+of France almost to the mouth of
+the Arno. Hither the remains of the
+French force were collected, commanded
+by General Massena; and the point of
+chief importance to his defence was the
+city of Genoa. Napoleon had just returned
+from Egypt, and was become First
+Consul; but he could not be expected to
+take the field till the following spring, and
+till then Massena was hopeless of relief
+from without&mdash;every thing was to depend
+on his own pertinacity. The strength of
+his army made it impossible to force it in
+such a position as Genoa; but its very
+numbers, added to the population of a
+great city, held out to the enemy a hope
+of reducing it by famine; and as Genoa
+derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord
+Keith, the British naval commander-in-chief
+in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance
+of his naval force to the Austrians;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page153" id="page153" title="153"></a>and, by the vigilance of his cruizers, the
+whole coasting trade right and left along
+the Riviera, was effectually cut off. It is
+not at once that the inhabitants of a great
+city, accustomed to the daily sight of well-stored
+shops and an abundant market, begin
+to realize the idea of scarcity; or that
+the wealthy classes of society, who have
+never known any other state than one of
+abundance and luxury, begin seriously to
+conceive of famine. But the shops were
+emptied; and the storehouses began to be
+drawn upon; and no fresh supply, or hope
+of supply, appeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Winter passed away and spring returned,
+so early and so beautiful on that garden-like
+coast, sheltered as it is from the north
+winds by its belts of mountains, and open
+to the full rays of the southern sun. Spring
+returned and clothed the hill-sides within
+the lines with its fresh verdure. But that
+verdure was no longer the mere delight of
+the careless eye of luxury, refreshing the
+citizens by its liveliness and softness, when
+they rode or walked up thither from the city
+to enjoy the surpassing beauty of the prospect.
+The green hill-sides were now visited
+for a very different object; ladies of the
+highest rank might be seen cutting up
+every plant which it was possible to turn to
+food, and bearing home the common weeds
+of our road-sides as a most precious treasure.
+The French general pitied the distresses
+of the people; but the lives and
+strength of his garrison seemed to him more
+important than the lives of the Genoese,
+and such provisions as remained were reserved,
+in the first place, for the French army.
+Scarcity became utter want, and want became
+famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of
+that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest
+tenements of its humblest poor, death was
+busy; not the momentary death of battle or
+massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence,
+but the lingering and most miserable death
+of famine. Infants died before their parents'
+eyes, husbands and wives lay down to
+expire together. A man whom I saw at
+Genoa in 1825, told me, that his father and
+two of his brothers had been starved to
+death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till
+in the month of June, when Napoleon had
+already descended from the Alps into the
+plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable,
+and Massena surrendered. But
+before he did so, twenty thousand innocent
+persons, old and young, women and children,
+had died by the most horrible of deaths
+which humanity can endure. Other horrors
+which occurred besides during this blockade,
+I pass over; the agonizing death of twenty
+thousand innocent and helpless persons requires
+nothing to be added to it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, is it right that such a tragedy as
+this should take place, and that the laws of
+war should be supposed to justify the authors
+of it? Conceive having been an officer
+in Lord Keith's squadron at that time, and
+being employed in stopping the food which
+was being brought for the relief of such misery.
+For the thing was done deliberately;
+the helplessness of the Genoese was known;
+their distress was known; it was known
+that they could not force Massena to surrender;
+it was known that they were dying
+daily by hundreds, yet week after week,
+and month after month, did the British ships
+of war keep their iron watch along all the
+coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any
+article of provision could escape their vigilance.
+One cannot but be thankful that
+Nelson was spared from commanding at this
+horrible blockade of Genoa.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, on which side the law of nations
+should throw the guilt of most atrocious
+murder, is of little comparative
+consequence, or whether it should attach
+it to both sides equally; but that the deliberate
+starving to death of twenty thousand
+helpless persons should be regarded
+as a crime in one or both of the parties
+concerned in it, seems to me self-evident.
+The simplest course would seem to be,
+that all non-combatants should be allowed
+to go out of a blockaded town, and that
+the general who should refuse to let them
+pass, should be regarded in the same light
+as one who were to murder his prisoners,
+or who were to be in the habit of butchering
+women and children. For it is not
+true that war only looks to the speediest
+and most effectual way of attaining its
+object; so that, as the letting the inhabitants
+go out would enable the garrison to maintain
+the town longer, the laws of war
+authorize the keeping them in and starving
+them. Poisoning wells might be a
+still quicker method of reducing a place;
+but do the laws of war therefore sanction
+it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to
+be placing the guilt of the individuals concerned
+in the two cases which I am going
+to compare, on an equal footing; it would
+be most unjust to do so&mdash;for in the one
+case they acted, as they supposed, according
+to a law which made what they did
+their duty. But, take the cases themselves,
+and examine them in all their circumstances;
+the degree of suffering inflicted&mdash;the
+innocence and helplessness of the
+sufferers&mdash;the interests at stake&mdash;and the
+possibility of otherwise securing them;
+and if any man can defend the lawfulness
+in the abstract of the starvation of the
+inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also
+to establish the lawfulness of the massacres
+of September.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>We rejoice to find that the great
+authority of Colonel W. Napier&mdash;an
+<a class="pagenum" name="page154" id="page154" title="154"></a>authority of which posterity will know
+the value&mdash;is arrayed on the side of
+those who think that war, the best
+school, as after all it must often be, of
+some of our noblest virtues, need not
+be always the cause of such atrocities.</p>
+
+<p>This enquiry shows us how the
+centre of external movement in Europe
+has varied; but it is not merely
+to the territorial struggle that our
+attention should be confined&mdash;mighty
+principles, Christian truth, civil freedom,
+were often partially at issue on
+one side, or on the other, in the different
+contests which the gold and
+steel of Europe were set in motion to
+determine; hence the necessity of considering
+not only the moral power,
+but the economical and military
+strength of the respective countries.
+It requires no mean share of political
+wisdom to mitigate an encounter with
+the financial difficulties by which
+every contest is beset. The evils of
+the political and social state of France
+were brought to a head by the dilapidation
+of its revenues, and occasioned,
+not the Revolution itself, but the
+disorders by which it was accompanied.
+And more than half of our national
+revenue is appropriated to the payment
+of our own debt; in other words,
+every acre of land, besides the support
+of its owner and the actual demands of
+the State, is encumbered with the support
+of two or three persons who represent
+the creditors of the nation;
+and every man who would have laboured
+twelve hours, had no national
+debt existed, is now obliged to toil
+sixteen for the same remuneration:
+such a state of things may be necessary,
+but it certainly requires investigation.</p>
+
+<p>Other parts of the law of nations,
+the maritime law especially, require
+improvement. Superficial men are
+apt to overlook the transcendent importance
+of error on these subjects
+by which desolation may be spread
+from one quarter of the globe to the
+other. As no man can bear long the
+unanimous disapprobation of his fellows,
+no nation can long set at defiance
+the voice of a civilized world.
+But we return to history in military
+operations. A good map is essential
+to this study. For instance, to understand
+the wars of Frederick the
+Great, it is not enough to know that
+he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen,
+and Cunersdorf&mdash;that he was victorious
+at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf,
+and Prague&mdash;that he was opposed
+by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff&mdash;we
+must also comprehend the
+situation of the Prussian dominions
+with regard to those of the allies&mdash;the
+importance of Saxony as covering
+Prussia on the side of Austria&mdash;the
+importance of Silesia as running into
+the Austrian frontier, and flanking a
+large part of Bohemia, should also
+be considered&mdash;this will alone enable
+us to account for Frederick's attack
+on Saxony, and his pertinacity in
+keeping possession of Silesia; nor
+should it be forgotten, that the military
+positions of one generation are
+not always those of the next, and that
+the military history of one period will
+be almost unintelligible, if judged according
+to the roads and fortresses of
+another. For instance, St Dizier in
+Champagne, which arrested Charles
+the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly
+untenable&mdash;Turin, so celebrated
+for the sieges it has sustained, is an
+open town, while Alexandria is the
+great Piedmontese fortress. The addition
+of Paris to the list of French
+strongholds, is, if really intended, a
+greater change than any that has
+been enumerated. This discussion
+leads to an allusion to mountain warfare,
+which has been termed the poetry
+of the military art, and of which the
+struggle in Switzerland in 1799,
+when the eastern part of that country
+was turned into a vast citadel, defended
+by the French against Suwaroff,
+is a most remarkable instance, as well
+as the most recent. The history by
+General Mathieu Dumas of the campaign
+in 1799 and 1800, is referred
+to as containing a good account and
+explanation of this branch of military
+science.</p>
+
+<p>The internal history of Europe
+during the three hundred and forty
+years which have elapsed since the
+middle ages, is the subject now proposed
+for our consideration. To the
+question&mdash;What was the external object
+of Europe during any part of this
+period? the answer is obvious, that it
+was engaged in resisting the aggression
+of Spain, or France, or Austria.
+But if we carry our view to the moral
+world, do we find any principle equally
+obvious, and a solution as satisfactory?
+By no means. We may, indeed, say,
+with apparent precision, that during
+the earliest part of this epoch, Europe
+<a class="pagenum" name="page155" id="page155" title="155"></a>was divided between the champions
+and antagonists of religion, as, during
+its latter portion, it was between the
+enemies and supporters of political
+reformation. But a deeper analysis
+will show us that these names were
+but the badges of ideas, always complex,
+sometimes contradictory&mdash;the
+war-cry of contending parties, by
+whom the reality was now forgotten,
+or to whom, compared with other
+purposes, it was altogether subordinate.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for instance, the exercise of
+political power. Is a state free in
+proportion to the number of its subjects
+who are admitted to rank among
+its citizens, or to the degree in which
+its recognised citizens are invested
+with political authority? In the latter
+point of view, the government of
+Athens was the freest the world has
+ever seen. In the former it was a
+most exclusive and jealous oligarchy.
+&quot;For a city to be well governed,&quot;
+says Aristotle in his Politics, &quot;those
+who share in its government must be
+free from the care of providing for
+their own support. This,&quot; he adds,
+&quot;is an admitted truth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again, the attentive reader can
+hardly fail to see that, in the struggle
+between Pompey and C&aelig;sar, C&aelig;sar
+represented the popular as Pompey
+did the aristocratical party, and that
+Pompey's triumph would have been
+attended, as Cicero clearly saw, by
+the domination of an aristocracy in
+the shape most oppressive and intolerable.
+The government of Rome,
+after several desperate struggles, had
+degenerated into the most corrupt oligarchy,
+in which all the eloquence of
+Cicero was unable to kindle the faintest
+gleam of public virtue. Owing
+to the success of C&aelig;sar, the civilized
+world exchanged the dominion of
+several tyrants for that of one, and
+the opposition to his design was the
+resistance of the few to the many.</p>
+
+<p>Or we may take another view of
+the subject. By freedom do we mean
+the absence of all restraint in private
+life, the non-interference by the state
+in the details of ordinary intercourse?
+According to such a view, the old
+government of Venice and the present
+government of Austria, where debauchery
+is more than tolerated, would
+be freer than the Puritan commonwealths
+in North America, where
+dramatic representations were prohibited
+as impious, and death was the
+legal punishment of fornication.</p>
+
+<p>These are specimens of the difficulties
+by which we are beset, when we
+endeavour to obtain an exact and
+faithful image from the troubled medium
+through which human affairs are
+reflected to us. Dr Arnold dwells on
+this point with his usual felicity of
+language and illustration.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;This inattention to altered circumstances,
+which would make us be Guelfs
+in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries,
+because the Guelf cause had been right in
+the eleventh or twelfth, is a fault of most
+universal application in all political questions,
+and is often most seriously mischievous.
+It is deeply seated in human nature,
+being, in fact, no other than an
+exemplification of the force of habit. It
+is like the case of a settler, landing in
+a country overrun with wood and undrained,
+and visited therefore by excessive
+falls of rain. The evil of wet, and damp,
+and closeness, is besetting him on every
+side; he clears away the woods, and he
+drains his land, and he, by doing so, mends
+both his climate and his own condition.
+Encouraged by his success, he perseveres
+in his system; clearing a country is with
+him synonymous with making it fertile and
+habitable; and he levels, or rather sets fire
+to, his forests without mercy. Meanwhile,
+the tide is turned without his observing
+it; he has already cleared enough, and
+every additional clearance is a mischief;
+damp and wet are no longer the evil most
+to be dreaded, but excessive drought.
+The rains do not fall in sufficient quantity;
+the springs become low, the rivers become
+less and less fitted for navigation. Yet
+habit blinds him for a long while to the
+real state of the case; and he continues
+to encourage a coming mischief in his
+dread of one that is become obsolete. We
+have been long making progress on our
+present tack; yet if we do not go about
+now, we shall run ashore. Consider the
+popular feeling at this moment against
+capital punishment; what is it but continuing
+to burn the woods, when the
+country actually wants shade and moisture?
+Year after year, men talked of the
+severity of the penal code, and struggled
+against it in vain. The feeling became
+stronger and stronger, and at last effected
+all, and more than all, which it had at first
+vainly demanded; yet still, from mere
+habit, it pursues its course, no longer to
+the restraining of legal cruelty, but to the
+injury of innocence and the encouragement
+of crime, and encouraging that worse
+evil&mdash;a sympathy with wickedness justly
+punished rather than with the law, whether
+<a class="pagenum" name="page156" id="page156" title="156"></a>of God or man, unjustly violated. So
+men have continued to cry out against the
+power of the Crown after the Crown had
+been shackled hand and foot; and to
+express the greatest dread of popular
+violence long after that violence was exhausted,
+and the anti-popular party was
+not only rallied, but had turned the tide
+of battle, and was victoriously pressing
+upon its enemy.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The view which Dr Arnold gives
+of the parties in England during the
+sixteenth century&mdash;that great epoch
+of English genius&mdash;is remarkable for
+its candour and moderation. He considers
+the distinctions which then
+prevailed in England as political rather
+than religious, &quot;inasmuch as
+they disputed about points of church
+government, without any reference to
+a supposed priesthood; and because
+even those who maintained that one
+or another form was to be preferred,
+because it was of divine appointment,
+were influenced in their interpretation
+of the doubtful language of the Scriptures
+by their own strong persuasion
+of what that language could not but
+mean to say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he then concludes by the unanswerable
+remark, that in England,
+according to the theory of the constitution
+during the sixteenth century,
+church and state were one. The proofs
+of this proposition are innumerable&mdash;not
+merely the act by which the supremacy
+was conferred on Henry VIII.&mdash;not
+merely the powers, almost unlimited,
+in matters ecclesiastical, delegated
+to the king's vicegerent, that
+vicegerent being a layman&mdash;not merely
+the communion established by the sole
+authority of Edward VI.&mdash;without the
+least participation in it by any bishop
+or clergyman; but the still more conclusive
+argument furnished by the
+fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline,
+or ritual of our church, was
+established except by the power of
+Parliament, and the power of Parliament
+alone&mdash;nay, more, that they
+were established in direct defiance of
+the implacable opposition of the bishops,
+by whom, being then Roman
+Catholics, the English Church, on the
+accession of Elizabeth, was represented&mdash;to
+which the omission of the
+names of the Lords Spiritual in the
+Act of Uniformity, which is said to be
+enacted by the &quot;Queen's Highness,&quot;
+with the assent of the Lords and Commons
+in Parliament assembled, is a
+testimony, at once unanswerable and
+unprecedented. We have dwelt with
+the more anxiety on this part of Dr
+Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete
+answer to the absurd opinions
+concerning the English Church, which
+it has been of late the object of a few
+bigots, unconsciously acting as the
+tools of artful and ambitious men, to
+propagate, and which would lead, by
+a direct and logical process, to the
+complete overthrow of Protestant faith
+and worship. Such, then, being the
+state of things &quot;recognized on all
+hands, church government was no
+light matter, but one which essentially
+involved in it the government of the
+state; and the disputing the Queen's
+supremacy, was equivalent to depriving
+her of one of the most important
+portions of her sovereignty, and committing
+half of the government of the
+nation to other hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the accession of Henry VIII.,
+the most profound tranquillity prevailed
+over England. The last embers
+of those factions by which, during his
+father's reign, the peace of the nation
+had been disturbed rather than endangered,
+were quenched by the vigilance
+and severity of that able monarch;
+during the wars of the Roses, the
+noblest blood in England had been
+poured out on the field or on the
+scaffold, and the wealth of the most
+opulent proprietors had been drained
+by confiscation. The parties of York
+and Lancaster were no more&mdash;the
+Episcopal and Puritan factions were
+not yet in being&mdash;every day diminished
+the influence of the nobles&mdash;the
+strength of the Commons was in its
+infancy&mdash;the Crown alone remained,
+strong in its own prerogative, stronger
+still in the want of all competitors.
+Crime after crime was committed by the
+savage tyrant who inherited it; he was
+ostentatious&mdash;the treasures of the nation
+were lavished at his feet; he was
+vindictive&mdash;the blood of the wise, the
+noble, and the beautiful, was shed, like
+water, to gratify his resentment; he
+was rapacious&mdash;the accumulations of
+ancient piety were surrendered to glut
+his avarice; he was arbitrary&mdash;and his
+proclamations were made equivalent
+to acts of Parliament; he was fickle&mdash;and
+the religion of the nation was
+changed to gratify his lust. To all
+this the English people submitted, as
+to some divine infliction, in silence and
+<a class="pagenum" name="page157" id="page157" title="157"></a>consternation&mdash;the purses, lives, liberties,
+and consciences of his people
+were, for a time, at his disposal. During
+the times of his son and his eldest
+daughter, the general aspect of affairs
+was the same. But, though the hurricane
+of royal caprice and bigotry
+swept over the land, seemingly without
+resistance, the sublime truths which
+were the daily subject of controversy,
+and the solid studies with which the
+age was conversant, penetrated into
+every corner of the land, and were
+incorporated with the very being of
+the nation. Then, as the mist of
+doubt and persecution which had covered
+Mary's throne cleared away, the
+intellect of England, in all its health,
+and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed
+in the men and women of the
+Elizabethan age:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;To say,&quot; observes Dr Arnold, &quot;that
+the Puritans were wanting in humility
+because they did not acquiesce in the state
+of things which they found around them,
+is a mere extravagance, arising out of a
+total misapprehension of the nature of
+humility, and of the merits of the feeling
+of veneration. All earnestness and depth
+of character is incompatible with such a
+notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated
+with some great truth, and compelled,
+as it were, to obey it, cannot listen
+to every one who may be indifferent to it,
+or opposed to it. There is a voice to
+which he already owes obedience, which
+he serves with the humblest devotion,
+which he worships with the most intense
+veneration. It is not that such feelings
+are dead in him, but that he has bestowed
+them on one object, and they are claimed
+for another. To which they are most due
+is a question of justice; he may be wrong
+in his decision, and his worship may be
+idolatrous; but so also may be the worship
+which his opponents call upon him to
+render. If, indeed, it can be shown that
+a man admires and reverences nothing, he
+may be justly taxed with want of humility;
+but this is at variance with the very notion
+of an earnest character; for its earnestness
+consists in its devotion to some one
+object, as opposed to a proud or contemptuous
+indifference. But if it be meant that
+reverence in itself is good, so that the more
+objects of veneration we have the better is
+our character, this is to confound the
+essential difference between veneration and
+love. The excellence of love is its universality;
+we are told that even the highest
+object of all cannot be loved if inferior
+objects are hated.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Opinions, in the meanwhile, not
+very favourable to established authority
+in the state, and marked by a rooted
+antipathy to ecclesiastical pretensions,
+were rapidly gaining proselytes in
+the nation, and even at the court.
+But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth,
+and, still more, the great veneration
+and esteem for that magnanimous
+princess, which were for many years
+the ruling principle&mdash;we might almost
+say, the darling passion&mdash;of Englishmen,
+enabled her to keep at bay the
+dangerous animosities which her miserable
+successor had neither dexterity
+to conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In
+his time the cravings, moral and intellectual,
+of the English nation discovered
+themselves in forms not to be
+mistaken&mdash;some more, some less formidable
+to established government;
+but all announcing that the time was
+come when concession to them was
+inevitable. No matter whether it
+was the Puritan who complained of
+the rags of popery, or the judge who
+questioned the prerogative of the sovereign,
+or the patriot who bewailed the
+profligate expenditure of James's polluted
+court, or the pamphleteer whom
+one of our dramatists has described so
+admirably, or the hoarse murmur of
+the crowd execrating the pusillanimous
+murder of Raleigh&mdash;whosesoever the
+voice might be, whatever shape it
+might assume, petition, controversy,
+remonstrance, address, impeachment,
+libel, menace, insurrection, the language
+it spoke was uniform and unequivocal;
+it demanded for the people
+a share in the administration of their
+government, civil and ecclesiastical&mdash;it
+expressed their determination to
+make the House of Commons a reality.</p>
+
+<p>The observations that follow are
+fraught with the most profound wisdom,
+and afford an admirable exemplification
+of the manner in which
+history should be read by those who
+wish to find in it something more than
+a mere register of facts and anecdotes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Under these circumstances there were
+now working together in the same party
+many principles which, as we have seen, are
+sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance
+the popular principle, that the influence
+of many should not be overborne
+by that of one, was working side by side
+with the principle of movement, or the
+desire of carrying on the work of the Reformation
+to the furthest possible point,
+and not only the desire of completing the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page158" id="page158" title="158"></a>Reformation, but that of shaking off the
+manifold evils of the existing state of
+things, both political and moral. Yet it is
+remarkable that the spirit of intellectual
+movement stood as it were hesitating
+which party it ought to join: and as the
+contest went on, it seemed rather to incline
+to that party which was most opposed
+to the political movement. This
+is a point in the state of English party in
+the seventeenth century which is well
+worth noticing, and we must endeavour
+to comprehend it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We might think, <i>a priori</i>, that the spirit
+of political, and that of intellectual,
+and that of religious movement, would go
+on together, each favouring and encouraging
+the other. But the Spirit of intellectual
+movement differs from the other
+two in this, that it is comparatively one with
+which the mass of mankind have little sympathy.
+Political benefits all men can appreciate;
+and all good men, and a great
+many more than we might well dare to
+call good, can appreciate also the value,
+not of all, but of some religious truth
+which to them may seem all: the way to
+obtain God's favour and to worship Him
+aright, is a thing which great bodies of
+men can value, and be moved to the most
+determined efforts if they fancy that they
+are hindered from attaining to it. But
+intellectual movement in itself is a thing
+which few care for. Political truth may
+be dear to them, so far as it effects their
+common well-being; and religious truth
+so far as they may think it their duty to
+learn it; but truth abstractedly, and because
+it is truth, which is the object, I suppose,
+of the pure intellect, is to the mass
+of mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the
+workings of the intellect come even to be
+regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we
+have got, we say, what we want, and we
+are well contented with it; why should we
+be kept in perpetual restlessness, because
+you are searching after some new truths
+which, when found, will compel us to derange
+the state of our minds in order to
+make room for them. Thus the democracy
+of Athens was afraid of and hated
+Socrates; and the poet who satirized
+Cleon, knew that Cleon's partizans, no less
+than his own aristocratical friends, would
+sympathize with his satire when directed
+against the philosophers. But if this hold
+in political matters, much more does it
+hold religiously. The two great parties
+of the Christian world have each their own
+standard of truth, by which they try all
+things: Scripture on the one hand, the
+voice of the church on the other. To
+both, therefore, the pure intellectual
+movement is not only unwelcome, but they
+dislike it. It will question what they will
+not allow to be questioned; it may arrive
+at conclusions which they would regard as
+impious. And, therefore, in an age of
+religious movement particularly, the spirit
+of intellectual movement soon finds
+itself proscribed rather than countenanced.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>In the extract which follows, the
+pure and tender morality of the sentiment
+vies with the atmosphere of fine
+writing that invests it. The passage
+is one which Plato might have
+envied, and which we should imagine
+the most hardened and successful of
+our modern apostates cannot read
+without some feeling like contrition
+and remorse. Fortunate indeed were
+the youth trained to virtue by such a
+monitor, and still more fortunate the
+country where such a duty was confided
+to such a man:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;I have tried to analyze the popular
+party: I must now endeavour to do the
+same with the party opposed to it. Of
+course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly
+at different times; when it is
+in the ascendant, its vilest elements are
+sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,&mdash;just
+men, wise men, noble-minded men,&mdash;then
+refuse to take part with it. But
+when it is humbled, and the opposite side
+begins to imitate its practices, then again
+many of the best and noblest spirits return
+to it, and share its defeat though they
+abhorred its victory. We must distinguish,
+therefore, very widely, between the
+anti-popular party in 1640, before the
+Long Parliament met, and the same party
+a few years, or even a few months, afterwards.
+Now, taking the best specimens
+of this party in its best state, we can
+scarcely admire them too highly. A man
+who leaves the popular cause when it is
+triumphant, and joins the party opposed
+to it, without really changing his principles
+and becoming a renegade, is one of
+the noblest characters in history. He
+may not have the clearest judgment, or
+the firmest wisdom; he may have been
+mistaken, but, as far as he is concerned
+personally, we cannot but admire him.
+But such a man changes his party not to
+conquer but to die. He does not allow
+the caresses of his new friends to make
+him forget that he is a sojourner with
+them, and not a citizen: his old friends
+may have used him ill, they may be dealing
+unjustly and cruelly: still their faults,
+though they may have driven him into
+exile, cannot banish from his mind the
+consciousness that with them is his true
+home: that their cause is habitually just
+and habitually the weaker, although now
+<a class="pagenum" name="page159" id="page159" title="159"></a>bewildered and led astray by an unwonted
+gleam of success. He protests so
+strongly against their evil that he chooses
+to die by their hands rather than in their
+company; but die he must, for there is no
+place left on earth where his sympathies
+can breathe freely; he is obliged to leave
+the country of his affections, and life elsewhere
+is intolerable. This man is no renegade,
+no apostate, but the purest of
+martyrs: for what testimony to truth can
+be so pure as that which is given uncheered
+by any sympathy; given not
+against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing
+enemies. And such a martyr
+was Falkland!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Others who fall off from a popular party
+in its triumph, are of a different character;
+ambitious men, who think that
+they become necessary to their opponents
+and who crave the glory of being able to
+undo their own work as easily as they
+had done it: passionate men, who, quarrelling
+with their old associates on some
+personal question, join the adversary in
+search of revenge; vain men, who think
+their place unequal to their merits, and
+hope to gain a higher on the opposite side:
+timid men, who are frightened as it were
+at the noise of their own guns, and the
+stir of actual battle&mdash;who had liked to
+dally with popular principles in the parade
+service of debating or writing in quiet
+times, but who shrink alarmed when both
+sides are become thoroughly in earnest:
+and again, quiet and honest men, who
+never having fully comprehended the general
+principles at issue, and judging only
+by what they see before them, are shocked
+at the violence of their party, and think
+that the opposite party is now become innocent
+and just, because it is now suffering
+wrong rather than doing it. Lastly,
+men who rightly understand that good
+government is the result of popular and
+anti-popular principles blended together,
+rather than of the mere ascendancy of
+either; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent
+either from going too far, and to
+throw their weight into the lighter scale:
+wise men and most useful, up to the moment
+when the two parties are engaged
+in actual civil war, and the question is&mdash;which
+shall conquer? For no man can
+pretend to limit the success of a party,
+when the sword is the arbitrator: he who
+wins in that game does not win by halves:
+and therefore the only question then is,
+which party is on the whole the best, or
+rather perhaps the least evil; for as one
+must crush the other, it is at least desirable
+that the party so crushed should be
+the worse.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Dr Arnold&mdash;rightly, we hope&mdash;assumes,
+that in lectures addressed
+to Englishmen and Protestants, it is
+unnecessary to vindicate the principles
+of the Revolution; it would, indeed,
+be an affront to any class of
+educated Protestant freemen, to argue
+that our present constitution was
+better than a feudal monarchy, or the
+religion of Tillotson superior to that
+of Laud&mdash;in his own words, &quot;whether
+the doctrine and discipline of our Protestant
+Church of England, be not
+better and truer than that of Rome.&quot;
+He therefore supposes the Revolution
+complete, the Bill of Rights and the
+Toleration Act already passed, the
+authority of King William recognized
+in England and in Scotland, while in
+Ireland the party of King James was
+still predominant. He then bids us
+consider the character and object of
+the parties by which Great Britain
+was then divided; on the side of the
+Revolution were enlisted the great
+families of our aristocracy, and the
+bulk of the middle classes. The faction
+of James included the great mass
+of country gentlemen, the lower orders,
+and, (after the first dread of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed
+away,) except in a very few instances,
+the parochial and teaching clergy;
+civil and religious liberty was the
+motto of one party&mdash;hereditary right
+and passive obedience, of the other.
+As the Revolution had been bloodless,
+it might have been supposed that its
+reward would have been secure, and
+that our great deliverer would have
+been allowed to pursue his schemes
+for the liberty of Europe, if not without
+opposition, at least without hostility.
+But the old Royalist party had
+been surprised and confounded, not
+broken or altogether overcome. They
+rallied&mdash;some from pure, others from
+selfish and sordid motives&mdash;under the
+banner to which they had been so
+long accustomed; and, though ultimately
+baffled, they were able to place
+in jeopardy, and in some measure to
+fling away the advantages which the
+blood and treasure of England had
+been prodigally lavished to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>The conquest of Ireland was followed
+by that terrible code against
+the Catholics, the last remnant of
+which is now obliterated from our
+statute-book. It is singular that this
+savage proscription should have been
+the work of the party at whose head
+stood the champion of toleration.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page160" id="page160" title="160"></a>The account which Mr Burke has
+given of it, and for the accuracy of
+which he appeals to Bishop Burnet,
+does not entirely coincide with the
+view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke
+says&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;A party in this nation, enemies to the
+system of the Revolution, were in opposition
+to the government of King William.
+They knew that our glorious deliverer
+was an enemy to all persecution. They
+knew that he came to free us from slavery
+and Popery, out of a country where a
+third of the people are contented Catholics,
+under a Protestant government. He
+came, with a part of his army composed of
+those very Catholics, to overset the power
+of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of
+a tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty
+served in every way, and by all persons,
+by a manly adherence to its own principles.
+Whilst freedom is true to itself,
+every thing becomes subject to it, and its
+very adversaries are an instrument in its
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The party I speak of (like some
+amongst us who would disparage the best
+friends of their country) resolved to
+make the King either violate his principles
+of toleration, or incur the odium of protecting
+Papists. They, therefore, brought
+in this bill, and made it purposely wicked
+and absurd, that it might be rejected.
+The then court-party discovering their
+game, turned the tables on them, and returned
+their bill to them stuffed with still
+greater absurdities, that its loss might lie
+upon its original authors. They, finding
+their own ball thrown back to them, kicked
+it back again to their adversaries.
+And thus this act, loaded with the double
+injustice of two parties, neither of whom
+intended to pass what they hoped the
+other would be persuaded to reject, went
+through the legislature, contrary to the
+real wish of all parts of it, and of all
+the parties that composed it. In this manner
+these insolent and profligate factions, as if
+they were playing with balls and counters,
+made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties
+of their fellow-creatures. Other acts
+of persecution have been acts of malice.
+This was a subversion of justice from wantonness.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Whether Dr Arnold's theory be
+applicable or not to this particular
+case, it furnishes but too just a solution
+of Irish misgovernment in general.
+It is, that excessive severity
+toward conquered rebels, is by no
+means inconsistent with the principles
+of free government, or even
+with the triumph of a democracy.
+The truth of this fact is extorted from
+us by all history, and may be accounted
+for first, by the circumstance, that
+large bodies of men are less affected
+than individuals, by the feelings of
+shame and a sense of responsibility;
+and, secondly, that conduct the most
+selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion
+of which would be enough to
+brand an individual with everlasting
+infamy, assumes, when adopted by
+popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike
+wisdom and patriotic inflexibility.
+The main cause of the difference
+with which the lower orders in
+France and England regarded the
+Revolution in their respective countries,
+is to be found in the different
+nature of the evils which they were
+intended to remove. The English
+Revolution was merely political&mdash;the
+French was social also; the benefits of
+the Bill of Rights, great and inestimable
+as they were, were such as demanded
+some knowledge and reflection to appreciate&mdash;they
+did not come home
+directly to the business and bosom of
+the peasant; it was only in rare and
+great emergencies that he could become
+sensible of the rights they gave,
+or of the means of oppression they
+took away: while the time-honoured
+dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells
+were menaced and assailed, nothing
+but the most senseless tyranny
+could render the cottage insecure;
+but the abolition of the seignorial
+rights in France, free communication
+between her provinces, equal taxation,
+impartial justice&mdash;these were blessings
+which it required no economist to
+illustrate, and no philosopher to explain.
+Every labourer in France,
+whose sweat had flowed for the benefit
+of others, whose goods had been
+seized by the exactors of the Taille
+and the Gabelle,<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1" href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> the fruits of whose
+soil had been wasted because he was
+<a class="pagenum" name="page161" id="page161" title="161"></a>not allowed to sell them at the neighbouring
+market, whose domestic happiness
+had been polluted, or whose
+self-respect had been lowered by injuries
+and insults, all retribution for
+which was hopeless, might well be
+expected to value these advantages
+more than life itself. But when the
+principles of the Revolution were
+triumphant, and the House of Brunswick
+finally seated on the throne of
+this country, it remains to be seen
+what were, during the eighteenth century,
+the fruits of this great and lasting
+victory. The answer is a melancholy
+one. Content with what had
+been achieved, the nation seems at
+once to have abandoned all idea of
+any further moral or intellectual progress.
+In private life the grossest
+ignorance and debauchery were written
+upon our social habits, in the
+broadest and most legible characters.
+In public life, we see chicanery in the
+law, apathy in the Church, corruption
+in Parliament, brutality on the seat of
+justice; trade burdened with a great
+variety of capricious restrictions; the
+punishment of death multiplied with
+the most shocking indifference; the
+state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment&mdash;which
+might be, and in
+those days often was, the lot of the
+most innocent of mankind&mdash;became in
+itself a tremendous punishment; the
+press virtually shackled; education
+every where wanted, and no where to
+be found.</p>
+
+<p>The laws that were passed resemble
+the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and
+even vindictive oligarchy, rather than
+institutions adopted for the common
+welfare, by the representatives of a
+free people. Turn to any of the works
+which describe the manners of the
+age, from the works of Richardson or
+Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill
+and the melancholy remonstrances of
+Cowper, and you are struck with the
+delineation of a state and manners, and
+a tone of feeling which, in the present
+day, appears scarcely credible.
+&quot;'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten
+me with the law?&quot; says Lovelace to
+the victim of his calculating and sordid
+violence. Throughout the volumes
+of these great writers, the features
+perpetually recur of insolence, corruption,
+violence, and debauchery in the
+one class, and of servility and cunning
+in the other. It is impossible for the
+worst quality of an aristocracy&mdash;nominally,
+to be sure, subject to the restraint
+of the law, but practically, almost
+wholly exempt from its operation&mdash;to
+be more clearly and more
+fearfully represented. The South Sea
+scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the
+disgraceful expeditions on the coast of
+France; the conduct of Lord George
+Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt
+on Carthagena, the loss of Minorca,
+the convention of Closterseven,
+the insecurity of the high-roads, nay,
+of the public streets in the metropolis
+itself, all serve to show the deplorable
+condition into which the nation was
+fast sinking, abroad and at home, when
+the &quot;Great Commoner&quot; once more
+aroused its energies, concentrated its
+strength, and carried it to a higher
+pinnacle of glory than it has ever been
+the lot even of Great Britain to attain.
+Yet this effect was transient&mdash;the progress
+of corruption was checked, but
+the disease still lurked in the heart,
+and tainted the life-blood of the
+community. The orgies of Medmenham
+Abbey, the triumphs of Wilkes, and
+the loss of America, bear fatal testimony
+to the want of decency and disregard
+of merit in private as well as
+public life which infected Great Britain,
+polluting the sources of her domestic
+virtues, and bringing disgrace
+upon her arms and councils during
+the greater part of the eighteenth century.
+It is with a masterly review of
+this period of our history that Dr Arnold
+closes his analysis of the three last
+centuries. His remaining lecture is
+dedicated to the examination of historical
+evidence&mdash;a subject on which it is
+not our present intention to offer any
+commentary.</p>
+
+<p>To trace effects to their causes, is
+the object of all science; and by this
+object, as it is accomplished or incomplete,
+the progress of any particular
+science must be determined. The order
+of the moral is in reality as immutable
+as the laws of the physical world;
+and human actions are linked to their
+consequences by a necessity as inexorable
+<a class="pagenum" name="page162" id="page162" title="162"></a>as that which controls the
+growth of plants or the motion of the
+earth, though the connexion between
+cause and effect is not equally discernible.
+The depression of the nobles
+and the rise of the commons in England,
+after the statutes of alienation,
+were the result of causes as infallible
+in their operation as those which regulate
+the seasons and the tides. Repeated
+experiments have proved beyond
+dispute, that gold is heavier than
+iron. Is the superior value of gold to
+iron a fact more questionable? Yet is
+value a quality purely moral, and absolutely
+dependent on the will of man.
+The events of to-day are bound to
+those of yesterday, and those of to-morrow
+will be bound to those of to-day,
+no less certainly than the harvest
+of the present year springs from the
+grain which is the produce of former
+harvests. When by a severe and diligent
+analysis we have ascertained all
+the ingredients of any phenomenon,
+and have separated it from all that is
+foreign and adventitious, we know its
+true nature, and may deduce a general
+law from our experiment; for a general
+law is nothing more than an expression
+of the effect produced by the
+same cause operating under the same
+circumstances. In the reign of Louis
+XV., a Montmorency was convicted
+of an atrocious murder. He was punished
+by a short imprisonment in the
+Bastile. His servant and accomplice
+was, for the same offence at the same
+time, broken alive upon the wheel.
+Is the proposition, that the angles
+of a triangle are equal to two right
+angles, more certain than the ruin of a
+system under which such a state of
+things was tolerated? How, then, does
+it come to pass, that the same people
+who cling to one set of truths reject
+the other with obstinate incredulity?
+Cicero shall account for it:&mdash;&quot;Sensus
+nostros non parens, non nutrix,
+non poeta, non scena depravat; animis
+omnes tendentur insidi&aelig;.&quot; The discoveries
+of physical science, in the
+present day at least, allow little scope
+to prejudice and inclination. Whig
+and Tory, Radical and Conservative,
+agree, that fire will burn and water
+suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so far
+as we know, has ventured to call in
+question the truths established by Cuvier
+and La Place. But every proposition
+in moral or political science enlists
+a host of feelings in zealous support
+or implacable hostility; and the
+same system, according to the creed
+and prepossessions of the speaker, is
+put forward as self-evident, or stigmatized
+as chimerical. One set of people
+throw corn into the river and burn
+mills, in order to cheapen bread&mdash;another
+vote that sixteen shillings are
+equal to twenty-one, in order to support
+public credit&mdash;proceedings in no
+degree more reasonable than a denial
+that two and two make four, or using
+gunpowder instead of water to stop a
+conflagration. Again, in physical
+science, the chain which binds the
+cause to its effect is short, simple, and
+passes through no region of vapour
+and obscurity; in moral phenomena,
+it is long hidden and intertwined with
+the links of ten thousand other chains,
+which ramify and cross each other in
+a confusion which it requires no common
+patience and sagacity to unravel.
+Therefore it is that the lessons of history,
+dearly as they have been purchased,
+are forgotten and thrown away&mdash;therefore
+it is that nations sow in
+folly and reap in affliction&mdash;that
+thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed,
+and commerce fettered by
+vexatious restrictions, by those who
+live in one century, without enabling
+their descendants to become wiser or
+richer in the next. The death of
+Charles I. did not prevent the exile of
+James II., and, in spite of the disasters
+of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted
+fortune too often and too long. It
+is not, then, by the mere knowledge of
+separate facts that history can contribute
+to our improvement or our happiness;
+it would then exchange the
+character of philosophy treated by
+examples, for that of sophistry misleading
+by empiricism. The more systematic
+the view of human events
+which it enables us to gain, the more
+nearly does it approach its real office,
+and entitle itself to the splendid panegyric
+of the Roman statesman&mdash;&quot;Historia,
+testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita
+memori&aelig;, magistra vit&aelig;, nuntia vetustatis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But while we insist upon the certainty
+of those truths which a calm
+examination of history confirms, and
+the sure operation of those general
+laws by which Providence in its wisdom
+has ordained that the affairs of
+this lower world shall be controlled&mdash;let
+<a class="pagenum" name="page163" id="page163" title="163"></a>it not be supposed that we for a
+moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes
+took such pains to inculcate
+upon his countrymen, that fortune
+in human affairs is for a time omnipotent.
+That fortune, which &quot;erring
+men call chance,&quot; is the name which
+finite beings must apply to those secret
+and unknown causes which no human
+sagacity can penetrate or comprehend.
+What depends upon a few persons,
+observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed
+to chance; what arises from a great
+number, may often be accounted for
+by known and determinate causes;
+and he illustrates this position by the
+instance of a loaded die, the bias of
+which, however it may for a short
+time escape detection, will certainly
+in a great number of instances become
+predominant. The issue of a battle
+may be decided by a sunbeam or a
+cloud of dust. Had an heir been born
+to Charles II. of Spain&mdash;had the
+youthful son of Monsieur De Bouill&eacute;
+not fallen asleep when Louis XVI.
+entered Varennes&mdash;had Napoleon, on
+his return from Egypt, been stopped
+by an English cruizer&mdash;how different
+would have been the face of Europe.
+The <i>poco di piu</i> and <i>poco di meno</i>
+has, in such contingencies, an unbounded
+influence. The trade-winds
+are steady enough to furnish grounds
+for the most accurate calculation; but
+will any man in our climate venture
+to predict from what quarter, on any
+particular day, the wind may chance
+to blow?</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, in forming our judgment
+of human affairs, we must apply a
+&quot;Lesbian rule,&quot; instead of one that is
+inflexible. Here it is that the line is
+drawn between science, and the wisdom
+which has for its object the administration
+of human affairs. The
+masters of science explore a multitude
+of phenomena to ascertain a single
+cause; the statesman and legislator,
+engaged in pursuits &quot;hardliest reduced
+to axiom,&quot; examine a multitude
+of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon.
+The investigations, however,
+to which such questions lead, are singularly
+difficult, as they require an
+accurate analysis of the most complicated
+class of facts which can possibly
+engross our attention, and to the complete
+examination of which the faculties
+of any one man must be inadequate.
+The finest specimens of such
+enquiries which we possess are the
+works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu.
+The latter, indeed, may be
+called a great historian. He sought
+in every quarter for his account of
+those fundamental principles which
+are common to all governments, as
+well as of those peculiarities by which
+they are distinguished one from
+another. The analogy which reaches
+from the first dim gleam of civility
+to the last and consummate result of
+policy and intelligence, from the law
+of the Salian Franks to the Code
+Napoleon, it was reserved for him to
+discover and explain. He saw that,
+though the shape into which the expression
+of human thought and will
+was moulded as the family became a
+tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be
+fantastic and even monstrous&mdash;that
+the staple from which it unrolled itself
+must be the same. Treading in
+the steps of Vico, he more than realized
+his master's project, and in his
+immortal work (which, with all its faults,
+is a magnificent, and as yet unrivalled,
+trophy of his genius, and will serve as
+a landmark to future enquirers when
+its puny critics are not known enough
+to be despised) he has extracted from
+a chaos of casual observations, detached
+hints&mdash;from the principles concealed
+in the intricate system of Roman
+jurisprudence, or exposed in the
+rules which barely held together the
+barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany&mdash;from
+the manners of the polished
+Athenian, and from the usages
+of the wandering Tartar&mdash;from the
+rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions
+of refined society&mdash;a digest
+of luminous and coherent evidence,
+by which the condition of man, in the
+different stages of his social progress,
+is exemplified and ascertained. The
+loss of the History of Louis XI.&mdash;a
+work which he had projected, and of
+which he had traced the outline&mdash;is
+a disappointment which the reader of
+modern history can never enough deplore.</p>
+
+<p>The province of science lies in
+truths that are universal and immutable;
+that of prudence in second
+causes that are transient and subordinate.
+What is universally true is
+alone necessarily true&mdash;the knowledge
+that rests in particulars must be accidental.
+The theorist disdains experience&mdash;the
+empiric rejects principle.
+The one is the pedant who read Hannibal
+a lecture on the art of war; the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page164" id="page164" title="164"></a>other is the carrier who knows the
+road between London and York better
+than Humboldt, but a new road is
+prescribed to him and his knowledge
+becomes useless. This is the state of
+mind La Fontaine has described so
+perfectly in his story of the &quot;Cierge.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie<br /></span>
+<span>Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la m&ecirc;me envie;<br /></span>
+<span>Et nouvel Emp&eacute;docle, aux flammes condamn&eacute;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Par sa pure et propre folie,<br /></span>
+<span>Il se lan&ccedil;a d&eacute;dans&mdash;ce f&ucirc;t mal raisonn&eacute;,<br /></span>
+<span>Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The mere chemist or mathematician
+will apply his truths improperly; the
+man of detail, the mere empiric, will
+deal skilfully with particulars, while
+to all general truths he is insensible.
+The wise man, the philosopher in action,
+will use the one as a stepping-stone
+to the other, and acquire a vantage-ground
+from whence he will
+command the realms of practice and
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>History teems with instances that&mdash;although
+the general course of the
+human mind is marked out, and each
+succeeding phasis in which it exhibits
+itself appears inevitable&mdash;the human
+race cannot be considered, as Vico
+and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to
+look upon it, as a mass without intelligence,
+traversing its orbit according
+to laws which it has no power to modify
+or control. On such an hypothesis,
+Wisdom and Folly, Justice
+and Injustice, would be the same,
+followed by the same consequences
+and subject to the same destiny&mdash;no
+certain laws establishing invariable
+grounds of hope and fear, would keep
+the actions of men in a certain course,
+or direct them to a certain end; the
+feelings, faculties, and instincts of man
+would be useless in a world where the
+wise was always as the foolish, the
+just as the unjust, where calculation
+was impossible, and experience of no
+avail.</p>
+
+<p>Man is no doubt the instrument, but
+the unconscious instrument, of Providence;
+and for the end they propose to
+themselves, though not for the result
+which they attain, nations as well as
+individuals are responsible. Otherwise,
+why should we read or speak of
+history? it would be the feverish
+dream of a distempered imagination,
+full of incoherent ravings, a disordered
+chaos of antagonist illusions&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>&mdash;&mdash;&quot;A tale<br /></span>
+<span>Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,<br /></span>
+<span>Signifying nothing.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But on the contrary, it is in history
+that the lessons of morality are
+delivered with most effect. The priest
+may provoke our suspicion&mdash;the moralist
+may fail to work in us any practical
+conviction; but the lessons of
+history are not such as vanish in the
+fumes of unprofitable speculation, or
+which it is possible for us to mistrust,
+or to deride. Obscure as the dispensations
+of Providence often are, it
+sometimes, to use Lord Bacon's language&mdash;&quot;pleases
+God, for the confutation
+of such as are without God
+in the world, to write them in such
+text and capital letters that he who
+runneth by may read it&mdash;that is, mere
+sensual persons which hasten by God's
+judgments, and never tend or fix their
+cogitations upon them, are nevertheless
+in their passage and race urged to
+discern it.&quot; In all historical writers,
+philosophical or trivial, sacred or profane,
+from the meagre accounts of the
+monkish chronicler, no less than from
+the pages stamped with all the indignant
+energy of Tacitus, gleams forth
+the light which, amid surrounding
+gloom and injustice, amid the apparent
+triumph of evil, discovers the
+influence of that power which the
+heathens personified as Nemesis. Her
+tread, indeed, is often noiseless&mdash;her
+form may be long invisible&mdash;but the
+moment at length arrives when the
+measure of forbearance is complete;
+the echoes of her step vibrate upon
+the ear, her form bursts upon the eye,
+and her victim&mdash;be it a savage tyrant,
+or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical
+church, or a corrupt nation&mdash;perishes.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>&quot;Come quei che va di notte,<br /></span>
+<span>Che porta il lume dietro, <i>e a se non giova,</i><br /></span>
+<span><i>Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte</i>.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And as in daily life we rejoice to
+trace means directed to an end, and
+proofs of sagacity and instinct even
+among the lower tribes of animated
+nature, with how much greater delight
+do we seize the proofs vouchsafed
+to us in history of that eternal
+law, by which the affairs of the universe
+are governed? How much more
+do we rejoice to find that the order to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page165" id="page165" title="165"></a>which physical nature owes its existence
+and perpetuity, does not stop at
+the threshold of national life&mdash;that the
+moral world is not <i>fatherless</i>, and that
+man, formed to look before and after,
+is not abandoned to confusion and
+insecurity?</p>
+
+<p>Fertile and comprehensive indeed
+is the domain of history, comprising
+the whole region of probabilities
+within its jurisdiction&mdash;all the various
+shapes into which man has been cast&mdash;all
+the different scenes in which he
+has been called upon to act or suffer;
+his power and his weakness, his folly
+and his wisdom, his virtues in their
+meridian height, his vices in the
+lowest abyss of their degradation, are
+displayed before us, in their struggles,
+vicissitudes, and infinitely diversified
+combinations: an inheritance beyond
+all price&mdash;a vast repository of
+fruitful and immortal truths. There
+is nothing so mean or so dignified;
+nothing so obscure or so glorious;
+no question so abstruse, no problem
+so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no
+situation so critical, of which we may
+not demand from history an account
+and elucidation. Here we find all that
+the toil, and virtues, and sufferings,
+and genius, and experience, of our
+species have laboured for successive
+generations to accumulate and preserve.
+The fruit of their blood, of
+their labour, of their doubts, and their
+struggles, is before us&mdash;a treasure that
+no malignity can corrupt, or violence
+take away. And above all, it is here
+that, when tormented by doubt, or
+startled by anomalies, stung by disappointment,
+or exasperated by injustice,
+we may look for consolation and
+encouragement. As we see the same
+events, that to those who witnessed
+them must have appeared isolated
+and capricious, tending to one great
+end, and accomplishing one specific
+purpose, we may learn to infer that
+those which appear to us most extraordinary,
+are alike subservient to a
+wise and benevolent dispensation.
+Poetry, the greatest of all critics has
+told us, has this advantage over history,
+that the lessons which it furnishes
+are not mixed and confined to
+particular cases, but pure and universal.
+Studied, however, in this spirit,
+history, while it improves the reason,
+may satisfy the heart, enabling us to
+await with patience the lesson of the
+great instructor, Time, and to employ
+the mighty elements it places within
+our reach, to the only legitimate purpose
+of all knowledge&mdash;&quot;The advancement
+of God's glory, and the
+relief of man's estate.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page166" id="page166" title="166"></a>
+<a name="bw328s2" id="bw328s2"></a><h2>POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.</h2>
+
+<h3>No. V.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE VICTORY FEAST.</h3>
+
+<p>[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which
+Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender philosophy
+which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the heroes
+introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where reminded of
+Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, <i>there is an under current
+of sentiment</i> which betrays the thoughtful <i>Northern</i> minstrel. This detracts
+from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation, but constitutes its very
+charm as an original composition. Its inspiration rises from a source purely
+Hellenic, but the streamlets it receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to
+change the metaphor) it has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the
+toning down of the colours betrays the German.]</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The stately walls of Troy had sunken,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;<br /></span>
+<span>The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Richly laden with the spoil,<br /></span>
+<span>Are on their lofty barks reclin'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Along the Hellespontine strand;<br /></span>
+<span>A gleesome freight the favouring wind<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Shall bear to Greece's glorious land;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And gleesome sounds the chaunted strain,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>As towards the household altars, now,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Each bark inclines the painted prow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>For Home shall smile again!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And there the Trojan women, weeping,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Sit ranged in many a length'ning row;<br /></span>
+<span>Their heedless locks, dishevell'd, sweeping<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.<br /></span>
+<span>No festive sounds that peal along,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><i>Their</i> mournful dirge can overwhelm;<br /></span>
+<span>Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Commingled, wails the ruin'd realm.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;Farewell, beloved shores!&quot; it said,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>&quot;From home afar behold us torn,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>By foreign lords as captives borne&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Ah, happy are the Dead!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And Calchas, while the altars blaze,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Invokes the high gods to their feast!<br /></span>
+<span>On Pallas, mighty or to raise<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Him, who wreathes around the land<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The girdle of his watery world,<br /></span>
+<span>And Zeus, from whose almighty hand<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The terror and the bolt are hurl'd.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Success at last awards the crown&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The long and weary war is past;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Time's destined circle ends at last&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And fall'n the Mighty Town!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The Son of Atreus, king of men,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The muster of the hosts survey'd,<br /></span>
+<span>How dwindled from the thousands, when<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Along Scamander first array'd!<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page167" id="page167" title="167"></a>With sorrow and the cloudy thought,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Great King's stately look grew dim&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>How few to Greece return with him!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Still let the song to gladness call,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>For those who yet their home shall greet!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>For them the blooming life is sweet:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Return is not for all!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Nor all who reach their native land<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>May long the joy of welcome feel&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Beside the household gods may stand<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Grim Murther with awaiting steel;<br /></span>
+<span>And they who 'scape the foe, may die<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Beneath the foul familiar glaive.<br /></span>
+<span>Thus He<a id="footnotetag2" name="footnotetag2" href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> to whose prophetic eye<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Her light the wise Minerva gave:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;Ah! blest whose hearth, to memory true,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The goddess keeps unstain'd and pure&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>For woman's guile is deep and sure,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And Falsehood loves the New!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By the best blood of Greece recaptured;<br /></span>
+<span>Round that fair form his glowing arms&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>(A second bridal)&mdash;wreathe enraptured.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Woe waits the work of evil birth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Revenge to deeds unblest is given!<br /></span>
+<span>For watchful o'er the things of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The eternal Council-Halls of Heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Yes, ill shall ever ill repay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Jove to the impious hands that stain<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Altar of Man's Hearth, again<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The doomer's doom shall weigh!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Well they, reserved for joy to day,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Cried out O&iuml;leus' valiant son,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;May laud the favouring gods who sway<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Our earth, their easy thrones upon;<br /></span>
+<span>Without a choice they mete our doom,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Our woe or welfare Hazard gives&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Patroclus slumbers in the tomb,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And all unharm'd Thersites lives.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>While luck and life to every one<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Blind Fate dispenses, well may they<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Enjoy the life and luck to day<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By whom the prize is won!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Yes, war will still devour the best!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Brother, remember'd in this hour!<br /></span>
+<span>His shade should be in feasts a guest,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whose form was in the strife a tower!<br /></span>
+<span>What time our ships the Trojan fired,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Thine arm to Greece the safety gave&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The prize to which thy soul aspired,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The crafty wrested from the brave.<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3" href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a><br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page168" id="page168" title="168"></a>Peace to thine ever-holy rest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Not thine to fall before the foe!<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Ajax alone laid Ajax low:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Ah&mdash;wrath destroys the best!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>To his dead sire&mdash;(the Dorian king)&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The bright-hair'd Pyrrhus<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4" href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> pours the wine:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Of every lot that life can bring,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>My soul, great Father, prizes thine.<br /></span>
+<span>Whate'er the goods of earth, of all,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The highest and the holiest&mdash;FAME!<br /></span>
+<span>For when the Form in dust shall fall,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>O'er dust triumphant lives the Name!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Brave Man, thy light of glory never<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Shall fade, while song to man shall last;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Living, soon from earth are pass'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>'THE DEAD&mdash;ENDURE FOR EVER!'&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;While silent in their grief and shame,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The conquer'd hear the conqueror's praise,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Quoth Tydeus' son, &quot;let Hector's fame,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>In me, his foe, its witness raise!<br /></span>
+<span>Who, battling for the altar-hearth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A brave defender, bravely fell&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>It takes not from the victor's worth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>If honour with the vanquish'd dwell.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Who falleth for the altar-hearth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>A rock and a defence laid low,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Shall leave behind him, in the foe,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The lips that speak his worth!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Lo, Nestor now, whose stately age<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Through threefold lives of mortals lives!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The laurel'd bowl, the kingly sage<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To Hector's tearful mother gives.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Drink&mdash;in the draught new strength is glowing,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The grief it bathes forgets the smart!<br /></span>
+<span>O Bacchus! wond'rous boons bestowing,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Oh how thy balsam heals the heart!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Drink&mdash;in the draught new vigour gloweth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The grief it bathes forgets the smart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And balsam to the breaking heart,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The healing god bestoweth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;As Niobe, when weeping mute,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To angry gods the scorn and prey,<br /></span>
+<span>But tasted of the charmed fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And cast despair itself away;<br /></span>
+<span>So, while unto thy lips, its shore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>This stream of life enchanted flows,<br /></span>
+<span>Remember'd grief, that stung before,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Sinks down to Leth&egrave;'s calm repose.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>So, while unto thy lips, its shore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The stream of life enchanted flows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Drown'd deep in Leth&egrave;'s calm repose,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The grief that stung before!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page169" id="page169" title="169"></a>Seized by the god&mdash;behold the dark<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And dreaming Prophetess<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5" href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> arise!<br /></span>
+<span>She gazes from the lofty bark,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Where Home's dim vapour wraps the skies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;A vapour, all of human birth!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As mists ascending, seen and gone,<br /></span>
+<span>So fade earth's great ones from the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And leave the changeless gods alone!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Behind the steed that skirs away,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Or on the galley's deck&mdash;sits Care!<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>To-morrow comes&mdash;and Life is where?<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>At least&mdash;we'll live to-day!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG.&mdash;A BALLAD.</h3>
+
+<p>[Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet grander
+one of the &quot;Fight with the Dragon&quot;) amongst those designed to depict and
+exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in &AElig;gidius Tschudi&mdash;a
+Swiss chronicler&mdash;and Schiller (who, as Hinrichs suggests,) probably met
+with it in the researches connected with the compositions of his drama, &quot;William
+Tell,&quot; appears to have adhered, with much fidelity, to the original narrative.]</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>At Aachen, in imperial state,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>In that time-hallow'd hall renown'd,<br /></span>
+<span>At solemn feast King Rudolf sate,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The day that saw the hero crown'd!<br /></span>
+<span>Bohemia and thy Palgrave, Rhine,<br /></span>
+<span>Give this the feast, and that the wine;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Arch Electoral Seven,<br /></span>
+<span>Like choral stars around the sun,<br /></span>
+<span>Gird him whose hand a world has won,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The anointed choice of Heaven.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>In galleries raised above the pomp,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Press'd crowd on crowd, their panting way;<br /></span>
+<span>And with the joy-resounding tromp,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Rang out the million's loud hurra!<br /></span>
+<span>For closed at last the age of slaughter,<br /></span>
+<span>When human blood was pour'd as water&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>LAW dawns upon the world!<a id="footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6" href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a><br /></span>
+<span>Sharp Force no more shall right the wrong,<br /></span>
+<span>And grind the weak to crown the strong&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>War's carnage-flag is furl'd!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>In Rudolf's hand the goblet shines&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And gaily round the board look'd he;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;And proud the feast, and bright the wines,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>My kingly heart feels glad to me!<br /></span>
+<span>Yet where the lord of sweet desire,<br /></span>
+<span>Who moves the heart beneath the lyre,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And dulcet Sound Divine?<br /></span>
+<span>Dear from my youth the craft of song,<br /></span>
+<span>And what as knight I loved so long,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>As Kaisar, still be mine.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page170" id="page170" title="170"></a>Lo, from the circle bending there,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>With sweeping robe the Bard appears,<br /></span>
+<span>As silver, white his gleaming hair,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Bleach'd by the many winds of years:<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;And music sleeps in golden strings&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The minstrel's hire, the LOVE he sings;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Well known to him the ALL<br /></span>
+<span>High thoughts and ardent souls desire!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>What would the Kaisar from the lyre<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Amidst the banquet-hall?&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The Great One smiled&mdash;&quot;Not mine the sway&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The minstrel owns a loftier power&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A mightier king inspires the lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Its hest&mdash;THE IMPULSE OF THE HOUR!<br /></span>
+<span>As through wide air the tempests sweep,<br /></span>
+<span>As gush the springs from mystic deep,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Or lone untrodden glen;<br /></span>
+<span>So from dark hidden fount within,<br /></span>
+<span>Comes SONG, its own wild world to win<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Amidst the souls of men!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And loud the music swept the ear:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Forth to the chase a Hero rode,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To hunt the bounding chamois-deer:<br /></span>
+<span>With shaft and horn the squire behind:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Through greensward meads the riders wind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>A small sweet bell they hear.<br /></span>
+<span>Lo, with the HOST, a holy man,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Before him strides the sacristan,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And the bell sounds near and near.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The noble hunter down-inclined<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His reverent head and soften'd eye,<br /></span>
+<span>And honour'd with a Christian's mind<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Christ who loves humility!<br /></span>
+<span>Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves<br /></span>
+<span>A brook&mdash;the rains had fed the waves,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And torrents from the hill.<br /></span>
+<span>His sandal shoon the priest unbound,<br /></span>
+<span>And laid the Host upon the ground,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And near'd the swollen rill!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;What wouldst thou, priest?&quot; the Count began,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As, marvelling much, he halted there.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Sir Count, I seek a dying man,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Sore hungering for the heavenly fare.<br /></span>
+<span>The bridge that once its safety gave,<br /></span>
+<span>Rent by the anger of the wave,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Drifts down the tide below.<br /></span>
+<span>Yet barefoot now, I will not fear<br /></span>
+<span>(The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Through the wild wave to go!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>He gave that priest the knightly steed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,<br /></span>
+<span>That he might serve the sick man's need,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.<br /></span>
+<span>He took the horse the squire bestrode;<br /></span>
+<span>On to the chase the hunter rode,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>On to the sick the priest!<br /></span>
+<span>And when the morrow's sun was red,<br /></span>
+<span>The servant of the Saviour led<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Back to its lord the beast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page171" id="page171" title="171"></a>&quot;Now Heaven forefend,&quot; the hero cried,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;That e'er to chase or battle more<br /></span>
+<span>These limbs the sacred steed bestride,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That once my Maker's image bore!<br /></span>
+<span>But not for sale or barter given;<br /></span>
+<span>Henceforth its Master is the Heaven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>My tribute to that King,<br /></span>
+<span>From whom I hold as fiefs, since birth,<br /></span>
+<span>Honour, renown, the goods of earth,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Life, and each living thing.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;So may the God who faileth never<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To hear the weak and guide the dim,<br /></span>
+<span>To thee give honour here and ever,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As thou hast duly honour'd Him!<br /></span>
+<span>Far-famed ev'n now through Switzerland<br /></span>
+<span>Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>And fair from thine embrace<br /></span>
+<span>Six daughters bloom&mdash;six crowns to bring&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Blest as the Daughters of a KING&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The Mothers of a RACE!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The mighty Kaisar heard amazed;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His heart was in the days of old:<br /></span>
+<span>Into the minstrel's eyes he gazed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That tale the Kaisar's own had told.<br /></span>
+<span>Yes, in the bard, the priest he knew,<br /></span>
+<span>And in the purple veil'd from view<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>The gush of holy tears.<br /></span>
+<span>A thrill through that vast audience ran,<br /></span>
+<span>And every heart the godlike man,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Revering God, reveres!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE WORDS OF ERROR.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Three errors there are, that for ever are found<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best;<br /></span>
+<span>But empty their meaning and hollow their sound&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.<br /></span>
+<span>The fruits of existence escape from the clasp<br /></span>
+<span>Of the seeker who strives but these shadows to grasp&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So long as Man dreams of some Age in <i>this</i> life<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>When the Right and the Good will all evil subdue;<br /></span>
+<span>For the Right and the Good lead us ever to strife,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And wherever they lead us, the Fiend will pursue.<br /></span>
+<span>And (till from the earth borne, and stifled at length)<br /></span>
+<span>The earth that he touches still gifts him with strength!<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7" href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a><br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;<br /></span>
+<span>For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And Virtue possesses no title to earth!<br /></span>
+<span>That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,<br /></span>
+<span>Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page172" id="page172" title="172"></a>So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;<br /></span>
+<span>The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And all we can learn is&mdash;to guess and divine!<br /></span>
+<span>Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?<br /></span>
+<span>The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>O, Noble Soul! fly from delusions like these,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>More heavenly belief be it thine to adore;<br /></span>
+<span>Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore!<br /></span>
+<span>Not <i>without</i> thee the streams&mdash;there the Dull seek them;&mdash;No!<br /></span>
+<span>Look <i>within</i> thee&mdash;behold both the fount and the flow!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE WORDS OF BELIEF.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Three Words will I name thee&mdash;around and about,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;<br /></span>
+<span>But they had not their birth in the being without,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!<br /></span>
+<span>And all worth in the man shall for ever be o'er<br /></span>
+<span>When in those Three Words he believes no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Man is made FREE!&mdash;Man, by birthright, is free,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.<br /></span>
+<span>Whatever the shout of the rabble may be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain,<br /></span>
+<span>For the Man made a Freeman grows safe in his gain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And VIRTUE is more than a shade or a sound,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And Man may her voice, in this being, obey;<br /></span>
+<span>And though ever he slip on the stony ground,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Yet ever again to the godlike way.<br /></span>
+<span>Though <i>her</i> wisdom <i>our</i> wisdom may not perceive,<br /></span>
+<span>Yet the childlike spirit can still believe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And a GOD there is!&mdash;over Space, over Time,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>While the Human Will rocks, like a reed, to and fro,<br /></span>
+<span>Lives the Will of the Holy&mdash;A Purpose Sublime,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A Thought woven over creation below;<br /></span>
+<span>Changing and shifting the All we inherit,<br /></span>
+<span>But changeless through all One Immutable Spirit!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Hold fast the Three Words of Belief&mdash;though about<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>From the lip to the lip, full of meaning they flee;<br /></span>
+<span>Yet they take not their birth from the being without&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>But a voice from within must their oracle be;<br /></span>
+<span>And never all worth in the Man can be o'er,<br /></span>
+<span>Till in those Three Words he believes no more.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>THE MIGHT OF SONG.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>A rain-flood from the mountain-riven,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>It leaps, in thunder, forth to Day,<br /></span>
+<span>Before its rush the crags are driven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The oaks uprooted, whirl'd away&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Aw'd, yet in awe all wildly glad'ning,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page173" id="page173" title="173"></a>The startled wanderer halts below;<br /></span>
+<span>He hears the rock-born waters mad'ning,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Nor wits the source from whence they go,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So, from their high, mysterious Founts along,<br /></span>
+<span>Stream on the silenc'd world the Waves of Song!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Knit with the threads of life, for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By those dread Powers that weave the woof,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Whose art the singer's spell can sever?<br /></span>
+<span class='i1'>Whose breast has mail to music proof?<br /></span>
+<span>Lo, to the Bard, a wand of wonder<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The Herald<a id="footnotetag8" name="footnotetag8" href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> of the Gods has given:<br /></span>
+<span>He sinks the soul the death-realm under,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Or lifts it breathless up to heaven&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion<br /></span>
+<span>Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>As, when the halls of Mirth are crowded,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Portentous, on the wanton scene&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Some Fate, before from wisdom shrouded,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Awakes and awes the souls of Men&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Before that Stranger from ANOTHER,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Behold how THIS world's great ones bow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mean joys their idle clamour smother,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The mask is vanish'd from the brow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And from Truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurl'd,<br /></span>
+<span>Fly all the craven Falsehoods of the World!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So, rapt from every care and folly,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>When spreads abroad the lofty lay,<br /></span>
+<span>The Human kindles to the Holy,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And into Spirit soars the Clay!<br /></span>
+<span>One with the Gods the Bard: before him<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>All things unclean and earthly fly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Hush'd are all meaner powers, and o'er him<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The dark fate swoops unharming by;<br /></span>
+<span>And while the Soother's magic measures flow,<br /></span>
+<span>Smooth'd every wrinkle on the brows of Woe!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Even as a child that, after pining<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>For the sweet absent mother&mdash;hears<br /></span>
+<span>Her voice&mdash;and, round her neck entwining<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Young arms, vents all his soul in tears;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So, by harsh custom far estranged,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Along the glad and guileless track,<br /></span>
+<span>To childhood's happy home, unchanged,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The swift song wafts the wanderer back&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Snatch'd from the coldness of unloving Art<br /></span>
+<span>To Nature's mother arms&mdash;to Nature's glowing heart!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<h3>HONOUR TO WOMAN.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Honour to Woman! To her it is given<br /></span>
+<span>To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>In the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,<br /></span>
+<span>She tends on each altar that's hallow'd to Feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And keeps ever-living the fire!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page174" id="page174" title="174"></a>From the bounds of Truth careering,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>With each hasty impulse veering,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Down to Passion's troubled deeps.<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And his heart, contented never,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Greeds to grapple with the Far,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Chasing his own dream for ever,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>On through many a distant Star!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But Woman with looks that can charm and enchain,<br /></span>
+<span>Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By the spell of her presence beguil'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>In the home of the Mother her modest abode,<br /></span>
+<span>And modest the manners by Nature bestow'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>On Nature's most exquisite child!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'>Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Foe to foe, the angry strife;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Man the Wild One, never resting,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Roams along the troubled life;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>What he planneth, still pursuing;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Vainly as the Hydra bleeds,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Crest the sever'd crest renewing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Wish to wither'd wish succeeds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But Woman at peace with all being, reposes,<br /></span>
+<span>And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whose sweets to her culture belong.<br /></span>
+<span>Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er<br /></span>
+<span>The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And the infinite Circle of Song.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'>Strong, and proud, and self-depending,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Man's cold bosom beats alone;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Heart with heart divinely blending,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>In the love that Gods have known,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Souls' sweet interchange of feeling,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Melting tears&mdash;he never knows,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Each hard sense the hard one steeling,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Arms against a world of foes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever<br /></span>
+<span>If woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;<br /></span>
+<span>Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,<br /></span>
+<span>How quiver the chords&mdash;how thy bosom is heaving&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>How trembles thy glance through the tear!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i2'>Man's dominion, war and labour;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Might to right the Statute gave;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Where the Mede reign'd&mdash;see the Slave!<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Peace and Meekness grimly routing,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Prowls the War-lust, rude and wild;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,<br /></span>
+<span class='i4'>Where the vanish'd Graces smil'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Of the Senses she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>She lulls, as she looks from above,<br /></span>
+<span>The Discord whose Hell for its victims is gaping,<br /></span>
+<span>And blending awhile the for-ever escaping,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whispers Hate to the Image of Love!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<br />
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="page175" id="page175" title="175"></a>
+<h3>THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Who comes?&mdash;why rushes fast and loud,<br /></span>
+<span>Through lane and street the hurtling crowd,<br /></span>
+<span>Is Rhodes on fire?&mdash;Hurrah!&mdash;along<br /></span>
+<span>Faster and fast storms the throng!<br /></span>
+<span>High towers a shape in knightly garb&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Behold the Rider and the Barb!<br /></span>
+<span>Behind is dragg'd a wondrous load;<br /></span>
+<span>Beneath what monster groans the road?<br /></span>
+<span>The horrid jaws&mdash;the Crocodile,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The shape the mightier Dragon, shows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>From Man to Monster all the while&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The alternate wonder glancing goes.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Shout thousands, with a single voice,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Behold the Dragon, and rejoice,<br /></span>
+<span>Safe roves the herd, and safe the swain!<br /></span>
+<span>Lo!&mdash;there the Slayer&mdash;here the Slain!<br /></span>
+<span>Full many a breast, a gallant life,<br /></span>
+<span>Has waged against the ghastly strife,<br /></span>
+<span>And ne'er return'd to mortal sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Hurrah, then, for the Hero Knight!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>So to the Cloister, where the vow'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And peerless Brethren of St John<br /></span>
+<span>In conclave sit&mdash;that sea-like crowd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Wave upon wave, goes thundering on.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>High o'er the rest, the chief is seen&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>There wends the Knight with modest mien;<br /></span>
+<span>Pours through the galleries raised for all<br /></span>
+<span>Above that Hero-council Hall,<br /></span>
+<span>The crowd&mdash;And thus the Victor One:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Prince&mdash;the knight's duty I have done.<br /></span>
+<span>The Dragon that devour'd the land<br /></span>
+<span>Lies slain beneath thy servant's hand;<br /></span>
+<span>Free, o'er the pasture, rove the flocks&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And free the idler's steps may stray&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And freely o'er the lonely rocks,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The holier pilgrim wends his way!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>A lofty look the Master gave,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Certes,&quot; he said; &quot;thy deed is brave;<br /></span>
+<span>Dread was the danger, dread the fight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Bold deeds bring fame to vulgar knight;<br /></span>
+<span>But say, what sways with holier laws<br /></span>
+<span>The knight who sees in Christ his cause,<br /></span>
+<span>And wears the cross?&quot;&mdash;Then every cheek<br /></span>
+<span>Grew pale to hear the Master speak;<br /></span>
+<span>But nobler was the blush that spread<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His face&mdash;the Victor's of the day&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>As bending lowly&mdash;&quot;Prince,&quot; he said;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;His noblest duty&mdash;TO OBEY!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And yet that duty, son,&quot; replied<br /></span>
+<span>The chief, &quot;methinks thou hast denied;<br /></span>
+<span>And dared thy sacred sword to wield<br /></span>
+<span>For fame in a forbidden field.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Master, thy judgment, howsoe'er<br /></span>
+<span>It lean, till all is told, forbear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page176" id="page176" title="176"></a>Thy law in spirit and in will,<br /></span>
+<span>I had no thought but to fulfil.<br /></span>
+<span>Not rash, as some, did I depart<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A Christian's blood in vain to shed;<br /></span>
+<span>But hoped by skill, and strove by art,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>To make my life avenge the dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Five of our Order, in renown<br /></span>
+<span>The war-gems of our saintly crown,<br /></span>
+<span>The martyr's glory bought with life;<br /></span>
+<span>'Twas then thy law forbade the strife.<br /></span>
+<span>Yet in my heart there gnaw'd, like fire,<br /></span>
+<span>Proud sorrow, fed with stern desire:<br /></span>
+<span>In the still visions of the night,<br /></span>
+<span>Panting, I fought the fancied fight;<br /></span>
+<span>And when the morrow glimmering came,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>With tales of ravage freshly done,<br /></span>
+<span>The dream remember'd, turn'd to shame,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That night should dare what day should shun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And thus my fiery musings ran&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>'What youth has learn'd should nerve the man;<br /></span>
+<span>How lived the great in days of old,<br /></span>
+<span>Whose Fame to time by bards is told&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Who, heathens though they were, became<br /></span>
+<span>As gods&mdash;upborne to heaven by fame?<br /></span>
+<span>How proved they best the hero's worth?<br /></span>
+<span>They chased the monster from the earth&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>They sought the lion in his den&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>They pierced the Cretan's deadly maze&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Their noble blood gave humble men<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Their happy birthright&mdash;peaceful days.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;'What! sacred, but against the horde<br /></span>
+<span>Of Mahound, is the Christian's sword?<br /></span>
+<span>All strife, save one, should he forbear?<br /></span>
+<span>No! earth itself the Christian's care&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>From every ill and every harm,<br /></span>
+<span>Man's shield should be the Christian's arm.<br /></span>
+<span>Yet art o'er strength will oft prevail,<br /></span>
+<span>And mind must aid where heart may fail!'<br /></span>
+<span>Thus musing, oft I roam'd alone,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Where wont the Hell-born Beast to lie;<br /></span>
+<span>Till sudden light upon me shone,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And on my hope broke victory!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Then, Prince, I sought thee with the prayer<br /></span>
+<span>To breathe once more my native air;<br /></span>
+<span>The license given&mdash;the ocean past&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I reach'd the shores of home at last.<br /></span>
+<span>Scarce hail'd the old beloved land,<br /></span>
+<span>Than huge, beneath the artist's hand,<br /></span>
+<span>To every hideous feature true,<br /></span>
+<span>The Dragon's monster-model grew.<br /></span>
+<span>The dwarf'd, deformed limbs upbore<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The lengthen'd body's ponderous load;<br /></span>
+<span>The scales the impervious surface wore,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Like links of burnish'd harness, glow'd.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Life-like, the huge neck seem'd to swell,<br /></span>
+<span>And widely, as some porch to hell<br /></span>
+<span>You might the horrent jaws survey,<br /></span>
+<span>Griesly, and greeding for their prey.<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page177" id="page177" title="177"></a>Grim fangs an added terror gave,<br /></span>
+<span>Like crags that whiten through a cave.<br /></span>
+<span>The very tongue a sword in seeming&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The deep-sunk eyes in sparkles gleaming.<br /></span>
+<span>Where the vast body ends, succeed<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The serpent spires around it roll'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Woe&mdash;woe to rider, woe to steed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Whom coils as fearful e'er enfold!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;All to the awful life was done&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The very hue, so ghastly, won&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The grey, dull tint:&mdash;the labour ceased,<br /></span>
+<span>It stood&mdash;half reptile and half beast!<br /></span>
+<span>And now began the mimic chase;<br /></span>
+<span>Two dogs I sought, of noblest race,<br /></span>
+<span>Fierce, nimble, fleet, and wont to scorn<br /></span>
+<span>The wild bull's wrath and levell'd horn;<br /></span>
+<span>These, docile to my cheering cry,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I train'd to bound, and rend, and spring,<br /></span>
+<span>Now round the Monster-shape to fly,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Now to the Monster-shape to cling!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And where their gripe the best assails,<br /></span>
+<span>The belly left unsheath'd in scales,<br /></span>
+<span>I taught the dexterous hounds to hang<br /></span>
+<span>And find the spot to fix the fang;<br /></span>
+<span>Whilst I, with lance and mail&egrave;d garb,<br /></span>
+<span>Launch'd on the beast mine Arab barb.<br /></span>
+<span>From purest race that Arab came,<br /></span>
+<span>And steeds, like men, are fired by fame.<br /></span>
+<span>Beneath the spur he chafes to rage;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Onwards we ride in full career&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I seem, in truth, the war to wage&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The monster reels beneath my spear!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Albeit, when first the <i>destrier</i><a id="footnotetag9" name="footnotetag9" href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> eyed<br /></span>
+<span>The laidly thing, it swerved aside,<br /></span>
+<span>Snorted and rear'd&mdash;and even they,<br /></span>
+<span>The fierce hounds, shrank with startled bay;<br /></span>
+<span>I ceased not, till, by custom bold,<br /></span>
+<span>After three tedious moons were told,<br /></span>
+<span>Both barb and hounds were train'd&mdash;nay, more,<br /></span>
+<span>Fierce for the fight&mdash;then left the shore!<br /></span>
+<span>Three days have fleeted since I prest<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>(Return'd at length) this welcome soil,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor once would lay my limbs to rest,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Till wrought the glorious crowning toil.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;For much it moved my soul to know<br /></span>
+<span>The unslack'ning curse of that grim foe.<br /></span>
+<span>Fresh rent, mens' bones lay bleach'd and bare<br /></span>
+<span>Around the hell-worm's swampy lair;<br /></span>
+<span>And pity nerved me into steel:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Advice?&mdash;I had a heart to feel,<br /></span>
+<span>And strength to dare! So, to the deed.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I call'd my squires&mdash;bestrode my steed,<br /></span>
+<span>And with my stalwart hounds, and by<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Lone secret paths, we gaily go<br /></span>
+<span>Unseen&mdash;at least by human eye&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Against a worse than human foe!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page178" id="page178" title="178"></a>&quot;Thou know'st the sharp rock&mdash;steep and hoar?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The abyss?&mdash;the chapel glimmering o'er?<br /></span>
+<span>Built by the Fearless Master's hand,<br /></span>
+<span>The fane looks down on all the land.<br /></span>
+<span>Humble and mean that house of prayer&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Yet God hath shrined a wonder there:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mother and Child, to whom of old<br /></span>
+<span>The Three Kings knelt with gifts, behold!<br /></span>
+<span>By three times thirty steps, the shrine<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The pilgrim gains&mdash;and faint, and dim,<br /></span>
+<span>And dizzy with the height, divine<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Strength on the sudden springs to him!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Yawns wide within that holy steep<br /></span>
+<span>A mighty cavern dark and deep&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>By blessed sunbeam never lit&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Rank f&oelig;tid swamps engirdle it;<br /></span>
+<span>And there by night, and there by day,<br /></span>
+<span>Ever at watch, the fiend-worm lay,<br /></span>
+<span>Holding the Hell of its abode<br /></span>
+<span>Fast by the hallow'd House of God.<br /></span>
+<span>And when the pilgrim gladly ween'd<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>His feet had found the healing way,<br /></span>
+<span>Forth from its ambush rush'd the fiend,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And down to darkness dragg'd the prey.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;With solemn soul, that solemn height<br /></span>
+<span>I clomb, ere yet I sought the fight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Kneeling before the cross within,<br /></span>
+<span>My heart, confessing, clear'd its sin.<br /></span>
+<span>Then, as befits the Christian knight,<br /></span>
+<span>I donn'd the spotless surplice white,<br /></span>
+<span>And, by the altar, grasp'd the spear:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So down I strode with conscience clear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Bade my leal squires afar the deed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>By death or conquest crown'd, await&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Leapt lightly on my lithesome steed,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And gave to God his soldier's fate!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Before me wide the marshes lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Started the hounds with sudden bay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Aghast the swerving charger slanting<br /></span>
+<span>Snorted&mdash;then stood abrupt and panting&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>For curling there, in coil&egrave;d fold,<br /></span>
+<span>The Unutterable Beast behold!<br /></span>
+<span>Lazily basking in the sun.<br /></span>
+<span>Forth sprang the dogs. The fight's begun!<br /></span>
+<span>But lo! the hounds in cowering fly<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Before the mighty poison-breath&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A yell, most like the jackall's cry,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Howl'd, mingling with that wind of death!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;No halt&mdash;I gave one cheering sound;<br /></span>
+<span>Lustily springs each dauntless hound&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Swift as the dauntless hounds advance,<br /></span>
+<span>Whirringly skirrs my stalwart lance&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Whirringly skirrs; and from the scale<br /></span>
+<span>Bounds, as a reed aslant the mail.<br /></span>
+<span>Onward&mdash;but no!&mdash;the craven steed<br /></span>
+<span>Shrinks from his lord in that dread need&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'><a class="pagenum" name="page179" id="page179" title="179"></a>Smitten and scared before that eye<br /></span>
+<span>Of basilisk horror, and that blast<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Of death, it only seeks to fly&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And half the mighty hope is past!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;A moment, and to earth I leapt;<br /></span>
+<span>Swift from its sheath the falchion swept;<br /></span>
+<span>Swift on that rock-like mail it plied&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The rock-like mail the sword defied:<br /></span>
+<span>The monster lash'd its mighty coil&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Down hurl'd&mdash;behold me on the soil!<br /></span>
+<span>Behold the hell-jaws gaping wide&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>When lo! they bound&mdash;the flesh is found;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Upon the scaleless parts they spring!<br /></span>
+<span>Springs either hound;&mdash;the flesh is found&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>It roars; the blood-dogs cleave and cling!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;No time to foil its fast'ning foes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Light, as it writhed, I sprang, and rose;<br /></span>
+<span>The all-unguarded place explored,<br /></span>
+<span>Up to the hilt I plunged the sword&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Buried one instant in the blood&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The next, upsprang the bubbling flood!<br /></span>
+<span>The next, one Vastness spread the plain&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Crush'd down&mdash;the victor with the slain;<br /></span>
+<span>And all was dark&mdash;and on the ground<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>My life, suspended, lost the sun,<br /></span>
+<span>Till waking&mdash;lo my squires around&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And the dead foe!&mdash;my tale is done.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Then burst, as from a common breast,<br /></span>
+<span>The eager laud so long supprest&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A thousand voices, choral-blending,<br /></span>
+<span>Up to the vaulted dome ascending&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>From groined roof and banner'd wall,<br /></span>
+<span>Invisible echoes answering all&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The very Brethren, grave and high,<br /></span>
+<span>Forget their state, and join the cry.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;With laurel wreaths his brows be crown'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Let throng to throng his triumph tell;<br /></span>
+<span>Hail him all Rhodes!&quot;&mdash;the Master frown'd,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And raised his hand&mdash;and silence fell.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Well,&quot; said that solemn voice, &quot;thy hand<br /></span>
+<span>From the wild-beast hath freed the land.<br /></span>
+<span>An idol to the People be!<br /></span>
+<span>A foe our Order frowns on thee!<br /></span>
+<span>For in thy heart, superb and vain,<br /></span>
+<span>A hell-worm laidlier than the slain,<br /></span>
+<span>To discord which engenders death,<br /></span>
+<span>Poisons each thought with baleful breath!<br /></span>
+<span>That hell-worm is the stubborn Will&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Oh! What were man and nations worth<br /></span>
+<span>If each his own desire fulfil,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And law be banish'd from the earth?<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;<i>Valour</i> the Heathen gives to story&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><i>Obedience</i> is the Christian's glory;<br /></span>
+<span>And on that soil our Saviour-God<br /></span>
+<span>As the meek low-born mortal trod.<br /></span>
+<span>We the Apostle-knights were sworn<br /></span>
+<span>To laws thy daring laughs to scorn&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page180" id="page180" title="180"></a>Not <i>fame</i>, but <i>duty</i> to fulfil&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Our noblest offering&mdash;man's wild will.<br /></span>
+<span>Vain-glory doth thy soul betray&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Begone&mdash;thy conquest is thy loss:<br /></span>
+<span>No breast too haughty to obey,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Is worthy of the Christian's cross!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>From their cold awe the crowds awaken,<br /></span>
+<span>As with some storm the halls are shaken;<br /></span>
+<span>The noble brethren plead for grace&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mute stands the doom'd, with downward face;<br /></span>
+<span>And mutely loosen'd from its band<br /></span>
+<span>The badge, and kiss'd the Master's hand,<br /></span>
+<span>And meekly turn'd him to depart:<br /></span>
+<span>A moist eye follow'd, &quot;To my heart<br /></span>
+<span>Come back, my son!&quot;&mdash;the Master cries:<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>&quot;Thy grace a harder fight obtains;<br /></span>
+<span>When Valour risks the Christian's prize,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Lo, how Humility regains!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>[In the ballad just presented to the reader, Schiller designed, as he wrote
+to Goethe, to depict the old Christian chivalry&mdash;half-knightly, half-monastic.
+The attempt is strikingly successful; and, even in so humble a translation,
+the unadorned simplicity and earnest vigour of a great poet, enamoured of his
+subject, may be sufficiently visible to a discerning critic. &quot;The Fight of the
+Dragon&quot; appears to us the most spirited and nervous of all Schiller's ballads,
+with the single exception of &quot;The Diver;&quot; and if its interest is less intense
+than that of the matchless &quot;Diver,&quot; and its descriptions less poetically striking
+and effective, its interior meaning or philosophical conception is at once
+more profound and more elevated. The main distinction, indeed, between the
+ancient ballad and the modern, as revived and recreated by Goethe and
+Schiller, is, that the former is a simple narrative, and the latter a narrative
+which conveys some intellectual idea&mdash;some dim, but important truth. The one
+has but the good faith of the minstrel, the other the high wisdom of the poet.
+In &quot;The Fight of the Dragon,&quot; is expressed the moral of that humility which
+consists in self-conquest&mdash;even merit may lead to vain-glory&mdash;and, after vanquishing
+the fiercest enemies without, Man has still to contend with his worst
+foe,&mdash;the pride or disobedience of his own heart. &quot;Every one,&quot; as a recent
+and acute, but somewhat over-refining critic has remarked, &quot;has more or
+less&mdash;his own 'fight with the Dragon,'&mdash;his own double victory (without and
+within) to achieve.&quot; The origin of this poem is to be found in the Annals of
+the Order of Malta&mdash;and the details may be seen in Vertot's History. The
+date assigned to the conquest of the Dragon is 1342. Helion de Villeneuve
+was the name of the Grand Master&mdash;that of the Knight, Dieu-Donn&eacute; de
+Gozon. Thevenot declares, that the head of the monster, (to whatever species
+it really belonged,) or its effigies, was still placed over one of the gates of the
+city in his time.]</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page181" id="page181" title="181"></a>
+<a name="bw328s3" id="bw328s3"></a><h2>REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.</h2>
+
+<p>Having shown that the standard of
+Taste is in the Truth of Nature, and
+that this truth is in the mind, Sir Joshua,
+in the Eighth Discourse, proceeds
+to a further development of the
+principles of art. These principles,
+whether poetry or painting, have their
+foundation in the mind; which by
+its sensitive faculties and intellectual
+requirements, remodels all that it receives
+from the external world, vivifying
+and characterizing all with itself,
+and thus bringing forth into light the
+more beautiful but latent creations of
+nature. The &quot;activity and restlessness&quot;
+of the mind seek satisfaction
+from curiosity, novelty, variety, and
+contrast. Curiosity, &quot;the anxiety
+for the future, the keeping the event
+suspended,&quot; he considers to be exclusively
+the province of poetry, and
+that &quot;the painter's art is more confined,
+and has nothing that corresponds
+with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this
+power and advantage of leading the
+mind on, till attention is totally engaged.
+What is done by painting
+must be done at one blow; curiosity
+has received at once all the satisfaction
+it can have.&quot; Novelty, variety, and
+contrast, however, belong to the painter.
+That poetry has this power, and
+operates by more extensively raising
+our curiosity, cannot be denied; but
+we hesitate in altogether excluding
+this power from painting. A momentary
+action may be so represented,
+as to elicit a desire for, and even an
+intimation of its event. It is true
+<i>that</i> curiosity cannot be satisfied, but
+it works and conjectures; and we suspect
+there is something of it in most
+good pictures. Take such a subject
+as the &quot;Judgment of Solomon:&quot; is
+not the &quot;event suspended,&quot; and a
+breathless anxiety portrayed in the
+characters, and freely acknowledged
+by the sympathy of the spectator? Is
+there no mark of this &quot;curiosity&quot; in
+the &quot;Cartoon of Pisa?&quot; The trumpet
+has sounded, the soldiers are some
+half-dressed, some out of the water,
+others bathing; one is anxiously looking
+for the rising of his companion,
+who has just plunged in, and we see
+but his hands above the water; the
+very range of rocks, behind which the
+danger is shown to come, tends to excite
+our curiosity; we form conjectures
+of the enemy, their number,
+nearness of approach, and from among
+the manly warriors before us form episodes
+of heroism in the great intimated
+epic: and have we not seen pictures
+by Rembrandt, where &quot;curiosity&quot;
+delights to search unsatisfied and
+unsatiated into the mysteries of colour
+and chiaro-scuro, receding further as
+we look into an atmosphere pregnant
+with all uncertain things? We think
+we have not mistaken the President's
+meaning. Mr Burnet appears to agree
+with us: though he makes no remark
+upon the power of raising curiosity,
+yet it surely is raised in the very picture
+to which we presume he alludes,
+Raffaelle's &quot;Death of Ananias;&quot; the
+event, in Sapphira, is intimated and suspended.
+&quot;Though,&quot; says Mr Burnet,
+&quot;the painter has but one page to
+represent his story, he generally
+chooses that part which combines the
+most illustrative incidents with the
+most effective denouement of the
+event. In Raffaelle we often find not
+only those circumstances which precede
+it, <i>but its effects upon the</i> personages
+introduced after the catastrophe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, a natural indolence
+of our disposition, which seeks
+pleasure in repose, and the resting in
+old habits, which must not be too violently
+opposed by &quot;variety,&quot; &quot;reanimating
+the attention, which is apt to
+languish under a continual sameness;&quot;
+nor by &quot;novelty,&quot; making &quot;more
+forcible impression on the mind than
+can be made by the representation of
+what we have often seen before;&quot; nor
+by &quot;contrasts,&quot; that &quot;rouse the power
+of comparison by opposition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The mind, then, though an active
+principle, having likewise a disposition
+to indolence, (might we have said repose?)
+limits the quantity of variety,
+novelty, and contrast which it will
+bear;&mdash;these are, therefore, liable to
+excesses. Hence arise certain rules
+of art, that in a composition objects
+must not be too scattered and divided
+into many equal parts, that perplex
+and fatigue the eye, at a loss where to
+find the principal action. Nor must
+there be that &quot;absolute unity,&quot;
+&quot;which, consisting of one group or
+mass of light only, would be as defective
+as an heroic poem without episode,
+or any collateral incidents to
+recreate the mind with that variety
+which it always requires.&quot; Sir Joshua
+<a class="pagenum" name="page182" id="page182" title="182"></a>instances Rembrandt and Poussin, the
+former as having the defect of &quot;absolute
+unity,&quot; the latter the defect of the
+dispersion and scattering his figures
+without attention to their grouping.
+Hence there must be &quot;the same just
+moderation observed in regard to ornaments;&quot;
+for a certain repose must
+never be destroyed. Ornament in
+profusion, whether of objects or
+colours, does destroy it; and, &quot;on
+the other hand, a work without ornament,
+instead of simplicity, to which it
+makes pretensions, has rather the appearance
+of poverty.&quot; &quot;We may be
+sure of this truth, that the most ornamental
+style requires repose to set off
+even its ornaments to advantage.&quot; He
+instances, in the dialogue between
+Duncan and Banquo, Shakspeare's
+purpose of repose&mdash;the mention of the
+martlets' nests, and that &quot;where those
+birds most breed and haunt, the air is
+delicate;&quot; and the practice of Homer,
+&quot;who, from the midst of battles and
+horrors, relieves and refreshes the
+mind of the reader, by introducing
+some quiet rural image, or picture of
+familiar domestic life. The writers
+of every age and country, where taste
+has begun to decline, paint and adorn
+every object they touch; are always
+on the stretch; never deviate or sink
+a moment from the pompous and the
+brilliant.&quot;<a id="footnotetag10" name="footnotetag10" href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Novelty, Variety, and Contrast are
+required in Art, because they are the
+natural springs that move the mind to
+attention from its indolent quiescence;
+but having moved, their duty is performed&mdash;the
+mind of itself will do the
+rest; they must not act prominent
+parts. In every work there must be a
+simplicity which binds the whole together,
+as a whole; and whatever comes
+not within that girdle of the graces,
+is worse than superfluous&mdash;it draws
+off and distracts the attention which
+should be concentrated. Besides that
+simplicity which we have spoken of&mdash;and
+we have used the word in its
+technical sense, as that which keeps
+together and makes one thing of many
+parts&mdash;there is a simplicity which is
+best known by its opposite, affectation;
+upon this Sir Joshua enlarges.
+&quot;Simplicity, being a negative virtue,
+cannot be described or defined.&quot; But
+it is possible, even in avoiding affectation,
+to convert simplicity into the
+very thing we strive to avoid. N.
+Poussin&mdash;whom, with regard to this
+virtue, he contrasts with others of the
+French school&mdash;Sir Joshua considers,
+in his abhorrence of the affectation
+of his countrymen, somewhat to approach
+it, by &quot;what in writing
+would be called pedantry.&quot; Du Piles
+is justly censured for his recipe of
+grace and dignity. &quot;If,&quot; says he,
+&quot;you draw persons of high character
+and dignity, they ought to be drawn
+in such an attitude that the portraits
+must seem to speak to us of themselves,
+and as it were to say to us,
+'Stop, take notice of me&mdash;I am the
+invincible king, surrounded by majesty.'
+'I am the valiant commander
+who struck terror every where,' 'I
+am that great minister, who knew all
+the springs of politics.' 'I am that
+magistrate of consummate wisdom
+and probity.'&quot; This is indeed affectation,
+and a very vulgar notion of
+greatness. We are reminded of Partridge,
+and his admiration of the overacting
+king. All the characters in
+thus seeming to say, would be little
+<a class="pagenum" name="page183" id="page183" title="183"></a>indeed. Not so Raffaelle and Titian
+understood grace and dignity. Simplicity
+he holds to be &quot;our barrier
+against that great enemy to truth and
+nature, affectation, which is ever
+clinging to the pencil, and ready to
+drop and poison every thing it touches.&quot;
+Yet that, &quot;when so very inartificial
+as to seem to evade the difficulties
+of art, is a very suspicious virtue.&quot;
+Sir Joshua dwells much upon this,
+because he thinks there is a perpetual
+tendency in young artists to run into
+affectation, and that from the very
+terms of the precepts offered them.
+&quot;When a young artist is first told
+that his composition and his attitudes
+must be contrasted; that he must turn
+the head contrary to the position of
+the body, in order to produce grace
+and animation; that his outline must
+be undulating and swelling, to give
+grandeur; and that the eye must be
+gratified with a variety of colours;
+when he is told this with certain animating
+words of spirit, dignity, energy,
+greatness of style, and brilliancy of
+tints, he becomes suddenly vain of his
+newly-acquired knowledge, and never
+thinks he can carry those rules too
+far. It is then that the aid of simplicity
+ought to be called in to correct
+the exuberance of youthful ardour.&quot;
+We may add that hereby, too, is shown
+the danger of particular and practical
+rules; very few of the kind are to be
+found in the &quot;Discourses.&quot; Indeed
+the President points out, by examples
+from Raffaelle, the good effect of setting
+aside these academical rules. We
+suspect that they are never less wanted
+than when they give direction to attitudes
+and forms of action. He admits
+that, in order &quot;to excite attention to
+the more manly, noble, and dignified
+manner,&quot; he had perhaps left &quot;an
+impression too contemptuous of the
+ornamental parts of our art.&quot; He
+had, to use his own expression, bent
+the bow the contrary way to make it
+straight. &quot;For this purpose, then,
+and to correct excess or neglect of
+any kind, we may here add, that it is
+not enough that a work be learned&mdash;it
+must be pleasing.&quot; Pretty much
+as Horace had said of poetry,</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, <i>dulcia</i> sunto.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To which maxim the Latin poet has
+unconsciously given the grace of
+rhyme&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He again shows the danger of
+particular practical rules.&mdash;&quot;It is
+given as a rule by Fresnoy, that
+'<i>the principal figure of a subject must
+appear in the midst of the picture,
+under the principal light, to distinguish
+it from the rest.</i>' A painter who should
+think himself obliged strictly to follow
+this rule, would encumber himself
+with needless difficulties; he would
+be confined to great uniformity of
+composition, and be deprived of many
+beauties which are incompatible with
+its observance. The meaning of this
+rule extends, or ought to extend, no
+further than this: that the principal
+figure should be immediately distinguished
+at the first glance of the eye;
+but there is no necessity that the principal
+light should fall on the principal
+<a class="pagenum" name="page184" id="page184" title="184"></a>figure, or that the principal figure
+should be in the middle of the picture.&quot;
+He might have added that it is the
+very place where generally it ought
+not to be. Many examples are given;
+we could have wished he had given a
+plate from any one in preference to
+that from Le Brun. Felebein, in praising
+this picture, according to preconceived
+recipe, gives Alexander,
+who is in shade, the principal light.
+&quot;Another instance occurs to me
+where equal liberty may be taken in
+regard to the management of light.
+Though the general practice is to
+make a large mass about the middle
+of the picture surrounded by shadow,
+the reverse may be practised, and
+<i>the spirit of the rule be preserved</i>.&quot;
+We have marked in italics the latter
+part of the sentence, because it shows
+that the rule itself must be ill-defined
+or too particular. Indeed, we receive
+with caution all such rules as belong
+to the practical and mechanical of the
+art. He instances Paul Veronese.
+&quot;In the great composition of Paul
+Veronese, the 'Marriage of Cana,' the
+figures are for the most part in half
+shadow. The great light is in the
+sky; and indeed the general effect of
+this picture, which is so striking, is
+no more than what we often see in
+landscapes, in small pictures of fairs
+and country feasts: but those principles
+of light and shadow, being
+transferred to a large scale, to a space
+containing near a hundred figures as
+large as life, and conducted, to all
+appearance, with as much facility, and
+with attention as steadily fixed upon
+<i>the whole together</i>, as if it were a small
+picture immediately under the eye, the
+work justly excites our admiration,
+the difficulty being increased as the
+extent is enlarged.&quot; We suspect that
+<i>the rule</i>, when it attempts to direct
+beyond the words Sir Joshua has
+marked in italics, refutes itself, and
+shackles the student. Infinite must be
+the modes of composition, and as infinite
+the modes of treating them in
+light and shadow and colour. &quot;Whatever
+mode of composition is adopted,
+every variety and license is allowable.&quot;
+All that is absolutely necessary is,
+that there be no confusion or distraction,
+no conflicting masses&mdash;in fact, that
+the picture tell its tale at once and
+effectually. A very good plate is
+given by Mr Burnet of the &quot;Marriage
+of Cana,&quot; by Paul Veronese. Sir
+Joshua avoids entering upon rules
+that belong to &quot;the detail of the
+art.&quot; He meets with combatants, as
+might have been expected, where he
+is thus particular. We will extract
+the passage which has been controverted,
+and to oppose the doctrine of
+which, Gainsborough painted his celebrated
+&quot;Blue Boy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Though it is not my <i>business</i> to
+enter into the detail of our art, yet I
+must take this opportunity of mentioning
+one of the means of producing
+that great effect which we observe in
+the works of the Venetian painters, as
+I think it is not generally known or
+observed, that the masses of light in
+a picture be always of a warm mellow
+colour, yellow red or yellowish white;
+and that the blue, the grey, or the
+green colours be kept almost entirely
+out of these masses, and be used only
+to support and set off these warm
+colours; and for this purpose a small
+proportion of cold colours will be sufficient.
+Let this conduct be reversed;
+let the light be cold, and the surrounding
+colours warm, as we often see in
+the works of the Roman and Florentine
+painters, and it will be out of the
+power of art, even in the hands of
+Rubens or Titian, to make a picture
+splendid and harmonious.&quot; Le Brun
+and Carlo Maratti are censured as
+being &quot;deficient in this management of
+colours.&quot; The &quot;Bacchus and Ariadne,&quot;
+now in our National Gallery, has ever
+been celebrated for its harmony of
+colour. Sir Joshua supports his theory
+or rule by the example of this
+picture: the red of Ariadne's scarf,
+which, according to critics, was purposely
+given to relieve the figure from
+the sea, has a better object. &quot;The
+figure of Ariadne is separated from
+the great group, and is dressed in
+blue, which, added to the colour of the
+sea, makes that quantity of cold
+colour which Titian thought necessary
+for the support and brilliancy of
+the great group; which group is composed,
+with very little exception, entirely
+of mellow colours. But as the
+picture in this case would be divided
+into two distinct parts, one half cold
+and the other warm, it was necessary
+to carry some of the mellow colours
+of the great group into the cold part
+of the picture, and a part of the cold
+into the great group; accordingly
+Titian gave Ariadne a red scarf, and
+to one of the Bacchantes a little blue
+<a class="pagenum" name="page185" id="page185" title="185"></a>drapery.&quot; As there is no picture
+more splendid, it is well to weigh and
+consider again and again remarks
+upon the cause of the brilliancy, given
+by such an authority as Sir Joshua
+Reynolds. With regard to his rule,
+even among artists, &quot;adhuc sub
+judice lis est.&quot; He combats the common
+notion of relief, as belonging
+only to the infancy of the art, and
+shows the advance made by Coreggio
+and Rembrandt; though the first
+manner of Coreggio, as well as of Leonardo
+da Vinci and Georgione, was dry
+and hard. &quot;But these three were
+among the first who began to correct
+themselves in dryness of style, by no
+longer considering relief as a principal
+object. As these two qualities, relief
+and fulness of effect, can hardly exist
+together, it is not very difficult to determine
+to which we ought to give
+the preference.&quot; &quot;Those painters
+who have best understood the art of
+producing a good effect, have adopted
+one principle that seems perfectly conformable
+to reason&mdash;that a part may
+be sacrificed for the good of the whole.
+Thus, whether the masses consist of
+light or shadow, it is necessary that
+they should be compact, and of a
+pleasing shape; to this end some parts
+may be made darker and some lighter,
+and reflections stronger than nature
+would warrant.&quot; He instances a
+&quot;Moonlight&quot; by Rubens, now, we
+believe, in the possession of Mr Rogers,
+in which Rubens had given more
+light and more glowing colours than
+we recognize in nature,&mdash;&quot;it might
+easily be mistaken, if he had not likewise
+added stars, for a fainter setting
+sun.&quot; We stop not to enquire if that
+harmony so praised, might not have
+been preserved had the resemblance
+to nature been closer. Brilliancy is
+produced. The fact is, the <i>practice</i> of
+art is a system of compensation. We
+cannot exactly in all cases represent
+nature,&mdash;we have not the means, but
+our means will achieve what, though
+<i>particularly</i> unlike, may, by itself or in
+opposition, produce similar effects.
+Nature does not present a varnished
+polished surface, nor that very transparency
+that our colours can give;
+but it is found that this transparency,
+in all its degrees, in conjunction
+and in opposition to opaque
+body of colour, represents the force
+of light and shade of nature, which is
+the principal object to attain. <i>The</i>
+richness of nature is not the exact
+richness of the palette. The painter's
+success is in the means of compensation.</p>
+
+<p>This Discourse concludes with observations
+on the Prize pictures. The
+subject seems to have been the Sacrifice
+of Iphigenia. All had copied
+the invention of Timanthes, in hiding
+the face of Agamemnon. Sir Joshua
+seems to agree with Mr Falconet,
+in a note in his translation of
+Pliny, who would condemn the painter,
+but that he copied the idea from
+the authority of Euripides; Sir Joshua
+considers it at best a trick, that
+can only with success be practised
+once. Mr Fuseli criticises the passage,
+and assumes that the painter
+had better reason than that given by
+Mr Falconet. Mr Burnet has added
+but two or three notes to this Discourse&mdash;they
+are unimportant, with
+the exception of the last, wherein he
+combats Sir Joshua's theory of the
+cold and warm colours. He candidly
+prints an extract of a letter from Sir
+Thomas Lawrence, who differs with
+him. It is so elegantly written that
+we quote the passage. Sir Thomas
+says,&mdash;&quot;Agreeing with you in so
+many points, I will venture to differ
+from you in your question with Sir
+Joshua. Infinitely various as nature
+is, there are still two or three truths
+that limit her variety, or, rather, that
+limit art in the imitation of her. I
+should instance for one the ascendency
+of white objects, which can never
+be departed from with impunity, and
+again, the union of colour with light.
+Masterly as the execution of that picture
+is (viz. the Boy in a blue dress,)
+I always feel a never-changing impression
+on my eye, that the &quot;Blue
+Boy&quot; of Gainsborough is a difficulty
+boldly combated, not conquered. The
+light blue drapery of the Virgin in the
+centre of the &quot;Notte&quot; is another instance;
+a check to the harmony of
+the celestial radiance round it.&quot; &quot;Opposed
+to Sir Thomas's opinion,&quot; says
+Mr Burnet, &quot;I might quote that of Sir
+David Wilkie, often expressed, and
+carried out in his picture of the 'Chelsea
+Pensioners' and other works.&quot;
+It strikes us, from our recollection of
+the &quot;Chelsea Pensioners,&quot; that it is
+not at all a case in point; the blue
+there not being light but dark, and
+serving as dark, forcibly contrasting
+with warmer light in sky and other
+objects; the <i>colour</i> of blue is scarcely
+given, and is too dark to be allowed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page186" id="page186" title="186"></a>to enter into the question. He adds,
+&quot;A very simple method may be
+adopted to enable the student to perceive
+where the warm and red colours
+are placed by the great colourists, by
+his making a sketch of light and shade
+of the picture, and then touching in
+the warm colours with red chalk; or
+by looking on his palette at twilight,
+he will see what colours absorb the
+light, and those that give it out, and
+thus select for his shadows, colours
+that have the property of giving depth
+and richness.&quot; Unless the pictures
+are intended to be seen at twilight,
+we do not see how this can bear upon
+the question; if it does, we would
+notice what we have often observed,
+that at twilight blue almost entirely
+disappears, to such a degree that in
+a landscape where the blue has even
+been deep, and the sky by no means
+the lightest part of the picture, at
+twilight the whole landscape comes
+out too hard upon the sky, which with
+its colour has lost its tone, and become,
+with relation to the rest, by far
+too light. It is said that of all the
+pictures in the National Gallery,
+when seen at twilight, the Coreggios
+retire last&mdash;we speak of the two, the
+&quot;Ecce Homo&quot; and the &quot;Venus,
+Mercury, and Cupid.&quot; In these there
+is no blue but in the drapery of the
+fainting mother, and that is so dark
+as to serve for black or mere shadow;
+the lighter blue close upon the neck
+is too small to affect the power of the
+picture. It certainly is a fact, that
+blue fades more than any colour at
+twilight, and, relatively speaking,
+leaves the image that contains it
+lighter. We should almost be inclined
+to ask the question, though with
+great deference to authority, is blue,
+when very light, necessarily cold; and
+if so, has it not an activity which, being
+the great quality of light, assimilates
+it with light, and thus takes
+in to itself the surrounding &quot;radiance?&quot;
+A very little positive warm colour,
+as it were set in blue, from whatever
+cause, gives it a surprising glow.
+We desire to see the theory of colours
+treated, not with regard to their corresponding
+harmony in their power
+one upon the other, nor in their light
+and shadow, but, if we may so express
+it, in their sentimentality&mdash;the effect
+they are capable of in moving the
+passions. We alluded to this in our
+last paper, and the more we consider
+the subject, the more we convinced
+that it is worth deeper investigation.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The NINTH DISCOURSE is short, and
+general in its character; it was delivered
+at the opening of the Royal
+Academy in Somerset Place, October
+16, 1780. It is an elegant address;
+raises the aim of the artist; and gives
+a summary of the origin of arts and
+their use. &quot;Let us for a moment
+take a short survey of the progress of
+the mind towards what is, or ought to
+be, its true object of attention. Man
+in his lowest state has no pleasures
+but those of sense, and no wants but
+those of appetite; afterwards, when
+society is divided into different ranks,
+and some are appointed to labour for
+the support of others, those whom
+their superiority sets free from labour
+begin to look for intellectual entertainments.
+Thus, while the shepherds
+were attending their flocks,
+their masters made the first astronomical
+observations; so music is said
+to have had its origin from a man at
+leisure listening to the strokes of a
+hammer. As the senses in the lowest
+state of nature are necessary to direct
+us to our support, when that support
+is once secure, there is danger in following
+them further; to him who has
+no rule of action but the gratification
+of the senses, plenty is always dangerous.
+It is therefore necessary to
+the happiness of individuals, and still
+more necessary to the security of society,
+that the mind should be elevated
+to the idea of general beauty, and the
+contemplation of general truth; by
+this pursuit the mind is always carried
+forward in search of something more
+excellent than it finds, and obtains its
+proper superiority over the common
+sense of life, by learning to feel itself
+capable of higher aims and nobler
+enjoyments.&quot; This is well said.
+Again.&mdash;&quot;Our art, like all arts which
+address the imagination, is applied to
+a somewhat lower faculty of the mind,
+which approaches nearer to sensuality,
+but through sense and fancy
+it must make its way to reason. For
+such is the progress of thought, that
+we perceive by sense, we combine by
+fancy, and distinguish by reason; and
+without carrying our art out of its
+natural and true character, the more
+we purify it from every thing that is
+gross in sense, in that proportion we
+<a class="pagenum" name="page187" id="page187" title="187"></a>advance its use and dignity, and in
+proportion as we lower it to mere sensuality,
+we pervert its nature, and degrade
+it from the rank of a liberal
+art; and this is what every artist
+ought well to remember. Let him
+remember, also, that he deserves just
+so much encouragement in the state
+as he makes himself a member of it
+virtuously useful, and contributes in
+his sphere to the general purpose and
+perfection of society.&quot; Sir Joshua
+has been blamed by those who have
+taken lower views of art, in that he has
+exclusively treated of the Great Style,
+which neither he nor the academicians
+of his day practised; but he
+would have been unworthy the presidential
+chair had he taken any other
+line. His was a noble effort, to assume
+for art the highest position, to
+dignify it in its aim, and thus to honour
+and improve first his country,
+then all human kind. We rise from
+such passages as these elevated above
+all that is little. Those only can feel
+depressed who would find excuses for
+the lowness of their pursuits.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The TENTH DISCOURSE.&mdash;Sir Joshua
+here treats of Sculpture, a less
+extensive field than Painting. The
+leading principles of both are the
+same; he considers wherein they
+agree, and wherein they differ. Sculpture
+cannot, &quot;with propriety and best
+effect, be applied to many subjects.&quot;
+Its object is &quot;form and character.&quot;
+It has &quot;one style only,&quot;&mdash;that one
+style has relation only to one style of
+painting, the Great Style, but that so
+close as to differ only as operating
+upon different materials. He blames
+the sculptors of the last age, who
+thought they were improving by borrowing
+from the ornamental, incompatible
+with its essential character.
+Contrasts, and the littlenesses of picturesque
+effects, are injurious to the
+formality its austere character requires.
+As in painting, so more particularly
+in sculpture, that imitation
+of nature which we call illusion, is in
+no respect its excellence, nor indeed its
+aim. Were it so, the Venus di Medici
+would be improved by colour. It
+contemplates a higher, a more perfect
+beauty, more an intellectual than sensual
+enjoyment. The boundaries of
+the art have been long fixed. To
+convey &quot;sentiment and character, as
+exhibited by attitude, and expression
+of the passions,&quot; is not within its province.
+Beauty of form alone, the
+object of sculpture, &quot;makes of itself
+a great work.&quot; In proof of which
+are the designs of Michael Angelo in
+both arts. As a stronger instance:&mdash;
+&quot;What artist,&quot; says he, &quot;ever looked
+at the Torso without feeling a warmth
+of enthusiasm as from the highest
+efforts of poetry? From whence does
+this proceed? What is there in this
+fragment that produces this effect, but
+the perfection of this science of abstract
+form?&quot; Mr Burnet has given
+a plate of the Torso. The expectation
+of deception, of which few divest
+themselves, is an impediment to the
+judgment, consequently to the enjoyment
+of sculpture. &quot;Its essence is
+correctness.&quot; It fully accomplishes
+its purpose when it adds the &quot;ornament
+of grace, dignity of character,
+and appropriated expression, as in the
+Apollo, the Venus, the Laocoon, the
+Moses of Michael Angelo, and many
+others.&quot; Sir Joshua uses expression
+as will be afterwards seen, in a very
+limited sense. It is necessary to lay
+down perfect correctness as its essential
+character; because, as in the case
+of the Apollo, many have asserted the
+beauty to arise from a certain incorrectness
+in anatomy and proportion.
+He denies that there is this incorrectness,
+and asserts that there never ought
+to be; and that even in painting these
+are not the beauties, but defects, in
+the works of Coreggio and Parmegiano.
+&quot;A supposition of such a
+monster as Grace begot by Deformity,
+is poison to the mind of a young artist.&quot;
+The Apollo and the Discobolus
+are engaged in the same purpose&mdash;the
+one watching the effect of his arrow,
+the other of his discus. &quot;The graceful,
+negligent, though animated air of
+the one, and the vulgar eagerness of the
+other, furnish a signal instance of the
+skill of the ancient sculptors in their nice
+discrimination of character. They are
+both equally true to nature, and equally
+admirable.&quot; Grace, character, and
+expression, are rather in form and
+attitude than in features; the general
+figure more presents itself; &quot;it is
+there we must principally look for
+expression or character; <i>patuit in corpore
+vultus</i>.&quot; The expression in the
+countenances of the Laocoon and his
+two sons, though greater than in any
+other antique statues, is of pain only;
+and that is more expressed &quot;by the
+<a class="pagenum" name="page188" id="page188" title="188"></a>writhing and contortion of the body
+than by the features.&quot; The ancient
+sculptors paid but little regard to features
+for their expression, their object
+being solely beauty of form. &quot;Take
+away from Apollo his lyre, from Bacchus
+his thyrsus and vine-leaves, and
+from Meleager the boar's head, and
+there will remain little or no difference
+in their characters.&quot; John di Bologna,
+he tells us, after he had finished a
+group, called his friends together to
+tell him what name to give it: they
+called it the &quot;Rape of the Sabines.&quot;
+A similar anecdote is told of Sir
+Joshua himself, that he had painted
+the head of the old man who attended
+him in his studio. Some one observed
+that it would make a Ugolino. The
+sons were added, and it became the
+well-known historical picture from
+Dante. He comments upon the ineffectual
+attempts of modern sculptors
+to detach drapery from the figure, to
+give it the appearance of flying in the
+air; to make different plans on the
+same bas-relievos; to represent the
+effects of perspective; to clothe in a
+modern dress. For the first attempt
+he reprehends Bernini, who, from
+want of a right conception of the
+province of sculpture, never fulfilled
+the promise given in his early work of
+Apollo and Daphne. He was ever
+attempting to make drapery flutter in
+the air, which the very massiveness of
+the material, stone, should seem to
+forbid. Sir Joshua does not notice
+the very high authority for such an
+attempt&mdash;though it must be confessed
+the material was not stone, still it was
+sculpture, and multitudinous are the
+graces of ornament, and most minutely
+described&mdash;the shield of Hercules,
+by Hesiod; even the noise of the
+furies' wings is affected. The drapery
+of the Apollo he considers to have
+been intended more for support than
+ornament; but the mantle from the
+arm he thinks &quot;answers a much
+higher purpose, by preventing that
+dryness of effect which would inevitably
+attend a naked arm, extended
+almost at full length; to which we
+may add, the disagreeable effect which
+would proceed from the body and arm
+making a right angle.&quot; He conjectures
+that Carlo Maratti, in his love
+for drapery, must have influenced the
+sculptors of the Apostles in the church
+of St John Lateran. &quot;The weight
+and solidity of stone was not to be
+overcome.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To place figures on different plans
+is absurd, because they must still appear
+all equally near the eye; the
+sculptor has not adequate means of
+throwing them back; and, besides,
+the thus cutting up into minute parts,
+destroys grandeur. &quot;Perhaps the only
+circumstance in which the modern
+have excelled the ancient sculptors,
+is the management of a single group
+in basso-relievo.&quot; This, he thinks,
+may have been suggested by the practice
+of modern painters. The attempt
+at perspective must, for the same reason,
+be absurd; the sculptor has not
+the means for this &quot;humble ambition.&quot;
+The ancients represented only the
+elevation of whatever architecture
+they introduced into their bas-reliefs,
+&quot;which is composed of little more
+than horizontal and perpendicular
+lines.&quot; Upon the attempt at modern
+dress in sculpture, he is severe in his
+censure. &quot;Working in stone is a
+very serious business, and it seems to
+be scarce worth while to employ such
+durable materials in conveying to
+posterity a fashion, of which the
+longest existence scarcely exceeds a
+year;&quot; and which, he might have
+added, the succeeding year makes
+ridiculous. We not only change our
+dresses, but laugh at the sight of
+those we have discarded. The gravity
+of sculpture should not be subject to
+contempt. &quot;The uniformity and
+simplicity of the materials on which
+the sculptor labours, (which are only
+white marble,) prescribe bounds to
+his art, and teach him to confine himself
+to proportionable simplicity of
+design.&quot; Mr Burnet has not given
+a better note than that upon Sir Joshua's
+remark, that sculpture has but
+one style. He shows how strongly
+the ancient sculptors marked those
+points wherein the human figure differs
+from that of other animals. &quot;Let
+us take, for example, the human foot;
+on examining, in the first instance,
+those of many animals, we perceive
+the toes either very long or very short
+in proportion; of an equal size nearly,
+and the claws often long and hooked
+inwards: now, in rude sculpture, and
+even in some of the best of the Egyptians,
+we find little attempt at giving
+a character of decided variation;
+but, on the contrary, we see
+<a class="pagenum" name="page189" id="page189" title="189"></a>the foot split up with toes of an
+equal length and thickness; while, in
+Greek sculpture, these points characteristic
+of man are increased, that the
+affinity to animals may be diminished.
+In the Greek marbles, the great toe
+is large and apart from the others,
+where the strap of the sandal came;
+while the others gradually diminish
+and sweep round to the outside of the
+foot, with the greatest regularity of
+curve; the nails are short, and the toes
+broad at the points, indicative of pressure
+on the ground.&quot; Rigidity he considers
+to have been the character of
+the first epochs, changing ultimately as
+in the Elgin marbles, &quot;from the hard
+characteristics of stone to the vivified
+character of flesh.&quot; He thinks Reynolds
+&quot;would have acknowledged the
+supremacy of beautiful nature, uncontrolled
+by the severe line of mathematical
+exactness,&quot; had he lived to see
+the Elgin marbles. &quot;The outline of
+life, which changes under every respiration,
+seems to have undulated under
+the plastic mould of Phidias.&quot; This
+is well expressed. He justly animadverts
+upon the silly fashion of the day,
+in lauding the vulgar imitation of the
+worsted stockings by Thom. The
+subjects chosen were most unfit for
+sculpture,&mdash;their only immortality
+must be in Burns. We do not understand
+his extreme admiration of Wilkie;
+in a note on parallel perspective
+in sculpture, he adduces Raffaelle as
+an example of the practice, and closes
+by comparing him with Sir David
+Wilkie,&mdash;&quot;known by the appellation
+of the Raffaelle of familiar life,&quot;&mdash;men
+perfect antipodes to each other!
+There is a proper eulogy on Chantrey,
+particularly for his busts, in which he
+commonly represented the eye. We
+are most anxious for the arrival of the
+ancient sculpture from Lycia, collected
+and packed for Government by
+the indefatigable and able traveller,
+Mr Fellowes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The ELEVENTH DISCOURSE is upon
+Genius, the particular genius of the
+painter in his power of seizing and
+representing nature, or his subject as
+a whole. He calls it the &quot;genius of
+mechanical performance.&quot; This, with
+little difference, is enforcing what has
+been laid down in former Discourses.
+Indeed, as far as precepts may be
+required, Sir Joshua had already
+performed his task; hence, there is
+necessary repetition. Yet all is said
+well, and conviction perpetuates the
+impressions previously made. Character
+is something independent of minute
+detail; genius alone knows what
+constitutes this character, and practically
+to represent it, is to be a painter
+of genius. Though it be true that he
+&quot;who does not at all express particulars
+expresses nothing; yet it is certain
+that a nice discrimination of minute
+circumstances, and a punctilious
+delineation of them, whatever excellence
+it may have, (and I do not mean
+to detract from it,) never did confer
+on the artist the character of genius.&quot;
+The impression left upon the mind is
+not of particulars, when it would seem
+to be so; such particulars are taken
+out of the subject, and are each a
+whole of themselves. Practically
+speaking, as we before observed, genius
+will be exerted in ascertaining
+how to paint the &quot;<i>nothing</i>&quot; in every
+picture, to satisfy with regard to detail,
+that neither its absence nor its
+presence shall be noticeable.</p>
+
+<p>Our pleasure is not in minute imitation;
+for, in fact, that is not true imitation,
+for it forces upon our notice
+that which naturally we do not see.
+We are not pleased with wax-work,
+which may be nearer reality; &quot;we
+are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing
+ends accomplished by seemingly inadequate
+means.&quot; If this be sound,
+we ought to be sensible of the inadequacy
+of the means, which sets aside
+at once the common notion that art is
+illusion. &quot;The properties of all objects,
+as far as the painter is concerned
+with them, are outline or drawing,
+the colour, and the light and shade.
+The drawing gives the form, the colour
+its visible quality, and the light
+and shade its solidity:&quot; in every one
+of these the habit of seeing as a whole
+must be acquired. From this habit
+arises the power of imitating by
+&quot;dexterous methods.&quot; He proceeds
+to show that the fame of the greatest
+painters does not rest upon their high
+finish. Raffaelle and Titian, one in
+drawing the other in colour, by no
+means finished highly; but acquired
+by their genius an expressive execution.
+Most of his subsequent remarks
+are upon practice in execution and
+colour, in contradistinction to elaborate
+finish. Vasari calls Titian, &quot;giudicioso,
+bello, e stupendo,&quot; with regard
+to this power. He generalized by
+<a class="pagenum" name="page190" id="page190" title="190"></a>colour, and by execution. &quot;In his
+colouring, he was large and general.&quot;
+By these epithets, we think Sir Joshua
+has admitted that the great style comprehends
+colouring. &quot;Whether it
+is the human figure, an animal, or
+even inanimate objects, there is nothing,
+however unpromising in appearance,
+but may be raised into dignity,
+convey sentiment, and produce emotion,
+in the hands of a painter of
+genius.&quot; He condemns that high
+finish which softens off. &quot;This extreme
+softening, instead of producing
+the effect of softness, gives the appearance
+of ivory, or some other hard
+substance, highly polished. The value
+set upon drawings, such as of Coreggio
+and Parmegiano, which are
+but slight, show how much satisfaction
+can be given without high finishing,
+or minute attention to particulars.
+&quot;I wish you to bear in mind, that
+when I speak of a whole, I do not
+mean simply <i>a whole</i> as belonging to
+composition, but <i>a whole</i> with respect
+to the general style of colouring; <i>a
+whole</i> with regard to light and shade;
+and <i>a whole</i> of every thing which may
+separately become the main object of
+a painter. He speaks of a landscape
+painter in Rome, who endeavoured to
+represent every individual leaf upon a
+tree; a few happy touches would have
+given a more true resemblance. There
+is always a largeness and a freedom
+in happy execution, that finish can
+never attain. Sir Joshua says above,
+that even &quot;unpromising&quot; subjects
+may be thus treated. There is a
+painter commonly thought to have
+finished highly, by those who do not
+look into his manner, whose dexterous,
+happy execution was perhaps never surpassed;
+the consequence is, that there
+is &quot;a largeness,&quot; in all his pictures.
+We mean Teniers. The effect of the
+elaborate work that has been added to
+his class of subjects, is to make them
+heavy and fatiguing to the eye. He
+praises Titian for the same large manner
+which he had given to his history
+and portraits, applied to his landscapes,
+and instances the back-ground
+to the &quot;Peter Martyr.&quot; He recommends
+the same practice in portrait
+painting&mdash;the first thing to be attained,
+is largeness and general effect.
+The following puts the truth clearly.
+&quot;Perhaps nothing that we can say
+will so clearly show the advantage
+and excellence of this faculty, as that
+it confers the character of genius on
+works that pretend to no other merit,
+in which is neither expression, character,
+nor dignity, and where none
+are interested in the subject. We
+cannot refuse the character of genius
+to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese,
+without opposing the general sense of
+mankind, (great authorities have called
+it the triumph of painting,) or to
+the Altar of St Augustine at Antwerp,
+by Rubens, which equally deserves
+that title, and for the same reason.
+Neither of these pictures have
+any interesting story to support them.
+That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation
+of a great concourse of
+people at a dinner; and the subject of
+Rubens, if it may be called a subject
+where nothing is doing, is an assembly
+of various saints that lived in different
+ages. The whole excellence
+of those pictures consists in mechanical
+dexterity, working, however, under
+the influence of that comprehensive
+faculty which I have so often
+mentioned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The power of <i>a whole</i> is exemplified
+by the anecdote of a child going
+through a gallery of old portraits.
+She paid very little attention to the
+finishing, or naturalness of drapery,
+but put herself at once to mimic the
+awkward attitudes. &quot;The censure of
+nature uninformed, fastened upon the
+greatest fault that could be in a picture,
+because it related to the character
+and management of the whole.&quot;
+What he would condemn is that substitute
+for deep and proper study,
+which is to enable the painter to conceive
+and execute every subject as a
+whole, and a finish which Cowley
+calls &quot;laborious effects of idleness.&quot;
+He concludes this Discourse with some
+hints on method of study. Many go
+to Italy to copy pictures, and derive
+little advantage. &quot;The great business
+of study is, to form a mind adapted
+and adequate to all times and
+all occasions, to which all nature is
+then laid open, and which may be
+said to possess the key of her inexhaustible
+riches.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of
+the Monk flying from the scene of
+murder, in Titian's &quot;Peter Martyr,&quot;
+showing how that great painter could
+occasionally adopt the style of Michael
+Angelo in his forms. In the
+same note he observes, that Sir Joshua
+had forgotten the detail of this picture,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page191" id="page191" title="191"></a>which detail is noticed and
+praised by Algarotti, for its minute
+discrimination of leaves and plants,
+&quot;even to excite the admiration of a
+botanist.&quot;&mdash;Sir Joshua said they were
+not there. Mr Burnet examined the
+picture at Paris, and found, indeed,
+the detail, but adds, that &quot;they are
+made out with the same hue as the
+general tint of the ground, which is a
+dull brown,&quot; an exemplification of the
+rule, &quot;Ars est celare artem.&quot; Mr
+Burnet remarks, that there is the
+same minute detail in Titian's &quot;Bacchus
+and Ariadne.&quot;&mdash;He is right&mdash;we
+have noticed it, and suspected that it
+had lost the glazing which had subdued
+it. As it is, however, it is not
+important. Mr Burnet is fearful lest
+the authority of Sir Joshua should induce
+a habit of generalizing too much.
+He expresses this fear in another note.
+He says, &quot;the great eagerness to acquire
+what the poet calls</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>'That voluntary style,<br /></span>
+<span>Which careless plays, and seems to mock at toil,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and which Reynolds describes as so
+captivating, has led many a student to
+commence his career at the wrong
+end. They ought to remember, that
+even Rubens founded this excellence
+upon years of laborious and careful
+study. His picture of himself and
+his first wife, though the size of life,
+exhibits all the detail and finish of
+Holbein.&quot; Sir Joshua nowhere recommends
+<i>careless</i> style; on the contrary,
+he every where urges the student
+to laborious toil, in order that he
+may acquire that facility which Sir
+Joshua so justly calls captivating, and
+which afterwards Rubens himself did
+acquire, by studying it in the works
+of Titian and Paul Veronese; and singularly,
+in contradiction to his fears
+and all he would imply, Mr Burnet
+terminates his passage thus:&mdash;&quot;Nor
+did he (Rubens) quit the dry manner
+of Otho Venius, till a contemplation
+of the works of Titian and Paul Veronese
+enabled him to display with
+rapidity those materials which industry
+had collected.&quot; It is strange to
+argue upon the abuse of a precept, by
+taking it at the wrong end.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The TWELFTH DISCOURSE recurs
+likewise to much that had been before
+laid down. It treats of methods of
+study, upon which he had been consulted
+by artists about to visit Italy.
+Particular methods of study he considers
+of little consequence; study
+must not be shackled by too much
+method. If the painter loves his art,
+he will not require prescribed tasks;&mdash;to
+go about which sluggishly, which
+he will do if he have another impulse,
+can be of little advantage. Hence
+would follow, as he admirably expresses
+it, &quot;a reluctant understanding,&quot;
+and a &quot;servile hand.&quot; He supposes,
+however, the student to be
+somewhat advanced. The boy, like
+other school-boys, must be under restraint,
+and learn the &quot;Grammar and
+Rudiments&quot; laboriously. It is not
+such who travel for knowledge. The
+student, he thinks, may be pretty
+much left to himself; if he undertake
+things above his strength, it is better
+he should run the risk of discouragement
+thereby, than acquire &quot;a slow
+proficiency&quot; by &quot;too easy tasks.&quot;
+He has little confidence in the efficacy
+of method, &quot;in acquiring excellence
+in any art whatever.&quot; Methodical
+studies, with all their apparatus, enquiry,
+and mechanical labour, tend
+too often but &quot;to evade and shuffle
+off real labour&mdash;the real labour of
+thinking.&quot; He has ever avoided giving
+particular directions. He has
+found students who have imagined
+they could make &quot;prodigious progress
+under some particular eminent
+master.&quot; Such would lean on any but
+themselves. &quot;After the Rudiments
+are past, very little of our art can be
+taught by others.&quot; A student ought
+to have a just and manly confidence
+in himself, &quot;or rather in the persevering
+industry which he is resolved
+to possess.&quot; Raffaelle had done nothing,
+and was quite young, when fixed
+upon to adorn the Vatican with his
+works; he had even to direct the best
+artists of his age. He had a meek and
+gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent
+with that manly confidence that
+insured him success&mdash;a confidence in
+himself arising from a consciousness of
+power, and a determination to exert it.
+The result is &quot;in perpetuum.&quot;&mdash;There
+are, however, artists who have too
+much self-confidence, that is ill-founded
+confidence, founded rather upon a
+certain dexterity than upon a habit of
+thought; they are like the improvisatori
+in poetry; and most commonly, as
+Metastasio acknowledged of himself,
+had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit
+<a class="pagenum" name="page192" id="page192" title="192"></a>of thinking with selection. To be able
+to draw and to design with rapidity,
+is, indeed, to be master of the grammar
+of art; but in the completion, and
+in the final settlement of the design,
+the portfolio must again and again
+have been turned over, and the nicest
+judgment exercised. This judgment
+is the result of deep study and intenseness
+of thought&mdash;thought not
+only upon the artist's own inventions,
+but those of others. Luca Giordano
+and La Fage are brought as examples
+of great dexterity and readiness of invention&mdash;but
+of little selection; for
+they borrowed very little from others:
+and still less will any artist, that can
+distinguish between excellence and
+insipidity, ever borrow from them.
+Raffaelle, who had no lack of invention,
+took the greatest pains to select;
+and when designing &quot;his greatest as
+well as latest works, the Cartoons,&quot;
+he had before him studies he had made
+from Masaccio. He borrowed from
+him &quot;two noble figures of St Paul.&quot;
+The only alteration he made was in
+the showing both hands, which he
+thought in a principal figure should
+never be omitted. Masaccio's work
+was well known; Raffaelle was not
+ashamed to have borrowed. &quot;Such
+men, surely, need not be ashamed of
+that friendly intercourse which ought
+to exist among artists, of receiving from
+the dead, and giving to the living, and
+perhaps to those who are yet unborn.
+The daily food and nourishment of
+the mind of an artist is found in the
+great works of his predecessors. 'Serpens
+nisi serpentem comederit, non
+fit draco.'&quot; The fact is, the most self-sufficient
+of men are greater borrowers
+than they will admit, or perhaps know;
+their very novelties, if they have any,
+commence upon the thoughts of others,
+which are laid down as a foundation in
+their own minds. The common sense,
+which is called &quot;common property,&quot;
+is that stock which all that have gone
+before us have left behind them; and
+we are but admitted to the heirship of
+what they have acquired. Masaccio
+Sir Joshua considers to have been
+&quot;one of the great fathers of modern
+art.&quot; He was the first who gave largeness,
+and &quot;discovered the path that
+leads to every excellence to which the
+art afterwards arrived.&quot; It is enough to
+say of him, that Michael Angelo, Leonardo
+da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle,
+Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto,
+Il Rosso, and Pierino del Vaga, formed
+their taste by studying his works.
+&quot;An artist-like mind&quot; is best formed
+by studying the works of great artists.
+It is a good practice to consider figures
+in works of great masters as statues
+which we may take in any view. This did
+Raffaelle, in his &quot;Sergius Paulus,&quot; from
+Masaccio. Lest there should be any misunderstanding
+of this sort of borrowing,
+which he justifies, he again refers
+to the practice of Raffaelle in this his
+borrowing from Masaccio. The two
+figures of St Paul, he doubted if Raffaelle
+could have improved; but &quot;he
+had the address to change in some
+measure without diminishing the grandeur
+of their character.&quot; For a serene
+composed dignity, he has given
+animation suited to their employment.
+&quot;In the same manner, he has given
+more animation to the figure of Sergius
+Paulus, and to that which is introduced
+in the picture of Paul preaching,
+of which little more than hints
+are given by Masaccio, which Raffaelle
+has finished. The closing the eyes of
+this figure, which in Masaccio might
+be easily mistaken for sleeping, is not
+in the least ambiguous in the Cartoon.
+His eyes, indeed are closed, but they
+are closed with such vehemence, that
+the agitation of a mind <i>perplexed in
+the extreme</i> is seen at the first glance;
+but what is most extraordinary, and I
+think particularly to be admired, is,
+that the same idea is continued through
+the whole figure, even to the drapery,
+which is so closely muffled about him,
+that even his hands are not seen: By
+this happy correspondence between
+the expression of the countenance and
+the disposition of the parts, the figure
+appears to think from head to foot.
+Men of superior talents alone are capable
+of thus using and adapting other
+men's minds to their own purposes,
+or are able to make out and finish
+what was only in the original a hint or
+imperfect conception. A readiness in
+taking such hints, which escape the
+dull and ignorant, makes, in my opinion,
+no inconsiderable part of that
+faculty of mind which is called genius.&quot;
+He urges the student not even
+to think himself qualified to invent,
+till he is well acquainted with the
+stores of invention the world possesses;
+and insists that, without such study,
+he will not have learned to select from
+nature. He has more than once enforced
+this doctrine, because it is new.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page193" id="page193" title="193"></a>He recommends, even in borrowing,
+however, an immediate recurrence to
+the model, that every thing may be
+finished from nature. Hence he proceeds
+to give some directions for
+placing the model and the drapery&mdash;first
+to impress upon the model the
+purpose of the attitude required&mdash;next,
+to be careful not to alter drapery
+with the hand, rather trusting, if
+defective, to a new cast. There is
+much in being in the way of accident.
+To obtain the freedom of accident
+Rembrandt put on his colours with his
+palette-knife; a very common practice
+at the present day. &quot;Works produced
+in an accidental manner will
+have the same free unrestrained air as
+the works of nature, whose particular
+combinations seem to depend upon
+accident.&quot; He concludes this Discourse
+by more strenuously insisting
+upon the necessity of ever having nature
+in view&mdash;and warns students by
+the example of Boucher, Director of
+the French Academy, whom he saw
+working upon a large picture, &quot;without
+drawings or models of any kind.&quot;
+He had left off the use of models many
+years. Though a man of ability, his
+pictures showed the mischief of his
+practice. Mr Burnet's notes to this
+Discourse add little to the material of
+criticism; they do but reiterate in substance
+what Sir Joshua had himself
+sufficiently repeated. His object seems
+rather to seize an opportunity of expressing
+his admiration of Wilkie,
+whom he adduces as a parallel example
+with Raffaelle of successful
+borrowing. It appears from the account
+given of Wilkie's process, that
+he carried the practice much beyond
+Raffaelle. We cannot conceive any
+thing <i>very</i> good coming from so very
+methodical a manner of setting to work.
+Would not the fire of genius be extinguished
+by the coolness of the process?
+&quot;When he had fixed upon his
+subject, he thought upon <i>all</i> pictures of
+that class already in existence.&quot; The
+after process was most elaborate.
+Now, this we should think a practice
+quite contrary to Raffaelle's, who more
+probably trusted to his own conception
+for the character of his picture as a
+whole, and whose borrowing was more
+of single figures; but, if of the whole
+manner of treating his subject, it is
+not likely that he would have thought
+of more than one work for his imitation.
+The fact is, Sir David Wilkie's
+pictures show that he did carry this
+practice too far&mdash;for there is scarcely
+a picture of his that does not show
+patches of imitations, that are not always
+congruous with each other; there
+is too often in one piece, a bit of Rembrandt,
+a bit of Velasquez, a bit of
+Ostade, or others. The most perfect,
+as a whole, is his &quot;Chelsea Pensioners.&quot;
+We do not quite understand
+the brew of study fermenting an accumulation
+of knowledge, and imagination
+exalting it. &quot;An accumulation
+of knowledge impregnated his mind,
+fermented by study, and exalted by
+imagination;&quot; this is very ambitious,
+but not very intelligible. He speaks of
+Wilkie attracting the attention of admirers
+and detractors. It is very absurd
+to consider criticism that is not
+always favourable, detraction. The
+following passage is well put. &quot;We
+constantly hear the ignorant advising
+a student to study the great book of
+nature, without being biassed by what
+has been done by other painters; it is
+as absurd as if they would recommend
+a youth to learn astronomy by lying
+in the fields, and looking on the stars,
+without reference to the works of Kepler,
+Tycho Brahe, or of Newton.&quot;
+There is indeed a world of cant in the
+present day, that a man must do all
+to his own unprejudiced reason, contemning
+all that has been done before
+him. We have just now been looking at
+a pamphlet on Materialism (a pamphlet
+of most ambitious verbiage,) in which,
+with reference to all former education,
+we are &quot;the slaves of prejudice;&quot; yet
+the author modestly requires that
+minds&mdash;we beg his pardon, we have <i>no
+minds</i>&mdash;intellects must be <i>trained</i> to his
+mode of thinking, ere they can arrive at
+the truth and the perfection of human
+nature. If this training is prejudice in
+one set of teachers, may it not be in another?
+We continually hear artists recommend
+nature without &quot;a prejudice
+in favour of old masters.&quot; Such artists
+are not likely to eclipse the fame of those
+great men, the study of whose works
+has so long <i>prejudiced</i> the world.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows
+that art is not imitation, but is under
+the influence and direction of the imagination,
+and in what manner poetry,
+painting, acting, gardening, and architecture,
+depart from nature. However
+good it is to study the beauties of
+artists, this is only to know art through
+<a class="pagenum" name="page194" id="page194" title="194"></a>them. The principles of painting
+remain to be compared with those
+of other arts, all of them with human
+nature. All arts address themselves
+only to two faculties of the
+mind, its imagination and its sensibility.
+We have feeling, and an instantaneous
+judgment, the result of the
+experience of life, and reasonings
+which we cannot trace. It is safer to
+trust to this feeling and judgment,
+than endeavour to control and direct
+art upon a supposition of what ought
+in reason to be the end or means. We
+should, therefore, most carefully store
+first impressions. They are true,
+though we know not the process by
+which the first conviction is formed.
+Partial and after reasoning often
+serves to destroy that character, the
+truth of which came upon us as with
+an instinctive knowledge. We often
+reason ourselves into narrow and partial
+theories, not aware that &quot;<i>real</i>
+principles of <i>sound reason</i>, and of so
+much more weight and importance,
+are involved, and as it were lie hid,
+under the appearance of a sort of vulgar
+sentiment. Reason, without doubt,
+must ultimately determine every thing;
+at this minute it is required to inform
+us when that very reason is to give
+way to feeling.&quot; Sir Joshua again
+refers to the mistaken views of art,
+and taken too by not the poorest
+minds, &quot;that it entirely or mainly depends
+on imitation.&quot; Plato, even in
+this respect, misleads by a partial
+theory. It is with &quot;such a false view
+that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to
+distinguish even Raffaelle himself,
+whom our enthusiasm honours with
+the name divine. The same sentiment
+is adopted by Pope in his epitaph
+on Sir Godfrey Kneller; and he
+turns the panegyric solely on imitation
+as it is a sort of deception.&quot; It
+is, undoubtedly, most important that
+the world should be taught to honour
+art for its highest qualities; until this
+is done, the profession will be a degradation.
+So far from painting being
+imitation, he proceeds to show
+that &quot;it is, and ought to be, in many
+points of view, and strictly speaking,
+no imitation at all of external nature.&quot;
+Civilization is not the gross state of
+nature; imagination is the result of
+cultivation, of civilization; it is to
+this state of nature art must be more
+closely allied. We must not appeal
+for judgment upon art to those who
+have not acquired the faculty to admire.
+The lowest style of all arts
+please the uncultivated. But, to speak
+of the unnaturalness of art&mdash;let it be
+illustrated by poetry, which speaks
+in language highly artificial, and &quot;a
+construction of measured words, such
+as never is nor ever was used by man.&quot;
+Now, as there is in the human mind
+&quot;a sense of congruity, coherence, and
+consistency,&quot; which must be gratified;
+so, having once assumed a language
+and style not adopted in common discourse,
+&quot;it is required that the sentiments
+also should be in the same proportion
+raised above common nature.&quot;
+There must be an agreement of all
+the parts with the whole. He recognizes
+the chorus of the ancient drama,
+and the recitative of the Italian opera
+as natural, under this view. &quot;And
+though the most violent passions, the
+highest distress, even death itself, are
+expressed in singing or recitative,
+I would not admit as sound criticism
+the condemnation of such exhibitions
+on account of their being unnatural.&quot;
+&quot;Shall reason stand in the way, and
+tell us that we ought not to like what
+we know we do like, and prevent us
+from feeling the full effect of this
+complicated exertion of art? It appears
+to us that imagination is that
+gift to man, to be attained by cultivation,
+that enables him to rise above
+and out of his apparent nature; it is
+the source of every thing good and
+great, we had almost said of every
+virtue. The parent of all arts, it is
+of a higher devotion; it builds and
+adorns temples more worthy of the
+great Maker of all, and praises Him
+in sounds too noble for the common
+intercourse and business of life, which
+demand of the most cultivated that
+they put themselves upon a lower
+level than they are capable of assuming.
+So far, therefore, is a servile
+imitation from being necessary, that
+whatever is familiar, or in any way
+reminds us of what we see and hear
+every day, perhaps does not belong to
+the higher provinces of art, either in
+poetry or painting. The mind is to
+be transported, as Shakspeare expresses
+it, <i>beyond the ignorant present</i>,
+to ages past. Another and a higher
+order of beings is supposed, and to
+those beings every thing which is introduced
+into the work must correspond.&quot;
+He speaks of a picture by
+Jan Steen, the &quot;Sacrifice of Iphigenia,&quot;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page195" id="page195" title="195"></a>wherein the common nature, with the
+silks and velvets, would make one
+think the painter had intended to burlesque
+his subject. &quot;Ill taught reason&quot;
+would lead us to prefer a portrait
+by Denner to one by Titian or
+Vandyke. There is an eloquent passage,
+showing that landscape painting
+should in like manner appeal to
+the imagination; we are only surprised
+that the author of this description
+should have omitted, throughout
+these Discourses, the greatest of all
+landscape painters, whose excellence
+he should seem to refer to by his language.
+&quot;Like the poet, he makes
+the elements sympathize with his subject,
+whether the clouds roll in volumes,
+like those of Titian or Salvator
+Rosa&mdash;or, like those of Claude, are
+gilded with the setting sun; whether
+the mountains have hidden and bold
+projections, or are gently sloped;
+whether the branches of his trees
+shoot out abruptly in right angles
+from their trunks, or follow each
+other with only a gentle inclination.
+All these circumstances contribute
+to the general character of the work,
+whether it be of the elegant or of the
+more sublime kind. If we add to this
+the powerful materials of lightness
+and darkness, over which the artist
+has complete dominion, to vary and
+dispose them as he pleases&mdash;to diminish
+or increase them, as will best
+suit his purpose, and correspond to
+the general idea of his work; a landscape,
+thus conducted, under the influence
+of a poetical mind, will have
+the same superiority over the more ordinary
+and common views, as Milton's
+&quot;Allegro&quot; and &quot;Penseroso&quot; have over
+a cold prosaic narration or description;
+and such a picture would make
+a more forcible impression on the
+mind than the real scenes, were they
+presented before us.&quot; We have
+quoted the above passage, because it
+is wanted&mdash;we are making great mistakes
+in that delightful, and (may we
+not say?) that high branch of art. He
+pursues the same argument with regard
+to acting, and condemns the
+<i>ignorant</i> praise bestowed by Fielding
+on Garrick. Not an idea of deception
+enters the mind of actor or author.
+On the stage, even the expression
+of strong passion must be without
+the natural distortion and screaming
+voice. Transfer, he observes, acting
+to a private room, and it would be
+ridiculous. &quot;Quid enim deformius,
+quum scenam in vitam transferre?&quot;
+Yet he gives here a caution, &quot;that
+no art can be grafted with success on
+another art.&quot; &quot;If a painter should
+endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp
+and parade of dress and attitude, instead
+of that simplicity which is not a
+greater beauty in life than it is in
+painting, we should condemn such
+pictures, as painted in the meanest
+style.&quot; What will our academician,
+Mr Maclise, say of this remark? He
+then adduces gardening in support of
+his theory,&mdash;&quot;nature to advantage
+dressed,&quot; &quot;beautiful and commodious
+for the recreation of man.&quot;
+We cannot, however, go with Sir
+Joshua, who adds, that &quot;so dressed,
+it is no longer a subject for the
+pencil of a landscape painter, as all
+landscape painters know.&quot; It is certainly
+unlike the great landscape he
+has described, but not very unlike
+Claude's, nor out of the way of his
+pencil. We have in our mind's eye
+a garden scene by Vander Heyden,
+most delightful, most elegant. It is
+some royal garden, with its proper
+architecture, the arch, the steps, and
+balustrades, and marble walks. The
+queen of the artificial paradise is entering,
+and in the shade with her attendants,
+but she will soon place her
+foot upon the prepared sunshine.
+Courtiers are here and there walking
+about, or leaning over the balustrades.
+All is elegance&mdash;a scene prepared for
+the recreation of pure and cultivated
+beings. We cannot say the picture
+is not landscape. We are sure it
+gave us ten times more pleasure than
+ever we felt from any of our landscape
+views, with which modern landscape
+painting has covered the walls
+of our exhibitions, and brought into
+disrepute our &quot;annuals.&quot; He proceeds
+to architecture, and praises Vanburgh
+for his poetical imagination; though
+he, with Perrault, was a mark for the
+wits of the day.<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11" href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Sir Joshua points to
+the fa&ccedil;ade of the Louvre, Blenheim,
+and Castle Howard, as &quot;the fairest
+ornaments.&quot; He finishes this admirable
+<a class="pagenum" name="page196" id="page196" title="196"></a>discourse with the following eloquent
+passage:&mdash;&quot;It is allowed on all
+hands, that facts and events, however
+they may bind the historian, have no
+dominion over the poet or the painter.
+With us history is made to bend and
+conform to this great idea of art. And
+why? Because these arts, in their
+highest province, are not addressed
+to the gross senses; but to the desires
+of the mind, to that spark of divinity
+which we have within, impatient of
+being circumscribed and pent up by
+the world which is about us. Just so
+much as our art has of this, just so
+much of dignity, I had almost said
+of divinity, it exhibits; and those of
+our artists who possessed this mark of
+distinction in the highest degree, acquired
+from thence the glorious appellation
+of divine.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse
+are not important to art. There is
+an amusing one on acting, that discusses
+the question of naturalness on the stage,
+and with some pleasant anecdotes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is
+chiefly occupied with the character of
+Gainsborough, and landscape painting.
+It has brought about him, and
+his name, a hornet's nest of critics, in
+consequence of some remarks upon a
+picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough
+and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some
+degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has
+been said that Wilson and Gainsborough
+never liked each other. It is a
+well-known anecdote that Sir Joshua,
+at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough,
+adding &quot;the greatest landscape
+painter of the age,&quot; to which
+Wilson, at whom the words were supposed
+to be aimed, dryly added, &quot;and
+the greatest portrait painter too.&quot;
+We can, especially under circumstances,
+for there had been a coolness
+between the President and Gainsborough,
+pardon the too favourable
+view taken of Gainsborough's landscape
+pictures. He was unquestionably
+much greater as a portrait painter.
+The following account of the interview
+with Gainsborough upon his
+death-bed, is touching, and speaks
+well of both:&mdash;&quot;A few days before
+he died he wrote me a letter, to express
+his acknowledgments for the
+good opinion I entertained of his abilities,
+and the manner in which (he
+had been informed) I always spoke of
+him; and desired that he might see
+me once before he died. I am aware
+how flattering it is to myself to be
+thus connected with the dying testimony
+which this excellent painter
+bore to his art. But I cannot prevail
+upon myself to suppress that I was
+not connected with him by any habits
+of familiarity. If any little jealousies
+had subsisted between us, they were
+forgotten in these moments of sincerity;
+and he turned towards me as
+one who was engrossed by the same
+pursuits, and who deserved his good
+opinion by being sensible of his excellence.
+Without entering into a
+detail of what passed at this last interview,
+the impression of it upon my
+mind was, that his regret at losing
+life was principally the regret of
+leaving his art; and more especially as
+he now began, he said, to see what
+his deficiencies were; which, he said,
+he flattered himself in his last works
+were in some measure supplied.&quot;
+When the Discourse was delivered,
+Raffaelle Mengs and Pompeo Batoni
+were great names. Sir Joshua
+foretells their fall from that high estimation.
+Andrea Sacchi, and &quot;<i>perhaps</i>&quot;
+Carlo Maratti, he considers the
+&quot;ultimi Romanorum.&quot; He prefers
+&quot;the humble attempts of Gainsborough
+to the works of those regular
+graduates in the great historical style.&quot;
+He gives some account of the &quot;customs
+and habits of this extraordinary man.&quot;
+Gainsborough's love for his art was
+remarkable. He was ever remarking
+to those about him any peculiarity of
+countenance, accidental combination
+of figures, effects of light and shade,
+in skies, in streets, and in company.
+If he met a character he liked, he
+would send him home to his house.
+He brought into his painting-room
+stumps of trees, weeds, &amp;c. He
+even formed models of landscapes on
+his table, composed of broken stones,
+dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass,
+which, magnified, became rocks,
+trees, and water. Most of this is the
+common routine of every artist's life;
+the modelling his landscapes in the
+manner mentioned, Sir Joshua himself
+seems to speak doubtingly about.
+It in fact shows, that in Gainsborough
+there was a poverty of invention; his
+scenes are of the commonest kind,
+such as few would stop to admire in
+nature; and, when we consider the
+wonderful variety that nature did present
+to him, it is strange that his
+<a class="pagenum" name="page197" id="page197" title="197"></a>sketches and compositions should
+have been so devoid of beauty. He
+was in the habit of painting by night,
+a practice which Reynolds recommends,
+and thought it must have been
+the practice of Titian and Coreggio.
+He might have mentioned the portrait
+of Michael Angelo with the candle in
+his cap and a mallet in his hand.
+Gainsborough was ambitious of attaining
+excellence, regardless of riches.
+The style chosen by Gainsborough
+did not require that he should go out
+of his own country. No argument is to
+be drawn from thence, that travelling
+is not desirable for those who choose
+other walks of art&mdash;knowing that
+&quot;the language of the art must be
+learned somewhere,&quot; he applied himself
+to the Flemish school, and certainly
+with advantage, and occasionally
+made copies from Rubens, Teniers,
+and Vandyke. Granting him as
+a painter great merit, Sir Joshua
+doubts whether he excelled most in
+portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures.
+Few now will doubt upon the
+subject&mdash;next to Sir Joshua, he was
+the greatest portrait painter we have
+had, so as to be justly entitled to the
+fame of being one of the founders of
+the English School. He did not attempt
+historical painting; and here
+Sir Joshua contrasts him with Hogarth;
+who did so injudiciously. It
+is strange that Sir Joshua should have
+characterised Hogarth as having given
+his attention to &quot;the Ridicule of Life.&quot;
+We could never see any thing
+ridiculous in his deep tragedies.
+Gainsborough is praised in that he
+never introduced &quot;mythological
+learning&quot; into his pictures. &quot;Our
+late ingenious academician, Wilson,
+has, I fear, been guilty, like many
+of his predecessors, of introducing
+gods and goddesses, ideal beings, into
+scenes which were by no means prepared
+to receive such personages. His
+landscapes were in reality too near
+common nature to admit supernatural
+objects. In consequence of this mistake,
+in a very admirable picture of
+a storm, which I have seen of his
+hand, many figures are introduced
+in the foreground, some in apparent
+distress, and some struck dead, as a
+spectator would naturally suppose, by
+lightning: had not the painter injudiciously,
+(as I think,) rather chosen
+that their death should be imputed
+to a little Apollo, who appears in the
+sky with his bent bow, and that those
+figures should be considered as the
+children of Niobe.&quot; This is the passage
+that gave so much offence; foolish
+admirers will fly into flame at the
+slightest spark&mdash;the question should
+have been, is the criticism just, not
+whether Sir Joshua had been guilty
+of the same error&mdash;but we like critics,
+the only true critics, who give their
+reason: and so did Sir Joshua. &quot;To
+manage a subject of this kind a peculiar
+style of art is required; and it
+can only be done without impropriety,
+or even without ridicule, when we
+adopt the character of the landscape,
+and that too in all its parts, to the
+historical or poetical representation.
+This is a very difficult adventure, and
+requires a mind thrown back two
+thousand years, like that of Nicolo
+Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture
+alluded to, the first idea that presents
+itself is that of wonder, at seeing a
+figure in so uncommon a situation as
+that in which Apollo is placed: for
+the clouds on which he kneels have
+not the appearance of being able to
+support him&mdash;they have neither the
+substance nor the form fit for the receptacle
+of a human figure, and they
+do not possess, in any respect, that
+romantic character which is appropriated
+to such an object, and which
+alone can harmonize with poetical
+stories.&quot; We presume Reynolds alludes
+to the best of the two Niobes
+by Wilson&mdash;that in the National Gallery.
+The other is villanously faulty
+as a composition, where loaf is piled
+upon loaf for rock and castle, and the
+tree is common and hedge-grown, for
+the purpose of making gates; but the
+other would have been a fine picture,
+not of the historical class&mdash;the parts are
+all common, the little blown about
+underwood is totally deficient in all
+form and character&mdash;rocks and trees,
+and they do not, as in a former discourse&mdash;Reynolds
+had laid down that
+they should&mdash;sympathize with the subject;
+then, as to the substance of the
+cloud, he is right&mdash;it is not voluminous,
+it is mere vapour. In the received
+adoption of clouds as supporting
+figures, they are, at least, pillowy,
+capacious, and round&mdash;here it is quite
+otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well
+call it a little Apollo, with that immense
+cloud above him, which is in
+fact too much a portrait of a cloud,
+too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject
+<a class="pagenum" name="page198" id="page198" title="198"></a>where the sky is not to be all in
+all. We do not say it is not fine and
+grand, and what you please; but it is
+not subordinate, it casts its lightning
+as from its own natural power, there
+was no need of a god's assistance.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the action does not take place
+in a &quot;prepared&quot; landscape. There
+is nothing to take us back to a
+fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust
+to Wilson's merits, for he calls it,
+notwithstanding this defect, &quot;a
+very admirable picture;&quot; which
+picture will, we suspect, in a few
+years lose its principal charm, if it
+has not lost it; the colour is sadly
+changing, there is now little aerial in
+the sky. It is said of Wilson, that he
+ridiculed the experiments of Sir
+Joshua, and spoke of using nothing
+but &quot;honest linseed&quot;&mdash;to which,
+however, he added varnishes and wax,
+as will easily be seen in those pictures
+of his which have so cracked&mdash;and
+now lose their colour. &quot;Honest&quot;
+linseed appears to have played
+him a sad trick, or he to have played
+a trick upon honest linseed. Sir
+Joshua, however, to his just criticism,
+adds the best precept, example&mdash;and
+instances two pictures, historical
+landscape, &quot;Jacob's Dream&quot;&mdash;which
+was exhibited a year or two ago in
+the Institution, Pall-Mall&mdash;by Salvator
+Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian
+Bourdon, &quot;The Return of the
+Ark from Captivity,&quot; now in the National
+Gallery. The latter picture, as
+a composition, is not perhaps good&mdash;it
+is cut up into too many parts, and
+those parts are not sufficiently poetical;
+in its hue, it may be appropriate.
+The other, &quot;Jacob's Dream&quot; is one
+of the finest by the master&mdash;there is
+an extraordinary boldness in the
+clouds, an uncommon grandeur,
+strongly marked, sentient of angelic
+visitants. This picture has been recently
+wretchedly engraved in mezzotinto;
+all that is in the picture firm
+and hard, is in the print soft, fuzzy,
+and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats
+very tenderly the mistaken manner of
+Gainsborough in his late pictures, the
+&quot;odd scratches and marks.&quot; &quot;This
+chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance,
+by a kind of magic at a
+certain distance, assumes form, and
+all their parts seem to drop into their
+places, so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence,
+under the appearance of chance
+and heavy negligence.&quot; The <i>heavy</i>
+negligence happily describes the fault
+of the manner. It is horribly manifest
+in that magnitude of vulgarity
+for landscape, the &quot;Market Cart&quot; in
+our National Gallery, and purchased at
+we know not what vast sum, and presented
+by the governors of the institution
+to the nation. We have a very
+high opinion of the genius of Gainsborough;
+but we do not see it in his
+landscapes, with very few exceptions.
+His portraits have an air of truth
+never exceeded, and that set off with
+great power and artistical skill; and
+his rustic children are admirable. He
+stands alone, and never has had a
+successful imitator. The mock sentimentality,
+the affected refinement,
+which has been added to his simple
+style by other artists, is disgusting in
+the extreme. Gainsborough certainly
+studied colour with great success.
+He is both praised and blamed for a
+lightness of manner and effect possessed
+&quot;to an unexampled degree of
+excellence;&quot; but &quot;the sacrifice which
+he made, to this ornament of our art,
+was too great.&quot; We confess we do not
+understand Sir Joshua, nor can we
+reconcile &quot;the <i>heavy</i> negligence&quot; with
+this &quot;lightness of manner.&quot; Mr Burnet,
+in one of his notes, compares
+Wilson with Gainsborough; he appears
+to give the preference to
+Wilson&mdash;why does he not compare
+Gainsborough with Sir Joshua himself?
+the rivalry should have been
+in portrait. There is a long
+note upon Sir Joshua's remarks
+upon Wilson's &quot;Niobe.&quot; We are not
+surprised at Cunningham's &quot;Castigation.&quot;
+He did not like Sir Joshua,
+and could not understand nor value
+his character. This is evident in his
+Life of the President. Cunningham
+must have had but an ill-educated
+classic eye when he asserted so grandiloquently,&mdash;&quot;He
+rose at once from
+the tame insipidity of common scenery
+into natural grandeur and magnificence;
+his streams seem all abodes
+for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts
+for the muses, and his temples worthy
+of gods,&quot;&mdash;a passage, we think, most
+worthy the monosyllable commonly
+used upon such occasions by the
+manly and simple-minded Mr Burchell.
+That Sir Joshua occasionally
+transgressed in his wanderings into
+<a class="pagenum" name="page199" id="page199" title="199"></a>mythology, it would be difficult to
+deny; nor was it his only transgression
+from his legitimate ground, as
+may be seen in his &quot;Holy Family&quot;
+in the National Gallery. But we
+doubt if the critique upon his &quot;Mrs
+Siddons&quot; is quite fair. The chair
+and the footstool may not be on the
+cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour
+reconciling the bodily presence of the
+muse with the demon and fatal ministers
+of the drama that attend her.
+Though Sir Joshua's words are here
+brought against him, it is without attention
+to their application in his critique,
+which condemned their form
+and character as not historical nor voluminous&mdash;faults
+that do not attach to
+the clouds, if clouds they must be in
+the picture (the finest of Sir Joshua's
+works) of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic
+Muse. It is not our business to enter
+upon the supposed fact, that Sir
+Joshua was jealous of Wilson; the
+one was a polished, the other perhaps
+a somewhat coarse man. We have
+only to see if the criticism be just.
+In this Discourse Sir Joshua has the
+candour to admit, that there were at
+one time jealousies between him and
+Gainsborough; there may have been
+between him and Wilson, but, at all
+events, we cannot take a just criticism
+as a proof of it, or we must convict
+him, and all others too, of being
+jealous of artists and writers whose
+works they in any manner censure.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE.&mdash;We
+come now to Sir Joshua's last Discourse,
+in which the President takes
+leave of the Academy, reviews his
+&quot;Discourses,&quot; and concludes with recommending
+the study of Michael
+Angelo.</p>
+
+<p>Having gone along with the President
+of the Academy in the pursuit
+of the principles of the art in these
+Discourses, and felt a portion of the
+enthusiasm which he felt, and knew
+so well how to impart to others, we
+come to this last Discourse, with a
+melancholy knowledge that it was the
+last; and reflect with pain upon that
+cloud which so soon interposed between
+Reynolds and at least the
+practical enjoyment of his art. He
+takes leave of the Academy affectionately,
+and, like a truth-loving man
+to the last, acknowledges the little
+contentions (in so softening a manner
+does he speak of the &quot;rough hostility
+of Barry,&quot; and &quot;oppositions of Gainsborough&quot;)
+which &quot;ought certainly,&quot;
+says he, &quot;to be lost among ourselves
+in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements:
+every controversy ought
+to be&mdash;I am persuaded will be&mdash;sunk
+in our zeal for the perfection of our
+common art.&quot; &quot;My age, and my infirmities
+still more than my age, make
+it probable that this will be the last
+time I shall have the honour of addressing
+you from this place.&quot; This
+last visit seemed to be threatened with
+a tragical end;&mdash;the circumstance
+showed the calm mind of the President;
+it was characteristic of the man
+who would die with dignity, and
+gracefully. A large assembly were
+present, of rank and importance, besides
+the students. The pressure was
+great&mdash;a beam in the floor gave way
+with a loud crash; a general rush
+was made to the door, all indiscriminately
+falling one over the other, except
+the President, who kept his seat
+&quot;silent and unmoved.&quot; The floor
+only sunk a little, was soon supported,
+and Sir Joshua recommenced his Discourse.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Justum et tenacem propositi<br /></span>
+<span>Impavidum ferient ruin&aelig;.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He compliments the Academy upon
+the ability of the professors, speaks
+with diffidence of his power as a writer,
+(the world has in this respect
+done him justice;) but that he had
+come not unprepared upon the subject
+of art, having reflected much upon his
+own and the opinions of others. He
+found in the art many precepts and
+rules, not reconcilable with each
+other. &quot;To clear away those difficulties
+and reconcile those contrary
+opinions, it became necessary to distinguish
+the greater truth, as it may be
+called, from the lesser truth; the
+larger and more liberal idea of nature
+from the more narrow and confined:
+that which addresses itself to the imagination,
+from that which is solely addressed
+to the eye. In consequence of
+this discrimination, the different
+branches of our art to which those
+different truths were referred, were
+perceived to make so wide a separation,
+and put on so new an appearance,
+that they seemed scarcely to have
+proceeded from the same general
+stock. The different rules and regulations
+which presided over each department
+of art, followed of course;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page200" id="page200" title="200"></a>every mode of excellence, from the
+grand style of the Roman and Florentine
+schools down to the lowest rank
+of still life, had its due weight and value&mdash;fitted
+to some class or other; and
+nothing was thrown away. By this
+disposition of our art into classes, that
+perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend
+every artist has at some time
+experienced from the variety of styles,
+and the variety of excellence with
+which he is surrounded, is, I should
+hope, in some measure removed, and
+the student better enabled to judge for
+himself what peculiarly belongs to
+his own particular pursuit.&quot; Besides
+the practice of art, the student must
+think, and speculate, and consider
+&quot;upon what ground the fabric of our
+art is built.&quot; An artist suffers throughout
+his whole life, from uncertain, confused,
+and erroneous opinions. We
+are persuaded there would be fewer
+fatal errors were these Discourses more
+in the hands of our present artists&mdash;&quot;Nocturn&acirc;
+versate manu, versate diurn&acirc;.&quot;&mdash;An
+example is given of the
+mischief of erroneous opinions. &quot;I
+was acquainted at Rome, in the early
+part of my life, with a student of the
+French Academy, who appeared to me
+to possess all the qualities requisite to
+make a great artist, if he had suffered
+his taste and feelings, and I may add
+even his prejudices, to have fair play.
+He saw and felt the excellences of the
+great works of art with which we
+were surrounded, but lamented that
+there was not to be found that nature
+which is so admirable in the inferior
+schools,&mdash;and he supposed with Felebien,
+Du Piles, and other theorists,
+that such an union of different excellences
+would be the perfection of art.
+He was not aware that the narrow
+idea of nature, of which he lamented
+the absence in the works of those
+great artists, would have destroyed the
+grandeur of the general ideas which
+he admired, and which was indeed the
+cause of his admiration. My opinions
+being then confused and unsettled, I
+was in danger of being borne down by
+this plausible reasoning, though I remember
+I then had a dawning suspicion
+that it was not sound doctrine;
+and at the same time I was unwilling
+obstinately to refuse assent to what I
+was unable to confute.&quot; False and
+low views of art are now so commonly
+taken both in and out of the profession,
+that we have not hesitated to
+quote the above passage; the danger
+Sir Joshua confesses he was in, is common,
+and demands the warning. To
+make it more direct we should add,
+&quot;Read his Discourses.&quot; Again, without
+intending to fetter the student's
+mind to a particular method of study,
+he urges the necessity and wisdom
+of previously obtaining the appropriated
+instruments of art, in a first
+correct design, and a plain manly colouring,
+before any thing more is attempted.
+He does not think it, however,
+of very great importance whether
+or not the student aim first at grace
+and grandeur before he has learned
+correctness, and adduces the example
+of Parmegiano, whose first public work
+was done when a boy, the &quot;St Eustachius&quot;
+in the Church of St Petronius,
+in Bologna&mdash;one of his last is the &quot;Moses
+breaking the Tables,&quot; in Parma.
+The former has grandeur and incorrectness,
+but &quot;discovers the dawnings
+of future greatness.&quot; In mature age
+he had corrected his defects, and the
+drawing of his Moses was equally
+admirable with the grandeur of the conception&mdash;an
+excellent plate is given
+of this figure by Mr Burnet. The
+fact is, the impulse of the mind is not
+to be too much restrained&mdash;it is better
+to give it its due and first play,
+than check it until it has acquired
+correctness&mdash;good sense first or last,
+and a love of the art, will generally insure
+correctness in the end; the impulses
+often checked, come with weakened
+power, and ultimately refuse to
+come at all; and each time that they
+depart unsatisfied, unemployed, take
+away with them as they retire a portion
+of the fire of genius. Parmegiano
+formed himself upon Michael
+Angelo: Michael Angelo brought the
+art to a &quot;sudden maturity,&quot; as Homer
+and Shakspeare did theirs. &quot;Subordinate
+parts of our art, and perhaps of
+other arts, expand themselves by a
+slow and progressive growth; but
+those which depend on a native vigour
+of imagination, generally burst forth
+at once in fulness of beauty.&quot;
+Correctness of drawing and imagination,
+the one of mechanical genius the other
+of poetic, undoubtedly work together
+for perfection&mdash;&quot;a confidence in the
+mechanic produces a boldness in the
+poetic.&quot; He expresses his surprise
+that the race of painters, before Michael
+Angelo, never thought of transferring
+to painting the grandeur they
+<a class="pagenum" name="page201" id="page201" title="201"></a>admired in ancient sculpture. &quot;Raffaelle
+himself seemed to be going on
+very contentedly in the dry manner
+of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael
+Angelo had never appeared, the art
+might still have continued in the same
+style.&quot; &quot;On this foundation the Caracci
+built the truly great academical
+Bolognian school; of which the first
+stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi.&quot;
+The Caracci called him &quot;nostro Michael
+Angelo riformato.&quot; His figure
+of Polyphemus, which had been attributed
+to Michael Angelo in Bishop's
+&quot;Ancient Statues,&quot; is given in a plate
+by Mr Burnet. The Caracci he considers
+sufficiently succeeded in the
+mechanical, not in &quot;the divine part
+which addresses itself to the imagination,&quot;
+as did Tibaldi and Michael Angelo.
+They formed, however, a school
+that was &quot;most respectable,&quot; and
+&quot;calculated to please a greater number.&quot;
+The Venetian school advanced
+&quot;the dignity of their style, by adding
+to their fascinating powers of colouring
+something of the strength of Michael
+Angelo.&quot; Here Sir Joshua seems
+to contradict his former assertion; but
+as he is here abridging, as it were, his
+whole Discourses, he cannot avoid his
+own observations. It was a point,
+however, upon which he was still
+doubtful; for he immediately adds&mdash;&quot;At
+the same time it may still be a
+doubt, how far their ornamental elegance
+would be an advantageous addition
+to his grandeur. But if there is
+any manner of painting, which may
+be said to unite kindly with his (Michael
+Angelo's) style, it is that of Titian.
+His handling, the manner in
+which his colours are left on the canvass,
+appears to proceed (as far as that
+goes) from congenial mind, equally
+disdainful of vulgar criticism. He is
+reminded of a remark of Johnson's,
+that Pope's Homer, had it not been
+clothed with graces and elegances not
+in Homer, would have had fewer
+readers, thus justifying by example
+and authority of Johnson, the graces
+of the Venetian school. Some Flemish
+painters at &quot;the great era of our
+art&quot; took to their country &quot;as much
+of this grandeur as they could carry.&quot;
+It did not thrive, but &quot;perhaps they
+contributed to prepare the way for
+that free, unconstrained, and liberal
+outline, which was afterwards introduced
+by Rubens, through the medium
+of the Venetian painters.&quot; The
+grandeur of style first discovered by
+Michael Angelo passed through Europe,
+and totally &quot;changed the whole
+character and style of design. His
+works excite the same sensation as the
+Epic of Homer. The Sybils, the statue
+of Moses, &quot;come nearer to a comparison
+with his Jupiter, his demigods,
+and heroes; those Sybils and
+prophets being a kind of intermediate
+beings between men and angels.
+Though instances may be produced in
+the works of other painters, which may
+justly stand in competition with those
+I have mentioned, such as the 'Isaiah,'
+and 'Vision of Ezekiel,' by Raffaelle,
+the 'St Mark' of Frate Bartolomeo,
+and many others; yet these, it
+must be allowed, are inventions so
+much in Michael Angelo's manner of
+thinking, that they may be truly considered
+as so many rays which discover
+manifestly the centre from whence
+they emanated.&quot; The style of Michael
+Angelo is so highly artificial that the
+mind must be cultivated to receive it;
+having once received it, the mind is improved
+by it, and cannot go very far
+back. Hence the hold this great style
+has had upon all who are most learned
+in art, and upon nearly all painters in
+the best time of art. As art multiplies,
+false tastes will arise, the early painters
+had not so much to unlearn as
+modern artists. Where Michael Angelo
+is not felt, there is a lost taste to
+recover. Sir Joshua recommends
+young artists to follow Michael Angelo
+as he did the ancient sculptors.
+&quot;He began, when a child, a copy of a
+mutilated Satyr's head, and finished in
+his model what was wanting in the original.&quot;
+So would he recommend the student
+to take his figures from Michael
+Angelo, and to change, and alter, and
+add other figures till he has caught the
+manner. Change the purpose, and retain
+the attitude, as did Titian. By
+habit of seeing with this eye of grandeur,
+he will select from nature all
+that corresponds with this taste. Sir
+Joshua is aware that he is laying himself
+open to sarcasm by his advice,
+but asserts the courage becoming a
+teacher addressing students: &quot;they
+both must equally dare, and bid defiance
+to narrow criticism and vulgar
+opinion.&quot; It is the conceited who
+think that art is nothing but inspiration;
+and such appropriate it in their
+own estimation; but it is to be learned,&mdash;if
+so, the right direction to it is of
+vast importance; and once in the right
+direction, labour and study will accomplish
+<a class="pagenum" name="page202" id="page202" title="202"></a>the better aspirations of the
+artist. Michael Angelo said of Raffaelle,
+that he possessed not his art by
+nature but by long study. &quot;Che
+Raffaelle non ebbe quest' arte da natura,
+ma per longo studio.&quot; Raffaelle
+and Michael Angelo were rivals, but
+ever spoke of each other with the respect
+and veneration they felt, and the
+true meaning of the passage was to
+the praise of Raffaelle; those were
+not the days when men were ashamed
+of being laborious,&mdash;and Raffaelle
+himself &quot;thanked God that he was
+born in the same age with that painter.&quot;&mdash;&quot;I
+feel a self-congratulation,&quot;
+adds Sir Joshua, &quot;in knowing myself
+capable of such sensations as he intended
+to excite. I reflect, not without
+vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony
+of my admiration of that truly
+divine man; and I should desire that
+the last words which I should pronounce
+in this Academy, and from this place,
+might be the name of Michael Angelo.&quot;
+They were his last words from the academical
+chair. He died about fourteen
+months after the delivery of this Discourse.
+Mr Burnet has given five
+excellent plates to this Discourse&mdash;one
+from Parmegiano, one from Tibaldi,
+one from Titian, one from Raffaelle,
+and one from Michael Angelo.
+Mr Burnet's first note repeats what
+we have again and again elsewhere
+urged, the advantage of establishing
+at our universities, Oxford and Cambridge,
+Professorships of Painting&mdash;infinite
+would be the advantage to art,
+and to the public. We do not despair.
+Mr Burnet seems to fear incorrect
+drawing will arise from some
+passages, which he supposes encourages
+it, in these Discourses; and fearing
+it, very properly endeavours to
+correct the error in a note. We had
+intended to conclude this paper with
+some few remarks upon Sir Joshua,
+his style, and influence upon art, but
+we have not space. Perhaps we may
+fulfil this part of our intention in
+another number of Maga.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a name="bw328s4" id="bw328s4"></a><h2>THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Grief hath been known to turn the young head grey&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>To silver over in a single day<br /></span>
+<span>The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime<br /></span>
+<span>Scarcely o'erpast: as in the fearful time<br /></span>
+<span>Of Gallia's madness, that discrown&egrave;d head<br /></span>
+<span>Serene, that on the accursed altar bled<br /></span>
+<span>Miscall'd of Liberty. Oh! martyr'd Queen!<br /></span>
+<span>What must the sufferings of that night have been&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span><i>That one</i>&mdash;that sprinkled thy fair tresses o'er<br /></span>
+<span>With time's untimely snow! But now no more<br /></span>
+<span>Lovely, august, unhappy one! of thee&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I have to tell an humbler history;<br /></span>
+<span>A village tale, whose only charm, in sooth,<br /></span>
+<span>(If any) will be sad and simple truth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Mother,&quot; quoth Ambrose to his thrifty dame&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>So oft our peasant's use his wife to name,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Father&quot; and &quot;Master&quot; to himself applied,<br /></span>
+<span>As life's grave duties matronize the bride&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Mother,&quot; quoth Ambrose, as he faced the north,<br /></span>
+<span>With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth<br /></span>
+<span>To his day labour, from the cottage door&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before,<br /></span>
+<span>There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton<a id="footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12" href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> roar?<br /></span>
+<span>It's brewing up down westward; and look there,<br /></span>
+<span>One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair;<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page203" id="page203" title="203"></a>And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on,<br /></span>
+<span>As threats, the waters will be out anon.<br /></span>
+<span>That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Best let the young ones bide from school to-day.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Do, mother, do!&quot; the quick-ear'd urchins cried;<br /></span>
+<span>Two little lasses to the father's side<br /></span>
+<span>Close clinging, as they look'd from him, to spy<br /></span>
+<span>The answering language of the mother's eye.<br /></span>
+<span><i>There</i> was denial, and she shook her head:<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Nay, nay&mdash;no harm will come to them,&quot; she said,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;The mistress lets them off these short dark days<br /></span>
+<span>An hour the earlier; and our Liz, she says,<br /></span>
+<span>May quite be trusted&mdash;and I know 'tis true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>To take care of herself and Jenny too.<br /></span>
+<span>And so she ought&mdash;she's seven come first of May&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Two years the oldest: and they give away<br /></span>
+<span>The Christmas bounty at the school to-day.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>The mother's will was law, (alas for her<br /></span>
+<span>That hapless day, poor soul!) <i>She</i> could not err,<br /></span>
+<span>Thought Ambrose; and his little fair-hair'd Jane<br /></span>
+<span>(Her namesake) to his heart he hugg'd again,<br /></span>
+<span>When each had had her turn; she clinging so<br /></span>
+<span>As if that day she could not let him go.<br /></span>
+<span>But Labour's sons must snatch a hasty bliss<br /></span>
+<span>In nature's tend'rest mood. One last fond kiss,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;God bless my little maids!&quot; the father said,<br /></span>
+<span>And cheerly went his way to win their bread.<br /></span>
+<span>Then might be seen, the playmate parent gone,<br /></span>
+<span>What looks demure the sister pair put on&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Not of the mother as afraid, or shy,<br /></span>
+<span>Or questioning the love that could deny;<br /></span>
+<span>But simply, as their simple training taught,<br /></span>
+<span>In quiet, plain straightforwardness of thought,<br /></span>
+<span>(Submissively resign'd the hope of play,)<br /></span>
+<span>Towards the serious business of the day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>To me there's something touching, I confess,<br /></span>
+<span>In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,<br /></span>
+<span>Seen often in some little childish face<br /></span>
+<span>Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace<br /></span>
+<span>(Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!)<br /></span>
+<span>The unnatural sufferings of the factory child,<br /></span>
+<span>But a staid quietness, reflective, mild,<br /></span>
+<span>Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes,<br /></span>
+<span>Sense of life's cares, without its miseries.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>So to the mother's charge, with thoughtful brow,<br /></span>
+<span>The docile Lizzy stood attentive now;<br /></span>
+<span>Proud of her years and of imputed sense,<br /></span>
+<span>And prudence justifying confidence&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And little Jenny, more <i>demurely</i> still,<br /></span>
+<span>Beside her waited the maternal will.<br /></span>
+<span>So standing hand in hand, a lovelier twain<br /></span>
+<span>Gainsb'rough ne'er painted: no&mdash;nor he of Spain,<br /></span>
+<span>Glorious Murillo!&mdash;and by contrast shown<br /></span>
+<span>More beautiful. The younger little one,<br /></span>
+<span>With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair,<br /></span>
+<span>By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair,<br /></span>
+<span>Sable and glossy as the raven's wing,<br /></span>
+<span>And lustrous eyes as dark.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i23'><a class="pagenum" name="page204" id="page204" title="204"></a>&quot;Now, mind and bring<br /></span>
+<span>Jenny safe home,&quot; the mother said&mdash;&quot;don't stay<br /></span>
+<span>To pull a bough or berry by the way:<br /></span>
+<span>And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast<br /></span>
+<span>Your little sister's hand, till you're quite past&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>That plank's so crazy, and so slippery<br /></span>
+<span>(If not o'erflowed) the stepping-stones will be.<br /></span>
+<span>But you're good children&mdash;steady as old folk,<br /></span>
+<span>I'd trust ye any where.&quot; Then Lizzy's cloak,<br /></span>
+<span>A good grey duffle, lovingly she tied,<br /></span>
+<span>And amply little Jenny's lack supplied<br /></span>
+<span>With her own warmest shawl. &quot;Be sure,&quot; said she,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;To wrap it round and knot it carefully<br /></span>
+<span>(Like this) when you come home; just leaving free<br /></span>
+<span>One hand to hold by. Now, make haste away&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Good will to school, and then good right to play.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Was there no sinking at the mother's heart,<br /></span>
+<span>When all equipt, they turn'd them to depart?<br /></span>
+<span>When down the lane, she watch'd them as they went<br /></span>
+<span>Till out of sight, was no forefeeling sent<br /></span>
+<span>Of coming ill? In truth I cannot tell:<br /></span>
+<span>Such warnings <i>have been sent</i>, we know full well,<br /></span>
+<span>And must believe&mdash;believing that they are&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>In mercy then&mdash;to rouse&mdash;restrain&mdash;prepare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And, now I mind me, something of the kind<br /></span>
+<span>Did surely haunt that day the mother's mind,<br /></span>
+<span>Making it irksome to bide all alone<br /></span>
+<span>By her own quiet hearth. Tho' never known<br /></span>
+<span>For idle gossipry was Jenny Gray,<br /></span>
+<span>Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay<br /></span>
+<span>At home with her own thoughts, but took her way<br /></span>
+<span>To her next neighbour's, half a loaf to borrow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Yet might her store have lasted out the morrow.<br /></span>
+<span>&mdash;And with the loan obtain'd, she linger'd still&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Said she&mdash;&quot;My master, if he'd had his will,<br /></span>
+<span>Would have kept back our little ones from school<br /></span>
+<span>This dreadful morning; and I'm such a fool,<br /></span>
+<span>Since they've been gone, I've wish'd them back. But then<br /></span>
+<span>It won't do in such things to humour men&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Our Ambrose specially. If let alone<br /></span>
+<span>He'd spoil those wenches. But it's coming on,<br /></span>
+<span>That storm he said was brewing, sure enough&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Well! what of that?&mdash;To think what idle stuff<br /></span>
+<span>Will come into one's head! and here with you<br /></span>
+<span>I stop, as if I'd nothing else to do&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And they'll come home drown'd rats. I must be gone<br /></span>
+<span>To get dry things, and set the kettle on.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>His day's work done, three mortal miles and more<br /></span>
+<span>Lay between Ambrose and his cottage door.<br /></span>
+<span>A weary way, God wot! for weary wight!<br /></span>
+<span>But yet far off, the curling smoke in sight<br /></span>
+<span>From his own chimney, and his heart felt light.<br /></span>
+<span>How pleasantly the humble homestead stood,<br /></span>
+<span>Down the green lane by sheltering Shirley Wood!<br /></span>
+<span>How sweet the wafting of the evening breeze<br /></span>
+<span>In spring-time, from his two old cherry-trees<br /></span>
+<span>Sheeted with blossom! And in hot July<br /></span>
+<span>From the brown moor-track, shadowless and dry,<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page205" id="page205" title="205"></a>How grateful the cool covert to regain<br /></span>
+<span>Of his own <i>avenue</i>&mdash;that shady lane,<br /></span>
+<span>With the white cottage, in a slanting glow<br /></span>
+<span>Of sunset glory, gleaming bright below,<br /></span>
+<span>And jasmine porch, his rustic portico!<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>With what a thankful gladness in his face,<br /></span>
+<span>(Silent heart-homage&mdash;plant of special grace!)<br /></span>
+<span>At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace,<br /></span>
+<span>Would Ambrose send a loving look before;<br /></span>
+<span>Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door,<br /></span>
+<span>The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat<br /></span>
+<span>In welcome, with a more rejoicing note;<br /></span>
+<span>And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed,<br /></span>
+<span>All bristle, back, and tail, but &quot;good at need,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear;<br /></span>
+<span>But of all welcomes pleasantest, most dear,<br /></span>
+<span>The ringing voices, like sweet silver bells,<br /></span>
+<span>Of his two little ones. How fondly swells<br /></span>
+<span>The father's heart, as, dancing up the lane,<br /></span>
+<span>Each clasps a hand in her small hand again;<br /></span>
+<span>And each must tell her tale, and &quot;say her say,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Impeding as she leads, with sweet delay,<br /></span>
+<span>(Childhood's blest thoughtlessness!) his onward way.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And when the winter day closed in so fast,<br /></span>
+<span>Scarce for his task would dreary daylight last;<br /></span>
+<span>And in all weathers&mdash;driving sleet and snow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Home by that bare, bleak moor-track must he go,<br /></span>
+<span>Darkling and lonely. Oh! the blessed sight<br /></span>
+<span>(His pole-star) of that little twinkling light<br /></span>
+<span>From one small window, thro' the leafless trees,<br /></span>
+<span>Glimmering so fitfully; no eye but his<br /></span>
+<span>Had spied it so far off. And sure was he,<br /></span>
+<span>Entering the lane, a steadier beam to see,<br /></span>
+<span>Ruddy and broad as peat-fed hearth could pour,<br /></span>
+<span>Streaming to meet him from the open door.<br /></span>
+<span>Then, tho' the blackbird's welcome was unheard&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Silenced by winter&mdash;note of summer bird<br /></span>
+<span>Still hail'd him from no mortal fowl alive,<br /></span>
+<span>But from the cuckoo-clock just striking five&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Tinker's ear and Tinker's nose were keen&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Off started he, and then a form was seen<br /></span>
+<span>Dark'ning the doorway; and a smaller sprite,<br /></span>
+<span>And then another, peer'd into the night,<br /></span>
+<span>Ready to follow free on Tinker's track,<br /></span>
+<span>But for the mother's hand that held her back;<br /></span>
+<span>And yet a moment&mdash;a few steps&mdash;and there,<br /></span>
+<span>Pull'd o'er the threshold by that eager pair,<br /></span>
+<span>He sits by his own hearth, in his own chair;<br /></span>
+<span>Tinker takes post beside, with eyes that say,<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Master! we've done our business for the day.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>The kettle sings, the cat in chorus purs,<br /></span>
+<span>The busy housewife with her tea-things stirs;<br /></span>
+<span>The door's made fast, the old stuff curtain drawn;<br /></span>
+<span>How the hail clatters! Let it clatter on.<br /></span>
+<span>How the wind raves and rattles! What cares he?<br /></span>
+<span>Safe housed, and warm beneath his own roof-tree,<br /></span>
+<span>With a wee lassie prattling on each knee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Such was the hour&mdash;hour sacred and apart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Warm'd in expectancy the poor man's heart.<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page206" id="page206" title="206"></a>Summer and winter, as his toil he plied,<br /></span>
+<span>To him and his the literal doom applied,<br /></span>
+<span>Pronounced on Adam. But the bread was sweet<br /></span>
+<span>So earn'd, for such dear mouths. The weary feet<br /></span>
+<span>Hope-shod, stept lightly on the homeward way;<br /></span>
+<span>So specially it fared with Ambrose Gray<br /></span>
+<span>That time I tell of. He had work'd all day<br /></span>
+<span>At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke<br /></span>
+<span>Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke,<br /></span>
+<span>And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that?<br /></span>
+<span>There was a treasure hidden in his hat&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>A plaything for the young ones. He had found<br /></span>
+<span>A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round<br /></span>
+<span>For its long winter sleep; and all his thought<br /></span>
+<span>As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought<br /></span>
+<span>But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,<br /></span>
+<span>And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize,<br /></span>
+<span>When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer,<br /></span>
+<span>Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>'Twas a wild evening&mdash;wild and rough. &quot;I knew,&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>Thought Ambrose, &quot;those unlucky gulls spoke true&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Gaffer Chewton never growls for nought&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>I should be mortal 'mazed now, if I thought<br /></span>
+<span>My little maids were not safe housed before<br /></span>
+<span>That blinding hail-storm&mdash;ay, this hour and more&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Unless, by that old crazy bit of board,<br /></span>
+<span>They've not passed dry-foot over Shallow-ford,<br /></span>
+<span>That I'll be bound for&mdash;swollen as it must be ...<br /></span>
+<span>Well! if my mistress had been ruled by me ...&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>But, checking the half-thought as heresy,<br /></span>
+<span>He look'd out for the Home-Star. There it shone,<br /></span>
+<span>And with a gladden'd heart he hasten'd on.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>He's in the lane again&mdash;and there below,<br /></span>
+<span>Streams from the open doorway that red glow,<br /></span>
+<span>Which warms him but to look at. For his prize<br /></span>
+<span>Cautious he feels&mdash;all safe and snug it lies&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Down Tinker!&mdash;down, old boy!&mdash;not quite so free&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>The thing thou sniffest is no game for thee.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But what's the meaning?&mdash;no look-out to-night!<br /></span>
+<span>No living soul a-stir!&mdash;Pray God, all's right!<br /></span>
+<span>Who's flittering round the peat-stack in such weather?<br /></span>
+<span>Mother!&quot; you might have fell'd him with a feather<br /></span>
+<span>When the short answer to his loud&mdash;&quot;Hillo!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>And hurried question&mdash;&quot;Are they come?&quot;&mdash;was&mdash;&quot;No.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>To throw his tools down&mdash;hastily unhook<br /></span>
+<span>The old crack'd lantern from its dusty nook,<br /></span>
+<span>And while he lit it, speak a cheering word,<br /></span>
+<span>That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,<br /></span>
+<span>Was but a moment's act, and he was gone<br /></span>
+<span>To where a fearful foresight led him on.<br /></span>
+<span>Passing a neighbour's cottage in his way&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Mark Fenton's&mdash;him he took with short delay<br /></span>
+<span>To bear him company&mdash;for who could say<br /></span>
+<span>What need might be? They struck into the track<br /></span>
+<span>The children should have taken coming back<br /></span>
+<span>From school that day; and many a call and shout<br /></span>
+<span>Into the pitchy darkness they sent out,<br /></span>
+<span>And, by the lantern light, peer'd all about,<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page207" id="page207" title="207"></a>In every road-side thicket, hole, and nook,<br /></span>
+<span>Till suddenly&mdash;as nearing now the brook&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Something brush'd past them. That was Tinker's bark&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Unheeded, he had follow'd in the dark,<br /></span>
+<span>Close at his master's heels, but, swift as light,<br /></span>
+<span>Darted before them now. &quot;Be sure he's right&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>He's on the track,&quot; cried Ambrose. &quot;Hold the light<br /></span>
+<span>Low down&mdash;he's making for the water. Hark!<br /></span>
+<span>I know that whine&mdash;the old dog's found them, Mark.&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on<br /></span>
+<span>Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!<br /></span>
+<span>And all his dull contracted light could show<br /></span>
+<span>Was the black void and dark swollen stream below.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Yet there's life somewhere&mdash;more than Tinker's whine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>That's sure,&quot; said Mark. &quot;So, let the lantern shine<br /></span>
+<span>Down yonder. There's the dog&mdash;and, hark!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i24'>&quot;Oh dear!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>And a low sob came faintly on the ear,<br /></span>
+<span>Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,<br /></span>
+<span>Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught<br /></span>
+<span>Fast hold of something&mdash;a dark huddled heap&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep,<br /></span>
+<span>For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd<br /></span>
+<span>By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt<br /></span>
+<span>Endways the broken plank, when it gave way<br /></span>
+<span>With the two little ones that luckless day!<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;My babes!&mdash;my lambkins!&quot; was the father's cry.<br /></span>
+<span><i>One little voice</i> made answer&mdash;&quot;Here am I!&quot;<br /></span>
+<span>'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouch'd, with face as white,<br /></span>
+<span>More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light,<br /></span>
+<span>Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips, drawn tight,<br /></span>
+<span>Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,<br /></span>
+<span>And eyes on some dark object underneath,<br /></span>
+<span>Wash'd by the turbid water, fix'd like stone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>One arm and hand stretch'd out, and rigid grown,<br /></span>
+<span>Grasping, as in the death-gripe&mdash;Jenny's frock.<br /></span>
+<span>There she lay drown'd. Could he sustain that shock,<br /></span>
+<span>The doating father? Where's the unriven rock<br /></span>
+<span>Can bide such blasting in its flintiest part<br /></span>
+<span>As that soft sentient thing&mdash;the human heart?<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>They lifted her from out her wat'ry bed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Its covering gone, the lonely little head<br /></span>
+<span>Hung like a broken snowdrop all aside&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied,<br /></span>
+<span>Leaving <i>that</i> free, about the child's small form,<br /></span>
+<span>As was her last injunction&mdash;&quot;<i>fast</i> and warm&quot;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Too well obeyed&mdash;too fast! A fatal hold<br /></span>
+<span>Affording to the scrag by a thick fold<br /></span>
+<span>That caught and pinn'd her in the river's bed,<br /></span>
+<span>While through the reckless water overhead<br /></span>
+<span>Her life-breath bubbled up.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i24'>&quot;She might have lived<br /></span>
+<span>Struggling like Lizzy,&quot; was the thought that rived<br /></span>
+<span>The wretched mother's heart when she knew all.<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;But for my foolishness about that shawl&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And Master would have kept them back the day;<br /></span>
+<span>But I was wilful&mdash;driving them away<br /></span>
+<span>In such wild weather!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i19'>Thus the tortured heart,<br /></span>
+<span>Unnaturally against itself takes part,<br /></span>
+<span><a class="pagenum" name="page208" id="page208" title="208"></a>Driving the sharp edge deeper of a woe<br /></span>
+<span>Too deep already. They had raised her now,<br /></span>
+<span>And parting the wet ringlets from her brow,<br /></span>
+<span>To that, and the cold cheek, and lips as cold,<br /></span>
+<span>The father glued his warm ones, ere they roll'd<br /></span>
+<span>Once more the fatal shawl&mdash;her winding-sheet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>About the precious clay. One heart still beat,<br /></span>
+<span>Warm'd by <i>his heart's</i> blood. To his <i>only child</i><br /></span>
+<span>He turn'd him, but her piteous moaning mild<br /></span>
+<span>Pierced him afresh&mdash;and now she knew him not.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>&quot;Mother!&quot;&mdash;she murmur'd&mdash;&quot;who says I forgot?<br /></span>
+<span>Mother! indeed, indeed, I kept fast hold,<br /></span>
+<span>And tied the shawl quite close&mdash;she can't be cold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But she won't move&mdash;we slipt&mdash;I don't know how&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But I held on&mdash;and I'm so weary now&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And it's so dark and cold! oh dear! oh dear!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And she won't move&mdash;if daddy was but here!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' /><br />
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Poor lamb&mdash;she wander'd in her mind, 'twas clear&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>But soon the piteous murmur died away,<br /></span>
+<span>And quiet in her father's arms she lay&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>They their dead burthen had resign'd, to take<br /></span>
+<span>The living so near lost. For her dear sake,<br /></span>
+<span>And one at home, he arm'd himself to bear<br /></span>
+<span>His misery like a man&mdash;with tender care,<br /></span>
+<span>Doffing his coat her shivering form to fold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>(His neighbour bearing <i>that</i> which felt no cold,)<br /></span>
+<span>He clasp'd her close&mdash;and so, with little said,<br /></span>
+<span>Homeward they bore the living and the dead.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>From Ambrose Gray's poor cottage, all that night,<br /></span>
+<span>Shone fitfully a little shifting light,<br /></span>
+<span>Above&mdash;below:&mdash;for all were watchers there,<br /></span>
+<span>Save one sound sleeper.&mdash;<i>Her</i>, parental care,<br /></span>
+<span>Parental watchfulness, avail'd not now.<br /></span>
+<span>But in the young survivor's throbbing brow,<br /></span>
+<span>And wandering eyes, delirious fever burn'd;<br /></span>
+<span>And all night long from side to side she turn'd,<br /></span>
+<span>Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,<br /></span>
+<span>With now and then the murmur&mdash;&quot;She won't move&quot;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright<br /></span>
+<span>Shone on that pillow, passing strange the sight&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>That young head's raven hair was streak'd with white!<br /></span>
+<span>No idle fiction this. Such things have been<br /></span>
+<span>We know. And <i>now I tell what I have seen</i>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Life struggled long with death in that small frame,<br /></span>
+<span>But it was strong, and conquer'd. All became<br /></span>
+<span>As it had been with the poor family&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>All&mdash;saving that which never more might be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>There was an empty place&mdash;they were but three.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>C.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page209" id="page209" title="209"></a>
+<a name="bw328s5" id="bw328s5"></a><h2>IMAGINARY CONVERSATION.</h2>
+<h3>BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.</h3>
+
+<h3>OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak, lad?
+Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth, it must
+be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no issue at such
+capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face again. Prythee what,
+in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair Master Oliver?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love and
+duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a sort, unto
+my zeal.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em. I
+have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his
+devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do suspect,
+Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and nobody will promise
+or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did. So! because
+a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as their representative
+in Parliament, thou art free of all men's houses, forsooth! I would have thee
+to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter for the house they have chaired
+thee unto than for mine. Yet I do not question but thou wilt be as troublesome
+and unruly there as here. Did I not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook
+when thou wert scarcely half the rogue thou art latterly grown up to? And
+yet wert thou immeasurably too big a one for it to hold.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth the
+Lord had not touched me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill conditions,
+and that my name&mdash;even your godson's&mdash;stank in your nostrils.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough, that
+stank first; in my house, at least.<a id="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13" href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> But perhaps there are worse maggots in
+stauncher mummeries.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my urgency.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within it
+another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why thou shouldst stand
+before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting the
+stones of the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head, I warrant
+thee. Come, put on thy beaver.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered in
+the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered at
+baptism for my good behaviour.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so presumptuously
+and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to do such an
+absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-hand business in the
+neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more have come under my
+archway.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay in
+the hand of the potter.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in their
+own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the wheel of
+these artificers; and little was left but rags when we got off. Sanctified folks
+are the cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and their Jordan tans and constringes
+us to the averdupoise of mummies.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page210" id="page210" title="210"></a><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;The Lord hath chosen his own vessels.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them anywhere
+on ass-back or cart, (cart preferably,) to rid our country of 'em. But
+now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we shall hobble on
+but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command in the army, and hast
+a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and stately piece of horse-flesh, I cannot
+but take it into my fancy that thou hast some commission of array or disarray
+to execute hereabout.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of swounding,
+and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put back nor staid in anywise,
+as you bear testimony unto me, uncle Oliver.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Thou never art more
+pery than when it rains with thee. Wet days, among those of thy kidney,
+portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this work!</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;What work, prythee?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in his loving-kindness
+having pity and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand, administer
+unto our necessities and righteously command us, <i>by the aforesaid as
+aforesaid</i> (thus runs the commission) hither am I deputed (woe is me!) to
+levy certain fines in this county, or shire, on such as the Parliament in its wisdom
+doth style malignants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;If there is anything left about the house, never be over nice:
+dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county or shire, we let
+go the civet-bag to save the weazon.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be witness
+than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose his servants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Then, faith! thou art his first butler.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found worthy
+of advancement.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy own:
+he does not sniffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or unworthy
+of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for an hour's rest.
+Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest heart afloat, let it be
+sticking in what mud-bank it might: and my wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty
+near as commodious as that over-yonder at Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times
+are changed, and places too! yet the cellar holds good.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the other
+side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they are.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I trust,
+for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of tradespeople. But of
+course you leave no person of higher quality in the outer court.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the most
+abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the sun: I would
+not forbid them this indulgence.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;But who are they?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;The Lord knows. May-be priests, deacons, and such like.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my mansion-house, is
+far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your behaviour in keeping them
+so long at my stable-door. With your permission, or without it, I shall take
+the liberty to invite them to partake of my poor hospitality.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances whereby it
+must be manifested that they lie under displeasure&mdash;not mine&mdash;not mine&mdash;but
+my milk must not flow for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;You may enter the house or remain where you are at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+<a class="pagenum" name="page211" id="page211" title="211"></a>of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,<a id="footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14" href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> Oliver! (but God will not surely
+let this be,) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of doubtful fidelity in
+the service of the body.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been taking
+a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in asking your
+worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the <i>men-at-belly</i> under the
+custody of the <i>men-at-arms</i>? This pestilence, like unto one I remember to
+have read about in some poetry of Master Chapman's,<a id="footnotetag15" name="footnotetag15" href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> began with the dogs
+and the mules, and afterwards crope up into the breasts of men.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not let
+the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting down to
+dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their colleges,
+these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or his Saints; no, not even stirrup
+or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth against those
+who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they raise not up their
+voices to cry for our deliverance.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in college
+halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought hither?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge and
+deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which, unless it
+be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but simply to undertake
+awhile the heavier office of burser for them, to cast up their accounts; to overlook
+the scouring of their plate; and to lay a list thereof, with a few specimens,
+before those who fight the fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abasement
+of the proud and the chastisement of worldlymindedness, may rejoice.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings.
+But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty and
+jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity.
+Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who lighted the
+faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering and cocksy, were
+less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but they were not all
+hypocritical; they had not always &quot;<i>the Lord</i>&quot; in their mouths.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;According to their own notions, they might have had at an outlay
+of a farthing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out as any thing
+else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little the grimmer and sourer.</p>
+
+<p>But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I hold it
+unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and so lead them
+away from their peaceful and useful occupations.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;I alway bow submissively before the judgment of mine elders;
+and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with greater
+wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas! those collegians
+not only are strong men, as you may readily see if you measure them round the
+waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious challengers. When we, who live
+in the fear of God, exhorted them earnestly unto peace and brotherly love,
+they held us in derision. Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page212" id="page212" title="212"></a>teaching us forbearance and self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the
+evil spirit moving them thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most
+wisely, might have been useful and peaceful, and had formerly been so. Why
+then did they gird the sword of strife about their loins against the children of
+Israel? By their own declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies
+the most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully, and
+in the name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they? Instead of surrendering
+it like honest and conscientious men, they attacked me and my people
+on horseback, with syllogisms and centhymemes, and the Lord knows with
+what other such gimcracks, such venemous and rankling old weapons as
+those who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to lay aside. Learning
+should not make folks mockers&mdash;should not make folks malignants&mdash;should
+not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galloon. Tankards and wassil-bowls had
+stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;How can these learned societies raise the money you exact
+from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i>.&mdash;In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that college
+named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed Trinity, there
+are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors or chemists not
+only do possess the faculty of making the precious metals out of old books and
+parchments, but out of the skulls of young lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily
+promise less. And this they bring about by certain gold wires fastened at
+the top of certain caps. Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they
+make a vain and sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting
+their lips with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i>.&mdash;Well&mdash;at last thou hast some mercy.</p>
+
+<p><i>Oliver</i> (<i>aloud</i>.)&mdash;Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclan! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up behind you
+and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you at the country-places
+look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable that ye should
+leave unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office of discharging the
+account. If there be any spare beds at the inns, allow the doctors and dons
+to occupy the same&mdash;they being used to lie softly; and be not urgent that
+more than three lie in each&mdash;they being mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly
+and unreproved any light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that they
+have not alway been accustomed to the service of guards and ushers. The
+Lord be with ye!&mdash;Slow trot! And now, uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no
+longer your loving-kindness. I kiss you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's
+duty; and most humbly and gratefully do I accept of your invitation to dine
+and lodge with you, albeit the least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. After
+the refreshment of needful food, more needful prayer, and that sleep which
+descendeth on the innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak
+I proceed on my journey Londonward.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sir Oliver</i> (<i>aloud</i>.)&mdash;Ho, there! (<i>To a servant</i>.)&mdash;Let dinner be prepared
+in the great diningroom; let every servant be in waiting, each in full
+livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed upon the table in due
+courses; arrange all the plate upon the side-board: a gentleman by descent&mdash;a
+stranger, has claimed my hospitality. (<i>Servant goes</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page213" id="page213" title="213"></a>
+<a name="bw328s6" id="bw328s6"></a><h2>CALEB STUKELY.</h2>
+
+<h3>PART XI.</h3>
+
+<h3>SAINTS AND SINNERS.</h3>
+
+<p>The history of my youth is the history
+of my life. My contemporaries
+were setting out on their journey
+when my pilgrimage was at an end.
+I had drained the cup of experience
+before other men had placed it to
+their lips. The vicissitudes of all seasons
+occurred in one, and, before my
+spring had closed, I had felt the
+winter's gloominess and cold. The
+scattered and separated experiences
+that diversify and mark the passage of
+the &quot;threescore years and ten,&quot;
+were collected and thrust into the narrow
+period of my nonage. Within
+that boundary, existence was condensed.
+It was the time of action and of
+suffering. I have passed from youth
+to maturity and decline gently and
+passively; and now, in the cool and
+quiet sunset, I repose, connected with
+the past only by the adhering memories
+that will not be excluded from
+my solitude. I have gathered upon
+my head the enduring snow of age;
+but it has settled there in its natural
+course, with no accompaniment of
+storm and tempest. I look back to
+the land over which I have journeyed,
+and through which I have been conveyed
+to my present humble resting-place,
+and I behold a broad extent of
+plain, spreading from my very feet,
+into the hazy distance, where all is
+cloud, mountain, tumult, and agitation.
+Heaven be praised, I can look
+back with gratitude, chastened and
+informed!</p>
+
+<p>Amongst all the startling and stirring
+events that crowded into the small
+division of time to which I refer, none
+had so confounded, perplexed, alarmed,
+and grieved me, as the discovery
+of Mr Clayton's criminality and falsehood.
+There are mental and moral
+concussions, which, like physical
+shocks, stun and stupify with their
+suddenness and violence. This was
+one of them. Months after I had been
+satisfied of his obliquity, it was difficult
+to <i>realize</i> the conviction that
+truth and justice authoritatively demanded.
+When I thought of the
+minister&mdash;when his form presented
+itself to my mind's eye, as it did, day
+after day, and hour after hour, it was
+impossible to contemplate it with the
+aversion and distaste which were the
+natural productions of his own base
+conduct. I could see nothing but the
+figure and the lineaments of him,
+whose eloquence had charmed, whose
+benevolent hand had nourished and
+maintained me. There are likewise,
+in this mysterious state of life, paroxysms
+and intervals of disordered
+consciousness, which memory refuses
+to acknowledge or record; the epileptic's
+waking dream is one&mdash;an unreal
+reality. And similar to this was my
+impression of the late events. They
+lacked substantiality. Memory took
+no account of them, discarded them,
+and would connect the present only
+with the bright experience she had
+treasured up, prior to the dark
+distempered season. I could not hate
+my benefactor. I could not efface
+the image, which months of apparent
+love had engraven on my heart.</p>
+
+<p>Thrust from Mr Clayton's chapel,
+and unable to obtain admission elsewhere,
+I felt how insecure was my
+tenure of office. I prepared myself
+for dismissal, and hoped that, when
+the hour arrived, I should submit
+without repining. In the meanwhile,
+I was careful in the performance of
+every duty, and studious to give no
+cause, not the remotest, for complaint
+or dissatisfaction. It was not long,
+however, before signs of an altered
+state of things presented themselves
+to view. A straw tells which way
+the wind blows, and wisps began to
+fly in all directions. I found at length
+that I could do nothing right. To-day
+I was too indolent; to-morrow,
+too officious:&mdash;now I was too much of
+a gentlemen; and now not half gentlemanly
+enough. The hardest infliction
+to bear was the treatment of
+my new friend and colleague&mdash;of him
+who had given me kind warning and
+advice, when mischief was only threatening,
+but who, on the first appearance
+of trouble, took alarm, and deserted
+my side. The moment that he
+perceived my inevitable fate, he decided
+upon leaving me alone to fight
+my hard battle. At first he spoke to
+me with shyness and reserve; afterwards
+coolly, and soon, he said nothing
+at all. Sometimes, perhaps, if
+<a class="pagenum" name="page214" id="page214" title="214"></a>we were quite alone, and there was
+no chance whatever of discovery, he
+would venture half a word or so upon
+the convenient subject of the weather;
+but these occasions were very rare.
+If a superior were present, hurricanes
+would not draw a syllable from his
+careful lips; and, under the eye of
+the stout and influential Mr Bombasty,
+it was well for me if frowns and
+sneers were the only exhibitions of
+rudeness on the part of my worldly
+and far-seeing friend. Ah, Jacob
+Whining! With all your policy and
+sagacious selfishness, you found it difficult
+to protract your own official
+existence a few months longer. He
+had hardly congratulated himself upon
+the dexterity which had kept him
+from being involved in my misfortunes,
+before <i>he</i> fell under the ban of
+<i>his</i> church, like me was persecuted,
+and driven into the world a branded
+and excommunicated outcast. Mr
+Whining, however, who had learnt
+much in the world, and more in his
+<i>connexion</i>, was a cleverer and more
+fortunate man than this friend and
+coadjutor. He retired with his experience
+into Yorkshire, drew a small
+brotherhood about him, and in a short
+time became the revered and beloved
+founder of the numerous and far-spread
+sect of <i>Whiningtonians</i>!</p>
+
+<p>It was just a fortnight after my expulsion
+from the <i>Church</i>, that matters
+were brought to a crisis as far as I
+was concerned, by the determined
+tone and conduct of the gentleman at
+the head of our society. Mr Bombasty
+arrived one morning at the
+office, in a perturbed and anxious
+state, and requested my attendance in
+his private room. I waited upon him.
+Perspiration hung about his fleshy
+face&mdash;he wiped it off, and then began:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young man,&quot; said he, &quot;this
+won't do at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, sir?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, don't be impudent. You
+are done for, I can tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How, sir?&quot; I enquired. &quot;What
+have I done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where are the subscriptions that
+were due last Saturday?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not yet collected, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What money have you belonging
+to the society?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a sixpence, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young man,&quot; continued the lusty
+president in a solemn voice, &quot;you are
+in a woeful state; you are living in
+the world without <i>a security</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Matter!&quot; echoed the gentleman.&mdash;&quot;Matter
+with a man that has lost
+his security! Are you positive you
+have got no funds about you? Just
+look into your pocket, my friend, and
+make sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have nothing, sir. Pray, tell
+me what I have done?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young man, holding the office
+that I hold, feeling as I feel, and
+knowing what I know, it would be
+perfect madness in me to have any
+thing to do with a man who has been
+given over by his security. Don't
+you understand me? Isn't that very
+good English? Mr Clayton will have
+nothing more to say to you. The society
+gives you warning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;May I not be informed, sir, why
+I am so summarily dismissed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, my good fellow, what is
+the matter with you? You seem remarkably
+stupid this morning. I can't
+beat about the bush with you. You
+must go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Without having committed a
+fault?&quot; I added, mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said the distinguished president,
+looking libraries at me, &quot;when
+one mortal has become security for
+another mortal, and suddenly annuls
+and stultifies his bond, to say that the
+other mortal has committed a <i>fault</i> is
+just to call brandy&mdash;<i>water</i>. Sir,&quot; continued
+Mr Bombasty, adjusting his
+India cravat, &quot;that man has perpetrated
+a crime&mdash;a crime <i>primy facey&mdash;exy
+fishio</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I saw that my time was come, and
+I said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If,&quot; said Mr Bombasty, &quot;you had
+lost your intellect, I am a voluntary
+contributor, and could have got you
+chains and a keeper in Bedlam. If
+you had broken a limb, I am a life-governor,
+and it would have been a
+pleasure to me to send you to the
+hospital. But you may as well ask
+me to put life into a dead man, as to
+be of service to a creature who has
+lost his security. You had better die
+at once. It would be a happy release.
+I speak as a friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you, sir,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hear complaints against you,
+but I don't listen to them. Every
+thing is swallowed up in one remarkable
+fact. Your security has let you
+down. You must go about your business.
+I speak as the president of this
+Christian society, and not, I hope,
+without the feelings of a man. The
+<a class="pagenum" name="page215" id="page215" title="215"></a>treasurer will pay your salary immediately,
+and we dispense with your
+services.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What am I to do?&quot; I asked, half
+aloud.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just the best you can,&quot; answered
+the gentleman. &quot;The audience is at
+an end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr Bombasty said no more, but
+drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box
+of enormous dimensions. From it he
+grasped between his thumb and finger
+a moderate handful of stable-smelling
+dust. His nose and India handkerchief
+partook of it in equal shares, and
+then he rang his bell with presidential
+dignity, and ordered up his customary
+lunch of chops and porter. A few
+hours afterwards I was again upon
+the world, ready to begin the fight
+of life anew, and armed with fifteen
+guineas for the coming struggle. Mr
+Clayton had kept his word with me,
+and did not desert me until I was once
+more fairly on the road to ruin.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first consequences of my
+unlooked-for meeting with the faithful
+Thompson, was the repayment of the
+five shillings which he had so generously
+spared me when I was about to
+leave him for Birmingham, without as
+many pence in my scrip. During my
+absence, however, fortune had placed
+my honest friend in a new relation
+to a sum of this value. Five shillings
+were not to him, as before, sixty
+pence. The proprietor of the house
+in which he lived, and which he had
+found it so difficult to let out to his
+satisfaction, had died suddenly, and
+had thought proper to bequeath to
+his tenant the bulk of his property,
+amounting, perhaps, to five thousand
+pounds. Thompson, who was an upholsterer
+by trade, left the workshop in
+which he was employed as journeyman
+immediately, and began to work upon
+his own account. He was a prosperous
+and a thriving man when I rejoined
+him. His manner was, as the
+reader has seen, kind and straightforward
+as ever, and the only change
+that his wealth had wrought in him,
+was that which gold may be supposed
+to work a heart alive to its duties,
+simple and honest in its intentions,
+and lacking only the means to make
+known its strong desire of usefulness.
+His generosity had kept pace with his
+success, his good wishes outstripped
+both. His home was finer, yet scarcely
+more sightly and happier than the
+one large room, which, with its complement
+of ten children, sire and
+dame, had still a nook for the needy
+and friendless stranger. The old house
+had been made over for a twelvemonth
+to the various tenants, free of all charge.
+At the end of that period it was the
+intention of Thompson to pull it down,
+and build a better in its place. A
+young widow, with her three orphans,
+lodged on the attic floor, and the
+grateful prayers of the four went far
+to establish the buoyancy of the landlord's
+spirit, and to maintain the smile
+that seldom departed from his manly
+cheek. Well might the poor creature,
+whom I once visited in her happy
+lodging, talk of the sin of destroying
+so comfortable a residence, and feel
+assured, that &quot;let them build a palace,
+they would never equal the present
+house, or make a sleeping-room
+where a body might rest so peacefully
+and well.&quot; Thompson's mode of life
+had scarcely varied. He was not idle
+amongst his men. When labour was
+suspended, he was with his children;
+another had been added to the number,
+and there were now eleven to
+relieve him of the superabundant profits
+created in the manufactory. Mrs
+Thompson was still a noble housewife,
+worthy of her husband. All was care,
+cleanliness, and economy at home.
+Griping stint would never have been
+tolerated by the hospitable master,
+and virtuous plenty only was admitted
+by the prudent wife. Had there been
+a oneness in the religious views of
+this good couple, <i>Paradise</i> would have
+been a word fit to write beneath the
+board that made known to men John
+Thompson's occupation; but this,
+alas! was wanting to complete a scene
+that otherwise looked rather like perfection.
+The great enemy of man
+seeks in many ways to defeat the
+benevolent aims of Providence. Thompson
+had remained at home one Sunday
+afternoon to smoke a friendly pipe
+with an old acquaintance, when he
+should have gone to church. His wife
+set out alone. Satan took advantage
+of her husband's absence, drew her to
+chapel, and made her&mdash;a <i>dissenter</i>.
+This was Thompson's statement of
+the case, and severer punishment, he
+insisted, had never been inflicted on a
+man for Sabbath-breaking.</p>
+
+<p>When I was dismissed by Mr Bombasty,
+it was a natural step to walk
+towards the abode of the upholsterer.
+I knew his hour for supper, and his
+long hour after that for ale, and pipe,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page216" id="page216" title="216"></a>and recreation. I was not in doubt
+as to my welcome. Mrs Thompson
+had given me a general invitation to
+supper, &quot;because,&quot; she said, &quot;it did
+Thompson good to chat after a hard
+day's work;&quot; and the respected
+Thompson himself had especially invited
+me to the long hour afterwards,
+&quot;because,&quot; he added, &quot;it did the ale
+and 'baccy good, who liked it so much
+better to go out of this here wicked
+world in company.&quot; About seven
+o'clock in the evening I found myself
+under their hospitable roof, seated in
+the room devoted to the general purposes
+of the house. It was large, and
+comfortably furnished. The walls
+were of wainscot, painted white, and
+were graced with two paintings. One,
+a family group, consisting of Thompson,
+wife, and eight children, most
+wretchedly executed, was the production
+of a slowly rising artist, a former
+lodger of my friend's, who had contrived
+to compound with his easy
+landlord for two years and three quarters'
+rent, with this striking display of
+his ability. Thompson was prouder
+of this picture than of the originals
+themselves, if that were possible. The
+design had been his own, and had cost
+him, as he was ready and even anxious
+to acknowledge, more time and trouble
+than he had ever given before, or
+meant to give again, to any luxury in
+life. The artist, as I was informed,
+had endeavoured to reduce to form
+some fifty different schemes that had
+arisen in poor Thompson's brain, but
+had failed in every one, so difficult he
+found it to introduce the thousand and
+one effects that the landlord deemed
+essential to the subject. His first idea
+had been to bring upon the canvass
+every feature of his life from boyhood
+upwards. This being impracticable,
+he wished to bargain for at least the
+workshop and the private residence.
+The lodgers, he thought, might come
+into the background well, and the tools,
+peeping from a basket in the corner,
+would look so much like life and nature.
+The upshot of his plans was the
+existing work of art, which Thompson
+considered matchless, and pronounced
+&quot;dirt cheap, if he had even given the
+fellow a seven years' lease of the
+entire premises.&quot; The situations were
+striking certainly. In the centre
+of the picture were two high chairs,
+on which were seated, as grave as
+judges, the heads of the establishment.
+They sat there, drawn to their full
+height, too dignified to look at one
+another, and yet displaying a fond
+attachment, by a joining of the hands.
+The youngest child had clambered to
+the father's knee, and, with a chisel,
+was digging at his nose, wonderful to
+say, without disturbing the stoic equanimity
+that had settled on the father's
+face. This was the favourite son.
+Another, with a plane larger than
+himself, was menacing the mother's
+knee. The remaining six had each
+a tool, and served in various ways
+to effect most artfully the beloved
+purpose of the vain upholsterer's
+heart&mdash;viz. the introduction of the
+entire workshop. The second painting
+in the centre of the opposite wall,
+represented Mr Clayton. The likeness
+was a failure, and the colours
+were coarse and glaring; but there
+needed no instruction to know that the
+carefully framed production attempted
+to portray the unenviable man,
+who, in spite of his immorality and
+shameless life, was still revered and
+idolized by the blind disciples who
+had taken him for their guide. This
+portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar
+property. There were no other articles
+of <i>virtu</i> in the spacious apartment;
+but cleanliness and decorum
+bestowed upon it a grace, the absence
+of which no idle decoration could supply.
+Early as the hour was, a saucepan
+was on the fire, whose bubbling
+water was busy with the supper that
+at half-past eight must meet the assault
+of many knives and forks. John
+Thompson and two sons&mdash;the eldest&mdash;were
+working in the shop. They had
+been there with little intermission
+since six that morning. The honest
+man was fond of work; so was he of
+his children&mdash;yes, dearly fond of <i>them</i>,
+and they must share with him the
+evening meal; and he must have them
+all about him; and he must help them
+all, and see them eat, and look with
+manly joy and pride upon the noisy
+youngsters, for whom his lusty arm
+had earned the bread that came like
+manna to him&mdash;so wholesome and so
+sweet! Three girls, humbly but neatly
+dressed, the three first steps of this
+great human ladder, were seated at a
+table administering to the necessities
+of sundry shirts and stockings that
+had suffered sensibly in their last week's
+struggle through the world. <i>They</i>
+were indeed a picture worth the looking
+at. You grew a better man in
+gazing on their innocence and industry.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page217" id="page217" title="217"></a>What a lesson stole from their
+quiet and contented looks, their patient
+perseverance, their sweet unity!
+How shining smooth the faces, how
+healthy, and how round, and how impossible
+it seemed for wrinkles ever
+to disturb the fine and glossy surface!
+Modesty never should forsake the
+humble; the bosom of the lowly born
+should be her home. Here she had
+enshrined herself, and given to simplicity
+all her dignity and truth.
+They worked and worked on; who
+should tell which was the most assiduous&mdash;which
+the fairest&mdash;which the
+most eager and successful to increase
+the happiness of all! And turn to
+Billy there, that half-tamed urchin!
+that likeness in little of his sire, rocking
+not so much against his will, as
+against conviction, the last of all the
+Thompsons&mdash;a six months' infant in
+the wicker cradle. How, obedient to
+his mother's wish, like a little man at
+first, he rocks with all his might, and
+then irregularly, and at long intervals&mdash;by
+fits and starts&mdash;and ceases
+altogether very soon, bobbing his
+curly head, and falling gently into a
+deep mesmeric sleep. The older lads
+are making wooden boats, and two,
+still older, stand on either side their
+mother. A book is in the hands of
+each, full of instruction and fine learning.
+It was the source of all their
+knowledge, the cause of all their earliest
+woes. Good Mrs Thompson
+had been neglected as a child, and
+was enthusiastic in the cause of early
+education. Sometimes they looked
+into the book, but oftener still they
+cast attentive eyes upon the fire, as if
+&quot;the book of knowledge fair&quot; was there
+displayed, and not a noisy saucepan,
+almost unable to contain itself for joy
+of the cod's head and shoulders, that
+must be ready by John Thompson's
+supper time. The whole family were
+my friends&mdash;with the boys I was on
+terms of warmest intimacy, and smiles
+and nods, and shouts and cheers, welcomed
+me amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, close your book, Bob,&quot; said
+the mother, soon after I was seated,
+&quot;and, Alec, give me yours. Put your
+hands down, turn from the fire, and
+look up at me, dears. What is the
+capital of Russia?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Birman empire,&quot; said Alec,
+with unhesitating confidence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Baltic sea,&quot; cried Bob, emulous
+and ardent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait&mdash;not so fast; let me see,
+my dears, which of you is right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Thompson appealed immediately
+to her book, after a long and
+private communication with which, she
+emphatically pronounced both wrong.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Give us a chance, mother,&quot; said
+Bob in a wheedling tone, (Bob knew
+his mother's weaknesses.) &quot;Them's
+such hard words. I don't know how
+it is, but I never can remember 'em.
+Just tell us the first syllable&mdash;oh, do
+now&mdash;please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know now!&quot; cried Alec.
+&quot;It's something with a G in it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Think of the apostles, dears.
+What are the names of the apostles?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, there's Moses,&quot; began Bob,
+counting on his fingers, &quot;and there's
+Sammywell, and there's Aaron, and
+Noah's ark&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop, my dear,&quot; said Mrs Thompson,
+who was very busy with her
+manual, and contriving a method of
+rendering a solution of her question
+easy. &quot;Just begin again. I said&mdash;who
+was Peter&mdash;no, not that&mdash;who
+was an apostle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know now!&quot; cried Alec
+again, (Alec was the sharp boy of the
+family.) &quot;It's Peter. Peter's the
+capital of Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not quite my dear. You are
+very warm&mdash;very warm indeed, but
+not quite hot. Try again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Paul,&quot; half murmured Robert,
+with a reckless hope of proving right.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Peter's right; but there's
+something else. What has your father
+been taking down the beds for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was a solemn silence, and
+the three industrious sisters blushed
+the faintest blush that could be raised
+upon a maiden's cheek.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To rub that stuff upon the walls,&quot;
+said the ready Alec.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, but what was it to kill?&quot;
+continued the instructress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fleas,&quot; said Bob.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Worse than that, my dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I know now,&quot; shrieked Alec,
+for the third time. &quot;<i>Petersbug's</i> the
+capital of Russia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Thompson looked at me with
+pardonable vanity and triumph, and I
+bestowed upon the successful students
+a few comfits which I had purchased
+on my road for my numerous and
+comfit-loving friends. The mere sight
+of this sweet &quot;reward of merit&quot; immediately
+inspired the two boys at
+work upon the boats with a desire for
+<a class="pagenum" name="page218" id="page218" title="218"></a>knowledge, and especially for learning
+the capitals of countries, that was
+most agreeable to contemplate. The
+lesson was continued, more to my
+amusement, I fear, than the edification
+of the pupils. The boys were unable
+to answer a single question until they
+had had so many <i>chances</i>, and had become
+so very <i>hot</i>, that not to have answered
+at length would have bordered
+on the miraculous. The persevering
+governess was not displeased at this,
+for she would not have lost the opportunity
+of displaying her own skill in
+metaphorical illustration, for a great
+deal, I am very sure. The clock struck
+eight; there was a general movement.
+The three sisters folded their work,
+and lodged it carefully in separate
+drawers. The eldest then produced
+the table-cloth, knives, forks, and
+spoons. The second exhibited bibs
+and pinafores; and the third brought
+from their hiding-places a dozen modest
+chairs, and placed them round
+the table. Bob assured the company
+&quot;he was <i>so</i> hungry;&quot; Alec said, &quot;so
+was he;&quot; and the boatmen, in an
+under tone, settled what should be
+done with the great cod's eyes, which,
+they contended, were the best parts of
+the fish, and &quot;shouldn't they be glad
+if father would give 'em one a-piece.&quot;
+The good woman must enquire, of
+course, how nearly the much-relished
+dainty had reached the critical
+and interesting state when it became
+most palatable to John Thompson;
+for John Thompson was an epicure,
+&quot;and must have his little bits of
+things done to a charm, or not at all.&quot;
+Half-past eight had struck. The family
+were bibbed and pinafored; the
+easy coat and slippers were at the fire,
+and warmed through and through&mdash;it
+was a season of intenseness.
+&quot;Here's father!&quot; shouted Alec, and
+all the bibs and pinafores rushed like
+a torrent to the door. Which shall
+the father catch into his ready arms,
+which kiss, which hug, which answer?&mdash;all
+are upon him; they know their
+playmate, their companion, and best
+friend; they have hoarded up, since
+the preceding night, a hundred things
+to say, and now they have got their
+loving and attentive listener. &quot;Look
+what I have done, father,&quot; says the
+chief boatman, &quot;Tom and I together.&quot;
+&quot;Well done, boys!&quot; says the father&mdash;and
+Tom and he are kissed. &quot;I have
+been <i>l</i>ocking baby,&quot; lisps little Billy,
+who, in return, gets rocked himself.
+&quot;Father, what's the capital of Russia?&quot;
+shrieks Alec, tugging at his coat.
+&quot;What do you mean, you dog?&quot; is
+the reply, accompanied by a hearty
+shake of his long flaxen hair. &quot;Petersburg,&quot;
+cry Tom and Alec both,
+following him to the hearth, each one
+endeavouring to relieve him of his
+boots as soon as he is seated there.
+The family circle is completed. The
+flaky fish is ready, and presented for
+inspection. The father has served
+them all, even to little Billy&mdash;their
+plates are full and smoking. &quot;Mother&quot;
+is called upon to ask a blessing.
+She rises, and assumes the looks of
+Jabez Buster&mdash;twenty blessings might
+be asked and granted in half the time
+she takes&mdash;so think and look Bob,
+Alec, and the boatmen; but at length
+she pauses&mdash;the word is given, and
+further ceremony is dispensed with.
+In childhood, supper is a thing to look
+forward to, and to <i>last</i> when it arrives;
+but not in childhood, any more than
+in old age, can sublunary joys endure
+for ever. The meal is finished. A
+short half-hour flies, like lightning,
+by. The children gather round their
+father; and in the name of all, upon
+his knees, he thanks his God for all
+the mercies of the day. Thompson is
+no orator. His heart is warm; his
+words are few and simple. The three
+attendant graces take charge of their
+brethren, detach them from their father's
+side, and conduct them to their
+beds. Happy father! happy children!
+May Providence be merciful, and
+keep the grim enemy away from your
+fireside! Let him not come now in
+the blooming beauty and the freshness
+of your loves! Let him not darken
+and embitter for ever the life that is
+still bright, beautiful, and glorious in
+the power of elevating and sustaining
+thought that leads beyond it. Let
+him wait the matured and not unexpected
+hour, when the shock comes,
+not to crush, to overwhelm, and to
+annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and
+to encourage; not to alarm and stagger
+the untaught spirit, but to bring
+to the subdued and long-tried soul its
+last lesson on the vanity and evanescence
+of its early dreams!</p>
+
+<p>It is half-past nine o'clock. Thompson,
+his wife, and two eldest boys are
+present, and, for the first time, I have
+an opportunity to make known the
+object of my visit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And so they have turned you
+off,&quot; said Thompson, when I had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page219" id="page219" title="219"></a>finished. &quot;And who's surprised at
+that? Not I, for one. Missus,&quot; continued
+he, turning to his wife, &quot;why
+haven't you got a curtain yet for that
+ere pictur? I can't abear the sight of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs Thompson looked plaintively
+towards the painting, and heaved a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, dear good man! He has got
+his enemies,&quot; said she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mrs Thompson!&quot; exclaimed her
+husband, &quot;I have done with that good
+man from this day for'ards; and I do
+hope, old 'ooman, that you'll go next
+Sunday to church with me, as we used
+to do afore you got that pictur
+painted.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's no good talking, Thompson,&quot;
+answered the lady, positively and
+firmly. &quot;I can't sit under a cold
+man, and there's an end of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There, that's the way you talk,
+missus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, you know, Thompson,
+every thing in the church is cold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, not now, my dear&mdash;they've
+put up a large stove. You'll recollect
+you haven't been lately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Besides, do you think I can sit in
+a place of worship, and hear a man
+say, '<i>Let us pray</i>,' in the middle of
+the service, making a fool of one, as
+if we hadn't been praying all the time?
+As that dear and persecuted saint
+says, (turning to the picture,) it's a
+common assault to our understandings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Polly, that's just always
+how you go off. If you'd only listen
+to reason, that could all be made out
+right in no time. The clergyman
+doesn't mean to say, <i>let us pray</i>, because
+he hasn't been praying afore;&mdash;what
+he means is&mdash;we have been praying
+all this time, and so we'll go on
+praying again&mdash;no, not again exactly&mdash;but
+don't leave off. That isn't what
+I mean either. Let me see, <i>let us
+pray</i>. Oh, yes! Why&mdash;stay. Where
+is it he does say, <i>let us pray</i>? There,
+I say, Stukely, you know it all much
+better than I do. Just make it right
+to the missus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not difficult,&quot; said I.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no, Mr Stukely, I daresay
+not!&quot; added Mrs Thompson, interrupting
+me. &quot;Mr Clayton says,
+Satan has got his janysarries abroad,
+and has a reason for every thing. It
+is very proper to say, too, I suppose,
+that it is an <i>imposition</i> when the bishops
+ordain the ministers? What a
+word to make use of. It's truly frightful!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm blessed,&quot; exclaimed
+Thompson, &quot;if I don't think you had
+better hold your tongue, old girl,
+about impositions; for sich oudacious
+robbers as your precious brothers is,
+I never come across, since I was stopped
+that ere night, as we were courting,
+on Shooter's Hill. It's a system
+of imposition from beginning to end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look to your Bible, Thompson;
+what does that say? Does that tell
+ministers to read their sermons?
+There can't be no truth and right
+feeling when a man puts down what
+he's going to say; the vital warmth
+is wanting, I'm sure. And then to
+read the same prayers Sunday after
+Sunday, till a body gets quite tired at
+hearing them over and over again,
+and finding nothing new! How can
+you improve an occasion if you are
+tied down in this sort of way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you ever see one of the brothers
+eat, Stukely?&quot; asked Thompson,
+avoiding the main subject.
+&quot;Don't you ask one of them to dinner&mdash;that's
+all. That nice boy Buster
+ought to eat for a wager. I had the
+pleasure of his company to dinner one
+fine afternoon. I don't mean to send
+him another invitation just yet, at all
+events.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; proceeded the fair, but
+stanch nonconformist; &quot;what does
+the Bible say, indeed! 'Take no
+thought of what you should say.'
+Why, in the church, I am told they
+are doing nothing else from Monday
+morning to Saturday night but writing
+the sermon they are going to
+read on the Sabbath. To <i>read</i> a sermon!
+What would the apostles say
+to that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, didn't you tell me, my dear,
+that the gentleman as set for that pictur
+got all his sermons by heart before
+he preached 'em?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course I did&mdash;but that's a very
+different thing. Doesn't it all pour
+from him as natural as if it had come
+to him that minute? He doesn't fumble
+over a book like a schoolboy. His
+beautiful eyes, I warrant you, ain't
+looking down all the time, as if he was
+ashamed to hold 'em up. Isn't it a privilege
+to see his blessed eyes rolling all
+sorts of ways; and don't they speak
+wolumes to the poor benighted sinner?
+Besides, don't tell me, Thompson;
+we had better turn Catholics at
+once, if we are to have the minister
+dressing up like the Pope of Rome,
+and all the rest of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are the gal of my heart,&quot;
+exclaimed the uxorious Thompson;
+<a class="pagenum" name="page220" id="page220" title="220"></a>&quot;but I must say you have got some
+of the disgracefulest notions out of
+that ere chapel as ever I heard on.
+Why, it's only common decency to
+wear a dress in the pulpit; and I believe
+in my mind, that that's come
+down to us from time immemorable,
+like every thing else in human natur.
+What's your opinion, Stukely?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; and what's your opinion,
+Mr Stukely,&quot; added the lady immediately,
+&quot;about calling a minister of
+the gospel&mdash;a <i>priest</i>? Is that Paperistical
+or not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That isn't the pint, Polly,&quot; proceeded
+John. &quot;We are talking about
+the silk dress now. Let's have that
+out first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And then the absolution&quot;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Poll. Stick to the silk dress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Thompson, it's always the
+way!&quot; continued the mistress of the
+house, growing red and wroth, and
+heedless of the presence of the eager-listening
+children; &quot;it's always the
+way. Satan is ruining of you. You'll
+laugh at the elect, and you'll not find
+your mistake out till it's too late to
+alter. Mr Clayton says, that the
+Establishment is the hothouse of devils;
+and the more I see of its ways,
+the more I feel he is right. Thompson,
+you are in the sink of iniquity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, I can't stand no more of
+this!&quot; exclaimed Thompson, growing
+uneasy in his chair, but without a
+spark of ill-humour. &quot;Let's change
+the topic, old 'ooman; I'm sure it can't
+do the young un's any good to hear
+this idle talk. Let's teach 'em nothing
+at all, if we can't larn 'em
+something better than wrangling
+about religion. Now, Jack,&quot; he continued,
+turning to his eldest boy,
+&quot;what is the matter with you? What
+are you sitting there for with your
+mouth wide open?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's the meaning of Paperist,
+father?&quot; asked the boy, who had been
+long waiting to propose the question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's that to you, you rascal?&quot;
+was the reply; &quot;mind your own business,
+my good fellow, and leave the
+Paperist to mind his'n; that's your father's
+maxim, who got it from his
+father before him. You'll learn to
+find fault with other people fast enough
+without my teaching you. I tell you
+what, Jack, if you look well after yourself,
+you'll find little time left to bother
+about others. If your hands are
+ever idle&mdash;recollect you have ten brothers
+and sisters about you. Look
+about you&mdash;you are the oldest boy&mdash;and
+see what you can do for them.
+Do you mind that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, father.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, old chap. Then just
+get out the bottle, and give your father
+something to coax the cod down.
+Poll, that fish won't settle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The long hour was beginning.
+That bottle was the signal. A gin and
+water nightcap, on this occasion, officiated
+for the ale. Jack and his brother
+received a special invitation to a sip
+or two, which they at once unhesitatingly
+accepted. The sturdy fellows
+shook their father and fellow-labourer's
+hand, and were not loth to go to rest.
+Their mother was their attendant.
+The ruffle had departed from her face.
+It was as pleasant as before. She
+was but half a dissenter. So Thompson
+thought when he called her back
+again, and bade his &quot;old 'ooman give
+her hobby one of her good old-fashioned
+busses, and think no more
+about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thompson and I were left together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what do you mean to do, sir,
+now?&quot; was his first question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hardly know.&quot; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, you'll cut the gang
+entirely&mdash;that's a nat'ral consequence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Thompson, not at present. I
+must not seem so fickle and inconstant.
+I must not seem so to myself.
+I joined this sect not altogether without
+deliberation. I must have further
+proof of the unsoundness of its principles.
+A few of its professors have
+been faithless even to their own position.
+Of what religious profession
+may not the same be said? I will be
+patient, and examine further.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was a-thinking,&quot; said Thompson,
+musingly, &quot;I was a-thinking, 'till
+you've got something else to do&mdash;&mdash;but
+no, never mind, you won't like
+that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I was thinking about the
+young un's. They're shocking back'ard
+in their eddication, and, between
+you and me, the missus makes them
+back'arder. I don't understand the
+way she has got of larning 'em at
+all. I don't want to make scholards
+of 'em. Nobody would but a fool.
+Bless 'em, they'll have enough to do
+to get their bread with sweating and
+toiling, without addling their brains
+about things they can't understand.
+But it is a cruelty, mind you, for a
+parent to hinder his child from reading
+<a class="pagenum" name="page221" id="page221" title="221"></a>his Bible on a Sunday afternoon,
+and to make him stand ashamed of
+himself before his fellow workman
+when he grows up, and finds that he
+can't put <i>paid</i> to a bill on a Saturday
+night. The boys should all know
+how to read and write, and keep accounts,
+and a little summut of human
+nature. This is what I wants to give
+'em, and nobody should I like better
+to put it into 'em than you, my old
+friend, if you'd just take the trouble
+'till you've got something better to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thompson,&quot; I answered instantly,
+&quot;I will do it with pleasure. I ought
+to have made the offer. It did not
+occur to me. I shall rejoice to repay
+you, in this trifling way, for all your
+good feeling and kindness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh no!&quot; answered my friend,
+&quot;none of that. We must have an
+understanding. Don't you think I
+should have asked the question, if I
+meant to sneak out in that dirty sort
+of way. No, that won't do. It's very
+kind of you, but we must make all
+that right. We sha'n't quarrel, I dare
+say. If you mean you'll do it, I have
+only just a word or two to say before
+you begin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be proud to serve you,
+Thompson, and on any terms you
+please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, it is a serving me&mdash;I don't
+deny it&mdash;but, mind you, only till you
+have dropped into something worth
+your while. What I wish to say is as
+this: As soon as ever my missus
+hears of what you are going to do, I
+know as well what she'll be at as I
+know what I am talking of now.
+She'll just be breaking my heart to
+have the boys larned French. Now,
+I'd just as soon bind 'em apprentice
+to that ere Clayton. I've seen too
+much of that ere sort of thing in my
+time. I'm as positive as I sit here,
+that when a chap begins to talk French
+he loses all his English spirit, and
+feels all over him as like a mounseer
+as possible. I'm sure he does. I've
+seen it a hundred times, and that I
+couldn't a-bear. Besides, I've been
+told that French is the language the
+thieves talk, and I solemnly believe
+it. That's one thing. Now, here's
+another. You'll excuse me, my dear
+fellow. In course you know more
+than I do, but I must say that you
+have got sometimes a very roundabout
+way of coming to the pint. I
+mean no offence, and I don't blame
+you. It's all along of the company
+you have kept. You are&mdash;it's the
+only fault you have got&mdash;you are
+oudaciously fond of hard words.
+Don't let the young uns larn 'em.
+That's all I have to say, and we'll
+talk of the pay some other time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At this turn of the conversation,
+Thompson insisted upon my lighting
+a pipe and joining him in the gin and
+water. We smoked for many minutes
+in silence. My friend had unbuttoned
+his waistcoat, and had drawn
+the table nearer to his warm and
+hospitable fire. A log of wood was
+burning slowly and steadily away,
+and a small, bright&mdash;very bright&mdash;copper
+kettle overlooked it from the
+hob. My host had fixed his feet upon
+the fender&mdash;the unemployed hand was
+in his corduroys. His eyes were
+three parts closed, enjoying what from
+its origin may be called&mdash;a pure tobacco-born
+soliloquy. The smoke
+arose in thin white curls from the clay
+cup, and at regular periods stole
+blandly from the corner of his lips.
+The silent man was blessed. He had
+been happy at his work; he had
+grown happier as the sun went down;
+his happiness was ripening at the
+supper table; <i>now</i>, half-asleep and
+half-awake&mdash;half conscious and half
+dreaming&mdash;wholly free from care,
+and yet not free from pregnant
+thought&mdash;the labourer had reached
+the summit of felicity, and was at
+peace&mdash;intensely.</p>
+
+<p>A few evenings only had elapsed
+after this interesting meeting, before
+I was again spending a delicious hour
+or two with the simple-hearted and
+generous upholsterer. There was
+something very winning in these
+moments snatched and secured from
+the hurricane of life, and passed in
+thorough and undisturbed enjoyment.
+My friend, notwithstanding that he
+had engaged my services, and was
+pleased to express his satisfaction at
+the mode in which I rendered them,
+was yet alive to my interests, and too
+apprehensive of injuring them by
+keeping me away from loftier employment.
+He did not like my being
+<i>thrown out</i> of the chapel, especially
+after he had heard my determination
+not to forsake immediately the sect
+to which I had attached myself. He
+was indifferent to his own fate. His
+worldly prospects could not be injured
+by his expulsion; on the contrary,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page222" id="page222" title="222"></a>he slyly assured me that &quot;his
+neighbours would begin to think better
+of him, and give him credit for
+having become an honester and more
+trustworthy man.&quot; But with regard
+to myself it was a different thing. I
+should require &quot;a character&quot; at some
+time or another, and there was a body
+of men primed and ready to vilify
+and crush me. He advised me, whilst
+he acknowledged it was a hard thing
+to say, and &quot;it went agin him to do
+it,&quot; to apply once more respectfully
+for my dismission. &quot;It won't do,&quot;
+he pertinently said, &quot;to bite your
+nose off to be revenged on your
+tongue.&quot; I was certainly in a mess,
+and must get out of it in the best way
+that I could. Buster and Tomkins
+had great power in <i>the Church</i>, and if
+I represented my case to either or
+both of them, he did hope they might
+be brought to consent not to injure
+me, or stand in the way of my getting
+bread. &quot;In a quarrel,&quot; he said, in
+conclusion, &quot;some one must give in.
+I was a young man, and had my way
+to make, and though he should despise
+his-self if he recommended me to do
+any thing mean and dirty in the business,
+yet, he thought, as the father of
+a numerous family, he ought to advise
+me to be civil, and to do the best for
+myself in this unfortunate dilemmy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I accepted his advice, and determined
+to wait upon the dapper deacon.
+I was physically afraid to encounter
+Buster, not so much on account of
+what I had seen of his spiritual pretension,
+as of what I had heard of his
+domestic behaviour. It was not a very
+difficult task to obtain from Mrs
+Thompson the secret history of many
+of her highly privileged acquaintances
+and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful
+degree, the peculiar virtue of
+her amiable sex, and to communicate
+secrets, delivered to her in strictest
+confidence, and imparted by her again
+with equal caution and provisory care,
+was the choicest recreation of her well
+employed and useful life. It was
+through this lady that I was favoured
+with a glance into the natural heart of
+Mr Buster; or into what he would
+himself have called, with a most unfilial
+disgust, &quot;HIS OLD MAN.&quot; It appeared
+that, like most great <i>actors</i>, he
+was a very different personage before
+and behind the curtain. Kings, who
+are miserable and gloomy through the
+five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who
+must needs die at the end of it, are your
+merriest knaves over a tankard at the
+Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool
+shall be the dullest dog that ever
+spoiled mirth with sour and discontented
+looks. Jabez Buster, his employment
+being over at Mr Clayton's
+theatre, his dress thrown aside, his
+mask put by, was not to be recognised
+by his nearest friend. This is
+the perfection of art. A greater
+tyrant on a small scale, with limited
+means, never existed than the saintly
+Buster when his character was done,
+and he found himself again in the
+bosom of his family. Unhappy bosom
+was it, and a sad flustration did his
+presence, nine times out of ten, produce
+there. He had four sons, and a
+delicate creature for a wife, born to
+be crushed. The sons were remarkable
+chiefly for their hypocrisy, which
+promised, in the fulness of time, to
+throw their highly-gifted parent's far
+into the shade; and, secondarily, for
+their persecution of their helpless and
+indulgent mother. They witnessed
+and approved so much the success of
+Jabez in this particular, that during
+his absence they cultivated the affectionate
+habit until it became a kind of
+second nature, infinitely more racy
+and agreeable than the primary. In
+proportion to their deliberate oppression
+of their mother was their natural
+dread and terror of their father. Mrs
+Thompson pronounced it &quot;the shockingest
+thing in this world to be present
+when the young blue-beards were
+worryting their mother's soul out with
+saying, '<i>I sha'n't</i>' and '<i>I won't</i>' to
+every thing, and swearing '<i>they'd tell
+their father this</i>,' '<i>and put him up to
+that, and then wouldn't he make a jolly
+row about it</i>,' with hollering out for
+nothing at all, only to frighten the
+poor timid cretur, and then making a
+holabaloo with the chairs, or perhaps
+falling down, roaring and kicking,
+just to drive the poor thing clean out
+of her wits, on purpose to laugh at
+her for being so taken in. Well, but
+it was a great treat, too,&quot; she added,
+&quot;to hear, in the midst of all this, Buster's
+heavy foot in the passage, and to
+see what a scrimmage there was at
+once amongst all the young hypocrites.
+How they all run in different
+directions&mdash;one to the fire&mdash;one to the
+table&mdash;one out at the back-door&mdash;one
+any where he could&mdash;all of 'em as
+silent as mice, and afeard of the very
+eye of the blacksmith, who knew,
+good man, how to keep every man
+<a class="pagenum" name="page223" id="page223" title="223"></a>Jack of 'em in order, and, if a word
+didn't do, wasn't by no means behind
+hand with blows. Buster,&quot; she continued,
+&quot;had his faults like other
+men, but he was a saint if ever there
+was one. To be sure he did like to
+have his own way at home, and wasn't
+it natural? And if he was rather
+overbearing and cruel to his wife,
+wasn't that, she should like to know,
+Satan warring with the new man, and
+sometimes getting the better of it?
+And if he was, as Thompson had
+hinted, rayther partial to the creature,
+and liked good living, what was this
+to the purpose? it was an infirmity
+that might happen to the best Christian
+living. Nobody could say that
+he wasn't a renewed man, and a chosen
+vessel, and faithful to his call. A
+man isn't a backslider because he's
+carnally weak, and a man isn't a saint
+because he's moral and well-behaved.
+'Good works,' Mr Clayton said, 'was
+filthy rags,' and so they were. To be
+sure, between themselves, there were
+one or two things said about Buster
+that she couldn't approve of. For instance,
+she had been told&mdash;but <i>this</i>
+was quite in confidence, and really
+must <i>not</i> go further&mdash;that he was&mdash;that&mdash;that,
+in fact, he was overtaken
+now and then with liquor, and then
+the house could hardly hold him, he
+got so furious, and, they did say, used
+such horrid language. But, after all,
+what was this? If a man's elected,
+he is not so much the worse. Besides,
+if one listened to people, one might
+never leave off. She had actually
+heard, she wouldn't say from whom,
+that Buster very often kept out late
+at night&mdash;sometimes didn't come home
+at all, and sometimes did at two
+o'clock in the morning, very hungry
+and ill-tempered, and then forced his
+poor wife out of bed, and made the
+delicate and shivering creature light
+a fire, cook beefsteaks, go into the
+yard for beer, and wait upon him till
+he had even eat every morsel up.
+She for one would never believe all
+this, though Mrs Buster herself had
+told her every word with tears in her
+eyes, and in the greatest confidence;
+so she trusted I wouldn't repeat it, as
+it wouldn't look well in her to be
+found out telling other people's secrets.&quot;
+Singular, perhaps, to say, the
+tale did not go further. I kept the
+lady's secret, and at the same time
+declined to approach Mr Jabez Buster
+in the character of a suppliant. If his
+advocate and panegyrist had nothing
+more to say for him, it could not be
+uncharitable to conclude that the pretended
+saint was as bold a sinner as
+ever paid infamous courtship to religion,
+and as such was studiously to be
+avoided. I turned my attention from
+him to Tomkins. There was no
+grossness about him, no brutality, no
+abominable vice. In the hour of my
+defeat and desertion, he had extended
+to me his sympathy, and, more in sorrow
+than in anger, I am convinced he
+voted for my expulsion from the
+church when he found that his vote,
+and twenty added to it, would not
+have been sufficient to protect me.
+He could not act in opposition to the
+wishes of his friend and patron, Mr
+Clayton, but very glad would he have
+been, as every word and look assured
+me, to meet the wishes of us both, had
+that been practicable. If the great
+desire of Jehu Tomkins' heart could
+have been gratified, he never would
+have been at enmity with a single
+soul on earth. He was a soft, good-natured,
+easy man; most desirous to
+be let alone, and not uneasily envious
+or distressed to see his neighbours
+jogging on, so long as he could do his
+own good stroke of business, and keep
+a little way before them. Jehu was
+a Liberal too&mdash;in politics and in religion&mdash;in
+every thing, in fact, but the
+one small article of <i>money</i>, and here, I
+must confess, the good dissenter dissented
+little from the best of us. He
+was a stanch Conservative in matters
+connected with the <i>till</i>. For his
+private life it was exemplary&mdash;at least
+it looked so to the world, and the
+world is satisfied with what it sees.
+Jehu was attentive to his business&mdash;yes,
+very&mdash;and a business life is not
+monotonous and dull, if it be relieved,
+as it was in this case, by dexterous
+arts, that give an interest and flavour
+to the commonest pursuits. Sometimes
+a customer would die&mdash;a natural
+state of things, but a great event for
+Jehu. First, he would &quot;improve the
+occasion&quot; to the surviving relatives&mdash;condole
+and pray with them. Afterwards
+he would <i>improve</i> it to himself,
+in his own little room, at night, when all
+the children were asleep, and no one was
+awake but Mrs Tomkins and himself.
+Then he would get down his ledger,
+and turn to the deceased's account&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;&mdash;&mdash;How <i>long</i> it is thou see'st,<br /></span>
+<span>And he would gaze 'till it became <i>much longer</i>;&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page224" id="page224" title="224"></a>&quot;For who could tell whether six shirts
+or twelve were bought in July last, and
+what could be the harm of making those
+eight handkerchiefs a dozen? He was a
+strange old gentleman; lived by himself&mdash;and
+the books might be referred
+to, and speak boldly for themselves.&quot;
+Yes, cunning Jehu, so they might, with
+those interpolations and erasures that
+would confound and overcome a lawyer.
+When customers did not die, it
+was pastime to be dallying with the
+living. In adding up a bill with haste,
+how many times will four and four
+make <i>nine</i>? They generally did with
+Jehu. The best are liable to errors.
+It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had
+hundreds at command, and the accident
+was amended. How easy is it sometimes
+to give no bill at all! How very
+easy to apply, a few months afterwards,
+for second payment; how much more
+easy still to pocket it without a word;
+or, if discovered and convicted, to
+apologize without a blush for the <i>mistake</i>!
+No, Jehu Tomkins, let me do
+you justice&mdash;this is not so easy&mdash;it
+requires all your zeal and holy intrepidity
+to reach this pitch of human
+frailty and corruption. With regard
+to the domestic position of my interesting
+friend, it is painful to add,
+that the less that is said about it the
+better. In vain was his name in full,
+painted in large yellow letters, over
+the shop front. In vain was <i>Bot. of
+Jehu Tomkins</i> engraven on satin paper,
+with flourishes innumerable beneath
+the royal arms; he was no more the
+master of his house than was the small
+boy of the establishment, who did
+the dirty work of the place for nothing
+a-week and the broken victuals.
+If Jehu was deacon abroad, he was
+taught to acknowledge an <i>arch</i>deacon
+at home&mdash;one to whom he was indebted
+for his success in life, and for reminding
+him of that agreeable fact about four
+times during every day of his existence.
+I was aware of this delicate circumstance
+when I ventured to the linen-draper's
+shop on my almost hopeless
+mission; but, although I had never
+spoken to Mrs Tomkins, I had often
+seen her in the chapel, and I relied
+much on the feeling and natural tenderness
+of the female heart. The
+respectable shop of Mr Tomkins was
+in Fleet Street. The establishment
+consisted of Mrs Tomkins, <i>premi&egrave;re</i>;
+Jehu, under-secretary; and four sickly-looking
+young ladies behind the counter.
+It is to be said, to the honour of
+Mrs Tomkins, that she admitted no
+young woman into her service whose
+character was not <i>decided</i>, and whose
+views were not very clear. Accordingly,
+the four young ladies were
+members of the chapel. It is pleasing
+to reflect, that, in this well-ordered
+house of business, the ladies took their
+turns to attend the weekly prayer
+meetings of the church. Would that
+I might add, that they were <i>not</i> severally
+met on these occasions by their
+young men at the corner of Chancery
+Lane, and invariably escorted by
+them some two or three miles in a
+totally opposite direction. Had Mrs
+Tomkins been born a man, it is difficult
+to decide what situation she would
+have adorned the most. She would
+have made a good man of business&mdash;an
+acute lawyer&mdash;a fine casuist&mdash;a
+great divine. Her attainments were
+immense; her self-confidence unbounded.
+She was a woman of middle
+height, and masculine bearing. She
+was not prepossessing, notwithstanding
+her white teeth and large mouth,
+and the intolerable grin that a customer
+to the amount of a halfpenny
+and upwards could bring upon her
+face under any circumstances, and at
+any hour of the day. Her complexion
+might have been good originally.
+Red blotches scattered over her cheek
+had destroyed its beauty. She wore
+a modest and becoming cap, and a
+gold eyeglass round her neck. She
+was devoted to money-making&mdash;heart
+and soul devoted to it during business
+hours. What time she was not in the
+shop, she passed amongst dissenting
+ministers, spiritual brethren, and deluded
+sinners. It remains to state
+the fact, that, whilst a customer never
+approached the lady without being
+repelled by the offensive smirk that
+she assumed, no dependent ever ventured
+near her without the fear of the
+scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully,
+when she pleased) upon her dark and
+inauspicious brow. What wonder
+that little Jehu was crushed into nothingness,
+behind his own counter,
+under the eye of his own wife!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page225" id="page225" title="225"></a>
+<a name="bw328s7" id="bw328s7"></a><h2>THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES.</h2>
+
+<h3>PART II.</h3>
+
+<p>In our last, we had occasion to
+speak sharply of that class of our
+aristocratic youth known by the name
+of fast fellows, and it may be thought
+that we characterized their foibles
+rather pointedly, and tinctured our
+animadversions with somewhat of undue
+asperity. This charge, however,
+can be made with no ground of reason
+or justice: the fact is, we only
+lashed the follies for which that class
+of men are pre-eminent, but left their
+vices in the shade, in the hope that
+the <i>raw</i> we have already established,
+will shame the fast fellows into a sense
+of the proprieties of conduct due to
+themselves and their station.</p>
+
+<p>The misfortune is, that these fast
+fellows forget, in the pursuit of their
+favourite follies, that the mischief to
+society begins only with themselves:
+that man is naturally a servile, imitative
+animal; and that he follows in the
+track of a great name, as vulgar muttons
+run at the heels of a belwether.
+The poison of fashionable folly runs
+comparatively innocuous while it circulates
+in fashionable veins; but when
+vulgar fellows are innoculated with
+the virus, it becomes a plague, a
+moral small-pox, distorting, disfiguring
+the man's mind, pockpitting his small
+modicum of brains, and blinding his
+mind's eye to the supreme contempt
+his awkward vagaries inspire.</p>
+
+<p>The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly
+in the spread of their servile imitation
+of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly
+profligacy at second-hand; and
+perhaps this is the worst trait in their
+character, for it is at once malicious
+and unwise: malicious, because the
+contemplation of humanity, degraded
+by bad example in high station, should
+rather be a source of secret shame
+than of devilish gratification: unwise,
+because their example is a discredit to
+their order, and a danger. To posses
+birth, fashion, station, wealth, power,
+is title enough to envy, and handle
+sufficient for scandal. How much
+stronger becomes that title&mdash;how
+much longer that handle&mdash;when men,
+enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it,
+not using, but abusing their good fortune!</p>
+
+<p>We should not have troubled our
+heads with the fast fellows at all, if
+it were not absolutely essential to the
+full consideration of our subject, widely
+to sever the prominent classes of
+fashionable life, and to have no excuse
+for continuing in future to confound
+them. We have now done
+with the fast fellows, and shall like them
+the more the less we hear of them.</p>
+
+<h3>CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS.</h3>
+
+<p>The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable
+or aristocratic life, comprises those
+who think that, in the nineteenth century,
+other means must be taken to
+preserve their order in its high and
+responsible position than those which,
+in dark ages, conferred honour upon
+the tallest or the bravest. They think,
+and think wisely, that the only method
+of keeping above the masses, in this
+active-minded age, is by soaring
+higher and further into the boundless
+realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting,
+in a fair neck-and-neck race
+with men of meaner birth, their purer
+blood, and urging the generous contest
+for fame, regardless of the allurements
+of pleasure, or the superior
+advantages of fortune. In truth, we
+might ask, what would become of our
+aristocratic classes ere long, if they
+came, as a body, to be identified with
+their gambling lords, their black-leg
+baronets, their insolvent honourables,
+and the seedy set of Chevaliers Diddlerowski
+and Counts Scaramouchi, who
+caper on the platform outside for their
+living? The populace would pelt these
+harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable
+life off their stage, if there was nothing
+better to be seen inside; but
+it fortunately happens that there is
+better.</p>
+
+<p>We can boast among our nobles
+and aristocratic families, a few men
+of original, commanding, and powerful
+intellect; many respectable in
+most departments of intellectual rivalry;
+many more laborious, hard-working
+men; and about the same
+proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed,
+crabbed, conceited, ignorant, insolent
+<a class="pagenum" name="page226" id="page226" title="226"></a>men, that you may find among the
+same given number of those commonly
+called the educated classes. We
+refer you to the aristocracies of other
+countries, and we think we may safely
+say, that we have more men of that
+class, in this country, who devote
+themselves to the high duties of their
+station, regardless of its pleasures,
+than in any other: men who recognize
+practically the responsibility of
+their rank, and do not shirk from
+them; men who think they have
+something to do, and something to
+repay, for the accidents of birth and
+fortune&mdash;who, in the senate, in the
+field, or in the less prominent, but not
+less noble, career of private life, act,
+as they feel, with the poet:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;At heros, et decus, et qu&aelig; non fecimus ipsi,<br /></span>
+<span>Vix ea nostra voco.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It has been admirably remarked, by
+some one whose name we forget, that
+the grand advantage of high birth is,
+placing a man as far forward at
+twenty-five as another man is at fifty.
+We might, as a corollary to this undeniable
+proposition, add, that birth
+not only places, but keeps a man in
+that advance of his fellows, which in
+the sum of life makes such vast ultimate
+difference in the prominence of
+their position.</p>
+
+<p>This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy
+of birth, of early enrolling
+themselves among the aristocracy of
+power, has, like every thing in the
+natural and moral world, its compensating
+disadvantage: they lose in one
+way what they gain in another; and
+although many of them become eminent
+in public life, few, very few,
+comparatively with the numbers who
+enter the arena, become great. They
+are respected, heard, and admired, by
+virtue of a class-prepossession in their
+favour; yet, after all, they must select
+from the ranks of the aristocracy of
+talent their firmest and best supporters,
+to whom they may delegate the
+heavy responsibilities of business, and
+lift from their own shoulders the burden
+of responsible power.</p>
+
+<p>One striking example of the force
+of birth, station, and association in
+public life, never fails to occur to us,
+as an extraordinary example of the
+magnifying power of these extrinsic
+qualities, in giving to the aristocracy
+of birth a consideration, which,
+though often well bestowed, is yet
+oftener bestowed without any desert
+whatever; and that title to admiration
+and respect, which has died with ancestry,
+patriotism, and suffering in the
+cause of freedom, is transferred from
+the illustrious dead to the undistinguished
+living.</p>
+
+<p>Without giving a catalogue <i>raisonn&eacute;</i>
+of the slow fellows, (we use the term
+not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction
+to the others,) we may
+observe that, besides the public service
+in which the great names are
+sufficiently known, you have poets,
+essayists, dramatists, astronomers,
+geologists, travellers, novelists, and,
+what is better than all, philanthropists.
+In compliment to human nature,
+we take the liberty merely to
+mention the names of Lord Dudley
+Stuart and Lord Ashley. The works
+of the slow fellows, especially their
+poetry, indicate in a greater or less
+degree the social position of the authors;
+seldom or never deficient in
+good taste, and not without feeling,
+they lack power and daring. The
+smooth style has their preference, and
+their verses smack of the school of
+Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not
+that, in poetry or prose, we can point
+out one of our slow fellows of the
+present day rising above judicious
+mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that
+the most daring and original of our
+noble authors have, in their day,
+been fast fellows; it is only necessary
+to name Rochester, Buckingham, and
+Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Among the slow fellows, are multitudes
+of pretenders to intellect in a
+small way. These patronize a drawing-master,
+not to learn to draw, but
+to learn to talk of drawing; they also
+study the <i>Penny Magazine</i> and other
+profound works, to the same purpose;
+they patronize the London University,
+and the Society for the Diffusion
+of Useful Knowledge, as far as lending
+their names; for, being mostly of
+the class of fashionable <i>screws</i>, they
+take care never to subscribe to any
+thing. They have a refined taste in
+shawls, and are consequently in the
+confidence of dressy old women, who
+hold them up as examples of every
+thing that is good. They take chocolate
+of a morning, and tea in the evening;
+drink sherry with a biscuit, and
+wonder how people <i>can</i> eat those hot
+lunches. They take constitutional
+walks and Cockle's pills; and, by
+virtue of meeting them at the Royal
+<a class="pagenum" name="page227" id="page227" title="227"></a>Society, are always consulting medical
+men, but take care never to offer them
+a guinea. They talk of music, of
+which they know something&mdash;of books,
+of which they know little&mdash;and of pictures,
+of which they know less; they
+have always read &quot;the last novel,&quot;
+which is as much as they can well
+carry; they know literary, professional,
+and scientific men at Somerset
+House, but, if they meet them in Park
+Lane, look as if they never saw them
+before; they are very peevish, have
+something to say against every man,
+and always say the worst first; they
+are very quiet in their manner, almost
+sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms
+of the fast fellows; they
+treat their inferiors with great consideration,
+addressing them, &quot;honest
+friend,&quot; &quot;my good man,&quot; and so on,
+but have very little heart, and less
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>They equally abhor the fast fellows
+and the pretenders to fashion. They
+are afraid of the former, who are
+always ridiculing them and their pursuits,
+by jokes theoretical and practical.
+If the fast fellows ascertain that
+a slow fellow affects sketching, they
+club together to annoy him, talking
+of the &quot;autumnal tints,&quot; and &quot;the
+gilding of the western hemisphere;&quot;
+if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage,
+or a root of mangel-wurzel,
+with a serious note, stating, that they
+hear it is a great curiosity in <i>his line</i>;
+if an entomologist, they are sure to
+send him away &quot;with a flea in his
+ear.&quot; If he affects poetry, the fast
+fellows make one of their servants
+transcribe, from <i>Bell's Life</i>, Scroggins's
+poetical version of the fight
+between Bendigo and Bungaree, or
+some such stuff; and, having got the
+slow fellow in a corner, insist upon
+having his opinion, and drive him
+nearly mad. All these, and a thousand
+other pranks, the fast fellows
+play upon their slow brethren, not in
+the hackneyed fashion which low people
+call &quot;<i>gagging</i>,&quot; and genteel people
+&quot;<i>quizzing</i>,&quot; but with a seriousness
+and gravity that heightens all the
+joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly
+ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>It is astonishing, considering the
+opportunities of the slow fellows, that
+they do not make a better figure; it
+seems wonderful, that they who glide
+swiftly down the current of fortune
+with wind and tide, should be distanced
+by those who, close-hauled
+upon a wind, are beating up against
+it all their lives; but so it is;&mdash;the
+compensating power that rules material
+nature, governs the operations of
+the mind. To whom much is given
+of opportunity, little is bestowed of
+the exertion to improve it. Those
+who rely more or less on claims extrinsic,
+are sure to be surpassed by
+those whose power is from within.
+After all, the great names of our nation
+(with here and there an exception
+to prove the rule) are plebeian.</p>
+
+<h3>OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER.</h3>
+
+<p>In their political capacity, people of
+fashion, among whom, for the present
+purpose, we include the whole of the
+aristocracy, are the common butt of
+envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.</p>
+
+<p>They are accused of standing between
+the mass of the people and their
+inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate
+resistance, the progress of rational
+liberty, and of&mdash;&mdash;but, in short, you
+have only to glance over the pages of
+any democratic newspaper, to be made
+aware of the horrible political iniquity
+of the aristocracy of England.</p>
+
+<p>The aristocracy in England, considered
+politically, is a subject too
+broad, too wide, and too deep for us,
+we most readily confess; nor is it exactly
+proper for a work of a sketchy
+nature, in which we only skim lightly
+along the surface of society, picking
+up any little curiosity as we go along,
+but without dipping deep into motives
+or habits of thought or action, especially
+in state affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Since our late lamented friends, the
+Whigs, have gone to enjoy a virtuous
+retirement and dignified ease, we have
+taken no delight in politics. There
+is no fun going on now-a-days&mdash;no
+quackery, no mountebankery, no asses,
+colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot
+fellows who have got into Downing
+Street have made politics no joke;
+and now that silence, as of the tomb,
+reigns amongst <i>quondam</i> leaders of
+the Treasury Benech&mdash;now that the
+camp-followers have followed the
+leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed,
+we really have nobody to laugh
+at; and, like our departed friends,
+have too little of the statesman to be
+serious about serious matters.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page228" id="page228" title="228"></a>With regard to the aristocracy in
+their public capacity, this is the way
+we always look at them.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, they govern us
+through the tolerance of public opinion,
+as men having station, power,
+property, much to lose, and little
+comparatively to gain&mdash;men who have
+put in bail to a large amount for their
+good behaviour: and, in the second
+place, they govern us, because really
+and truly there are so many outrageously
+discordant political quacks,
+desirous of taking our case in hand,
+that we find it our interest to entrust
+our public health to an accomplished
+physician, even although he charges
+a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure
+a perfect cure with a box of pills costing
+thirteenpence-halfpenny. There
+can be no doubt whatever, that the
+most careful men are the men who
+have most to care for: he that has a
+great deal to lose, will think twice,
+where he that has nothing to lose, will
+not think at all: and the government
+of this vast and powerful empire, we
+imagine, with great deference, must
+require a good deal of thinking. In
+a free press, we have a never-dying
+exponent of public opinion, a perpetual
+advocate of rational liberty,
+and a powerful engine for the exposure,
+which is ultimately the redress, of
+wrong: and although this influential
+member of our government receives
+no public money, nor is called right
+honourable, nor speaks in the House,
+yet in fact and in truth it has a seat
+in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous
+occasions, a voice of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>That the aristocracy of power
+should be in advance of public opinion,
+is not in the nature of things, and
+should no more be imputed as a crime
+to them, than to us not to run when
+we are not in a hurry: they cannot,
+as a body, move upwards, because
+they stand so near the top, that dangerous
+ambition is extinguished; and
+it is hardly to be expected that, as a
+body, they should move downwards,
+unless they find themselves supported
+in their position upon the right of
+others, in which case we have always
+seen that, although they descend gradually,
+they descend at last.</p>
+
+<p>This immobility of our aristocracy
+is the origin of the fixity of our political
+institutions, which has been, is,
+and will continue to be, the great element
+of our pre-eminence as a nation:
+it possesses a force corrective and directive,
+and at once restrains the excess,
+while it affords a point of resistance,
+to the current of the popular
+will. And this immobility, it should
+never be forgotten, is owing to that
+very elevation so hated and so envied:
+wanting which the aristocracy
+would be subject to the vulgar ambitions,
+vulgar passions, and sordid desires
+of meaner aspirants after personal
+advantage and distinction. It is a
+providential blessing, we firmly believe,
+to a great nation to possess a
+class, by fortune and station, placed
+above the unseemly contentions of
+adventurers in public life: looked up
+to as men responsible without hire for
+the public weal, and, without sordid
+ambitions of their own, solicitous to
+preserve it: looked up to, moreover,
+as examples of that refinement of feeling,
+jealous sense of honour, and manly
+independence, serving as detersives of
+the grosser humours of commercial
+life, and which, filtering through the
+successive <i>strata</i> of society, clarify and
+purify in their course, leaving the very
+dregs the cleaner for their passage.</p>
+
+<p>A body thus by habit and constitution
+opposed to innovation, and determined
+against the recklessness of inconsiderate
+reforms, has furnished a
+stock argument to those who delight
+in &quot;going a-head&quot; faster than their
+feet, which are the grounds of their
+arguments, can carry them. We
+hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks
+in the way of legislative improvements,
+and, with greater propriety
+of metaphor, likened to drags upon the
+wheel of progressive reform; and so
+on, through all the regions of illustration,
+until we are in at the death of
+the metaphor. How happens to be
+overlooked the advantage of this anti-progressive
+barrier, to the concentration
+and deepening of the flood of
+opinion on any given subject? how is
+it that men are apt altogether to forget
+that this very barrier it is which
+prevents the too eager crowd from
+trampling one another to death in
+their haste? which gives time for the
+ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and
+reckless enthusiasm, and the dregs of
+agitation, quietly to subside; and, for
+all that, bears the impress of reason and
+sound sense to circulate with accumulated
+pressure through the public
+mind? Were it not for the barrier
+which the aristocracy of power thus
+<a class="pagenum" name="page229" id="page229" title="229"></a>interposes for a time, only to withdraw
+when the time for interposition is past,
+we should live in a vortex of revolution
+and counter-revolution. Our whole
+time, and our undivided energies,
+would be employed in acting hastily,
+and repenting at leisure; in repining
+either because our biennial revolutions
+went too far, or did not go far enough;
+in expending our national strength in
+the unprofitable struggles of faction
+with faction, adventurer with adventurer:
+with every change we should
+become more changeful, and with
+every settlement more unsettled: one
+by one our distant colonies would follow
+the bright example of our people
+at home, and our commerce and trade
+would fall with our colonial empire.
+In fine, we should become in the eyes
+of the world what France now is&mdash;a
+people ready to sacrifice every solid
+advantage, every gradual, and therefore
+permanent, improvement, every
+ripening fruit that time and care, and
+the sunshine of peace only can mature,
+to a genius for revolution.</p>
+
+<p>This turbulent torrent of headlong
+reform, to-day flooding its banks, to-morrow
+dribbling in a half-dry channel,
+the aristocracy of power collects,
+concentrates, and converts into a
+power, even while it circumscribes it,
+and represses. So have we seen a
+mountain stream useless in summer,
+dangerous in winter, now a torrent
+now a puddle, wasting its unprofitable
+waters in needless brawling; let a barrier
+be opposed to its downward course,
+let it be dammed up, let a point of
+resistance be afforded where its waters
+may be gathered together, and regulated,
+you find it turned to valuable
+account, acting with men's hands, becoming
+a productive labourer, and
+contributing its time and its industry
+to advance the general sum of rational
+improvement.</p>
+
+<p>From the material to the moral
+world you may always reason by analogy.
+If you study the theory of
+revolutions, you will not fail to observe
+that, wherever, in constructing your
+barrier, you employ ignorant engineers,
+who have not duly calculated
+the depth and velocity of the current;
+whenever you raise your dam to such
+a height that no flood will carry away
+the waste waters; whenever you talk
+of finality to the torrent, saying, thus
+long shalt thou flow, and no longer;
+whenever you put upon your power
+a larger wheel than it can turn&mdash;you
+are slowly but surely preparing for
+that flood which will overwhelm your
+work, destroy your mills, your dams,
+and your engines; in a word, you are
+the remote cause of a revolution.</p>
+
+<p>This is the danger into which aristocracies
+of power are prone to fall:
+the error of democracies is, to delight
+in the absolutism of liberty; but thus
+it is with liberty itself, that true dignity
+of man, that parent of all blessings:
+absolute and uncontrolled, a
+tyranny beyond the power to endure
+itself, the worst of bad masters, a
+fool who is his own client; restrained
+and tempered, it becomes a wholesome
+discipline, a property with its
+rights and its duties, a sober responsibility,
+bringing with it, like all other
+responsibilities, its pleasures and its
+cares; not a toy to be played with, nor
+even a jewel to be worn in the bonnet,
+but a talent to be put out to interest, and
+enjoyed in the unbroken tranquillity
+of national thankfulness and peace.</p>
+
+<p>Another defect in the aristocracy of
+power is, the narrow sphere of their
+sympathies, extending only to those
+they know, and are familiar with; that
+is to say, only as far as the circumference
+of their own limited circle.
+This it is that renders them keenly
+apprehensive of danger close at hand,
+but comparatively indifferent to that
+which menaces them from a distance.
+Placed upon a lofty eminence, they
+are comparatively indifferent while
+clouds obscure, and thunder rattles
+along the vale; their resistance is of
+a passive kind, directed not to the depression
+of those beneath them, nor
+to overcome pressure from above, but
+to preserve themselves in the enviable
+eminence of their position, and there
+to establish themselves in permanent
+security.</p>
+
+<p>As a remedy for this short-sightedness,
+the result of their isolated position,
+the aristocracy of power is always
+prompt to borrow from the aristocracy
+of talent that assistance in
+the practical working of its government
+which it requires; they are
+glad to find safe men among the people
+to whom they can delegate the
+cares of office, the annoyances of patronage,
+and the odium of power;
+and, the better to secure these men,
+they are always ready to lift them
+among themselves, to identify them
+with their exclusive interests, and to
+give them a permanent establishment
+among the nobles of the land.</p>
+
+<a class="pagenum" name="page230" id="page230" title="230"></a>
+<h3>THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS.</h3>
+
+<p>Perhaps we may be expected to say
+something of the dress of men of fashion,
+as it is peculiar, and not less
+characteristic than their manner.
+Their clothes, like their lives, are
+usually of a neutral tint; staring colours
+they studiously eschew, and are
+never seen with elaborate gradations
+of under waistcoats. They would as
+soon appear out of doors <i>in cuerpo</i>, as
+in blue coats with gilt buttons, or
+braided military frocks, or any dress
+smacking of the professional. When
+they indulge in fancy colours and patterns,
+you will not fail to remark that
+these are not worn, although imitated
+by others. The moment a dressy man
+of fashion finds that any thing he has
+patronized gets abroad, he drops the
+neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may
+be, and condemns the tailor as an
+&quot;unsafe&quot; fellow. But it is not often
+that even the most dressy of our men
+of fashion originate any thing <i>outr&eacute;</i>,
+or likely to attract attention; of late
+years their style has been plain, almost
+to scrupulosity.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding that the man of
+fashion is plainly dressed, no more
+than ordinary penetration is required
+to see that he is excellently well
+dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure,
+much plainer than the coat of a Jew-clothesman,
+having neither silk linings,
+nor embroidered pocket-holes, nor cut
+velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see
+how it fits him&mdash;not like cast iron, nor
+like a wet sack, but as if he had been
+born in it.</p>
+
+<p>There is a harmony, a propriety in
+the coat of a man of fashion, an unstudied
+ease, a graceful symmetry, a
+delicacy of expression, that has always
+filled us with the profoundest admiration
+of the genius of the artist; indeed,
+no ready money could purchase coats
+that we have seen&mdash;coats that a real
+love of the subject, and working upon
+long credit, for a high connexion,
+could alone have given to the world&mdash;coats,
+not the dull conceptions of a
+geometric cutter, spiritlessly outlined
+upon the shop-board by the crayon of
+a mercenary foreman, but the fortunate
+creation of superior intelligence,
+boldly executed in the happy moments
+of a generous enthusiasm!</p>
+
+<p>Vain, very vain is it for the pretender
+to fashion to go swelling into the
+<i>atelier</i> of a first-rate coat architect,
+with his ready money in his hand, to
+order such a coat! <i>Order</i> such a
+coat, forsooth! order a Raphael, a
+Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such
+a coat&mdash;we say it with the generous
+indignation of a free Briton&mdash;is one
+of the exclusive privileges reserved,
+by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!</p>
+
+<p>The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too,
+deserves our unlimited approbation.
+Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth
+century, in which those who
+can manage it have the happiness to
+live, than the precision we have attained
+in trouser-cutting. While yet
+the barbarism of the age, or poverty
+of customers, <i>vested</i> the office of
+trouser-cutter and coat architect in
+the same functionary, coats were without
+<i>soul</i>, and &quot;inexpressibles&quot; inexpressibly
+bad, or, as Coleridge would
+have said, &quot;ridiculous exceedingly.&quot;
+In our day, on the contrary, we have
+attained to such a pitch of excellence,
+that the trouser-cutter who fails to
+give expression to his works, is hunted
+into the provinces, and condemned for
+life to manufacture nether garments
+for clergymen and country gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>The results of the minute division
+of labour, to which so much of the
+excellence of all that is excellent in
+London is mainly owing, is in nothing
+more apparent than in that department
+of the fine arts which people devoid
+of taste call fashionable tailoring.
+We have at the West End fashionable
+<i>artistes</i> in riding coats, in dress coats,
+in cut-aways; one is superlative in a
+Taglioni, another devotes the powers
+of his mind exclusively to the construction
+of a Chesterfield, a third
+gives the best years of his life to the
+symmetrical beauty of a barrel-trouser;
+from the united exertions of
+these, and a thousand other men of
+taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed
+man of fashion turned out
+upon the town. Then there are constructors
+of Horse Guards' and of Foot
+Guards' jacket, full and undress; the
+man who contrives these would expire
+if desired to turn his attention to the
+coat of a marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker
+despises the hard, heavy
+style of the cutters for the Royal Artillery,
+and so on. Volumes would
+not shut if we were to fill them with
+the infinite variety of these disguisers
+of that nakedness which formerly was
+<a class="pagenum" name="page231" id="page231" title="231"></a>our shame, but which latterly, it would
+seem, has become our pride. With
+the exception of one gentleman citywards,
+who has achieved an immortality
+in the article of box-coats, every
+contriver of men of fashion, we mean
+in the tailoring, which is the principal
+department, reside in the parish of St
+James's, within easy reach of their
+distinguished patrons. These gentlemen
+have a high and self-respecting
+idea of the nobleness and utility of
+their vocation. A friend of ours, of
+whom we know no harm save that he
+pays his tailors' bills, being one day
+afflicted with this unusual form of insanity,
+desired the artist to deduct
+some odd shillings from his bill; in a
+word, to make it pounds&mdash;&quot;Excuse
+me, sir,&quot; said Snip, &quot;but pray, let <i>us</i>
+not talk of pounds&mdash;pounds for tradesmen,
+if you please; but artists, sir,
+<i>artists</i> are always remunerated with
+guineas!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To return to the outward and visible
+man of fashion, from whose peculiarities
+our dissertation upon the sublime
+and beautiful in tailoring has too
+long detained us. The same subdued
+expression of elegance and ease
+that pervades the leading articles of
+his attire, extends, without exception,
+to all the accessories; or if he is deficient
+in aught, the accessorial <i>toggery</i>,
+such as hats, boots, <i>choker</i>, gloves, are
+always carefully attended to; for it is
+in this department that so distinguished
+a member of the detective police as
+ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised
+snobbery. You will never see
+a man of fashion affect a Paget hat,
+for example, or a D'Orsayan beaver:
+the former has a ridiculous exuberance
+of crown, the latter a by no means
+allowable latitude of brim&mdash;besides,
+borrowing the fashion of a hat, is with
+him what plagiarizing the interior
+furniture of the head is with others.
+He considers stealing the idea of a hat
+low and vulgar, and leaves the unworthy
+theft to be perpetrated by pretenders
+to fashion: content with a hat
+that becomes him, he is careful never
+to be before or behind the prevailing
+hat-intelligence of the time. Three
+hats your man of fashion sedulously
+escheweth&mdash;a new hat, a shocking bad
+hat, and a gossamer. As the song says,
+&quot;when into a shop he goes&quot; he never
+&quot;buys a four-and-nine,&quot; neither buyeth
+he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any
+of the hats indebted for their glossy
+texture to the entrails of the silk
+worm; he sporteth nothing below a
+two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
+putteth it not on his head until his
+valet, exposing it to a shower of rain,
+has &quot;taken the shine out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In boots he is even more scrupulously
+attentive to what Philosopher
+Square so appropriately called the
+fitness of things: his boots are never
+square-toed, or round-toed, like the
+boots of people who think their toes
+are in fashion. You see that they fit
+him, that they are of the best material
+and make, and suitable to the season:
+you never see him sport the Sunday
+patent-leathers of the &quot;snob,&quot; who
+on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny
+high-lows: you never see
+him shambling along in boots a world
+too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled
+victim to the malevolence of
+Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot
+has always been attended to; he has
+worn well-fitting boots every day of
+his life, and he walks as if he knew
+not whether he had boots on or not.
+As for stocks, saving that he be a military
+man, he wears them not; they
+want that easy negligence, attainable
+only by the graceful folds of a well
+tied <i>choker</i>. You never see a man of
+fashion with his neck in the pillory,
+and you hardly ever encounter a
+Cockney whose cervical investment
+does not convey at once the idea of
+that obsolete punishment. A gentleman
+never considers that his neck
+was given him to show off a cataract
+of black satin upon, or as a post
+whereon to display gold-threaded fabrics,
+of all the colours of the rainbow:
+sooner than wear such things,
+he would willingly resign his neck to
+the embraces of a halter. His study is
+to select a modest, unassuming <i>choker,
+fine</i> if you please, but without pretension
+as to pattern, and in colour harmonizing
+with his residual <i>toggery</i>:
+this he ties with an easy, unembarrassed
+air, so that he can conveniently
+look about him. Oxford men, we
+have observed, tie chokers better than
+any others; but we do not know whether
+there are exhibitions or scholarships
+for the encouragement of this
+laudable faculty. At Cambridge
+(except Trinity) there is a laxity in
+chokers, for which it is difficult to
+account, except upon the principle
+that men there attend too closely to
+the mathematics; these, as every body
+knows, are in their essence inimical
+to the higher departments of the fine
+<a class="pagenum" name="page232" id="page232" title="232"></a>arts. There is no reason, however,
+why in this important branch of learning,
+which, as we may say, comes
+home to the bosom of every man, one
+Alma Mater should surpass another;
+since at both the intellects of men are
+almost exclusively occupied for years
+in tying their abominable white chokers,
+so as to look as like tavern waiters
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing: if a gentleman
+sticks a pin in his choker, you may
+be sure it has not a head as big as a
+potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese
+Twin pin, connected by a bit of
+chain, or an imitation precious stone,
+or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears
+studs, they are plain, and have cost
+not less at the least than five guineas
+the set. Neither does he ever make
+a High Sheriff of himself, with chains
+dangling over the front of his waistcoat,
+or little pistols, seals, or trinketry
+appearing below his waistband,
+as much as to say, &quot;<i>if you only knew
+what a watch I have inside</i>!&quot; Nor does
+he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned
+fingers; if he wears rings, you
+may depend upon it that they are of
+value, that they are sparingly distributed,
+and that his hand is not a paw.</p>
+
+<p>A man of fashion never wears
+Woodstock gloves, or gloves with
+double stitches, or eighteen-penny
+imitation French kids: his gloves,
+like himself and every thing about
+him, are the real thing. Dressy young
+men of fashion sport primrose kids in
+the forenoon; and, although they take
+care to avoid the appearance of snobbery
+by never wearing the same pair
+a second day, yet, after all, primrose
+kids in the forenoon are not the thing,
+not in keeping, not quiet enough:
+we therefore denounce primrose kids,
+and desire to see no more of them.</p>
+
+<p>If you are unfortunate enough to
+be acquainted with a snob, you need
+not put yourself to the unnecessary
+expense of purchasing an almanac for
+the ensuing year: your friend the
+snob will answer that useful purpose
+completely to your satisfaction. For
+example, on Thursdays and Sundays
+he shaves and puts on a clean shirt,
+which he exhibits as freely as possible
+in honour of the event: Mondays and
+Fridays you will know by the vegetating
+bristles of his chin, and the
+disappearance of the shirt cuffs and
+collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays
+and Saturdays by supplementary
+collar and cuffs, which, being white
+and starched, form a pleasing contrast
+with that portion of the original <i>chemise</i>,
+vainly attempted to be concealed
+behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
+stock. Wednesdays and Fridays
+you cannot mistake; your friend
+is then at the dirtiest, and his beard at
+the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
+wash and shave: on quarter-day,
+when he gets his salary, he goes to a
+sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.</p>
+
+<p>A gentleman, on the contrary, in
+addition to his other noble inutilities,
+is useless as an almanac. He is never
+half shaven nor half shorn: you never
+can tell when he has had his hair cut,
+nor has he his clean-shirt days, and
+his days of foul linen. He is not
+merely outwardly <i>propre</i>, but asperges
+his cuticle daily with &quot;oriental scrupulosity:&quot;
+he is always and ever, in
+person, manner, dress, and deportment,
+the same, and has never been other
+than he now appears.</p>
+
+<p>You will say, perhaps, this is all
+very fine; but give me the money the
+man of fashion has got, and I will be
+as much a man of fashion as he: I
+will wear my clothes with the same
+ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
+<i>degag&eacute;</i>, as the veriest Bond Street
+lounger of them all. Friend, thou
+mayest say so, or even think so, but I
+defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
+will out; and, if you do not happen
+to be a gentleman born, we tell you
+plainly you will never, by dint of expense
+in dress, succeed in &quot;topping
+the part.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We have been for many years
+deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
+into the origin of the peculiar
+attributes characteristic of the man of
+fashion. A work of such importance,
+however, we cannot think of giving
+to the world, except in the appropriate
+envelope of a ponderous quarto:
+just now, by way of whetting the appetite
+of expectation, we shall merely
+observe, that, after much pondering,
+we have at last discovered the secret
+of his wearing his garments &quot;with a
+difference,&quot; or, more properly, with an
+indifference, unattainable by others of
+the human species. You will conjecture,
+haply, that it is because he and
+his father before him have been from
+childhood accustomed to pay attention
+to dress, and that habit has given
+them that air which the occasional
+dresser can never hope to attain: or
+that, having the best <i>artistes</i>, seconded
+by that beautiful division of labour of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page233" id="page233" title="233"></a>which we have spoken heretofore, he
+can attain an evenness of costume, an
+undeviating propriety of toggery&mdash;not
+at all: the whole secret consists
+in <i>never paying, nor intending to pay,
+his tailor</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic
+dispensation, contract for three suits
+a-year, the old ones to be returned,
+and again made new; or those who,
+struck with more than money madness,
+go to a tailor, cash in hand, for
+the purpose of making an investment,
+are always accustomed to consider a
+coat as a representative of so much
+money, transferred only from the
+pocket to the back. Accordingly,
+they are continually labouring under
+the depression of spirits arising from
+a sense of the possible depreciation of
+such a valuable property. Visions of
+showers of rain, and March dust, perpetually
+haunt their morbid imaginations.
+Greasy collars, chalky seams,
+threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that
+the time must come when that tunic,
+for which five pounds ten have been
+lost to them and their heirs for ever,
+will be worth no more than a couple
+of shillings to an old-clothesman in
+Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
+walk along the Strand, with apprehensions
+of anticipated expenditure.
+They walk circumspectly, lest a baker,
+sweep, or hodman, stumbling against
+the coat, may deprive its wearer of
+what to him represents so much ready
+money. These real and imaginary
+evils altogether prohibit the proprietor
+of a paid-up coat wearing it with
+any degree of graceful indifference.</p>
+
+<p>But when a family of fashion, for
+generations, have not only never
+thought of paying a tailor, but have
+considered taking up bills, which the
+too confiding snip has discounted for
+them, as decidedly smacking of the
+punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman;
+thus drawing down upon themselves
+the vengeance of that most intolerant
+sect of Protestants, the Notaries
+Public; when a young man of
+fashion, taught from earliest infancy
+to regard tailors as a Chancellor of
+the Exchequer regards the people at
+large, that is to say, as a class of
+animals created to be victimized in
+every possible way, it is astonishing
+what a subtle grace and indescribable
+expression are conveyed to coats which
+are sent home to you for nothing, or,
+what amounts to exactly the same
+thing, which you have not the most
+remote idea of paying for, <i>in secula
+seculorum</i>. So far from caring whether
+it rains or snows, or whether the
+dust flies, when you have got on one
+of these eleemosynary coats, you are
+rather pleased than otherwise. There
+is a luxury in the idea that on the
+morrow you will start fresh game, and
+victimize your tailor for another. The
+innate cruelty of the human animal is
+gratified, and the idea of a tailor's
+suffering is never conceived by a customer
+without involuntary cachinnation.
+Not only is he denied the attribute
+of integral manhood&mdash;which
+even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys&mdash;but
+that principle which induces
+a few men of enthusiastic temperament
+to pay debts, is always held a
+fault when applied to the bills of
+tailors. And, what is a curious and
+instructive fact in the natural history
+of London fashionable tailors, and
+altogether unnoticed by the Rev.
+Leonard Jenyns, in his <i>Manual of
+British Vertebrate Animals</i>, if you
+go to one of these gentlemen, requesting
+him to &quot;execute,&quot; and professing
+your readiness to pay his bill on demand
+or delivery, he will be sure to
+give your order to the most scurvy
+botch in his establishment, put in the
+worst materials, and treat you altogether
+as a person utterly unacquainted
+with the usages of polite society. But
+if, on the contrary, you are recommended
+to him by Lord Fly-by-night,
+of Denman Priory&mdash;if you give a
+thundering order, and, instead of offering
+to pay for it, pull out a parcel of
+bill-stamps, and <i>promise</i> fifty per cent
+for a few hundreds down, you will be
+surprised to observe what delight will
+express itself in the radiant countenance
+of your victim: visions of cent
+per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams
+of bonds with penalties, and all those
+various shapes in which security delights
+to involve the extravagant, rise
+flatteringly before the inward eye of
+the man of shreds and patches. By
+these transactions with the great, he
+becomes more and more a man, less
+and less a tailor; instead of cutting
+patterns and taking measures, he
+flings the tailoring to his foreman,
+becoming first Lord of the Treasury
+and Chancellor of the Exchequer to
+peers of the realm.</p>
+
+<p>With a few more of the less important
+distinctive peculiarities of the
+gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss
+this portion of our subject. A gentleman
+<a class="pagenum" name="page234" id="page234" title="234"></a>never affects military air or costume
+if he is not a military man, and
+even then avoids professional rigidity
+and swagger as much as possible; he
+never sports spurs or a riding-whip,
+except when he is upon horseback,
+contrary to the rule observed by his
+antagonist the snob, who always sports
+spurs and riding-whip, but who never
+mounts higher than a threepenny stride
+on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a
+gentleman ever wear a <i>moustache</i>, unless
+he belongs to one of the regiments
+of hussars, or the household cavalry,
+who alone are ordered to display that
+ornamental exuberance. Foreigners,
+military or non-military, are recognized
+as wearing hair on the upper
+lip with propriety, as is the custom of
+their country. But no gentleman
+here thinks of such a thing, any more
+than he would think of sporting the
+uniform of the Tenth Hussars.</p>
+
+<p>There is an affectation among the
+vulgar clever, of wearing the <i>moustache</i>,
+which they clip and cut <i>&agrave; la
+Vandyk</i>: this is useful, as affording a
+ready means of distinguishing between
+a man of talent and an ass&mdash;the former,
+trusting to his head, goes clean shaved,
+and looks like an Englishman: the
+latter, whose strength lies altogether
+in his hair, exhausts the power of Macassar
+in endeavouring to make himself
+as like an ourang-outang as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing must be observed
+by all who would successfully ape the
+gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the
+street in mid-day. No better sign can
+you have than this of a fellow reckless
+of decency and behaviour: a gentleman
+smokes, if he smokes at all, where he
+offends not the olfactories of the passers-by.
+Nothing, he is aware, approaches
+more nearly the most offensive
+personal insult, than to compel
+ladies and gentlemen to inhale, after
+you, the ejected fragrance of your
+penny Cuba or your three-halfpenny
+mild Havannah.</p>
+
+<p>In the cities of Germany, where the
+population almost to a man inhale the
+fumes of tobacco, street smoking is
+very properly prohibited; for however
+agreeable may be the sedative influence
+of the Virginian weed when inspired
+from your own manufactory,
+nothing assuredly is more disgusting
+than inhalation of tobacco smoke at
+second-hand.</p>
+
+<p>Your undoubted man of fashion,
+like other animals, has his peculiar
+<i>habitat</i>: you never see him promenading
+in Regent Street between the hours
+of three and five in the afternoon, nor
+by any chance does he venture into
+the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar
+he is never seen except on business,
+and then, never on foot: if he lounges
+any where, it is in Bond Street, or
+about the clubs of St James's.</p>
+
+<h3>OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.</h3>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare, taste, high life and the musical
+glasses.&quot;&mdash;<i>Vicar of Wakefield</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p>We will venture to assert, that in
+the course of these essays on the aristocracies
+of London life, we have
+never attempted to induce any of our
+readers to believe that there was any
+cause for him to regret, whatever condition
+of life it had pleased Providence
+to place him in, or to suppose, for one
+moment, that reputable men, though
+in widely different circumstances, are
+not equally reputable. We have studiously
+avoided portraying fashionable
+life according to the vulgar
+notions, whether depreciatory or
+panegyrical. We have shown that
+that class is not to be taken and treated
+of as an integral quantity, but to
+be analyzed as a component body,
+wherein is much sterling ore and no
+little dross. We have shown by sufficient
+examples, that whatever in our
+eyes makes the world of fashion really
+respectable, is solely owing to the real
+worth of its respectable members; and
+on the contrary, whatever contempt
+we fling upon the fashionable world,
+is the result of the misconduct of individuals
+of that order, prominently
+contemptible.</p>
+
+<p>Of the former, the example is of infinite
+value to society, in refining its
+tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed
+ease, which, if not true
+politeness, is its true substitute; and,
+of the latter, the mischief done to society
+is enhanced by the multitude of
+low people ready to imitate their
+vices, inanities, and follies.</p>
+
+<p>Pretenders to fashion, who hang
+upon the outskirts of fashionable society,
+and whose lives are a perpetual
+but unavailing struggle to jump above
+their proper position, are horrid nuisances;
+and they abound, unfortunately,
+in London.</p>
+
+<p>In a republic, where practical equality
+<a class="pagenum" name="page235" id="page235" title="235"></a>is understood and acted upon,
+this pretension would be intolerable;
+in an aristocratic state of society, with
+social gradations pointedly defined
+and universally recognized, it is merely
+ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the
+pretenders, it is a source of much and
+deserved misery and isolation.</p>
+
+<p>There are ten thousand varying
+shades and degrees of this pretension,
+from the truly fashionable people who
+hanker after the <i>exclusives</i>, or seventh
+heaven of high life, down to the courier
+out of place, who, in a pot-house,
+retails Debrett by heart, and talks of
+lords, and dukes, and earls, as of his
+particular acquaintance, and how and
+where he met them when on his travels.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>exclusives</i> are a queer set, some
+of them not by any means people of
+the best pretensions to lead the <i>ton</i>.
+Lady L&mdash;&mdash; and Lady B&mdash;&mdash; may be
+very well as patronesses of Almack's;
+but what do you say to Lady J&mdash;&mdash;,
+a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in
+money, keeping her shop by deputy
+in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill?
+Almack's, as every body knows who
+has been there, or who has talked with
+any observing <i>habitu&eacute;</i> of the place,
+contains a great many queer, spurious
+people, smuggled in somehow by
+indirect influence, when royal command
+is not the least effectual: a
+surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken
+young men, and, in an inverse
+ratio, women who have any thing more
+than the clothes they wear: yet, by
+mere dint of difficulty, by the simple
+circumstance of making admission to
+this assembly a matter of closeting,
+canvassing, balloting, black-balling,
+and so forth, people of much better
+fashion than many of the exclusives
+make it a matter of life and death to
+have their admission secured. Admission
+to Almack's is to a young <i>d&eacute;butante</i>
+of fashion as great an object as a
+seat at the Privy Council Board to a
+flourishing politician: your <i>ton</i> is
+stamped by it, you are of the exclusive
+<i>set</i>, and, by virtue of belonging to that
+set, every other is open to you as a
+matter of course, when you choose to
+condescend to visit it. The room in
+which Almack's balls are held we need
+not describe, because it has been often
+described before, and because the
+doorkeeper, any day you choose to
+go to Duke Street, St James's, will be
+too happy to show it you for sixpence;
+but we will give you in his own words,
+all the information we could contrive
+to get from a man of the highest
+fashion, who is a subscriber.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, I really don't know,&quot; said
+he, &quot;that I have any thing to tell you
+about Almack's, except that all that
+the novel-writers say about it is ridiculous
+nonsense: the lights are good,
+the refreshments not so good, the
+music excellent; the women dress
+well, dance a good deal, and talk but
+little. There is a good deal of envy,
+jealousy, and criticism of faces, figures,
+fortunes, and pretensions: one, or at
+most two, of the balls in a season are
+pleasant; the others <i>slow</i> and very
+dull. The point of the thing seems to
+be, that people of rank choose to like
+it because it stamps a set, and low
+people talk about it because they
+cannot by any possibility know any
+thing about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Such is Almack's, of which volumes
+have been spun, of most effete and
+lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid
+appetites of the pretenders to fashion.</p>
+
+<p>We must not omit to inform our
+rural readers, that no conventional
+rank gives any one in London a patent
+of privilege in truly fashionable
+society. An old baronet shall be exclusive,
+when a young peer shall
+have no fashionable society at all: a
+lord is by no means necessarily a man
+in what the fashionable sets call good
+society: we have many lords who are
+not men of fashion, and many men of
+fashion who are not lords.</p>
+
+<p>Professional peers, whether legal,
+naval, or military, bishops, judges,
+and all that class of men who attain
+by talents, interest, and good fortune,
+or all, or any of these, a lofty social
+position, have no more to do with the
+exclusive or merely fashionable sets
+than you or I. A man may be a barrister
+in full practice to-day, an attorney-general
+to-morrow, a chief-justice
+the day after with a peerage: yet his
+wife and daughter visit the same people,
+and are visited by the same people,
+that associated with them before.
+If men of fashion know them, it is because
+they have business to transact
+or favours to seek for, or because it
+is part of their system to keep up a
+qualified intimacy with all whom they
+think proper to lift to their own level:
+but this intimacy is only extended by
+the man of birth to the man of talent.
+His family do not become people of
+fashion until the third or fourth generation:
+he remains the man of business,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page236" id="page236" title="236"></a>the useful, working, practical,
+brains-carrying man that he was; and
+his family, if they are wise, seek not
+to become the familiars of the old
+aristocracy, and if they are foolish,
+become the most unfortunate pretenders
+to fashion. They are too near
+to be pleasant; and the gulf which
+people of hereditary fashion place between
+is impassable, even though they
+flounder up to their necks in servile
+mud.</p>
+
+<p>It is the same with baronets, M.P.'s,
+and all that sort of people. These
+handles to men's names go down very
+well in the country, where it is imagined
+that a baronet or an M.P. is,
+<i>ex officio</i>, a man of consequence, and
+that, rank being equal, consequence is
+also equal. In London, on the contrary,
+people laugh at the idea of a
+man pluming himself upon such distinctions
+without a difference: in town
+we have baronets of all sorts&mdash;the
+&quot;Heathcotes, and such large-acred
+men,&quot; Sir Watkyn, and the territorial
+baronetage: then we have the
+Hanmers, and others of undoubted
+fashion, to which their patent is the
+weakest of their claims: then we
+have the military, naval, and medical
+baronet: descending, through infinite
+gradations, we come down to the
+tallow-chandling, the gin-spinning,
+the banking, the pastry-cooking baronetage.</p>
+
+<p>What is there, what can there be,
+in common with these widely severed
+classes, save that they equally enjoy
+<i>Sir</i> at the head and <i>Bart</i>. at the tail
+of their sponsorial and patronymic
+appellations? Do you think the
+landed Bart. knows any more of the
+medical Bart. than that, when he sends
+for the other to attend his wife, he
+calls him generally &quot;doctor,&quot; and
+seldom Sir James: or that the military
+Bart. does not much like the
+naval Bart.? and do not all these
+incongruous Barts. shudder at the
+bare idea of been seen on the same
+side of the street with a gin-spinning,
+Patent-British-Genuine-Foreign-Cognac
+Brandy-making Bart.? and do
+not each and every one of these Barts.
+from head to tail, even including the
+last-mentioned, look down with immeasurable
+disdain upon the poor
+Nova Scotia baronets, who move heaven
+and earth to get permission to
+wear a string round their necks, and
+a badge like the learned fraternity of
+cabmen?</p>
+
+<p>Then as to the magic capitals
+M.P., which provincial people look
+upon as embodying in the wearer
+the concentrated essence of wisdom,
+eloquence, personal distinction, and
+social eminence. Who, in a country
+town, on a market day, has not seen
+tradesmen cocking their eye, apprentices
+glowering through the shop
+front, and ladies subdolously peeping
+behind the window-shutter to catch
+a glimpse of the &quot;member for our
+town,&quot; and, having seen him, think
+they are rather happier then they were
+before? The greatest fun in the
+world is to go to a <i>cul-de-sac</i> off a
+dirty lane near Palace Yard, called
+Manchester Buildings, a sort of senatorial
+pigeon-house, where the meaner
+fry of houseless M.P.'s live, each in
+his one pair, two pair, three pair, as
+the case may be, and give a postman's
+knock at every door in rapid succession.
+In a twinkling, the &quot;collective
+wisdom&quot; of Manchester Buildings and
+the Midland Counties poke out their
+heads. Cobden appears on the balcony;
+Muntz glares out of a second
+floor, like a live bear in a barber's
+window; Wallace of Greenock comes
+to the door in a red nightcap; and a
+long &quot;tail&quot; of the other immortals of
+a session. You may enjoy the scene
+as much as you please; but when you
+hear one or two of the young Irish
+patriotic &quot;mimbers&quot; floundering from
+the attics, the wisest course you can
+take will be incontinently to &quot;mizzle.&quot;
+These men, however, have one redeeming
+quality&mdash;that they live in Manchester
+Buildings, and don't care who
+knows it; they are out of fashion,
+and don't care who are in; they are
+minding their business, and not hanging
+at the skirts of people ever ready
+and willing to kick them off.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the &quot;dandy&quot;
+M.P.'s, who ride hack-horses, associate
+with fashionable actresses, and
+hang about the clubs. Then there is
+the chance or accidental M.P., who
+has been elected he hardly knows how
+or when, and wonders to find himself
+in Parliament. Then there is the
+desperate, adventuring, ear-wigging
+M.P., whose hope of political existence,
+and whose very livelihood, depend
+upon getting or continuing in
+place. Then there is the legal M.P.,
+with one eye fixed on the Queen's,
+the other squinting at the Treasury
+Bench. Then there is the lounging
+M.P., who is usually the scion of a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page237" id="page237" title="237"></a>noble family, and who comes now and
+then into the House, to stare vacantly
+about, and go out again. Then there
+is the military M.P., who finds the
+House an agreeable lounge, and does
+not care to join his regiment on foreign
+service. Then there is the bustling
+M.P. of business, the M.P. of business
+without bustle, and the independent
+country gentleman M.P., who
+wants nothing for himself or any
+body else, and who does not care a
+turnip-top for the whole lot of them.</p>
+
+<p>The aggregate distinction, as a
+member of Parliament, is totally sunk
+in London. It is the man, and not
+the two letters after his name, that
+any body whose regard is worth the
+having in the least regard. There are
+M.P.s never seen beyond the exclusive
+set, except on a committee of the
+House, and then they know and speak
+to nobody save one of themselves.
+There are other M.P.s that you will
+find in no society except Tom Spring's
+or Owen Swift's, at the Horse-shoe in
+Litchborne Street.</p>
+
+<p>These observations upon baronets
+and M.P.s may be extended upwards
+to the peerage, and downwards to the
+professional, commercial, and all other
+the better classes. Every man hangs,
+like a herring, by his own tail; and
+every class would be distinct and separate,
+but that the pretenders to fashion,
+like some equivocal animals in the
+chain of animated nature, connect
+these different classes by copying pertinaciously
+the manners, and studying
+to adopt the tastes and habits of the
+class immediately above them.</p>
+
+<p>Of pretenders to fashion, perhaps
+the most successful in their imitative
+art are the</p>
+
+<p>SHEENIES.&mdash;By this term, as used
+by men of undoubted <i>ton</i> with reference
+to the class we are about to
+consider, you are to understand runagate
+Jews rolling in riches, who profess
+to love roast pork above all things,
+who always eat their turkey with
+sausages, and who have <i>cut</i> their religion
+for the sake of dangling at the
+heels of fashionable Christians. These
+people are &quot;swelling&quot; upon the profits
+of the last generation in St Mary Axe
+or Petticoat Lane. The founders of
+their families have been loan-manufacturers,
+crimps, receivers of stolen
+goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers
+and sweaters, rag-merchants, and
+the like, and conscientious Israelites;
+but their children, not having fortitude
+to abide by their condition, nor
+right principle to adhere to their sect,
+come to the west end of the town, and,
+by right of their money, make unremitting
+assaults upon the loose fish of
+fashionable society, who laugh at, and
+heartily despise them, while they are
+as ashes in the mouths of the respectable
+members of the persuasion to
+which they originally belonged.</p>
+
+<p>HEAVY SWELLS are another very
+important class of pretenders to fashion,
+and are divided into civil and
+military. Professional men, we say
+it to their honour, seldom affect the
+heavy swell, because the feeblest
+glimmerings of that rationality of
+thinking which results from among
+the lowest education, preserves them
+from the folly of the attempt, and, in
+preserving from folly, saves them from
+the self-reproaching misery that attends
+it. Men of education or of
+common sense, look upon pretension
+to birth, rank, or any thing else to
+which they have no legitimate claim,
+as little more than moral forgery; it
+it is with them an uttering base coin
+upon false pretences. It is generally
+the wives and families of professional
+men who are afflicted with pretension
+to fashion, of which we shall give
+abundant examples when we come to
+treat of gentility-mongers. But the
+heavy swell, who is of all classes,
+from the son and heir of an opulent
+blacking-maker down to the lieutenant
+of a marching regiment on half-pay,
+is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably
+illiterate, and therefore incapable,
+by nature and bringing-up, of
+respecting himself by a modest contented
+demeanour. He is never so
+unhappy as when he appears the thing
+he is&mdash;never so completely in his
+element as when acting the thing he
+is not, nor can ever be. He spends his
+life in jumping, like a cat, at shadows
+on the wall. He has day and night
+dreams of people, who have not the
+least idea that such a man is in existence,
+and he comes in time, by mere
+dint of thinking of nobody else, to
+think that he is one of them. He acquaints
+himself with the titles of lords,
+as other men do those of books, and
+then boasts largely of the extent of
+his acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Let us suppose that he is an officer
+of a hard-fighting, foreign-service,
+neglected infantry regiment. This,
+which to a soldier would be an honest
+pride, is the shame of the Heavy Military
+<a class="pagenum" name="page238" id="page238" title="238"></a>Swell. His chief business in life,
+next to knowing the names and faces
+of lords, is concealing from you the
+corps to which he has the dishonour,
+he thinks, to belong. He talks mightily
+of the service, of hussars and light
+dragoons; but when he knows that
+you know better, when you poke him
+hard about the young or old buffs, or
+the dirty half-hundred, he whispers in
+your ear that &quot;my fellows,&quot; as he
+calls them, are very &quot;fast,&quot; and that
+they are &quot;all known in town, very well
+known indeed&quot;&mdash;a piece of information
+you will construe in the case of
+the heavy swell to mean, better known
+than trusted.</p>
+
+<p>When he is on full pay, the heavy
+swell is known to the three old women
+and five desperate daughters who
+compose good society in country quarters.
+He affects a patronizing air at
+small tea-parties, and is wonderfully
+run after by wretched un-idea'd girls,
+that is, by ten girls in twelve; he is
+eternally striving to get upon the
+&quot;staff,&quot; or anyhow to shirk his regimental
+duty; he is a whelp towards
+the men under his command, and has
+a grand idea of spurs, steel scabbards,
+and flogging; to his superiors he is a
+spaniel, to his brother officers an intolerable
+ass; he makes the mess-room
+a perfect hell with his vanity, puppyism,
+and senseless bibble-babble.</p>
+
+<p>On leave, or half-pay, he &quot;mounts
+mustaches,&quot; to help the hussar and
+light-dragoon idea, or to delude the
+ignorant into a belief that he may
+possibly belong to the household cavalry.
+He hangs about doors of military
+clubs, with a whip in his hand;
+talks very loud at the &quot;Tiger&quot; or the
+&quot;Rag and famish,&quot; and never has done
+shouting to the waiter to bring him a
+&quot;Peerage;&quot; carries the &quot;Red Book&quot;
+and &quot;Book of Heraldry&quot; in his pocket;
+sees whence people come, and
+where they go, and makes them out
+somehow; in short, he is regarded
+with a thrill of horror by people of
+fashion, fast or slow, civil or military.</p>
+
+<p>The Civil Heavy Swell affects fashionable
+curricles, and enjoys all the
+consideration a pair of good horses
+can give. He rides a blood bay in
+Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is
+detected by galloping, or some other
+solecism; his dress and liveries are
+always overdone, the money shows on
+every thing about him. He has familiar
+abbreviations for the names of all
+the fast men about town; calls this
+Lord &quot;Jimmy,&quot; 'tother Chess, a third
+Dolly, and thinks he knows them;
+keeps an expensive mistress, because
+&quot;Jimmy&quot; and Chess are supposed to
+do the same, and when he is out of
+the way, his mistress has some of the
+fast fellows to supper, at the heavy
+swell's expense. He settles the point
+whether claret is to be drank from a
+jug or black bottle, and retails the
+merits of a <i>plateau</i> or <i>epergne</i> he saw,
+when last he dined with a &quot;fellow&quot;
+in Belgrave Square.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Foreigneering</i> Heavy Swell has
+much more spirit, talent, and manner,
+than the home-grown article; but he
+is poor in a like ratio, and is therefore
+obliged to feather his nest by
+denuding the pigeon tribe of their
+metallic plumage. He is familiarly
+known to all the fast fellows, who
+<i>cut</i> him, however, as soon as they
+marry, but is not accounted good <i>ton</i>
+by heads of families. He is liked at
+the Hells and Clubs, where he has a
+knack of distinguishing himself without
+presumption or affectation. He
+is a dresser by right divine, and
+dresses ridiculously. The fashionable
+fellows affect loudly to applaud his
+taste, and laugh to see the vulgar imitate
+the foreigneering swell. He is
+the idol of equivocal women, and condescends
+to patronize unpresentable
+gentility-mongers. He is not unhappy
+at heart, like the indigenous
+heavy swell, but enjoys his intimacy
+with the fast fellows, and uses it.</p>
+
+<p>There is an infallible test we should
+advise you to apply, whenever you
+are bored to desperation by any of
+these heavy swells. When he talks
+of &quot;my friend, the Duke of Bayswater,&quot;
+ask him, in a quiet tone,
+where he last met the <i>Duchess</i>. If he
+says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl
+of) is an honest good fellow, enquire
+whether he prefers Lady Mary or
+Lady Seraphina Serpentine. This
+drops him like a shot&mdash;he can't get
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a rule in good society that you
+know the set only when you know the
+women of that set; however you may
+work your way among the men, whatever
+you may do at the Hells and
+Clubs, goes for nothing&mdash;the <i>women</i>
+stamp you counterfeit or current,
+and&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Not to know <i>them</i>, argues yourself unknown.&quot;</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page239" id="page239" title="239"></a>
+<a name="bw328s8" id="bw328s8"></a><h2>EYRE'S CABUL.</h2>
+
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat and Destruction of
+the British Army, January 1842; with a Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan.
+By Lieutenant Vincent Eyre, Bengal Artillery, late Deputy-Commissary of Ordnance
+at Cabul. London: John Murray.</p></div>
+
+<p>This is the first connected account
+that has appeared of the military disasters
+that befell the British army at
+Cabul&mdash;by far the most signal reverse
+our arms have ever sustained in Asia.
+The narrative is full of a deep and
+painful interest, which becomes more
+and more intense as we approach the
+closing catastrophe. The simple detail
+of the daily occurrences stirs up
+our strongest feelings of indignation,
+pity; scorn, admiration, horror, and
+grief. The tale is told without art,
+or any attempt at artificial ornament,
+and in a spirit of manly and gentlemanlike
+forbearance from angry comment
+or invective, that is highly creditable
+to the author, and gives us a
+very favourable opinion both of his
+head and of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>That a British army of nearly six
+thousand fighting men&mdash;occupying a
+position chosen and fortified by our
+own officers, and having possession,
+within two miles of this fortified cantonment,
+of a strong citadel commanding
+the greater part of the town
+of Cabul, a small portion only of
+whose population rose against us at
+the commencement of the revolt&mdash;should
+not only have made no vigorous
+effort to crush the insurrection;
+but that it should ultimately have
+been driven by an undisciplined Asiatic
+mob, destitute of artillery, and
+which never appears to have collected
+in one place above 10,000 men, to
+seek safety in a humiliating capitulation,
+by which it surrendered the
+greater part of its artillery, military
+stores, and treasure, and undertook to
+evacuate the whole country on condition
+of receiving a safe conduct from
+the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they
+placed, and could place, no reliance;
+and finally, that, of about 4500 armed
+soldiers and twelve thousand camp-followers,
+many of whom were also
+armed, who set out from Cabul, only
+one man, and he wounded, should
+have arrived at Jellalabad; is an amount
+of misfortune so far exceeding every
+rational anticipation of evil, that we
+should have been entitled to assume
+that these unparalleled military disasters
+arose from a series of unparalleled
+errors, even if we had not had,
+as we now have, the authority of Lord
+Ellenborough for asserting the fact.</p>
+
+<p>But every nation, and more particularly
+the British nation, is little inclined
+to pardon the men under whose
+command any portion of its army or
+of its navy may have been beaten.
+Great Britain, reposing entire confidence
+in the courage of her men, and
+little accustomed to see them overthrown,
+is keenly jealous of the reputation
+of her forces; and, as she is ever
+prompt to reward military excellence
+and success, she heaps unmeasured
+obloquy on those who may have subjected
+her to the degradation of defeat.
+When our forces have encountered
+a reverse, or even when the success
+has not been commensurate with
+the hopes that had been indulged; the
+public mind has ever been prone to
+condemn the commanders; and wherever
+there has been reason to believe
+that errors have been committed
+which have led to disaster, there has
+been little disposition to make any
+allowances for the circumstances of
+the case, or for the fallibility of man;
+but, on the contrary, the nation has too
+often evinced a fierce desire to punish
+the leaders for the mortification the
+country has been made to endure.</p>
+
+<p>This feeling may tend to elevate
+the standard of military character,
+but it must at the same time preclude
+the probability of calm or impartial
+examination, so far as the great body
+of the nation is concerned; and it is
+therefore the more obviously incumbent
+on those who, from a more intimate
+knowledge of the facts, or from
+habits of more deliberate investigation,
+are not carried away by the tide
+of popular indignation and invective,
+to weigh the circumstances with
+conscientious caution, and to await
+the result of judicial enquiry before
+they venture to apportion the blame
+or even to estimate its amount.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The following notes,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre in his preface, &quot;were penned to relieve
+<a class="pagenum" name="page240" id="page240" title="240"></a>the monotony of an Affghan prison,
+while yet the events which they record
+continued fresh in my memory. I now
+give them publicity, in the belief that the
+information which they contain on the
+dreadful scenes lately enacted in Affghanistan,
+though clothed in a homely garb,
+will scarcely fail to be acceptable to many
+of my countrymen, both in India and England,
+who may be ignorant of the chief
+particulars. The time, from the 2d November
+1841, on which day the sudden
+popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to
+the 13th January 1842, which witnessed
+the annihilation of the last small remnant
+of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was
+one continued tragedy. The massacre of
+Sir Alexander Burnes and his associates,&mdash;the
+loss of our commissariat fort&mdash;the
+defeat of our troops under Brigadier
+Shelton at Beymaroo&mdash;the treacherous
+assassination of Sir William Macnaghten,
+our envoy and minister&mdash;and lastly, the
+disastrous retreat and utter destruction of
+a force consisting of 5000 fighting men
+and upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,&mdash;are
+events which will assuredly rouse
+the British Lion from his repose, and excite
+an indignant spirit of enquiry in every
+breast. Men will not be satisfied, in this
+case, with a bare statement of the facts,
+but they will doubtless require to be made
+acquainted with the causes which brought
+about such awful effects. We have lost
+six entire regiments of infantry, three
+companies of sappers, a troop of European
+horse-artillery, half the mountain-train
+battery, nearly a whole regiment of
+regular cavalry, and four squadrons of
+irregular horse, besides a well-stocked
+magazine, which <i>alone</i>, taking into consideration
+the cost of transport up to Cabul,
+may be estimated at nearly a million sterling.
+From first to last, not less than 104
+British officers have fallen: their names
+will be found in the Appendix. I glance
+but slightly at the <i>political</i> events of this
+period, not having been one of the initiated;
+and I do not pretend to enter into
+<i>minute</i> particulars with regard to even
+our <i>military</i> transactions, more especially
+those not immediately connected with the
+sad catastrophe which it has been my ill
+fortune to witness, and whereof I now
+endeavour to portray the leading features.
+In these notes I have been careful to state
+only what I know to be undeniable facts.
+I have set down nothing on mere hearsay
+evidence, nor any thing which cannot be
+attested by living witnesses or by existing
+documentary evidence. In treating of
+matters which occurred under my personal
+observation, it has been difficult to avoid
+<i>altogether</i> the occasional expression of my
+own individual opinion: but I hope it will
+be found that I have made no observations
+bearing hard on men or measures, that
+are either uncalled for, or will not stand
+the test of future investigation.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>After the surrender of Dost Mahomed
+Khan, there remained in Affghanistan
+no chief who possessed a
+dominant power or influence that
+made him formidable to the government
+of Shah Shoojah, or to his English
+allies; and the kingdom of Cabul
+seemed to be gradually, though slowly,
+subsiding into comparative tranquillity.
+In the summer of the year
+1841, the authority of the sovereign
+appears to have been acknowledged
+in almost every part of his dominions.
+A partial revolt of the Giljyes was
+speedily suppressed by our troops.
+The Kohistan, or more correctly,
+Koohdaman of Cabul, a mountainous
+tract, inhabited by a warlike people,
+over whom the authority of the governments
+of the country had long
+been imperfect and precarious, had
+submitted, or had ceased to resist. A
+detachment from the British force at
+Kandahar, after defeating Akter
+Khan, who had been instigated by the
+Vezeer of Herat to rebel, swept the
+country of Zemindawer, drove Akter
+Khan a fugitive to Herat, received
+the submission of all the chiefs in that
+part of the kingdom, and secured the
+persons of such as it was not thought
+prudent to leave at large in those districts.</p>
+
+<p>The Shah's authority was not believed
+to be so firmly established, that
+both Sir William Macnaghten, the
+British envoy at Cabul, who had recently
+been appointed governor of
+Bombay, and Sir Alexander Burnes,
+on whom the duties of the envoy would
+have devolved on Sir W. Macnaghten's
+departure, thought that the time
+had arrived when the amount of the
+British force in Affghanistan, which
+was so heavy a charge upon the revenues
+of India, might with safety be
+reduced, and General Sale's brigade
+was ordered to hold itself in readiness
+to march to Jellalabad, on its route to
+India.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this time, however, Major
+Pottinger, the political agent in Kohistan,
+including, we presume, the
+Koohdaman, thought the force at his
+disposal too small to maintain the
+tranquillity of the district; and the
+chiefs of the valley of Nijrow, or Nijrab,
+a valley of Kohistan Proper, had
+not only refused to submit, but had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page241" id="page241" title="241"></a>harboured the restless and disaffected
+who had made themselves obnoxious
+to the Shah's government. But although
+Major Pottinger had no confidence
+in the good feelings of the
+people of his own district to the government,
+and even seems to have anticipated
+insurrection, no movement
+of that description had yet taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Early in September, however, Captain
+Hay, who was with a small force
+in the Zoormut valley, situated nearly
+west from Ghuznee and south from
+Cabul, having been induced by the
+representations of Moollah Momin&mdash;the
+collector of the revenues, who was
+a Barikzye, and a near relation of one
+of the leaders of the insurrection, in
+which he afterwards himself took an
+active part&mdash;to move against a fort in
+which the murderers of Colonel Herring
+were said to have taken shelter,
+the inhabitants resisted his demands,
+and fired upon the troops. His force
+was found insufficient to reduce it,
+and he was obliged to retire; a stronger
+force was therefore sent, on the
+approach of which the people fled to
+the hills, and the forts they had evacuated
+were blown up. This occurrence
+was not calculated seriously to
+disturb the confident hopes that were
+entertained of the permanent tranquillity
+of the country; but before
+the force employed upon that expedition
+had returned to Cabul, a formidable
+insurrection had broken out in
+another quarter.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Early in October,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre, &quot;three Giljye chiefs of note suddenly
+quitted Cabul, after plundering a
+rich cafila at Tezeen, and took up a
+strong position in the difficult defile of
+Khoord-Cabul, about ten miles from the
+capital, thus blocking up the pass, and
+cutting off our communication with Hindostan.
+Intelligence had not very long
+previously been received that Mahomed
+Akber Khan, second son of the ex-ruler
+Dost Mahomed Khan, had arrived at
+Bameean from Khooloom, for the supposed
+purpose of carrying on intrigues against
+the Government. It is remarkable that he
+is nearly connected by marriage with Mahomed
+Shah Khan and Dost Mahomed
+Khan, also Giljyes, who almost immediately
+joined the above-mentioned chiefs.
+Mahomed Akber had, since the deposition
+of his father, never ceased to foster feelings
+of intense hatred towards the English
+nation; and, though often urged by the
+fallen ruler to deliver himself up, had resolutely
+preferred the life of a houseless exile
+to one of mean dependence on the bounty
+of his enemies. It seems, therefore, in
+the highest degree probable that this hostile
+movement on the part of the Eastern
+Giljyes was the result of his influence over
+them, combined with other causes which
+will be hereafter mentioned.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The other causes here alluded to,
+appear to be &quot;the deep offence given
+to the Giljyes by the ill-advised reduction
+of their annual stipends, a
+measure which had been forced upon
+Sir William Macnaghten by Lord
+Auckland. This they considered, and
+with some show of justice, as a breach
+of faith on the part of our Government.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We presume that it is not Mr
+Eyre's intention to assert that this
+particular measure was ordered by
+Lord Auckland, but merely that the
+rigid economy enforced by his lordship,
+led the Envoy to have recourse
+to this measure as one of the means by
+which the general expenditure might
+be diminished.</p>
+
+<p>Formidable as this revolt of the
+Giljyes was found to be, we are led
+to suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten
+and Sir A. Burnes were misled,
+probably by the Shah's government,
+very greatly to underrate its
+importance and its danger. The
+force under Colonel Monteath,<a id="footnotetag16" name="footnotetag16" href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> which
+in the first instance was sent to suppress
+it, was so small that it was not
+only unable to penetrate into the
+country it was intended to overawe or
+to subdue, but it was immediately attacked
+in its camp, within ten miles of
+Cabul, and lost thirty-five sepoys killed
+and wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Two days afterwards, the 11th
+October, General Sale marched from
+Cabul with H.M.'s 13th light infantry,
+to join Colonel Monteath's
+camp at Bootkhak; and the following
+morning the whole proceeded to force
+the pass of Khoord-Cabul, which was
+effected with some loss. The 13th
+returned through the pass to Bootkhak,
+suffering from the fire of parties
+which still lurked among the rocks.
+The remainder of the brigade encamped
+at Khoord-Cabul, at the further
+extremity of the defile. In this
+divided position the brigade remained
+for some days, and both camps had
+<a class="pagenum" name="page242" id="page242" title="242"></a>to sustain night attacks from the
+Affghans&mdash;&quot;that on the 35th native
+infantry being peculiarly disastrous,
+from the treachery of the Affghan
+horse, who admitted the enemy within
+their lines, by which our troops were
+exposed to a fire from the least suspected
+quarter. Many of our gallant
+sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus
+met their death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the 20th October, General Sale,
+having been reinforced, marched to
+Khoord-Cabul; &quot;and about the 22d,
+the whole force there assembled, with
+Captain Macgregor, political agent,
+marched to Tezeen, encountering
+much determined opposition on the
+road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By this time it was too evident
+that the whole of the Eastern Giljyes
+had risen in one common league
+against us.&quot; The treacherous proceedings
+of their chief or viceroy, Humza
+Khan, which had for some time been
+suspected, were now discovered, and
+he was arrested by order of Shah
+Shoojah.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;It must be remarked,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre, &quot;that for some time previous to
+these overt acts of rebellion, the always
+strong and ill-repressed personal dislike
+of the Affghans towards Europeans, had
+been manifested in a more than usually
+open manner in and about Cabul. Officers
+had been insulted and attempts made
+to assassinate them. Two Europeans had
+been murdered, as also several camp-followers;
+but these and other signs of the
+approaching storm had unfortunately been
+passed over as mere ebullitions of private
+angry feeling. This incredulity and apathy
+is the more to be lamented, as it was pretty
+well known that on the occasion of the
+<i>shub-khoon</i>, or first night attack on the
+35th native infantry at Bootkhak, a large
+portion of our assailants consisted of the
+armed retainers of the different men of
+consequence in Cabul itself, large parties
+of whom had been seen proceeding from
+the city to the scene of action on the
+evening of the attack, and afterwards returning.
+Although these men had to pass
+either through the heart or round the
+skirts of our camp at Seeah Sung, it was
+not deemed expedient even to question
+them, far less to detain them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the 26th October, General Sale
+started in the direction of Gundamuk,
+Captain Macgregor having half-frightened,
+half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs
+into what proved to have been a most
+hollow truce.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On the same day, the 37th native
+infantry, three companies of the Shah's
+sappers under Captain Walsh, and
+three guns of the mountain train under
+Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps
+towards Cabul, where the sappers,
+pushing on, arrived unopposed; but
+the rest of the detachment was attacked
+on the 2d November&mdash;on the
+afternoon of which day, Major Griffiths,
+who commanded it, received
+orders to force his way to Cabul,
+where the insurrection had that morning
+broken out. His march through
+the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul,
+was one continued conflict; but the
+gallantry of his troops, and the excellence
+of his own dispositions, enabled
+him to carry the whole of his wounded
+and baggage safe to the cantonments
+at Cabul, where he arrived about three
+o'clock on the morning of the 3d
+November, followed almost to the
+gates by about 3000 Giljyes.</p>
+
+<p>The causes of the insurrection in
+the capital are not yet fully ascertained,
+or, if ascertained, they have
+not been made public. Lieutenant
+Eyre does not attempt to account for
+it; but he gives us the following memorandum
+of Sir W. Macnaghten's, found,
+we presume, amongst his
+papers after his death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The immediate cause of the outbreak
+in the capital was a seditious letter addressed
+by Abdoollah Khan to several
+chiefs of influence at Cabul, stating that it
+was the design of the Envoy to seize and
+send them all to London! The principal
+rebels met on the previous night, and, relying
+on the inflammable feelings of the
+people of Cabul, they pretended that the
+King had issued an order to put all infidels
+to death; having previously forged an
+order from him for our destruction, by the
+common process of washing out the contents
+of a genuine paper, with the exception
+of the seal, and substituting their own
+wicked inventions.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>But this invention, though it was
+probably one of the means employed
+by the conspirators to increase the
+number of their associates, can hardly
+be admitted to account for the insurrection.
+The arrival of Akber Khan
+at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes,
+the previous flight of their chiefs from
+Cabul, and the almost simultaneous
+attack of our posts in the Koohdaman,
+(called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,)
+on the 3d November&mdash;the attack of a
+party conducting prisoners from Candahar
+to Ghuznee&mdash;the immediate
+<a class="pagenum" name="page243" id="page243" title="243"></a>interruption of every line of communication
+with Cabul&mdash;and the selection
+of the season of the year the
+most favourable to the success of the
+insurrection, with many other less
+important circumstances, combine to
+force upon us the opinion, that the
+intention to attack the Cabul force, so
+soon as it should have become isolated
+by the approach of winter, had been
+entertained, and the plan of operations
+concerted, for some considerable time
+before the insurrection broke out.
+That many who wished for its success
+may have been slow to commit
+themselves, is to be presumed, and
+that vigorous measures might, if resorted
+to on the first day, have suppressed
+the revolt, is probable; but
+it can hardly be doubted that we must
+look far deeper, and further back, for
+the causes which united the Affghan
+nation against us.</p>
+
+<p>The will of their chiefs and spiritual
+leaders&mdash;fanatical zeal, and hatred of
+the domination of a race whom they
+regarded as infidels&mdash;may have been
+sufficient to incite the lower orders to
+any acts of violence, or even to the
+persevering efforts they made to extirpate
+the English. In their eyes
+the contest would assume the character
+of a religious war&mdash;of a crusade;
+and every man who took up arms in
+that cause, would go to battle with
+the conviction that, if he should be
+slain, his soul would go at once to
+paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy
+of the faith, he thereby also secured to
+himself eternal happiness. But the
+chiefs are not so full of faith; and
+although we would not altogether exclude
+religious antipathy as an incentive,
+we may safely assume that something
+more immediately affecting their
+temporal and personal concerns must
+with them, or at least with the large
+majority, have been the true motives
+of the conspiracy&mdash;of their desire to
+expel the English from their country.
+Nor is it difficult to conceive what
+some of these motives may have been.
+The former sovereigns of Affghanistan,
+even the most firmly-established
+and the most vigorous, had no other
+means of enforcing their commands,
+than by employing the forces of one
+part of the nation to make their authority
+respected in another; but men
+who were jealous of their own independence
+as chiefs, were not likely to
+aid the sovereign in any attempt to
+destroy the substantial power, the
+importance, or the independence of
+their class; and although a refractory
+chief might occasionally, by the aid of
+his feudal enemies, be taken or destroyed,
+and his property plundered,
+his place was filled by a relation, and
+the order remained unbroken. The
+Affghan chiefs had thus enjoyed,
+under their native governments, an
+amount of independence which was
+incompatible with the system we introduced&mdash;supported
+as that system
+was by our military means. These
+men must have seen that their own
+power and importance, and even their
+security against the caprices of their
+sovereign, could not long be preserved&mdash;that
+they were about to be
+subjected as well as governed&mdash;to be
+deprived of all power to resist the
+oppressions of their own government,
+because its will was enforced by an
+army which had no sympathy with the
+nation, and which was therefore ready
+to use its formidable strength to compel
+unqualified submission to the sovereign's
+commands.</p>
+
+<p>The British army may not have
+been employed to enforce any unjust
+command&mdash;its movements may have
+been less, far less, injurious to the
+countries through which it passed than
+those of an Affghan army would have
+been, and its power in the moment of
+success may have been far less abused;
+but still it gave a strength to the arm
+of the sovereign, which was incompatible
+with the maintenance of the
+pre-existing civil and social institutions
+or condition of the country, and
+especially of the relative positions of
+the sovereign and the noble. In the
+measures we adopted to establish the
+authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted
+to carry out a system of government
+which could only have been
+made successful by a total revolution
+in the social condition of the people,
+and in the relative positions of classes;
+and as these revolutions are not effected
+in a few years, the attempt failed.<a id="footnotetag17" name="footnotetag17" href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a></p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page244" id="page244" title="244"></a>But if the predominance of our influence
+and of our military power,
+and the effects of the system we introduced,
+tended to depress the chiefs, it
+must have still more injuriously affected
+or threatened the power of the
+priesthood.</p>
+
+<p>This we believe to have been one
+of the primary and most essential
+causes of the revolt&mdash;this it was that
+made the insurrection spread with such
+rapidity, and that finally united the
+whole nation against us. With the aristocracy
+and the hierarchy of the country,
+it must have been but a question
+of courage and of means&mdash;a calculation
+of the probability of success; and
+as that probability was greatly increased
+by the results of the first
+movement at Cabul, and by the inertness
+of our army after the first outbreak,
+all acquired courage enough to
+aid in doing what all had previously
+desired to see done.</p>
+
+<p>But if there be any justice in this
+view of the state of feeling in Affghanistan,
+even in the moments of its
+greatest tranquillity, it is difficult to
+account for the confidence with which
+the political authorities charged with
+the management of our affairs in that
+country looked to the future, and the
+indifference with which they appear
+to have regarded what now must appear
+to every one else to have been
+very significant, and even alarming,
+intimations of dissaffection in Cabul,
+and hostility in the neighbouring
+districts.</p>
+
+<p>But it is time we should return to
+Lieutenant Eyre, whose narrative of
+facts is infinitely more attractive than
+any speculations we could offer.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;At an early hour this morning, (2d
+November 1841,) the startling intelligence
+was brought from the city, that a
+popular outbreak had taken place; that
+the shops were all closed; and that a general
+attack had been made on the houses
+of all British officers residing in Cabul.
+About 8 A.M., a hurried note was received
+by the Envoy in cantonments from Sir Alexander
+Burnes, stating that the minds of the
+people had been strongly excited by some
+mischievous reports, but expressing a hope
+that he should succeed in quelling the
+commotion. About 9 A.M., however,
+a rumour was circulated, which afterwards
+proved but too well founded, that Sir
+Alexander had been murdered, and Captain
+Johnson's treasury plundered. Flames
+were now seen to issue from that part of
+the city where they dwelt, and it was too
+apparent that the endeavour to appease
+the people by quiet means had failed, and
+that it would be necessary to have recourse
+to stronger measures. The report of firearms
+was incessant, and seemed to extend
+through the town from end to end.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir William Macnaghten now called
+upon General Elphinstone to act. An
+order was accordingly sent to Brigadier
+Shelton, then encamped at Seeah Sung,
+about a mile and a half distant from cantonments,
+to march forthwith to the <i>Bala
+Hissar</i>, or <i>royal citadel</i>, where his Majesty
+Shah Shoojah resided, commanding a
+large portion of the city, with the following
+troops:&mdash;viz. one company of H.M.
+44th foot; a wing of the 54th regiment
+native infantry, under Major Ewart; the
+6th regiment Shah's infantry, under Captain
+Hopkins; and four horse-artillery
+guns, under Captain Nicholl; and on arrival
+there, to act according to his own
+judgment, after consulting with the King.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The remainder of the troops encamped
+at Seeah Sung were at the same
+time ordered into cantonments: viz. H.M.
+44th foot, under Lieutenant-Colonel Mackerell;
+two horse-artillery guns, under
+Lieutenant Waller; and Anderson's irregular
+horse. A messenger was likewise
+dispatched to recall the 37th native infantry
+from Khoord-Cabul without delay.
+The troops at this time in cantonments
+were as follows: viz. 5th regiment native
+infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver;
+a wing of 54th native infantry; five six-pounder
+field guns, with a detachment of
+the Shah's artillery, under Lieutenant
+Warburton; the Envoy's body-guard; a
+troop of Skinner's horse, and another of
+local horse, under Lieutenant Walker;
+three companies of the Shah's sappers,
+under Captain Walsh; and about twenty
+men of the Company's sappers, attached to
+Captain Paton, assistant-quartermaster-general.</p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page245" id="page245" title="245"></a>&quot;Widely spread and formidable as this
+insurrection proved to be afterwards, it
+was at first a mere insignificant ebullition
+of discontent on the part of a few desperate
+and restless men, which military
+energy and promptitude ought to have
+crushed in the bud. Its commencement
+was an attack by certainly not 300 men on
+the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and
+Captain Johnson, paymaster to the Shah's
+force; and so little did Sir Alexander
+himself apprehend serious consequences,
+that he not only refused, on its first breaking
+out, to comply with the earnest entreaties
+of the wuzeer to accompany him to
+the Bala Hissar, but actually forbade his
+guard to fire on the assailants, attempting
+to check what he supposed to be a mere
+riot, by haranguing the attacking party
+from the gallery of his house. The result
+was fatal to himself; for in spite of the
+devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed
+his guard, and that of the paymaster's
+office and treasury on the opposite
+side of the street, who yielded their trust
+only with their latest breath, the latter
+were plundered, and his two companions,
+Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal
+European regiment, and his brother,
+Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay army,
+were massacred, in common with every
+man, woman, and child found on the premises,
+by these bloodthirsty miscreants.
+Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six
+men with his own hand, before he was
+shot down.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The King, who was in the Bala Hissar,
+being somewhat startled by the increasing
+number of the rioters, although not at
+the time aware, so far as we can judge, of
+the assassination of Sir A. Burnes, dispatched
+one of his sons with a number of
+his immediate Affghan retainers, and that
+corps of Hindoostanees commonly called
+Campbell's regiment, with two guns, to
+restore order: no support, however, was
+rendered to these by our troops, whose
+leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the
+intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable
+of adopting more than the most
+puerile defensive measures. Even Sir
+William Macnaghten seemed, from a note
+received at this time from him by Captain
+Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he
+therein expressed his perfect confidence
+as to the speedy and complete success of
+Campbell's Hindoostanees in putting an end
+to the disturbance. Such, however, was
+not the case; for the enemy, encouraged
+by our inaction, increased rapidly in spirit
+and numbers, and drove back the King's
+guard with great slaughter, the guns being
+with difficulty saved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be understood that Captain
+Trevor lived at this time with his family
+in a strong <i>bourge</i> or tower, situated by
+the river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter,
+which, on the west, is wholly distinct
+from the remainder of the city. Within
+musket-shot, on the opposite side of the
+river, in the direction of the strong and
+populous village of Deh Affghan, is a fort
+of some size, then used as a godown, or
+storehouse, by the Shah's commissariat,
+part of it being occupied by Brigadier
+Anquetil, commanding the Shah's force.
+Close to this fort, divided by a narrow
+watercourse, was the house of Captain
+Troup, brigade-major of the Shah's force,
+perfectly defensible against musketry.
+Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain
+Troup had gone out on horseback early
+in the morning towards cantonments, and
+were unable to return; but the above fort
+and house contained the usual guard of
+sepoys; and in a garden close at hand,
+called the <i>Yaboo-Khaneh</i>, or lines of the
+baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of
+the Shah's sappers and miners, and a party
+of Captain Ferris's juzailchees. Captain
+Trevor's tower was capable of being made
+good against a much stronger force than
+the rebels at this present time could have
+collected, had it been properly garrisoned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As it was, the Hazirbash,<a id="footnotetag18" name="footnotetag18" href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> or King's lifeguards,
+were, under Captain Trevor, congregated
+round their leader, to protect
+him and his family; which duty, it will
+be seen, they well performed under very
+trying circumstances. For what took place
+in this quarter I beg to refer to a communication
+made to me at my request by
+Captain Colin Mackenzie,<a id="footnotetag19" name="footnotetag19" href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> assistant political
+agent at Peshawur, who then occupied
+the godown portion of the fort above mentioned,
+which will be found hereafter.<a id="footnotetag20" name="footnotetag20" href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a></p>
+
+<p><a class="pagenum" name="page246" id="page246" title="246"></a>&quot;I have already stated that Brigadier
+Shelton was, early in the day, directed to
+proceed with part of the Seeah Sung
+force to occupy the Bala Hissar, and, if
+requisite, to lead his troops against the
+insurgents. Captain Lawrence, military
+secretary to the Envoy, was at the same
+time sent forward to prepare the King for
+that officer's reception. Taking with him
+four troopers of the body-guard, he was
+galloping along the main road, when,
+shortly after crossing the river, he was
+suddenly attacked by an Affghan, who,
+rushing from behind a wall, made a desperate
+cut at him with a large two-handed
+knife. He dexterously avoided the blow
+by spurring his horse on one side; but,
+passing onwards, he was fired upon by
+about fifty men, who, having seen his approach,
+ran out from the Lahore gate of
+the city to intercept him. He reached
+the Bala Hissar safe, where he found the
+King apparently in a state of great agitation,
+he having witnessed the assault from
+the window of his palace. His Majesty
+expressed an eager desire to conform to
+the Envoy's wishes in all respects in this
+emergency.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Lawrence was still conferring
+with the King, when Lieutenant Sturt, our
+executive engineer, rushed into the palace,
+stabbed in three places about the face and
+neck. He had been sent by Brigadier
+Shelton to make arrangements for the
+accommodation of the troops, and had
+reached the gate of the <i>Dewan Khaneh</i>,
+or hall of audience, when the attempt at
+his life was made by some one who had
+concealed himself there for that purpose,
+and who immediately effected his escape.
+The wounds were fortunately not dangerous,
+and Lieutenant Sturt was conveyed
+back to cantonments in the King's own
+palanquin, under a strong escort. Soon
+after this Brigadier Shelton's force arrived;
+but the day was suffered to pass
+without any thing being done demonstrative
+of British energy and power. The
+murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation
+of public and private property, was
+perpetrated with impunity within a mile
+of our cantonment, and under the very
+walls of the Bala Hissar.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such an exhibition on our part taught
+the enemy their strength&mdash;confirmed
+against us those who, however disposed
+to join in the rebellion, had hitherto kept
+aloof from prudential motives, and ultimately
+encouraged the nation to unite as
+one man for our destruction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was, in fact, the crisis of all others
+calculated to test the qualities of a military
+commander. Whilst, however, it is
+impossible for an unprejudiced person to
+approve the military dispositions of this
+eventful period, it is equally our duty to
+discriminate. The most <i>responsible</i> party
+is not always the most culpable. It would
+be the height of injustice to a most amiable
+and gallant officer not to notice the
+long course of painful and wearing illness,
+which had materially affected the nerves,
+and probably even the intellect, of General
+Elphinstone; cruelly incapacitating him,
+so far as he was personally concerned,
+from acting in this sudden emergency with
+the promptitude and vigour necessary for
+our preservation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Unhappily, Sir William Macnaghten
+at first made light of the insurrection,
+and, by his representations as to the general
+feeling of the people towards us,
+not only deluded himself, but misled the
+General in council. The unwelcome truth
+was soon forced upon us, that in the whole
+Affghan nation we could not reckon on a
+single friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But though no active measures of aggression
+were taken, all necessary preparations
+were made to secure the cantonment
+against attack. It fell to my own
+lot to place every available gun in position
+round the works. Besides the guns already
+mentioned, we had in the magazine
+6 nine-pounder iron guns, 3 twenty-four
+pounder howitzers, 1 twelve-pounder ditto,
+and 3 5&frac12;-inch mortars; but the detail of
+artillerymen fell very short of what was
+required to man all these efficiently, consisting
+of only 80 Punjabees belonging to
+the Shah, under Lieutenant Warburton,
+very insufficiently instructed, and of doubtful
+fidelity.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The fortified cantonment occupied
+by the British troops was a quadrangle
+of 1000 yards long by 600 broad,
+with round flanking bastions at each
+corner, every one of which was commanded
+by some fort or hill. To one
+end of this work was attached the
+Mission compound and enclosure,
+about half as large as the cantonment,
+surrounded by a simple wall. This
+space required to be defended in time
+of war, and it rendered the whole of
+one face of the cantonment nugatory
+for purposes of defence. The profile
+of the works themselves was weak,
+being in fact an ordinary field-work.
+But the most strange and unaccountable
+circumstance recorded by Lieutenant
+Eyre respecting these military arrangements,
+is certainly the fact, that
+the commissariat stores, containing
+whatever the army possessed of food
+or clothing, was not within the circuit
+of these fortified cantonments, but in
+a detached and weak fort, the gate of
+<a class="pagenum" name="page247" id="page247" title="247"></a>which was commanded by another
+building at a short distance. Our author
+thus sums up his observations on
+these cantonments:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;In fact, we were so hemmed in on all
+sides, that, when the rebellion became
+general, the troops could not move out a
+dozen paces from either gate without being
+exposed to the fire of some neighbouring
+hostile fort, garrisoned, too, by marksmen
+who seldom missed their aim. The
+country around us was likewise full of impediments
+to the movements of artillery
+and cavalry, being in many places flooded,
+and every where closely intersected by
+deep water-cuts.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot help adding, in conclusion,
+that almost all the calamities that befell
+our ill-starred force may be traced more
+or less to the defects of our position; and
+that our cantonment at Cabul, whether we
+look to its situation or its construction,
+must ever be spoken of as a disgrace to
+our military skill and judgment.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 3.&mdash;The 37th native infantry
+arrived in cantonments, as previously
+stated.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Early in the afternoon, a detachment
+under Major Swayne, consisting of two
+companies 5th native infantry, one of
+H.M. 44th, and two H.A. guns under
+Lieutenant Waller, proceeded out of the
+western gate towards the city, to effect, if
+possible, a junction at the Lahore gate
+with a part of Brigadier Shelton's force
+from the Bala Hissar. They drove back
+and defeated a party of the enemy who
+occupied the road near the Shah Bagh,
+but had to encounter a sharp fire from the
+Kohistan gate of the city, and from the
+walls of various enclosures, behind which
+a number of marksmen had concealed
+themselves, as also from the fort of Mahmood
+Khan, commanding the road along
+which they had to pass. Lieutenant Waller
+and several sepoys were wounded. Major
+Swayne, observing the whole line of road
+towards the Lahore gate strongly occupied
+by some Affghan horse and juzailchees,
+and fearing that he would be unable to
+effect the object in view with so small a
+force unsupported by cavalry, retired into
+cantonments. Shortly after this, a large
+body of the rebels having issued from the
+fort of Mahmood Khan, 900 yards southeast
+of cantonments, extended themselves
+in a line along the bank of the river, displaying
+a flag; an iron nine-pounder was
+brought to bear on them from our southeast
+bastion, and a round or two of shrapnell
+caused them to seek shelter behind
+some neighbouring banks, whence, after
+some desultory firing on both sides, they
+retired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever hopes may have been entertained,
+up to this period, of a speedy
+termination to the insurrection, they began
+now to wax fainter every hour, and an
+order was dispatched to the officer
+commanding at Candahar to lose no time in
+sending to our assistance the 16th and
+43d regiments native infantry, (which
+were under orders for India,) together
+with a troop of horse-artillery and half a
+regiment of cavalry; an order was likewise
+sent off to recall General Sale with
+his brigade from Gundamuk. Captain
+John Conolly, political assistant to the
+Envoy, went into the Bala Hissar early
+this morning, to remain with the King,
+and to render every assistance in his power
+to Brigadier Shelton.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On this day Lieutenants Maule and
+Wheeler were murdered at Kahdarrah
+in Koohdaman; the Kohistan regiment
+of Affghans which they commanded,
+offering no resistance to the
+rebels. The two officers defended
+themselves resolutely for some time,
+but fell under the fire of the enemy.
+Lieutenant Maule had been warned of
+his danger by a friendly native, but
+refused to desert his post.</p>
+
+<p>On this day also Lieutenant Rattray,
+Major Pottinger's assistant, was
+treacherously murdered at Lughmanee,
+during a conference to which
+he had been invited, and within sight
+of the small fort in which these two
+gentlemen resided. This act was followed
+by a general insurrection in
+Kohistan and Koohdaman, which terminated
+in the destruction of the Goorkha
+regiment at Charikar, and the
+slaughter of all the Europeans in that
+district except Major Pottinger and
+Lieutenant Haughton, both severely
+wounded, who, with one sepoy and
+one or two followers, succeeded in
+eluding the vigilance of the Affghan
+parties, who were patrolling the roads
+for the purpose of intercepting them,
+and at length arrived in cantonments,
+having actually passed at night
+through the town and bazars of Cabul.
+For the details of this interesting
+and afflicting episode in Mr Eyre's
+narrative, we must refer our readers
+to the work itself. Major Pottinger
+appears on this occasion to have exhibited
+the same high courage and
+promptitude and vigour in action,
+and the same resources in difficulty,
+that made him conspicuous at Herat,
+and Lieutenant Haughton was no unworthy
+companion of such a man.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p><a class="pagenum" name="page248" id="page248" title="248"></a>&quot;<i>November</i> 4.&mdash;The enemy having taken
+strong possession of the <i>Shah Bagh</i>, or
+King's Garden, and thrown a garrison
+into the fort of Mahomed Shereef,
+nearly opposite the bazar, effectually prevented
+any communication between the
+cantonment and commissariat fort, the
+gate of which latter was commanded by
+the gate of the Shah Bagh on the other
+side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ensign Warren of the 5th native infantry
+at this time occupied the commissariat
+fort with 100 men, and having reported
+that he was very hard pressed by the
+enemy, and in danger of being completely
+cut off, the General, either forgetful or
+unaware at the moment of the important
+fact, that upon the possession of this fort
+we were entirely dependent for provisions,
+and anxious only to save the lives of men
+whom he believed to be in imminent peril,
+hastily gave directions that a party under
+the command of Captain Swayne, of
+H.M.'s 44th regiment, should proceed
+immediately to bring off Ensign Warren
+and his garrison to cantonments, abandoning
+the fort to the enemy. A few minutes
+previously an attempt to relieve him
+had been made by Ensign Gordon, with a
+company of the 37th native infantry and eleven
+camels laden with ammunition; but the
+party were driven back, and Ensign Gordon
+killed. Captain Swayne now accordingly
+proceeded towards the spot with two
+companies of H.M.'s 44th; scarcely had
+they issued from cantonments ere a sharp
+and destructive fire was poured upon
+them from Mahomed Shereef's fort
+which, as they proceeded, was taken up
+by the marksmen in the Shah Bagh, under
+whose deadly aim both officers and men
+suffered severely; Captains Swayne and
+Robinson of the 44th being killed, and
+Lieutenants Hallahan, Evans, and Fortye
+wounded in this disastrous business. It
+now seemed to the officer, on whom the
+command had devolved, impracticable to
+bring off Ensign Warren's party without
+risking the annihilation of his own, which
+had already sustained so rapid and severe
+a loss in officers; he therefore returned
+forthwith to cantonments. In the course
+of the evening another attempt was made
+by a party of the 5th light cavalry; but
+they encountered so severe a fire from the
+neighbouring enclosures as obliged them
+to return without effecting their desired
+object, with the loss of eight troopers
+killed and fourteen badly wounded. Captain
+Boyd, the assistant commissary-general,
+having meanwhile been made acquainted
+with the General's intention to
+give up the fort, hastened to lay before
+him the disastrous consequences that
+would ensue from so doing. He stated
+that the place contained, besides large
+supplies of wheat and attah, all his stores
+of rum, medicine, clothing, &amp;c., the value
+of which might be estimated at four lacs
+of rupees; that to abandon such valuable
+property would not only expose the force
+to the immediate want of the necessaries
+of life, but would infallibly inspire the
+enemy with tenfold courage. He added
+that we had not above two days' supply
+of provisions in cantonments, and that
+neither himself nor Captain Johnson of
+the Shah's commissariat had any prospect
+of procuring them elsewhere under existing
+circumstances. In consequence of
+this strong representation on the part of
+Captain Boyd, the General sent immediate
+orders to Ensign Warren to hold out the
+fort to the last extremity. (Ensign Warren,
+it must be remarked, denied having
+received this note.) Early in the night a
+letter was received from him to the effect
+that he believed the enemy were busily
+engaged in mining one of the towers, and
+that such was the alarm among the sepoys
+that several of them had actually made
+their escape over the wall to cantonments;
+that the enemy were making preparations
+to burn down the gate; and
+that, considering the temper of his men,
+he did not expect to be able to hold out
+many hours longer, unless reinforced without
+delay. In reply to this he was informed
+that he would be reinforced by
+two A.M.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At about nine o'clock P.M., there was
+an assembly of staff and other officers at
+the General's house, when the Envoy
+came in and expressed his serious conviction,
+that unless Mahomed Shereef's fort
+were taken that very night, we should lose
+the commissariat fort, or at all events be
+unable to bring out of it provisions for the
+troops. The disaster of the morning rendered
+the General extremely unwilling to
+expose his officers and men to any similar
+peril; but, on the other hand, it was
+urged that the darkness of the night
+would nullify the enemy's fire, who would
+also most likely be taken unawares, as it
+was not the custom of the Affghans to
+maintain a very strict watch at night. A
+man in Captain Johnson's employ was
+accordingly sent out to reconnoitre the
+place. He returned in a few minutes
+with the intelligence that about twenty
+men were seated outside the fort near the
+gate, smoking and talking; and, from what
+he overheard of their conversation, he
+judged the garrison to be very small, and
+unable to resist a sudden onset. The debate
+was now resumed, but another hour
+passed and the General could not make up
+his mind. A second spy was dispatched,
+whose report tended to corroborate what
+<a class="pagenum" name="page249" id="page249" title="249"></a>the first had said. I was then sent to
+Lieutenant Sturt, the engineer, who was
+nearly recovered from his wounds, for his
+opinion. He at first expressed himself
+in favour of an immediate attack, but, on
+hearing that some of the enemy were on
+the watch at the gate, he judged it prudent
+to defer the assault till an early hour
+in the morning: this decided the General,
+though not before several hours had slipped
+away in fruitless discussion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Orders were at last given for a detachment
+to be in readiness at four A.M.
+at the Kohistan gate; and Captain Bellew,
+deputy-assistant quartermaster-general,
+volunteered to blow open the gate;
+another party of H.M.'s 44th were at the
+same time to issue by a cut in the south
+face of the rampart, and march simultaneously
+towards the commissariat fort, to
+reinforce the garrison. Morning had,
+however, well dawned ere the men could
+be got under arms; and they were on the
+point of marching off, when it was reported
+that Ensign Warren had just arrived
+in cantonments with his garrison,
+having evacuated the fort. It seems that
+the enemy had actually set fire to the gate;
+and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect
+of a reinforcement, and expecting the
+enemy every moment to rush in, led out
+his men by a hole which he had prepared
+in the wall. Being called upon in a public
+letter from the assistant adjutant-general
+to state his reasons for abandoning
+his post, he replied that he was ready to
+do so before a court of enquiry, which he
+requested might be assembled to investigate
+his conduct; it was not, however,
+deemed expedient to comply with his
+request.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is beyond a doubt that our feeble
+and ineffectual defence of this fort, and
+the valuable booty it yielded, was the first
+<i>fatal</i> blow to our supremacy at Cabul,
+and at once determined those chiefs&mdash;and
+more particularly the Kuzzilbashes&mdash;who
+had hitherto remained neutral, to join in
+the general combination to drive us from
+the country.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 5.&mdash;It no sooner became
+generally known that the commissariat
+fort, upon which we were dependent
+for supplies, had been abandoned,
+than one universal feeling of indignation
+pervaded the garrison. Nor
+can I describe,&quot; says Lieutenant
+Eyre, &quot;the impatience of the troops,
+but especially of the native portion,
+to be led out for its recapture&mdash;a feeling
+that was by no means diminished
+by seeing the Affghans crossing and
+re-crossing the road between the
+commissariat fort and the gate of the
+<i>Shah Bagh</i>, laden with the provisions
+upon which had depended our ability
+to make a protracted defence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That the whole commissariat should
+have been deposited in a detached
+fort is extraordinary and inexcusable,
+but that the garrison of that fort
+should not have been reinforced, is
+even more unintelligible; and that
+a sufficient force was not at once
+sent to succour and protect it when
+attacked, is altogether unaccountable.
+General Elphinstone was disabled by
+his infirmities from efficiently discharging
+the duties that had devolved
+upon him, but he appears to have
+been ready to act upon the suggestion
+of others. What then were his staff
+about?&mdash;some of them are said to have
+had little difficulty or delicacy in urging
+their own views upon their commander.
+Did they not suggest to him
+in time the importance, the necessity,
+of saving the commissariat at all hazards?</p>
+
+<p>At the suggestion of Lieutenant
+Eyre, it was determined to attempt
+the capture of Mahomed Shereef's fort
+by blowing open the gate, Mr Eyre
+volunteering to keep the road clear
+for the storming party with the guns.
+&quot;The General agreed; a storming
+party under Major Swayne, 6th native
+infantry, was ordered; the powder
+bags were got ready, and at noon we
+issued from the western gate.&quot; &quot;For
+twenty minutes the guns were worked
+under a very sharp fire from the fort;&quot;
+but &quot;Major Swayne, instead of rushing
+forward with his men as had been
+agreed, had in the mean time remained
+stationary, under cover of the wall
+by the road-side.&quot; The General, seeing
+that the attempt had failed, recalled
+the troops into cantonments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 6.&mdash;It was now determined
+to take the fort of Mahomed Shereef by
+regular breach and assault.&quot; A practicable
+breach was effected, and a
+storming party composed of one company
+H.M. 44th, under Ensign Raban,
+one ditto 5th native infantry, under
+Lieutenant Deas, and one ditto
+37th native infantry, under Lieutenant
+Steer, the whole commanded by Major
+Griffiths, speedily carried the place.
+&quot;Poor Raban was shot through the
+heart when conspicuously waving a
+flag on the summit of the breach.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As this fort adjoined the Shah
+Bagh, it was deemed advisable to dislodge
+<a class="pagenum" name="page250" id="page250" title="250"></a>the enemy from the latter if
+possible. This was partially effected,
+and, had advantage been taken of the
+opportunity to occupy the buildings
+of the garden gateway, &quot;immediate
+re-possession could have been taken
+of the commissariat fort opposite,
+which had not yet been emptied of
+half its contents.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, our cavalry were
+engaged in an affair with the enemy's
+horse, in which we appear to have
+had the advantage. &quot;The officers
+gallantly headed their men, and encountered
+about an equal number of
+the enemy who advanced to meet
+them. A hand-to-hand encounter
+took place, which ended in the Affghan
+horse retreating to the plain,
+leaving the hill in our possession. In
+this affair, Captain Anderson personally
+engaged and slew the brother in-law
+of Abdoolah Khan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the Affghans collected from various
+quarters; the juzailchees,<a id="footnotetag21" name="footnotetag21" href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> under
+Captain Mackenzie, were driven
+with great loss from the Shah Bagh
+which they had entered; and a gun
+which had been employed to clear
+that enclosure was with difficulty
+saved. Our troops having been drawn
+up on the plain, remained prepared to
+receive an attack from the enemy,
+who gradually retired as the night
+closed in.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 8.&mdash;An attempt was made by
+the enemy to mine a tower of the fort
+that had been taken, which they could
+not have done had the gate of the
+Shah Bagh been occupied. The
+chief cause of anxiety now was the
+empty state of the granary. Even
+with high bribes and liberal payment,
+the Envoy could not procure
+sufficient for daily consumption. The
+plan of the enemy now was to starve
+us out, and the chiefs exerted all
+their influence to prevent our being
+supplied.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 9.&mdash;The General's weak
+state of health rendered it necessary
+to relieve him from the command of
+the garrison, and at the earnest request
+of the Envoy, Brigadier Shelton
+was summoned from the Bala
+Hissar, &quot;in the hope that, by heartily
+co-operating with the Envoy and
+General, he would strengthen their
+hands and rouse the sinking confidence
+of the troops. He entered
+cantonments this morning, bringing
+with him one H.A. gun, one mountain-train
+ditto, one company H.M.'s
+44th, the Shah's 6th infantry, and a
+small supply of attah (flour.)&quot;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;<i>November</i> 10.&mdash;Henceforward Brigadier
+Shelton bore a conspicuous part in
+the drama, upon the issue of which so much
+depended. He had, however, from the
+very first, seemed to despair of the force
+being able to hold out the winter at Cabul,
+and strenuously advocated an immediate
+retreat to Jellalabad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This sort of despondency proved, unhappily,
+very infectious. It soon spread its
+baneful influence among the officers, and
+was by them communicated to the soldiery.
+The number of <i>croakers</i> in garrison became
+perfectly frightful, lugubrious looks
+and dismal prophecies being encountered
+every where. The severe losses sustained
+by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on
+the 4th instant, had very much discouraged
+the men of that regiment; and it is a lamentable
+fact that some of those European
+soldiers, who were naturally expected
+to exhibit to their native brethren in arms
+an example of endurance and fortitude,
+were among the first to loose confidence,
+and give vent to feelings of discontent at
+the duties imposed on them. The evil
+seed, once sprung up, became more and
+more difficult to eradicate, showing daily
+more and more how completely demoralizing
+to the British soldier is the very idea
+of a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir William Macnaghten and his suite
+were altogether opposed to Brigadier
+Shelton in this matter, it being in his (the
+Envoy's) estimation a duty we owed the
+Government to retain our post, at whatsoever
+risk. This difference of opinion,
+on a question of such vital importance,
+was attended with unhappy results, inasmuch
+as it deprived the General, in his
+hour of need, of the strength which unanimity
+imparts, and produced an uncommunicative
+and disheartening reserve in
+an emergency which demanded the freest
+interchange of counsel and ideas.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>On the morning of this day, large
+parties of the enemy's horse and foot
+occupied the heights to the east and
+to the west of the cantonments, which,
+it was supposed, they intended to assault.
+No attack was made; but &quot;on
+the eastern quarter, parties of the
+enemy, moving down into the plain,
+occupied all the forts in that direction.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page251" id="page251" title="251"></a>... At this time, not above two
+days' provisions remained in garrison;
+and it was very clear, that unless the
+enemy were quickly driven out from
+their new possession, we should soon
+be completely hemmed in on all sides.&quot;
+At the Envoy's urgent desire, he taking
+the entire responsibility on himself,
+the General ordered a force, under Brigadier
+Shelton, to storm the Rikabashee
+fort, which was within musket-shot
+of the cantonments, and from
+which a galling fire had been poured
+into the Mission compound by the
+Affghans. About noon, the troops
+assembled at the eastern gate; a
+storming party of two companies
+from each regiment taking the lead,
+preceded by Captain Bellew, who
+hurried forward to blow open the gate&mdash;but
+missing the gate, he blew open
+a small wicket, through which not
+more than two or three men could
+enter abreast, and these in a stooping
+posture. A sharp fire was kept up
+from the walls, and many of the bravest
+fell in attempting to force their
+entrance through the wicket; but
+Colonel Mackerell of the 44th, and
+Lieutenant Bird of the Shah's 6th
+infantry, with a handful of Europeans
+and a few sepoys, forced their way
+in&mdash;the garrison fled through the gate
+which was at the opposite side, and
+Colonel Mackerell and his little party
+closed it, securing the chain with a
+bayonet; but, at this moment, some
+Affghan horse charged round the
+corner&mdash;the cry of cavalry was raised&mdash;&quot;the
+Europeans gave way simultaneously
+with the sepoys&mdash;a bugler
+of the 6th infantry, through mistake,
+sounded the retreat&mdash;and it became
+for a time, a scene of <i>sauve qui peut</i>.&quot;
+In vain did the officers endeavour to
+rally the men, and to lead them back
+to the rescue of their commanding-officer
+and their comrades; only one
+man, private Stewart of the 44th,
+listened to the appeal and returned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me here (says Lieutenant
+Eyre) do Brigadier Shelton justice:
+his acknowledged courage redeemed
+the day.&quot; After great efforts, at last
+he rallied them&mdash;again advancing to
+the attack, again they faltered. A
+third time did the Brigadier bring on
+his men to the assault, which now
+proved successful; but while this disgraceful
+scene was passing outside the
+fort, the enemy had forced their way
+into it, and had cut to pieces Colonel
+Mackerell and all his little party, except
+Lieutenant Bird, who, with one
+sepoy, was found in a barricaded
+apartment, where these two brave
+men had defended themselves till the
+return of the troops, killing above
+thirty of the enemy by the fire of
+their two muskets.</p>
+
+<p>Our loss on this occasion was not
+less than 200 killed and wounded;
+but the results of this success, though
+dearly purchased, were important.
+Four neighbouring forts were immediately
+evacuated by the enemy, and
+occupied by our troops: they were
+found to contain 1400 maunds of
+grain, of which about one-half was
+removed into cantonments immediately;
+but Brigadier Shelton not having
+thought it prudent to place a guard
+for the protection of the remainder, it
+was carried off during the night by
+the Affghans. &quot;Permanent possession
+was, however, taken of the Rikabashee
+and Zoolfikar forts, and the
+towers of the remainder were blown
+up on the following day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It cannot fail to excite surprise,
+that these forts, which do not seem to
+have been occupied by the enemy till
+the 10th, were not either occupied or
+destroyed by the British troops before
+that day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Nov</i>. 13.&mdash;The enemy appeared in
+great force on the western heights,
+where, having posted two guns, they
+fired into cantonments with considerable
+precision. At the entreaty of
+the Envoy, it was determined to attack
+them&mdash;a force, under Brigadier
+Shelton, moved out for that purpose&mdash;the
+advance, under Major Thain,
+ascended the hill with great gallantry;
+&quot;but the enemy resolutely stood
+their ground at the summit of the
+ridge, and unflinchingly received the
+discharge of our musketry, which,
+strange to say, even at the short
+range of ten or twelve yards, did little
+or no execution.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The fire of our guns, however,
+threw the Affghans into confusion.
+A charge of cavalry drove them up
+the hill, and the infantry advancing,
+carried the height, the enemy retreating
+along the ridge, closely followed
+by our troops, and abandoning their
+guns to us; but, owing to the misconduct
+of the troops, only one of them
+was carried away, the men refusing
+to advance to drag off the other,
+which was therefore spiked by Lieutenant
+<a class="pagenum" name="page252" id="page252" title="252"></a>Eyre, with the aid of one artilleryman.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;This was the last success our arms
+were destined to experience. Henceforward
+it becomes my weary task to relate
+a catalogue of errors, disasters, and difficulties,
+which, following close upon each
+other, disgusted our officers, disheartened
+our soldiers, and finally sunk us all into
+irretrievable ruin, as though Heaven itself,
+by a combination of evil circumstances, for
+its own inscrutable purposes, had planned
+our downfall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>November 16th</i>.&mdash;The impression
+made by the enemy by the action of the
+13th was so far salutary, that they did not
+venture to annoy us again for several days.
+Advantage was taken of this respite to
+throw magazine supplies from time to time
+into the Bala Hissar, a duty which was
+ably performed by Lieutenant Walker,
+with a resalah of irregular horse, under
+cover of night. But even in this short
+interval of comparative rest, such was the
+wretched construction of the cantonment,
+that the mere ordinary routine of garrison
+duty, and the necessity of closely manning
+our long line of rampart both by day and
+night, was a severe trial to the health and
+patience of the troops; especially now that
+the winter began to show symptoms of
+unusual severity. There seemed, indeed,
+every probability of an early fall of snow,
+to which all looked forward with dread,
+as the harbinger of fresh difficulties and of
+augmented suffering.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These considerations, and the manifest
+superiority of the Bala Hissar as a
+military position, led to the early discussion
+of the expediency of abandoning the
+cantonment, and consolidating our forces in
+the above-mentioned stronghold. The
+Envoy himself was, from the first, greatly
+in favour of this move, until overruled by
+the many objections urged against it by the
+military authorities; to which, as will be
+seen by a letter from him presently quoted,
+he learned by degrees to attach some
+weight himself; but to the very last it was
+a measure that had many advocates, and I
+venture to state my own firm belief that,
+had we at this time moved into the Bala
+Hissar, Cabul would have been still in our
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Brigadier Shelton having firmly
+set his face against the movement from
+the first moment of its proposition, all
+serious idea of it was gradually abandoned,
+though it continued to the very last a subject
+of common discussion.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 18. Accounts were this day
+received from Jellalabad, that General
+Sale, having sallied from the town,
+had repulsed the enemy with considerable
+loss.... The hope
+of his return has tended much to support
+our spirits; our disappointment
+was therefore great, to learn that all
+expectation of aid from that quarter
+was at an end. Our eyes were now
+turned towards the Kandahar force
+as our last resource though an advance
+from that quarter seemed
+scarcely practicable so late in the
+year.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The propriety of attacking Mahomed
+Khan's fort, the possession of
+which would have opened an easy
+communication with the Bala Hissar,
+was discussed; but, on some sudden
+objection raised by Lieutenant Sturt
+of the engineers, the project was
+abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th, a letter was addressed
+by the Envoy to the General, the object
+of which seems not to be very apparent.
+He raises objections to a retreat
+either to Jellalabad or to the
+Bala Hissar, and expresses a decided
+objection to abandon the cantonment
+under any circumstances, if food can
+be procured; but, nevertheless, it is
+sufficiently evident that his hopes of
+successful resistance had even now
+become feeble, and he refers to the
+possibility that succours may arrive
+from Kandahar, or that &quot;something
+might turn up in our favour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The village of Beymaroo, (or Husbandless,
+from a beautiful virgin who
+was nursed there,) within half a mile
+of the cantonments, had been our
+chief source of supply, to which the
+enemy had in some measure put a
+stop by occupying it every morning.
+It was therefore determined to endeavour
+to anticipate them by taking
+possession of it before their arrival.
+For this purpose, a party moved out
+under Major Swayne of the 5th native
+infantry; but the Major, &quot;it would
+seem, by his own account, found the
+village already occupied, and the entrance
+blocked up in such a manner
+that he considered it out of his power
+to force a passage.&quot; It does not appear
+that the attempt was made.
+Later in the day there was some skirmishing
+in the plain, in the course of
+which Lieutenant Eyre was wounded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is worthy of note that Mahomed
+Akber Khan, second son of the
+late Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan,
+arrived in Cabul this night (22d Nov.)
+from Bameean. This man was destined
+to exercise an evil influence
+<a class="pagenum" name="page253" id="page253" title="253"></a>over our future fortunes. The crisis
+of our struggle was already nigh at
+hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 23.&mdash;This day decided the
+fate of the Cabul force.&quot; It had been
+determined by a council, at the special
+recommendation of the Envoy, that a
+force under Brigadier Shelton should
+storm the village of Beymaroo, and
+maintain the hill above it against any
+numbers of the enemy that might appear.
+At two A.M., the troops<a id="footnotetag22" name="footnotetag22" href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a> moved
+out of cantonments, ascended the hill
+by the gorge, dragging up the gun,
+and moved along the ridge to a
+point overlooking the village. A
+sharp fire of grape created great confusion,
+and it was suggested by Captain
+Bellew and others to General
+Shelton, to storm the village, while
+the evident panic of the enemy lasted.
+To this the Brigadier did not
+accede.</p>
+
+<p>When day broke, the enemy, whose
+ammunition had failed, were seen
+hurrying from the village&mdash;not 40
+men remained. A storming party,
+under Majors Swayne and Kershaw,
+was ordered to carry the village; but
+Major Swayne missed the gate, which
+was open, and arrived at a barricaded
+wicket, which he had no means of
+forcing. Major Swayne was wounded,
+and lost some men, and was ultimately
+recalled. Leaving a reserve
+of three companies of the 37th native
+infantry, under Major Kershaw, at
+the point overhanging Beymaroo, the
+Brigadier moved back with the rest
+of the troops and the gun to the part
+of the hill which overlooked the gorge.
+It was suggested to raise a sungar or
+breastwork to protect the troops, for
+which purpose the sappers had been
+taken out, but it was not done. Immense
+numbers of the enemy, issuing
+from the city, had now crowned the
+opposite hill&mdash;in all, probably 10,000
+men. Our skirmishers were kept out
+with great difficulty, and chiefly by
+the exertions and example of Colonel
+Oliver. The remainder of the troops
+were formed into two squares, and
+the cavalry drawn up <i>en masse</i> immediately
+in their rear, and all suffered
+severely&mdash;the vent of the only
+gun became too hot to be served. A
+party of cavalry under Lieutenant
+Walker was recalled to prevent its
+destruction, and a demonstration of
+the Affghan cavalry on our right flank,
+which had been exposed by the recall
+of Lieutenant Walker, was repulsed
+by a fire of shrapnell, which mortally
+wounded a chief of consequence. The
+enemy surrounded the troops on three
+sides. The men were faint with fatigue
+and thirst&mdash;the Affghan skirmishers
+pressed on, and our's gave
+way. The men could not be got to
+charge bayonets. The enemy made
+a rush at the guns, the cavalry were
+ordered to charge, but would not follow
+their officers. The first square
+and the cavalry gave way, and were
+with difficulty rallied behind the second
+square, leaving the gun in the
+hands of the enemy, who immediately
+carried off the limber and horses.
+News of Abdoolah Khan's wound
+spread amongst the Affghans, who
+now retired. Our men resumed courage,
+and regained possession of the
+gun; and fresh ammunition having
+arrived from cantonments, it again
+opened on the enemy: but our cavalry
+would not act, and the infantry were
+too much exhausted and disheartened
+to make a forward movement, and too
+few in number. The whole force of
+the enemy came on with renewed
+vigour&mdash;the front of the advanced
+square had been literally mowed down,
+and most of the gallant artillerymen
+had fallen. The gun was scarcely
+limbered up preparatory to retreat,
+when a rush from the Ghazees broke
+the first square. All order was at an
+end, the entreaties and commands of
+the officers were unheeded, and an
+utter rout ensued down the hill towards
+the cantonments, the enemy's
+cavalry making a fearful slaughter
+among the unresisting fugitives. The
+retreat of Major Kershaw's party was
+cut off, and his men were nearly all
+destroyed. The mingled tide of flight
+and pursuit seemed to be about to
+enter the cantonments together; but
+the pursuers were checked by the fire
+of the Shah's 5th infantry and the juzailchees,
+and by a charge of a fresh
+troop of cavalry under Lieutenant
+Hardyman, and fifteen or twenty of
+his own men rallied by Lieutenant
+Walker, who fell in that encounter.
+<a class="pagenum" name="page254" id="page254" title="254"></a>Osman Khan, too, a chief whose men
+were amongst the foremost, voluntarily
+halted them and drew them off,
+&quot;which may be reckoned, indeed,
+(says Lieutenant Eyre,) the chief reason
+why <i>all</i> of our people who on
+that day went forth to battle were not
+destroyed.&quot; The gun and the second
+limber which had arrived from the
+cantonments, in attempting to gallop
+down hill, was overturned and lost.
+&quot;Our loss was tremendous&mdash;the
+greater part of the wounded, including
+Colonel Oliver, having been left
+in the field, where they were miserably
+cut to pieces.&quot;<a id="footnotetag23" name="footnotetag23" href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>Thus terminated in disaster the
+military struggle at Cabul, and then
+commenced that series of negotiations
+not less disastrous, which led to the
+murder of the Envoy, to the retreat
+of the army, and to its ultimate
+annihilation. In Lieutenant Eyre's account
+of their military operations, we
+look in vain for any evidence of
+promptitude, vigour, or decision, skill
+or judgment, in the commanders; and
+we have abundant evidence of a lamentable
+want of discipline and proper
+spirit in the troops, especially
+amongst the Europeans. Instances
+of high personal courage and gallantry
+amongst the officers are numerous,
+and they always will be, when the occasion
+requires them; but if the facts
+of this narrative had been given without
+the names, no man would have recognised
+in it the operations of a
+British army.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;<i>Nov</i>. 24.&mdash;Our troops (says Eyre) had
+now lost all confidence; and even such of the
+officers as had hitherto indulged the hope
+of a favourable turn in our affairs, began
+at last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings
+as to our future fate. Our force
+resembled a ship in danger of wrecking
+among rocks and shoals, for want of an
+able pilot to guide it safely through them.
+Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the
+helm of affairs been grasped by a hand
+competent to the important task, we might
+perhaps have steered clear of destruction;
+but, in the absence of any such deliverer,
+it was but too evident that Heaven alone
+could save us by some unforeseen interposition.
+The spirit of the men was gone;
+the influence of the officers over them
+declined daily; and that boasted discipline,
+which alone renders a handful of our
+troops superior to an irregular multitude,
+began fast to disappear from among us.
+The enemy, on the other hand, waxed
+bolder every day and every hour; nor was
+it long ere we got accustomed to be
+bearded with impunity from under the
+very ramparts of our garrison.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never were troops exposed to greater
+hardships and dangers; yet, sad to say,
+never did soldiers shed their blood with
+less beneficial result than during the investment
+of the British lines at Cabul.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Captain Conolly now wrote from
+the Bala Hissar, urging an immediate
+retreat thither; &quot;but the old objections
+were still urged against the measure
+by Brigadier Shelton and others,&quot;
+though several of the chief military,
+and all the political officers, approved
+<a class="pagenum" name="page255" id="page255" title="255"></a>of it. Shah Shoojah was impatient
+to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>The door to negotiation was opened
+by a letter to the Envoy from Osman
+Khan Barukzye, a near relation of the
+new king, Nuwab Mahomed Zuman
+Khan, who had sheltered Captain
+Drummond in his own house since the
+first day of the outbreak. He took
+credit to himself for having checked
+the ardour of his followers on the
+preceding day, and having thus saved
+the British force from destruction; he
+declared that the chiefs only desired
+we should quietly evacuate the country,
+leaving them to govern it according
+to their own rules, and with a
+king of their own choosing. The
+General, on being referred to, was of
+opinion that the cantonments could
+not be defended throughout the winter,
+and approved of opening a negotiation
+on the basis of the evacuation
+of the country. On the 27th, two
+deputies were sent by the assembled
+chiefs to confer with Sir W. Macnaghten;
+but the terms they proposed
+were such as he could not accept.
+The deputies took leave of the Envoy,
+with the exclamation, that &quot;we should
+meet again in battle.&quot; &quot;We shall
+at all events meet,&quot; replied Sir William,
+&quot;at the day of judgment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At night the Envoy received a letter,
+proposing &quot;that we should deliver up
+Shah Shoojah and all his family&mdash;lay
+down our arms, and make an unconditional
+surrender&mdash;when they might,
+perhaps, be induced to spare our lives,
+and allow us to leave the country on
+condition of never returning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Envoy replied, &quot;that these
+terms were too dishonourable to be
+entertained for a moment; and that, if
+they were persisted in, he must again
+appeal to arms, leaving the result to
+the God of battles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Active hostilities were not renewed
+till the 1st of December, when a desperate
+effort was made by the enemy
+to gain possession of the Bala Hissar;
+but they were repulsed by Major
+Ewart with considerable slaughter.
+On the 4th, they cannonaded the cantonment
+from the Beymaroo hills, but
+did little mischief, and at night they
+made an unsuccessful attempt on Mahomed
+Shereef's fort. On the 5th,
+they completed, without opposition,
+the destruction of the bridge over the
+Cabul river. On the 6th, the garrison
+of Mahomed Shereef's fort disgracefully
+abandoned it, the men of
+the 44th apparently being the first to
+fly; and a garrison of the same regiment,
+in the bazar village, was with
+difficulty restrained from following
+their example. On the 7th, this post
+of honour was occupied by the 37th
+native infantry; the 44th, who had
+hitherto been intrusted with it, being
+no longer considered worthy to retain
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It is but justice to Mr Eyre to give
+in his own words some remarks which
+he has thought it right to make, with
+reference to what he has recorded of
+the conduct of that unhappy
+regiment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;In the course of this narrative, I have
+been compelled by stern truth to note down
+facts nearly affecting the honour and interests
+of a British regiment. It may, or
+rather I fear it must, inevitably happen,
+that my unreserved statements of the Cabul
+occurrences will prove unacceptable to
+many, whose private or public feelings are
+interested in glossing over or suppressing
+the numerous errors committed and censures
+deservedly incurred. But my heart
+tells me that no paltry motives of rivalry
+or malice influence my pen; rather a sincere
+and honest desire to benefit the public
+service, by pointing out the rocks on
+which our reputation was wrecked, the
+means by which our honour was sullied,
+and our Indian empire endangered, as a
+warning to future actors in similar scenes.
+In a word, I believe that more good is
+likely to ensue from the publication of the
+whole unmitigated truth, than from a mere
+garbled statement of it. A kingdom has
+been lost&mdash;an army slain;&mdash;and surely, if
+I can show that, had we been but true to
+ourselves, and had vigorous measures been
+adopted, the result might have been widely
+different, I shall have written an instructive
+lesson to rulers and subjects, to generals
+and armies, and shall not have incurred
+in vain the disapprobation of the
+self-interested or the proud.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The Envoy having again appealed
+to the General, again received an answer,
+stating the impossibility of holding
+out, and recommending that the
+Envoy should lose no time in entering
+into negotiations. This letter was
+countersigned by Brigadiers Shelton
+and Anquetil, and Colonel Chambers.</p>
+
+<p>On the 11th December, the Envoy,
+accompanied by Captains Lawrence,
+Trevor, and Mackenzie, and a few
+troopers, went out by agreement to
+meet the chiefs on the plain towards
+the Seah Sung hills. A conciliatory
+address from the Envoy was met by
+professions of personal esteem and approbation
+<a class="pagenum" name="page256" id="page256" title="256"></a>of the views he had laid before
+them, and of gratitude for the
+manner in which the Ameer Dost
+Mahomed Khan had been treated.
+The Envoy then read to them a sketch
+of the proposed treaty, which was to
+the following effect:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;That the British should evacuate
+Affghanistan, including Candahar, Ghuznee,
+Cabul, Jellalabad, and all the other
+stations absolutely within the limits of the
+country so called; that they should be
+permitted to return not only unmolested
+to India, but that supplies of every description
+should be afforded them in their
+road thither, certain men of consequence
+accompanying them as hostages; that the
+Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan, his family,
+and every Affghan now in exile for political
+offences, should be allowed to return
+to their country; that Shah Shoojah and
+his family should be allowed the option
+of remaining at Cabul, or proceeding
+with the British troops to Loodiana,
+in either case receiving from the Affghan
+Government a pension of one lac
+of rupees per annum; that means of transport,
+for the conveyance of our baggage,
+stores, &amp;c., including that required by the
+royal family, in case of their adopting the
+latter alternative, should be furnished by
+the existing Affghan Government: that an
+amnesty should be granted to all those
+who had made themselves obnoxious on
+account of their attachment to Shah Shoojah
+and his allies, the British; that all
+prisoners should be released; that no
+British force should be ever again sent
+into Affghanistan, unless called for by the
+Affghan government, between whom and
+the British nation perpetual friendship
+should be established on the sure foundation
+of mutual good offices.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>After some objections on the part
+of Mahomed Akber Khan, the terms
+were agreed to, and it was further arranged
+that provisions should be
+supplied to our troops, and that they
+should evacuate the cantonment in
+three days.</p>
+
+<p>Preparations were immediately
+commenced for the retreat. Arms
+were ordered to be distributed from
+the stores, now about to be abandoned,
+to some of the camp-followers, and
+such of the soldiers as might require
+them; and a disgraceful scene of confusion
+and tumult followed, which
+showed the fearful extent to which the
+army was disorganized.</p>
+
+<p>The troops in the Bala Hissar were
+moved into cantonments, not without
+a foretaste of what they had to expect
+on their march to Jellalabad, under
+the safe conduct of Akber Khan.</p>
+
+<p>The demands of the chiefs now rose
+from day to day. They refused to
+supply provisions until we should further
+assure them of our sincerity, by
+giving up every fort in the immediate
+vicinity of the cantonment. The troops
+were accordingly withdrawn, the forts
+were immediately occupied by the
+Affghans, and the cantonment thus
+placed at their mercy. On the 18th,
+the promised cattle for carriage had
+not yet been supplied, and a heavy
+fall of snow rendered the situation of
+the troops more desperate. On the
+19th, the Envoy wrote an order for the
+evacuation of Ghuznee. On the
+20th, the Envoy had another interview
+with the chiefs, who now demanded
+that a portion of the guns and ammunition
+should be given up. This also
+was agreed to. At this stage of the
+proceedings, Lieutenant Sturt of the
+engineers proposed to the General to
+break off the treaty, and march forthwith
+to Jellalabad; but the proposal
+was not approved. The arrangements
+for giving effect to the treaty were
+still carried on; and the Envoy again
+met Akber Khan and Osman Khan
+on the plain, when Captains Conolly
+and Airey were given up as hostages,
+and the Envoy sent his carriage and
+horses, and a pair of pistols, as presents
+to Akber Khan, who further demanded
+an Arab horse, the property of
+Captain Grant, assistant adjutant-general:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Late in the evening of the 22d December,&quot;
+(says Capt. Mackenzie, in a letter
+to Lieut. Eyre,) &quot;Capt. James Skinner,
+who, after having been concealed in Cabul
+during the greater part of the siege, had
+latterly been the guest of Mahomed Akber,
+arrived in cantonments, accompanied by
+Mahomed Sudeeq Khan, a first cousin of
+Mahomed Akber, and by Sirwar Khan,
+the Arhanee merchant, who, in the beginning
+of the campaign, had furnished the
+army with camels, and who had been much
+in the confidence of Sir A. Burnes, being,
+in fact, one of our stanchest friends.
+The two latter remained in a different
+apartment, while Skinner dined with the
+Envoy. During dinner, Skinner jestingly
+remarked that he felt as if laden with
+combustibles, being charged with a message
+from Mahomed Akber to the Envoy
+of a most portentous nature.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Even then I remarked that the Envoy's
+eye glanced eagerly towards Skinner
+<a class="pagenum" name="page257" id="page257" title="257"></a>with an expression of hope. In fact, he
+was like a drowning man catching at straws.
+Skinner, however, referred him to his Affghan
+companions, and after dinner the four
+retired into a room by themselves. My
+knowledge of what there took place is
+gained from poor Skinner's own relation,
+as given during my subsequent captivity
+with him in Akber's house. Mahomed
+Sudeeq disclosed Mahomed Akber's proposition
+to the Envoy, which was, that the
+following day Sir William should meet
+him (Mahomed Akber) and a few of his
+immediate friends, viz. the chiefs of the
+Eastern Giljyes, outside the cantonments,
+when a final agreement should be made,
+so as to be fully understood by both parties;
+that Sir William should have a considerable
+body of troops in readiness,
+which, on a given signal, were to join with
+those of Mahomed Akber and the Giljyes,
+assault and take Mahmood Khan's fort,
+and secure the person of Ameenoolah.
+At this stage of the proposition Mahomed
+Sudeeq signified that, for a certain sum of
+money, the head of Ameenoolah should be
+presented to the Envoy; but from this Sir
+William shrunk with abhorrence, declaring
+that it was neither his custom nor
+that of his country to give a price for
+blood. Mahomed Sudeeq then went on
+to say, that, after having subdued the rest
+of the khans, the English should be permitted
+to remain in the country eight
+months longer, so as to save their <i>purdah</i>,
+(veil, or credit,) but that they were then
+to evacuate Affghanistan, as if of their
+own accord; that Shah Shoojah was to
+continue king of the country, and that
+Mahomed Akber was to be his wuzeer.
+As a further reward for his (Mahomed
+Akber's) assistance, the British Government
+were to pay him thirty lacs of rupees,
+and four lacs of rupees per annum
+during his life! To this extraordinary
+and wild proposal, Sir William gave ear
+with an eagerness which nothing can account
+for but the supposition, confirmed
+by many other circumstances, that his
+strong mind had been harassed until it
+had in some degree lost its equipoise;
+and he not only assented fully to these
+terms, but actually gave a Persian paper
+to that effect, written in his own hand,
+declaring as his motives that it was not
+only an excellent opportunity to carry into
+effect the real wishes of Government&mdash;which
+were to evacuate the country with
+as much credit to ourselves as possible&mdash;but
+that it would give England time to
+enter into a treaty with Russia, defining
+the bounds beyond which neither were to
+pass in Central Asia. So ended this fatal
+conference, the nature and result of which,
+contrary to his usual custom, Sir William
+communicated to none of those who, on
+all former occasions, were fully in his confidence,
+viz. Trevor, Lawrence, and myself.
+It seemed as if he feared that we
+might insist on the impracticability of the
+plan, which he must have studiously concealed
+from himself. All the following
+morning his manner was distracted and
+hurried, in a way that none of us had ever
+before witnessed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;After breakfast, Trevor, Lawrence,
+and myself were summoned to attend the
+Envoy during his conference with Mahomed
+Akber Khan. I found him alone, when,
+for the first time, he disclosed to me the
+nature of the transaction he was engaged
+in. I immediately warned him that it was
+a plot against him. He replied hastily,
+'A plot! let me alone for that&mdash;trust me
+for that!' and I consequently offered no
+further remonstrance. Sir William then
+arranged with General Elphinstone that
+the 54th regiment, under Major Ewart,
+should be held in readiness for immediate
+service. The Shah's 6th, and two guns,
+were also warned.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Sir W. Macnaghten, halting the
+troopers of the escort, advanced about
+500 or 600 yards from the eastern
+rampart of the cantonment, and there
+awaited Akber Khan and his party:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Close by where some hillocks, on the
+further side of which from the cantonment
+a carpet was spread where the snow lay
+least thick, and there the khans and Sir
+William sat down to hold their conference.
+Men talk of presentiment; I suppose
+it was something of the kind which
+came over me, for I could scarcely prevail
+upon myself to quit my horse. I did so,
+however, and was invited to sit down
+among the Sirdars. After the usual salutations,
+Mahomed Akber commenced business
+by asking the Envoy if he was perfectly
+ready to carry into effect the proposition
+of the preceding night? The
+Envoy replied, 'Why not?' My attention
+was then called off by an old Affghan
+acquaintance of mine, formerly chief of the
+Cabul police, by name Gholam Moyun-ood-deen.
+I rose from my recumbent
+posture, and stood apart with him conversing.
+I afterwards remembered that
+my friend betrayed much anxiety as to
+where my pistols were, and why I did not
+carry them on my person. I answered,
+that although I wore my sword for form,
+it was not necessary to be armed <i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i>.
+His discourse was also full of extravagant
+compliments, I suppose for the purpose
+of lulling me to sleep. At length my
+attention was called off from what he
+was saying, by observing that a number
+<a class="pagenum" name="page258" id="page258" title="258"></a>of men, armed to the teeth, had gradually
+approached to the scene of conference,
+and were drawing round in a
+sort of circle. This Lawrence and myself
+pointed out to some of the chief men, who
+affected at first to drive them off with
+whips; but Mahomed Akber observed,
+that it was of no consequence, as they
+were in the secret. I again resumed my
+conversation with Gholam Moyun-ood-deen,
+when suddenly I heard Mahomed
+Akber call out, 'Begeer, begeer,' (seize!
+seize!) and, turning round, I saw him
+grasp the Envoy's left hand, with an expression
+in his face of the most diabolical
+ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who
+laid hold of the Envoy's right hand. They
+dragged him in a stooping posture down
+the hillock; the only words I heard poor
+Sir William utter being, 'Az barae Khooda'
+(for God's sake!) I saw his face,
+however, and it was full of horror and
+astonishment. I did not see what became
+of Trevor, but Lawrence was dragged past
+me by several Affghans, whom I saw wrest
+his weapons from him. Up to this moment
+I was so engrossed in observing what was
+taking place, that I actually was not aware
+that my own right arm was mastered, that
+my urbane friend held a pistol to my
+temple, and that I was surrounded by a
+circle of Ghazees, with drawn swords and
+cocked juzails. Resistance was in vain,
+so, listening to the exhortations of Gholam
+Moyun-ood-deen, which were enforced by
+the whistling of divers bullets over my
+head, I hurried through the snow with
+him to the place where his horse was
+standing, being despoiled <i>en route</i> of my
+sabre, and narrowly escaping divers attempts
+made on my life. As I mounted
+behind my captor, now my energetic defender,
+the crowd increased around us, the
+cries of 'Kill the Kafir' became more
+vehement, and, although we hurried on
+at a fast canter, it was with the utmost
+difficulty Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, although
+assisted by one or two friends or
+followers, could ward off and avoid the
+sword-cuts aimed at me, the rascals being
+afraid to fire lest they should kill my conductor.
+Indeed he was obliged to wheel
+his horse round once, and taking off his
+turban, (the last appeal a Mussulman can
+make,) to implore them for God's sake to
+respect the life of his friend. At last,
+ascending a slippery bank, the horse fell.
+My cap had been snatched off, and I now
+received a heavy blow on the head from a
+bludgeon, which fortunately did not quite
+deprive me of my senses. I had sufficient
+sense left to shoot a-head of the fallen
+horse, where my protector with another
+man joined me, and clasping me in their
+arms, hurried me towards the wall of
+Mahomed Khan's fort. How I reached
+the spot where Mahomed Akber was receiving
+the gratulations of the multitude I
+know not, but I remember a fanatic rushing
+on me, and twisting his hand in my
+collar until I became exhausted from suffocation.
+I must do Mahomed Akber the
+Justice to say, that, finding the Ghazees
+bent on my slaughter, even after I had
+reached his stirrup, he drew his sword
+and laid about him right manfully, for my
+conductor and Meerza B&agrave;oodeen Khan
+were obliged to press me up against the
+wall, covering me with their own bodies,
+and protesting that no blow should reach
+me but through their persons.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pride, however, overcame Mahomed
+Akber's sense of courtesy, when he thought
+I was safe, for he then turned round to
+me, and repeatedly said, in a tone of triumphant
+derision, 'Shuma moolk-i-ma me
+geered!' (<i>You'll</i> seize my country, will
+you!)&mdash;he then rode off, and I was hurried
+towards the gate of the fort. Here new
+dangers awaited me, for Moolah Momin,
+fresh from the slaughter of poor Trevor,
+who was killed riding close behind me&mdash;Sultan
+Jan having the credit of having
+given him the first sabre-cut&mdash;stood here
+with his followers, whom he exhorted to
+slay me, setting them the example by cutting
+fiercely at me himself. Fortunately a
+gun stood between us, but still he would
+have effected his purpose, had not Mahomed
+Shah Khan at that instant, with
+some followers, come to my assistance.
+These drew their swords in my defence,
+the chief himself throwing his arm round
+my neck, and receiving on his shoulder a
+cut aimed by Moollah Momin at my head.
+During the bustle I pushed forward into
+the fort, and was immediately taken to a
+sort of dungeon, where I found Lawrence
+safe, but somewhat exhausted by his
+hideous ride and the violence he had sustained,
+although unwounded. Here the
+Giljye chiefs, Mahomed Shah Khan, and
+his brother Dost Mahomed Khan, presently
+joined us, and endeavoured to
+cheer up our flagging spirits, assuring us
+that the Envoy and Trevor were not dead,
+but on the contrary quite well. They
+stayed with us during the afternoon, their
+presence being absolutely necessary for our
+protection. Many attempts were made
+by the fanatics to force the door to accomplish
+our destruction. Others spit at us
+and abused us through a small window,
+through which one fellow levelled a blunderbuss
+at us, which was struck up by
+our keepers and himself thrust back. At
+last Ameenoollah made his appearance,
+and threatened us with instant death.
+Some of his people most officiously advanced
+to make good his word, until pushed
+<a class="pagenum" name="page259" id="page259" title="259"></a>back by the Giljye chiefs, who remonstrated
+with this iniquitous old monster,
+their master, whom they persuaded to relieve
+us from his hateful presence. During
+the afternoon, a human hand was held up
+in mockery to us at the window. We said
+that it had belonged to an European, but
+were not aware at the time that it was actually
+the hand of the poor Envoy. Of all
+the Mahomedans assembled in the room
+discussing the events of the day, one only,
+an old moollah, openly and fearlessly condemned
+the acts of his brethren, declaring
+that the treachery was abominable, and a
+disgrace to Islam. At night they brought
+us food, and gave us each a postheen to
+sleep on. At midnight we were awakened
+to go to the house of Mahomed Akber in
+the city. Mahomed Shah Khan then, with
+the meanness common to all Affghans of
+rank, robbed Lawrence of his watch, while
+his brother did me a similar favour. I had
+been plundered of my rings and every thing
+else previously, by the understrappers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Reaching Mahomed Akber's abode, we
+were shown into the room where he lay in
+bed. He received us with great outward
+show of courtesy, assuring us of the welfare
+of the Envoy and Trevor, but there
+was a constraint in his manner for which I
+could not account. We were shortly taken
+to another apartment, where we found
+Skinner, who had returned, being on parole,
+early in the morning. Doubt and
+gloom marked our meeting, and the latter
+was fearfully deepened by the intelligence
+which we now received from our fellow-captive
+of the base murder of Sir William
+and Trevor. He informed us that the head
+of the former had been carried about the
+city in triumph. We of course spent a
+miserable night. The next day we were
+taken under a strong guard to the house
+of Zuman Khan, where a council of the
+Khans were being held. Here we found
+Captains Conolly and Airey, who had some
+days previously been sent to the hurwah's
+house as hostage for the performance of
+certain parts of the treaty which was to
+have been entered into. A violent discussion
+took place, in which Mahomed Akber
+bore the most prominent part. We were
+vehemently accused of treachery, and every
+thing that was bad, and told that the whole
+of the transactions of the night previous
+had been a trick of Mahomed Akber, and
+Ameenoollah, to ascertain the Envoy's sincerity.
+They declared that they would now
+grant us no terms, save on the surrender
+of the whole of the married families as
+hostages, all the guns, ammunition, and
+treasure. At this time Conolly told me
+that on the preceding day the Envoy's head
+had been paraded about in the court-yard;
+that his and Trevor's bodies had been hung
+up in the public bazar, or <i>chouk</i>; and that
+it was with the greatest difficulty that the
+old hurwah, Zuman Khan, had saved him
+and Airey from being murdered by a body
+of fanatics, who had attempted to rush into
+the room where they were. Also, that previous
+to the arrival of Lawrence, Skinner,
+and myself, Mahomed Akber had been relating
+the events of the preceding day to
+the <i>Jeerga</i> or council, and that he had unguardedly
+avowed having, while endeavouring
+to force the Envoy either to mount on
+horseback or to move more quickly, <i>struck</i>
+him; and that, seeing Conolly's eyes fastened
+upon him with an expression of intense
+indignation, he had altered the phrase and
+said, 'I mean I <i>pushed</i> him.' After an
+immense deal of gabble, a proposal for a
+renewal of the treaty, not, however, demanding
+all the guns, was determined to be sent
+to the cantonments, and Skinner, Lawrence,
+and myself were marched back to
+Akber's house, enduring <i>en route</i> all
+manner of threats and insults. Here we
+were closely confined in an inner apartment,
+which was indeed necessary for
+our safety. That evening we received
+a visit from Mahomed Akber, Sultan
+Jan, and several other Affghans. Mahomed
+Akber exhibited his double-barrelled
+pistols to us, which he had worn the
+previous day, requesting us to put their
+locks to rights, something being amiss.
+<i>Two of the barrels had been recently discharged</i>,
+which he endeavoured in a most
+confused way to account for by saying, that
+he had been charged by a havildar of the
+escort, and had fired both barrels at him.
+Now all the escort had run away without
+even attempting to charge, the only man
+who advanced to the rescue having been
+a Hindoo Jemadar of Chuprassies, who
+was instantly cut to pieces by the assembled
+Ghazees. This defence he made
+without any accusation on our part, betraying
+the anxiety of a liar to be believed.
+On the 26th, Captain Lawrence was taken
+to the house of Ameenoollah, whence he
+did not return to us. Captain Skinner
+and myself remained in Akber's house until
+the 30th. During this time we were
+civilly treated, and conversed with numbers
+of Affghan gentlemen who came to visit
+us. Some of them asserted that the Envoy
+had been murdered by the unruly soldiery.
+Others could not deny that Akber himself
+was the assassin. For two or three days
+we had a fellow-prisoner in poor Sirwar
+Khan, who had been deceived throughout
+the whole matter, and out of whom they
+were then endeavouring to screw money.
+He, of course, was aware from his countrymen,
+that not only had Akber committed
+the murder, but that he protested to the
+Ghazees that he gloried in the deed. On
+<a class="pagenum" name="page260" id="page260" title="260"></a>one occasion a moonshee of Major Pottinger,
+who had escaped from Charekhar,
+named Mohun Beer, came direct from the
+presence of Mahomed Akber to visit us.
+He told us that Mahomed Akber had begun
+to see the impolicy of having murdered
+the Envoy, which fact he had just avowed
+to him, shedding many tears, either of
+pretended remorse or of real vexation
+at having committed himself. On several
+occasions Mahomed Akber personally, and
+by deputy, besought Skinner and myself to
+give him advice as to how he was to extricate
+himself from the dilemma in which
+he was placed, more than once endeavouring
+to excuse himself for not having effectually
+protected the Envoy, by saying that
+Sir William had drawn a sword-stick upon
+him. It seems that meanwhile the renewed
+negotiations with Major Pottinger, who had
+assumed the Envoy's place in cantonments,
+had been brought to a head; for on the
+night of the 30th, Akber furnished me
+with an Affghan dress, (Skinner already
+wore one,) and sent us both back to cantonments.
+Several Affghans, with whom
+I fell in afterwards, protested to me that
+they had seen Mahomed Akber shoot the
+Envoy with his own hand; amongst them
+Meerza B&aacute;oodeen Khan, who, being an
+old acquaintance, always retained a sneaking
+kindness for the English.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am, my dear Eyre, yours very truly,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;C. MACKENZIE.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cabul, 29th July, 1842.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>The negotiations were now renewed
+by Major Pottinger, who had been
+requested by General Elphinstone to
+assume the unenviable office of political
+agent and adviser.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The additional clauses in the treaty
+now proposed for our renewed acceptance
+were&mdash;1st. That we should leave behind
+our guns, excepting six. 2nd. That we
+should immediately give up all our treasures.
+3d. That the hostages should be
+all exchanged for married men, with their
+wives and families. The difficulties of
+Major Pottinger's position will be readily
+perceived, when it is borne in mind that
+he had before him the most conclusive
+evidence of the late Envoy's ill-advised
+intrigue with Mahomed Akber Khan, in
+direct violation of that very treaty which
+was now once more tendered for consideration.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>A sum of fourteen lacs of rupees,
+about L.140,000, was also demanded,
+which was said to be payable to the
+several chiefs on the promise of the
+late Envoy.</p>
+
+<p>Major Pottinger, at a council of
+war convened by the General, &quot;declared
+his conviction that no confidence
+could be placed in any treaty
+formed with the Affghan chiefs; that,
+under such circumstances, to bind the
+hands of the Government by promising
+to evacuate the country, and to restore
+the deposed Ameer, and to
+waste, moreover, so much public
+money merely to save our own lives
+and property, would be inconsistent
+with the duty we owed to our country
+and the Government we served;
+and that the only honourable course
+would be, either to hold out at Cabul,
+or to force our immediate retreat to
+Jellalabad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This however, the officers composing
+the council, one and all declared
+to be impracticable, owing to the
+want of provisions, the surrender of
+the surrounding forts, and the insuperable
+difficulties of the road at the
+present season.&quot; The new treaty was
+therefore, forthwith accepted. The
+demand of the chiefs, that married
+officers with their families should be
+left as hostages, was successfully resisted.
+Captains Drummond, Walsh,
+Warburton, and Webb, were accepted
+in their place, and on the 29th went
+to join Captains Conolly and Airey at
+the house of Nuwab Zuman Khan.
+Lieutenant Haughton and a portion of
+the sick and wounded, were sent into
+the city, and placed under the protection
+of the chiefs. &quot;Three of the Shah's
+guns, with the greater portion of our
+treasure, were made over during the
+day, much to the evident disgust of
+the soldiery.&quot; On the following day,
+&quot;the remainder of the sick went into
+the city, Lieutenant Evans, H.M.
+44th foot, being placed in command,
+and Dr Campbell, 54th native infantry,
+with Dr Berwick of the mission, in
+medical charge of the whole. Two
+more of the Shah's guns were given
+up. It snowed hard the whole day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>January</i> 5.&mdash;Affairs continued in
+the same unsettled state to this date.
+The chiefs postponed our departure
+from day to day on various pretexts....
+Numerous cautions were received
+from various well-wishers, to
+place no confidence in the professions
+of the chiefs, who had sworn together
+to accomplish our entire destruction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is not our intention to offer any
+lengthened comments on these details.
+They require none. The facts,
+if they be correctly stated, speak for
+<a class="pagenum" name="page261" id="page261" title="261"></a>themselves; and, for reasons already
+referred to, we are unwilling to anticipate
+the result of the judicial investigation
+now understood to be in progress.
+This much, however, we may
+be permitted to say, that the traces of
+fatal disunion amongst ourselves will,
+we fear, be made every where apparent.
+It is notorious that Sir William
+Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes
+were on terms the reverse of cordial.
+The Envoy had no confidence in the
+General. The General was disgusted
+with the authority the Envoy had assumed,
+even in matters exclusively
+military&mdash;and, debilitated by disease,
+was unable always to assert his authority
+even in his own family. The arrival
+of General Shelton in the cantonments
+does not appear to have
+tended to restore harmony, cordiality,
+or confidence, or even to have revived
+the drooping courage of the troops, or to
+have renovated the feelings of obedience,
+and given effect to the bonds of
+discipline, which had been too much relaxed.
+But, even after admitting all
+these things, much more still remains to
+be explained before we can account for
+all that has happened&mdash;before we can
+understand how the political authorities
+came to reject every evidence of approaching
+danger, and therefore to be
+quite unprepared for it when it came.
+Why no effort was made on the first
+day to put down the insurrection: Why,
+in the arrangements for the defence
+of the cantonments, the commisariat
+fort was neglected, and the other forts
+neither occupied nor destroyed: Why
+almost every detachment that was sent
+out was too small to effect its object:
+Why, with a force of nearly six thousand
+men, we should never on any
+one occasion have had two thousand
+in the field, and, as in the action at
+Beymaroo, only one gun: Why so
+many orders appear to have been disregarded;
+why so few were punctually
+obeyed.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;At last the fatal morning dawned
+(the 6th January) which was to witness
+the departure of the Cabul force from the
+cantonments in which it had endured a
+two months' siege.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>&quot;Dreary indeed was the scene over
+which, with drooping spirits and dismal
+forebodings, we had to bend our unwilling
+steps. Deep snow covered every inch of
+mountain and plain with one unspotted
+sheet of dazzling whiteness; and so intensely
+bitter was the cold, as to penetrate
+and defy the defences of the warmest
+clothing.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Encumbered with baggage, crowded
+with 12,000 camp-followers, and
+accompanied by many helpless women
+and children, of all ranks and of all
+ages&mdash;with misery before, and death
+behind, and treachery all around
+them&mdash;with little hope of successful
+resistance if attacked, without tents
+enough to cover them, and without food
+or fuel for the march, 4500 fighting
+men, with nine guns, set out on this
+march of death.</p>
+
+<p>At 9 A.M. the advance moved out,
+but was delayed for upwards of an
+hour at the river, having found the
+temporary bridge incomplete; and it
+was noon ere the road was clear for
+the main column, which, with its long
+train of loaded camels, continued to
+pour out of the gate until the evening,
+by which time thousands of Affghans
+thronged the area of the cantonment
+rending the air with exulting cries,
+and committing every kind of atrocity.
+Before the rearguard commenced
+its march it was night; but by
+the light of the burning buildings the
+Affghan marksmen laid Lieut. Hardyman,
+and fifty rank and file, lifeless
+on the snow. The order of march
+was soon lost; scores of sepoys and
+camp-followers sat down in despair to
+perish, and it was 2 A.M. before the
+rearguard reached the camp at Bygram,
+a distance of five miles. Here
+all was confusion; different regiments,
+with baggage, camp-followers, camels,
+and horses, mixed up together. The
+cold towards morning became more
+intense, and thousands were lying on
+the bare snow, without shelter, fire,
+or food. Several died during the
+night, amongst whom was an European
+conductor; and the proportion
+of those who escaped without frostbites
+was small. Yet this was but the
+<i>beginning</i> of sorrows.</p>
+
+<p><i>January 7th</i>.&mdash;At 8 A.M. the force
+moved on in the same inextricable
+confusion. Already nearly half the
+sepoys, from sheer inability to keep
+their ranks, had joined the crowd of
+non-combatants. The rearguard was
+attacked, and much baggage lost, and
+one of the guns having been overturned,
+was taken by the Affghans,
+whose cavalry charged into the very
+heart of the column.</p>
+
+<p>Akber Khan said, that the force
+<a class="pagenum" name="page262" id="page262" title="262"></a>had been attacked because it had
+marched contrary to the wish of the
+chiefs. He insisted that it should
+halt, and promised to supply food,
+forage, and fuel for the troops, but
+demanded six more hostages, which
+were given. These terms having
+been agreed to, the firing ceased for
+the present, and the army encamped
+at Bootkhak, where the confusion was
+indescribable. &quot;Night again,&quot; says
+Lieutenant Eyre, &quot;closed over us,
+with its attendant horrors&mdash;starvation,
+cold, exhaustion, death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At an early hour on the 8th the
+Affghans commenced firing into the
+camp; and as they collected in considerable
+numbers, Major Thain led
+the 44th to attack them. In this
+business the regiment behaved with a
+resolution and gallantry worthy of
+British soldiers. Again Akber Khan
+demanded hostages. Again they were
+given, and again the firing ceased.
+This seems to prove that Akber Khan
+had the power, if he had chosen to
+exert it, to restrain those tribes. Once
+more the living mass of men and animals
+was put in motion. The frost
+had so crippled the hands and feet of
+the strongest men, as to prostrate
+their powers and to incapacitate them
+for service.</p>
+
+<p>The Khoord-Cabul pass, which
+they were about to enter, is about five
+miles long, shut in by lofty hills, and
+by precipices of 500 or 600 feet in
+height, whose summits approach one
+another in some parts to within about
+fifty or sixty yards. Down the centre
+dashed a torrent, bordered with ice,
+which was crossed about eight-and-twenty
+times.</p>
+
+<p>While in this dark and narrow
+gorge, a hot fire was opened upon
+the advance, with whom were several
+ladies, who, seeing no other chance of
+safety, galloped forwards, &quot;running
+the gauntlet of the enemy's bullets,
+which whizzed in hundreds about their
+ears, until they were fairly out of
+the pass. Providentially the whole
+escaped, except Lady Sale, who was
+slightly wounded in the arm.&quot; Several
+of Akber Khan's chief adherents
+exerted themselves in vain to restrain
+the Giljyes; and as the crowd moved
+onward into the thickest of the fire,
+the slaughter was fearful. Another
+horse-artillery gun was abandoned,
+and the whole of its artillerymen
+slain, and some of the children of the
+officers became prisoners. It is supposed
+that 3000 souls perished in the
+pass, amongst whom were many
+officers.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;On the force reaching Khoord-Cabul,
+snow began to fall, and continued till
+morning. Only four small tents were saved,
+of which one belonged to the General:
+two were devoted to the ladies and
+children, and one was given up to the
+sick; but an immense number of poor
+wounded wretches wandered about the
+camp destitute of shelter, and perished
+during the night. Groans of misery and
+distress assailed the ear from all quarters.
+We had ascended to a still colder climate
+than we had left behind, and we were without
+tents, fuel, or food: the snow was the
+only bed for all, and of many, ere morning,
+it proved the <i>winding-sheet</i>. It is
+only marvellous that any should have survived
+that fearful night!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;<i>January 9th</i>.&mdash;Another morning
+dawned, awakening thousands to increased
+misery; and many a wretched survivor
+cast looks of envy at his comrades, who
+lay stretched beside him in the quiet sleep
+of death. Daylight was the signal for a
+renewal of that confusion which attended
+every movement of the force.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Many of the troops and followers
+moved without orders at 8 A.M., but
+were recalled by the General, in consequence
+of an arrangement with Akber
+Khan. &quot;This delay, and prolongation
+of their sufferings in the
+snow, of which one more march would
+have carried them clear, made a very
+unfavourable impression on the minds
+of the native soldiery, who now, for
+the first time, began very generally
+to entertain the idea of deserting.&quot;
+And it is not to be wondered at, that
+the instinct of self-preservation should
+have led them to falter in their fealty
+when the condition of the whole army
+had become utterly hopeless.</p>
+
+<p>Akber Khan now proposed that the
+ladies and children should be made
+over to his care; and, anxious to save
+them further suffering, the General
+gave his consent to the arrangement,
+permitting their husbands and the
+wounded officers to accompany them.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Up to this time scarcely one of the
+ladies had tasted a meal since leaving Cabul.
+Some had infants a few days old at
+the breast, and were unable to stand without
+assistance. Others were so far advanced
+in pregnancy, that, under ordinary
+circumstances, a walk across a drawing-room
+would have been an exertion; yet
+<a class="pagenum" name="page263" id="page263" title="263"></a>these helpless women, with their young families,
+had already been obliged to rough it
+on the backs of camels, and on the tops of
+the baggage yaboos: those who had a horse
+to ride, or were capable of sitting on one,
+were considered fortunate indeed. Most
+had been without shelter since quitting the
+cantonment&mdash;their servants had nearly all
+deserted or been killed&mdash;and, with the
+exception of Lady Macnaghten and Mrs
+Trevor, they had lost all their baggage,
+having nothing in the world left but the
+clothes on their backs; <i>those</i>, in the case
+of some of the invalids, consisted of <i>night
+dresses</i> in which they had started from
+Cabul in their litters. Under such circumstances,
+a few more hours would probably
+have seen some of them stiffening corpses.
+The offer of Mahomed Akber was consequently
+their only chance of preservation.
+The husbands, better clothed and hardy,
+would have infinitely preferred taking their
+chance with the troops; but where is the
+man who would prefer his own safety, when
+he thought he could by his presence assist
+and console those near and dear to him?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not, therefore, wonderful, that
+from persons so circumstanced the General's
+proposal should have met with little
+opposition, although it was a matter of
+serious doubt whether the whole were
+not rushing into the very jaws of death,
+by placing themselves at the mercy of a
+man who had so lately imbrued his hands
+in the blood of a British envoy, whom he
+had lured to destruction by similar professions
+of peace and good-will.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Anticipating an attack, the troops
+paraded to repel it, and it was now
+found that the 44th mustered only
+100 files, and the native infantry regiments
+about sixty each. &quot;The promises
+of Mahomed Akber to provide
+food and fuel were unfulfilled, and
+another night of starvation and cold
+consigned more victims to a miserable
+death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p><i>January</i> 10.&mdash;At break of day all
+was again confusion, every one hurrying
+to the front, and dreading above
+all things to be left in the rear. The
+Europeans were the only efficient men
+left, the Hindostanees having suffered
+so severely from the frost in their
+hands and feet, that few could hold a
+musket, much less pull a trigger.
+The enemy had occupied the rocks
+above the gorge, and thence poured a
+destructive fire upon the column as it
+slowly advanced. Fresh numbers fell
+at every volley. The sepoys, unable to
+use their arms, cast them away, and,
+with the followers, fled for their lives.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;The Affghans now rushed down upon
+their helpless and unresisting victims
+sword in hand, and a general massacre
+took place. The last small remnant of
+the native infantry regiments were here
+scattered and destroyed; and the public
+treasure, with all the remaining baggage,
+fell into the hands of the enemy. Meanwhile,
+the advance, after pushing through
+the Tungee with great loss, had reached
+Kubbur-i-Jubbar, about five miles a-head,
+without more opposition. Here they
+halted to enable the rear to join, but, from
+the few stragglers who from time to time
+came up, the astounding truth was brought
+to light, that of all who had that morning
+marched from Khoord-Cabul they
+were almost the sole survivors, nearly the
+whole of the main and rear columns having
+been cut off and destroyed. About
+50 horse-artillerymen, with one twelve-pounder
+howitzer, 70 files H.M.'s 44th,
+and 150 cavalry troopers, now composed
+the whole Cabul force; but, notwithstanding
+the slaughter and dispersion that had
+taken place, the camp-followers still formed
+a considerable body.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>Another remonstrance was now addressed
+to Akber Khan. He declared,
+in reply, his inability to restrain
+the Giljyes. As the troops entered a
+narrow defile at the foot of the Huft
+Kotul, they found it strewn with the
+dead bodies of their companions. A
+destructive fire was maintained on the
+troops from the heights on either side,
+and fresh numbers of dead and wounded
+lined the course of the stream.
+&quot;Brigadier Shelton commanded the
+rear with a few Europeans, and but
+for his persevering energy and unflinching
+fortitude in repelling the
+assailants, it is probable the whole
+would have been there sacrificed.&quot;
+They encamped in the Tezeen valley,
+having lost 12,000 men since leaving
+Cabul; fifteen officers had been killed
+and wounded in this day's march.</p>
+
+<p>After resting three hours, they
+marched, under cover of the darkness,
+at seven P.M. Here the last
+gun was abandoned, and with it Dr
+Cardew, whose zeal and gallantry had
+endeared him to the soldiers; and a
+little further on Dr Duff was left on
+the road in a state of utter exhaustion.</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;Bodies of the neighbouring tribes
+were by this time on the alert, and fired
+at random from the heights, it being fortunately
+too dark for them to aim with
+precision; but the panic-stricken camp-followers
+now resembled a herd of startled
+deer, and fluctuated backwards and forwards,
+<i>en masse</i>, at every shot, blocking
+up the entire road, and fatally retarding
+<a class="pagenum" name="page264" id="page264" title="264"></a>the progress of the little body of soldiers
+who, under Brigadier Shelton, brought up
+the rear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Burik-&agrave;b a heavy fire was encountered
+by the hindmost from some caves
+near the road-side, occasioning fresh disorder,
+which continued all the way to Kutter-Sung,
+where the advance arrived at
+dawn of day, and awaited the junction of
+the rear, which did not take place till 8
+A.M.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p><i>January</i> 11.&mdash; ...</p>
+
+<div class='blkquot'><p>&quot;From Kutter-Sung to Jugdulluk it
+was one continued conflict; Brigadier
+Shelton, with his brave little band in the
+rear, holding overwhelming numbers in
+check, and literally performing wonders.
+But no efforts could avail to ward off the
+withering fire of juzails, which from all
+sides assailed the crowded column, lining
+the road with bleeding carcasses. About
+three P.M. the advance reached Jugdulluk,
+and took up its position behind some
+ruined walls that crowned a height by the
+road-side. To show an imposing front,
+the officers extended themselves in line,
+and Captain Grant, assistant adjutant-general,
+at the same moment received a
+wound in the face. From this eminence
+they cheered their comrades under Brigadier
+Shelton in the rear, as they still
+struggled their way gallantly along every
+foot of ground, perseveringly followed up
+by their merciless enemy, until they arrived
+at their ground. But even here
+rest was denied them; for the Affghans,
+immediately occupying two hills which
+commanded the position, kept up a fire
+from which the walls of the enclosure afforded
+but a partial shelter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The exhausted troops and followers
+now began to suffer greatly from thirst,
+which they were unable to satisfy. A
+tempting stream trickled near the foot of
+the hill, but to venture down to it was
+certain death. Some snow that covered
+the ground was eagerly devoured, but increased,
+instead of alleviating, their sufferings.
+The raw flesh of three bullocks,
+which had fortunately been saved, was
+served out to the soldiers, and ravenously
+swallowed.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<p>About half-past three Akber Khan
+sent for Capt. Skinner, who promptly
+obeyed the call, hoping still to effect
+some arrangement for the preservation
+of those who survived. The men now
+threw themselves down, hoping for a
+brief repose, but the enemy poured
+volleys from the heights into the enclosures
+in rapid succession. Captain
+Bygrave, with about fifteen brave
+Europeans, sallied forth, determined
+to drive the enemy from the heights
+or perish in the attempt. They succeeded;
+but the enemy, who had fled
+before them, returned and resumed
+their fatal fire. At five P.M. Captain
+Skinner returned with a message from
+Akber Khan, requesting the presence
+of the General at a conference, and demanding
+Brigadier Shelton and Capt.
+Johnson as hostages for the surrender
+of Jellalabad. The troops saw the departure
+of these officers with despair,
+feeling assured that these treacherous
+negotiations &quot;were preparatory to
+fresh sacrifices of blood.&quot; The General
+and his companions were received
+with every outward token of
+kindness, and they were supplied with
+food, but they were not permitted to
+return. The Sirdar put the General
+off with promises; and at seven P.M.
+on the 12th, firing being heard, it was
+ascertained that the troops, impatient
+of further delay, had actually moved
+off. Before their departure Captain
+Skinner had been treacherously shot.
+They had been exposed during the
+whole day to the fire of the enemy&mdash;&quot;sally
+after sally had been made by
+the Europeans, bravely led by Major
+Thain, Captain Bygrave, and Lieutenants
+Wade and Macartney, but
+again and again the enemy returned
+to worry and destroy. Night came,
+and all further delay in such a place
+being useless, the whole sallied forth,
+determined to pursue the route to Jellalabad
+at all risks.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The sick and the wounded were
+necessarily abandoned to their fate.
+For some time the Giljyes seemed not
+to be on the alert; but in the defile, at
+the top of the rise, further progress
+was obstructed by barriers formed
+of prickly trees. This caused great delay,
+and &quot;a terrible fire was poured
+in from all quarters&mdash;a massacre even
+worse than that of the Tunga Tarikee<a id="footnotetag24" name="footnotetag24" href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a>
+commenced, the Affghans rushing in
+furiously upon the pent-up crowd of
+troops and followers, and committing
+wholesale slaughter. A miserable
+remnant managed to clear the barriers.
+Twelve officers, amongst whom
+was Brigadier Anquetil, were killed.
+Upwards of forty others succeeded in
+pushing through, about twelve of
+whom, being pretty well mounted,
+rode on a-head of the rest with the
+few remaining cavalry, intending to
+<a class="pagenum" name="page265" id="page265" title="265"></a>make the best of their way to Jellalabad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The country now became more
+open&mdash;the Europeans dispersed, in
+small parties under different officers.
+The Giljyes were too much occupied
+in plundering the dead to pursue
+them, but they were much delayed by
+the amiable anxiety of the men to
+carry on their wounded comrades.
+The morning of the 13th dawned as
+they approached Gundamuk, revealing
+to the enemy the insignificance of
+their numerical strength; and they
+were compelled, by the vigorous assaults
+of the Giljyes, to take up a
+defensive position on a height to the
+left of the road, &quot;where they made a
+resolute stand, determined to sell
+their lives at the dearest possible price.
+At this time they could only muster
+about twenty muskets.&quot; An attempt
+to effect an amicable arrangement
+terminated in a renewal of hostilities,
+and &quot;the enemy marked off man after
+man, and officer after officer, with unerring
+aim. Parties of Affghans
+rushed up at intervals to complete the
+work of extermination, but were as
+often driven back by the still dauntless
+handful of invincibles. At length,
+all being wounded more or less, a final
+onset of the enemy, sword in hand,
+terminated the unequal struggle and
+completed the dismal tragedy.&quot; Captain
+Souter, who was wounded, and
+three or four privates, were spared and
+led away captive. Major Griffiths
+and Captain Blewitt, having descended
+to confer with the enemy,
+had been previously led off. Of the
+twelve officers who had gone on in advance
+eleven were destroyed, and Dr
+Brydon alone of the whole Cabul
+force reached Jellalabad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such was the memorable retreat
+of the British army from Cabul, which,
+viewed in all its circumstances&mdash;in
+the military conduct which preceded
+and brought about such a consummation,
+the treachery, disaster, and
+suffering which accompanied it&mdash;is,
+perhaps, without a parallel in history.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page266" id="page266" title="266"></a>
+<a name="bw328s9" id="bw328s9"></a><h2>THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.</h2>
+
+<p>Since the day when Lord Auckland,
+by his famous proclamation in
+October 1838, &quot;directed the assemblage
+of a British force for service
+across the Indus,&quot; we have never
+ceased to denounce the invasion and
+continued occupation of Affghanistan
+as equally unjust and impolitic<a id="footnotetag25" name="footnotetag25" href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a>&mdash;unjust,
+as directed against a people
+whose conduct had afforded us no
+legitimate grounds of hostility, and
+against a ruler whose only offence
+was, that he had accepted<a id="footnotetag26" name="footnotetag26" href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a> the proffer
+from another quarter of that support
+and alliance which we had denied to
+his earnest entreaty&mdash;and impolitic,
+as tending not only to plunge us into
+an endless succession of ruinous and
+unprofitable warfare, but to rouse
+against us an implacable spirit of enmity,
+in a nation which had hitherto
+shown every disposition to cultivate
+amicable relations with our Anglo-Indian
+Government. In all points,
+our anticipations have been fatally
+verified. After more than two years
+consumed in unavailing efforts to
+complete the reduction of the country,
+our army of occupation was at
+last overwhelmed by the universal
+and irresistible outbreak of an indignant
+and fanatic population; and
+the restored monarch, Shah-Shoojah,
+(&quot;whose popularity throughout Affghanistan
+had been proved to the
+Governor-general by the strong and
+unanimous testimony of the best authorities&quot;)
+perished, as soon as he lost
+the protection of foreign bayonets, by
+the hands of his outraged countrymen.<a id="footnotetag27" name="footnotetag27" href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The tottering and unsubstantial
+phantom of a <i>Doorauni kingdom</i> vanished
+at once and for ever&mdash;and the
+only remaining alternative was, (as
+we stated the case in our number of
+last July,) &quot;either to perpetrate a
+second act of violence and national
+injustice, by reconquering Affghanistan
+<i>for the vindication</i> (as the phrase
+is) <i>of our military honour</i>, and holding
+it without disguise as a province
+of our empire&mdash;or to make the best
+of a bad bargain, by contenting ourselves
+with the occupation of a few
+posts on the frontier, and leaving the
+unhappy natives to recover, without
+foreign interference, from the dreadful
+state of anarchy into which our
+irruption has thrown them.&quot; Fortunately
+for British interests in the
+East, the latter course has been
+adopted. After a succession of brilliant
+military triumphs, which, in the
+words of Lord Ellenborough's recent
+proclamation, &quot;have, in one short
+campaign, avenged our late disasters
+upon every scene of past misfortune,&quot;
+the evacuation of the country has
+been directed&mdash;not, however, before a
+<a class="pagenum" name="page267" id="page267" title="267"></a>fortunate chance had procured the
+liberation of <i>all</i> the prisoners who
+had fallen into the power of the Affghans
+in January last; and ere this
+time, we trust, not a single British
+regiment remains on the bloodstained
+soil of Affghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>The proclamation above referred
+to,<a id="footnotetag28" name="footnotetag28" href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a> (which we have given at length
+at the conclusion of this article,) announcing
+these events, and defining
+the line of policy in future to be pursued
+by the Anglo-Indian Government,
+is in all respects a remarkable
+document. As a specimen of frankness
+and plain speaking, it stands
+unique in the history of diplomacy;
+and, accordingly, both its matter and
+its manner have been made the subjects
+of unqualified censure by those
+scribes of the Opposition press who,
+&quot;content to dwell in forms for ever,&quot;
+have accustomed themselves to regard
+the mystified protocols of Lord Palmerston
+as the models of official style.
+The <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, with amusing
+ignorance of the state of the public
+mind in India, condemns the Governor-general
+for allowing it to
+become known to the natives that
+the abandonment of Affghanistan was
+in consequence of a change of policy!
+conceiving (we suppose) that our Indian
+subjects would otherwise have
+believed the Cabul disasters to have
+formed part of the original plan of
+the war, and to have veiled some purpose
+of inscrutable wisdom; while the
+<i>Globe</i>, (Dec. 3,) after a reluctant
+admission that &quot;the policy itself of
+evacuating the country <i>may be wise</i>,&quot;
+would fain deprive Lord Ellenborough
+of the credit of having originated this
+decisive step, by an assertion that &quot;we
+have discovered no proof that a permanent
+possession of the country beyond
+the Indus was contemplated by
+his predecessor.&quot; It would certainly
+have been somewhat premature in
+Lord Auckland to have announced his
+ultimate intentions on this point while
+the country in question was as yet but
+imperfectly subjugated, or when our
+troops were subsequently almost
+driven out of it; but the views of
+the then home Government, from
+which it is to be presumed that Lord
+Auckland received his instructions,
+were pretty clearly revealed in the
+House of Commons on the 10th of
+August last, by one whose authority
+the <i>Globe</i>, at least, will scarcely dispute&mdash;by
+Lord Palmerston himself.
+To prevent the possibility of misconstruction,
+we quote the words attributed
+to the late Foreign Secretary.
+After drawing the somewhat unwarrantable
+inference, from Sir Robert
+Peel's statement, &quot;that no immediate
+withdrawal of our troops from Candahar
+and Jellalabad was contemplated,&quot;
+that an order had at one time been
+given for the abandonment of Affghanistan,
+he proceeds&mdash;&quot;I do trust
+that her Majesty's Government will
+not carry into effect, either immediately
+or at <i>any</i> future time, the arrangement
+thus contemplated. It was all very
+well when we were in power, and it
+was suited to party purposes, to run
+down any thing we had done, and to
+represent as valueless any acquisition
+on which we may have prided ourselves&mdash;it
+was all very well to raise an
+outcry against the Affghan expedition,
+and to undervalue the great advantages
+which the possession of the
+country was calculated to afford us&mdash;but
+I trust the Government will rise
+above any consideration of that sort,
+and that they will give the matter
+their fair, dispassionate, and deliberate
+consideration. I must say, I never
+was more convinced of any thing in
+the whole course of my life&mdash;and I
+may be believed when I speak my
+earnest conviction&mdash;that the most important
+interests of this country, both
+commercial and political, would be
+sacrificed, if we were to sacrifice the
+military possession of the country of
+Eastern Affghanistan.&quot; Is it in the
+power of words to convey a clearer
+admission, that the pledge embodied
+in Lord Auckland's manifesto&mdash;&quot;to
+withdraw the British army as soon as
+the independence and integrity of Affghanistan
+should be secured by the
+establishment of the Shah&quot;&mdash;was in
+fact mere moonshine: and the real object
+of the expedition was the conquest
+of a country advantageously situated
+<a class="pagenum" name="page268" id="page268" title="268"></a>for the defence of our Indian frontier
+against (as it now appears) an imaginary
+invader? Thus Napoleon, in
+December 1810, alleged &quot;the necessity,
+in consequence of the new order
+of things which has arisen, of new
+guarantees for the security of my empire,&quot;
+as a pretext for that wholesale
+measure of territorial spoliation in
+Northern Germany, which, from the
+umbrage it gave Russia, proved ultimately
+the cause of his downfall: but
+it was reserved for us of the present
+day, to hear a <i>British</i> minister avow
+and justify a violent and perfidious
+usurpation on the plea of political expediency.
+It must indeed be admitted
+that, in the early stages of the war,
+the utter iniquity of the measure met
+with but faint reprobation from any
+party in the state: the nation, dazzled
+by the long-disused splendours of military
+glory, was willing, without any
+very close enquiry, to take upon trust
+all the assertions so confidently put
+forth on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah,
+the hostile machinations of Dost
+Mohammed, and the philanthropic and
+disinterested wishes of the Indian Government
+for (to quote a notable
+phrase to which we have more than
+once previously referred) &quot;<i>the reconstruction
+of the social edifice</i>&quot; in Affghanistan.
+But now that all these
+subterfuges, flimsy as they were at
+best, have been utterly dissipated by
+this undisguised declaration of Lord
+Palmerston, that the real object of
+the war was to seize and hold the
+country on our own account, the attempt
+of the <i>Globe</i> to claim for Lord
+Auckland the credit of having from
+the first contemplated a measure thus
+vehemently protested against and disclaimed
+by the late official leader of
+his party, is rather too barefaced to
+be passed over without comment.</p>
+
+<p>Without, however, occupying ourselves
+further in combating the attacks
+of the Whig press on this proclamation,
+which may very well be left to
+stand on its own merits, we now proceed
+to recapitulate the course of the
+events which have, in a few months, so
+completely changed the aspect of affairs
+beyond the Indus. When we
+took leave, in July last, of the subject
+of the Affghan campaign, we left
+General Pollock, with the force which
+had made its way through the Khyber
+Pass, still stationary at Jellalabad, for
+want (as it was said) of camels and
+other means of transport: while General
+Nott, at Candahar, not only held
+his ground, but victoriously repulsed
+in the open field the Affghan <i>insurgents</i>,
+(as it is the fashion to call them,)
+who were headed by the prince Seifdar-Jung,
+son of Shah Shoojah! and
+General England, after his repulse on
+the 28th of March at the Kojuck Pass,
+remained motionless at Quettah. The
+latter officer (in consequence, as it
+is said, of peremptory orders from General
+Nott to meet him on a given
+day at the further side of the Pass)
+was the first to resume active operations;
+and on the 28th of April, the
+works at Hykulzie in the Kojuck,
+which had been unaccountably represented
+on the former occasion as most
+formidable defences,<a id="footnotetag29" name="footnotetag29" href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a> were carried
+without loss or difficulty, and the force
+continued its march uninterrupted to
+Candahar. The fort of Khelat-i-Ghiljie,
+lying about halfway between
+Candahar and Ghazni, was at the
+sane time gallantly and successfully
+defended by handful of Europeans
+and sepoys, till relieved by the advance
+of a division from Candahar,
+which brought off the garrison, and
+razed the fortifications of the place.
+Girishk, the hereditary stronghold of
+the Barukzye chiefs, about eighty miles
+west of Candahar, was also dismantled
+and abandoned; and all the troops
+in Western Affghanistan were thus
+<a class="pagenum" name="page269" id="page269" title="269"></a>concentrated under the immediate
+command of General Nott, whose success
+in every encounter with the Affghans
+continued to be so decisive, that
+all armed opposition disappeared from
+the neighbourhood of Candahar; and
+the prince Seifdar-Jung, despairing of
+the cause, of which he had perhaps
+been from the first not a very willing
+supporter, came in and made his submission
+to the British commander.</p>
+
+<p>During the progress of these triumphant
+operations in Western Affghanistan,
+General Pollock still lay inactive
+at Jellalabad; and some abortive
+attempts were made to negotiate with
+the dominant party at Cabul for the
+release of the prisoners taken the
+preceding winter. Since the death of
+Shah-Shoojah, the throne had been
+nominally filled by his third son,
+Futteh-Jung, the only one of the
+princes who was on the spot; but
+all the real power was vested, with
+the rank of vizier, in the hands of
+Akhbar Khan, who had not only
+possessed himself of the Bala-Hissar
+and the treasure of the late
+king, but had succeeded in recruiting
+the forces of the Affghan league, by
+a reconciliation with Ameen-ullah
+Khan,<a id="footnotetag30" name="footnotetag30" href="#footnote30"><sup>30</sup></a> the original leader of the outbreak,
+with whom he had formerly
+been at variance. All efforts, however,
+to procure the liberation of the
+captives, on any other condition than
+the liberation of Dost Mohammed, and
+the evacuation of Affghanistan by the
+English, (as hostages for which they
+had originally been given,) proved
+fruitless; and at length, after more
+than four months' delay, during which
+several sharp affairs had taken place
+with advanced bodies of the Affghans,
+General Pollock moved forward with
+his whole force, on the 20th of August,
+against Cabul. This city had
+again in the mean time become a scene
+of tumult and disorder&mdash;the Kizilbashes
+or Persian inhabitants, as well
+as many of the native chiefs, resisting
+the exactions of Akhbar Khan; who,
+at last, irritated by the opposition to
+his measures, imprisoned the titular
+shah, Futteh-Jung, in the Bala-Hissar;
+whence he succeeded after a
+time in escaping, and made his appearance,
+in miserable plight, (Sept.
+1,) at the British headquarters at Futtehabad,
+between Jellalabad and Gundamuck.
+The advance of the army was
+constantly opposed by detached bodies
+of the enemy, and several spirited
+skirmishes took place:&mdash;till, on the
+13th of September, the main Affghan
+force, to the number of 16,000 men,
+under Akhbar Khan and other leaders,
+was descried on the heights near
+Tazeen, (where the slaughter of our
+troops had taken place in January,)
+at the entrance of the formidable
+defiles called the Huft-Kothul, or
+Seven Passes. It is admitted on all
+hands that in this last struggle, (as
+they believed, for independence,) the
+Affghans fought with most distinguished
+gallantry, frequently charging
+sword in hand upon the bayonets;
+but their irregular valour eventually
+gave way before the discipline of their
+opponents, and a total rout took place.
+The chiefs fled in various directions,
+&quot;abandoning Cabul to the <i>avengers of
+British wrongs</i>,&quot; who entered the city
+in triumph on the 15th, and hoisted
+the British colours on the Bala-Hissar.
+The principal point now remaining
+to be effected was the rescue of
+the prisoners whom Akhbar Khan had
+carried off with him in his flight, with
+the intention (as was rumoured) of
+transporting them into Turkestan;
+but from this peril they were fortunately
+delivered by the venality of
+the chief to whose care they had been
+temporarily intrusted; and on the
+21st they all reached the camp in safety,
+with the exception of Captain Bygrave,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page270" id="page270" title="270"></a>who was also liberated, a few days
+later, by the voluntary act of Akhbar
+himself.<a id="footnotetag31" name="footnotetag31" href="#footnote31"><sup>31</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>General Nott, meanwhile, in pursuance
+of his secret orders from the
+Supreme Government, had been making
+preparations for abandoning Candahar;
+and, on the 7th and 8th of
+August, the city was accordingly evacuated,
+both by his corps and by the
+division of General England&mdash;the
+Affghan prince, Seifdar-Jung, being
+left in possession of the place. The
+routes of the two commanders were
+now separated. General England,
+with an immense train of luggage,
+stores, &amp;c., directed his march through
+the Kojuck Pass to Quettah, which
+he reached with little opposition;&mdash;while
+Nott, with a more lightly-equipped
+column, about 7000 strong,
+advanced by Khelat-i-Ghiljie against
+Ghazni. This offensive movement
+appears to have taken the Affghans at
+first by surprise; and it was not till
+he arrived within thirty-eight miles
+of Ghazni that General Nott found
+his progress opposed (August 30) by
+12,000 men under the governor,
+Shams-o-deen Khan, a cousin of Mohammed
+Akhbar. The dispersion of
+this tumultuary array was apparently
+accomplished (as far as can be gathered
+from the extremely laconic despatches
+of the General) without much
+difficulty; and, on the 6th of September,
+after a sharp skirmish in the environs,
+the British once more entered
+Ghazni. In the city and neighbouring
+villages were found not fewer
+than 327 sepoys of the former garrison,
+which had been massacred to a
+man (according to report) immediately
+after the surrender; but notwithstanding
+this evidence of the moderation
+with which the Affghans had
+used their triumph, General Nott, (in
+obedience, as is said, to the <i>positive
+tenor of his instructions</i>,) &quot;directed the
+city of Ghazni, with the citadel and
+the whole of its works, to be destroyed;&quot;
+and this order appears, from
+the engineer's report, to have been rigorously
+carried into effect. The
+mace of Mamood Shah Ghaznevi, the
+first Moslem conqueror of Hindostan,
+and the famous sandal-wood portals of
+his tomb, (once the gates of the great
+Hindoo temple at Somnaut,<a id="footnotetag32" name="footnotetag32" href="#footnote32"><sup>32</sup></a>) were
+carried off as trophies: the ruins of
+Ghazni were left as a monument of
+British vengeance; and General Nott,
+resuming his march, and again routing
+Shams-o-deen Khan at the defiles
+of Myden, effected his junction with
+General Pollock, on the 17th of September,
+at Cabul; whence the united
+corps, together mustering 18,000 effective
+men, were to take the route for
+Hindostan through the Punjab early
+in October.</p>
+
+<p>Such have been the principal events
+of the brief but brilliant campaign
+which has concluded the Affghan war,
+and which, if regarded solely in a military
+point of view, must be admitted
+to have amply vindicated the lustre of
+the British arms from the transient
+cloud cast on them by the failures and
+disasters of last winter.</p>
+
+<p>The Affghan tragedy, however,
+may now, we hope, be considered as
+concluded, so far as related to our own
+participation in its crimes and calamities;
+but for the Affghans themselves,
+&quot;left to create a government in the
+midst of anarchy,&quot; there can be at present
+little chance of even comparative
+tranquillity, after the total dislocation
+of their institutions and internal relations
+by the fearful torrent of war
+which has swept over the country.
+The last atonement now in our power
+to make, both to the people and the
+ruler whom we have so deeply injured,
+as well as the best course for our own
+interests, would be at once to release
+Dost Mohammed from the unmerited
+and ignominious confinement to which
+he has been subjected in Hindostan,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page271" id="page271" title="271"></a>and to send him back in honour to
+Cabul; where his own ancient partisans,
+as well as those of his son,
+would quickly rally round him; and
+where his presence and accustomed
+authority might have some effect in
+restraining the crowd of fierce chiefs,
+who will be ready to tear each other
+to pieces as soon as they are released
+from the presence of the <i>Feringhis</i>.
+There would thus be at least a possibility
+of obtaining a nucleus for the
+re-establishment of something like
+good order; while in no other quarter
+does there appear much prospect of a
+government being formed, which
+might be either &quot;approved by the
+Affghans themselves,&quot; or &quot;capable of
+maintaining friendly relations with
+neighbouring states.&quot; If the accounts
+received may be depended upon, our
+troops had scarcely cleared the Kojuck
+Pass, on their way from Candahar to
+the Indus, when that city became the
+scene of a contest between the Prince
+Seifdar-Jung and the Barukzye chiefs
+in the vicinity; and though the latter
+are said to have been worsted in the
+first instance, there can be little doubt
+that our departure will be the signal
+for the speedy return of the quondam
+<i>Sirdars</i>, or rulers of Candahar, (brothers
+of Dost Mohammed,) who have
+found an asylum in Persia since their
+expulsion in 1839, but who will scarcely
+neglect so favourable an opportunity
+for recovering their lost authority.
+Yet another competitor may still, perhaps,
+be found in the same quarter&mdash;one
+whose name, though sufficiently
+before the public a few years since,
+has now been almost forgotten in the
+strife of more mighty interests. This
+is Shah Kamran of Herat, the rumours
+of whose death or dethronement prove
+to have been unfounded, and who certainly
+would have at this moment a
+better chance than he has ever yet
+had, for regaining at least Candahar
+and Western Affghanistan. He was
+said to be on the point of making the
+attempt after the repulse of the Persians
+before Herat, just before our
+adoption of Shah-Shoojah; and his
+title to the crown is at least as good
+as that of the late Shah, or any of his
+sons. It will be strange if this prince,
+whose danger from Persia was the
+original pretext for crossing the Indus,
+should be the only one of all the parties
+concerned, whose condition underwent
+no ultimate change, through
+all the vicissitudes of the tempest
+which has raged around him.</p>
+
+<p>Nor are the elements of discord less
+abundant and complicated on the side
+of Cabul. The defeat of Tazeen will
+not, any more than the preceding ones,
+have annihilated Akhbar Khan and his
+confederate chiefs:&mdash;they are still
+hovering in the Kohistan, and will
+doubtless lose no time in returning to
+Cabul as soon as the retreat of the
+English is ascertained. It is true
+that the civil wars of the Affghans,
+though frequent, have never been protracted
+or sanguinary:&mdash;like the
+Highlanders, as described by Bailie
+Nicol Jarvie, &quot;though they may quarrel
+among themselves, and gie ilk
+ither ill names, and may be a slash
+wi' a claymore, they are sure to join
+in the long run against a' civilized
+folk:&quot;&mdash;but it is scarcely possible that
+so many conflicting interests, now
+that the bond of common danger is
+removed, can be reconciled without
+strife and bloodshed. It is possible,
+indeed, that Futteh-Jung (whom the
+last accounts state to have remained
+at Cabul when our troops withdrew,
+in the hope of maintaining himself on
+the musnud, and who is said to be the
+most acceptable to the Affghans of
+the four sons<a id="footnotetag33" name="footnotetag33" href="#footnote33"><sup>33</sup></a> of Shah-Shoojah) may
+be allowed to retain for a time the title
+of king; but he had no treasure and
+few partizans; and the rooted distaste
+of the Affghans for the titles and prerogatives
+of royalty is so well ascertained,
+that Dost Mohammed, even in
+the plenitude of his power, never ventured
+to assume them. All speculations
+on these points, however, can at
+present amount to nothing more than
+vague conjecture; the troubled waters
+must have time to settle, before any
+thing can be certainly prognosticated
+<a class="pagenum" name="page272" id="page272" title="272"></a>as to the future destinies of Affghanistan.</p>
+
+<p>The kingdom of the Punjab will
+now become the barrier between Affghanistan
+and our north-western frontier
+in India; and it is said that the
+Sikhs, already in possession of Peshawer
+and the rich plain extending to
+the foot of the Khyber mountains,
+have undertaken in future to occupy
+the important defiles of this range,
+and the fort of Ali-Musjid, so as to
+keep the Affghans within bounds. It
+seems to us doubtful, however, whether
+they will be able to maintain
+themselves long, unaided, in this perilous
+advanced post: though the national
+animosity which subsists between
+them and the Affghans is a sufficient
+pledge of their good-will for the
+service&mdash;and their co-operation in the
+late campaign against Cabul has been
+rendered with a zeal and promptitude
+affording a strong contrast to their lukewarmness
+at the beginning of the war,
+when they conceived its object to be
+the re-establishment of the monarchy
+and national unity of their inveterate
+foes. But the vigour of the Sikh
+kingdom, and the discipline and efficiency
+of their troops, have greatly
+declined in the hands of the present
+sovereign, Shere Singh, who, though
+a frank and gallant soldier, has little
+genius for civil government, and is
+thwarted and overborne in his measures
+by the overweening power of the
+minister, Rajah Dhian Singh, who
+originally rose to eminence by the favour
+of Runjeet. At present, our information
+as to the state of politics in
+the Punjab is not very explicit, the
+intelligence from India during several
+months, having been almost wholly engrossed
+by the details of the campaign
+in Affghanistan; but as far as can be
+gathered from these statements, the
+country has been brought, by the insubordination
+of the troops, and the
+disputes of the Maharajah and his Minister,
+to a state not far removed from
+anarchy. It is said that the fortress
+of Govindghur, where the vast treasures
+amassed by Runjeet are deposited,
+has been taken possession of by
+the malecontent faction, and that Shere
+Singh has applied for the assistance
+of our troops to recover it; and the
+<i>Delhi Gazette</i> even goes so far as to
+assert that this prince, &quot;disgusted with
+the perpetual turmoil in which he is
+embroiled, and feeling his incapacity
+of ruling his turbulent chieftains, is
+willing to cede his country to us, and
+become a pensioner of our Government.&quot;
+But this announcement,
+though confidently given, we believe
+to be at least premature. That the
+Punjab must inevitably, sooner or
+later, become part of the Anglo-Indian
+empire, either as a subsidiary
+power, like the Nizam, or directly, as a
+province, no one can doubt; but its
+incorporation at this moment, in the
+teeth of our late declaration against
+any further extension of territory, and
+at the time when the Sikhs are zealously
+fulfilling their engagements as
+our allies, would be both injudicious
+and unpopular in the highest degree.
+An interview, however, is reported to
+have been arranged between Lord
+Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which
+is to take place in the course of the
+ensuing summer, and at which some
+definitive arrangements will probably
+be entered into, on the future political
+relations of the two Governments.<a id="footnotetag34" name="footnotetag34" href="#footnote34"><sup>34</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>The only permanent accession of
+territory, then, which will result from
+the Affghan war, will consist in the
+extension of our frontier along the
+whole course of the Sutlej and Lower
+Indus&mdash;&quot;the limits which nature appears
+to have assigned to the Indian
+empire&quot;&mdash;and in the altered relations
+with some of the native states consequent
+on these arrangements. As far
+as Loodeana, indeed, our frontier on
+the Sutlej has long been well established,
+and defined by our recognition
+of the Sikh kingdom on the opposite
+bank;&mdash;but the possessions of the
+chief of Bhawulpoor, extending on the
+left bank nearly from Loodeana to the
+confluence of the Sutlej with the Indus,
+have hitherto been almost exempt
+from British interference;<a id="footnotetag35" name="footnotetag35" href="#footnote35"><sup>35</sup></a> as have
+<a class="pagenum" name="page273" id="page273" title="273"></a>also the petty Rajpoot states of Bikaneer,
+Jesulmeer, &amp;c., which form oases
+in the desert intervening between
+Scinde and the provinces more immediately
+under British control. These,
+it is to be presumed, will now be summarily
+taken under the <i>protection</i> of
+the Anglo-Indian Government:&mdash;but
+more difficulty will probably be experienced
+with the fierce and imperfectly
+subdued tribes of Scindians and Belooches,
+inhabiting the lower valley of
+the Indus;&mdash;and, in order to protect
+the commerce of the river, and maintain
+the undisputed command of its
+course, it will be necessary to retain a
+sufficient extent of vantage-ground
+on the further bank, and to keep up
+in the country an amount of force adequate
+to the effectual coercion of these
+predatory races. For this purpose, a
+<i>place d'armes</i> has been judiciously established
+at Sukkur, a town which,
+communicating with the fort of Bukkur
+on an island of the Indus, and
+with Roree on the opposite bank, effectually
+secures the passage of the
+river; and the ports of Kurrachee
+and Sonmeani on the coast, the future
+marts of the commerce of the Indus,
+have also been garrisoned by British
+troops.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>It has long since been evident<a id="footnotetag36" name="footnotetag36" href="#footnote36"><sup>36</sup></a> that
+Scinde, by that <i>principle of unavoidable
+expansion</i> to which we had so
+often had occasion to refer, must
+eventually have been absorbed into
+the dominions of the Company; but
+the process by which it at last came
+into our hands is so curious a specimen
+of our Bonapartean method of
+dealing with reluctant or refractory
+neutrals, that we cannot pass it altogether
+without notice. Scinde, as
+well as Beloochistan, had formed part
+of the extensive empire subdued by
+Ahmed Shah, the founder of the
+Doorani monarchy; but in the reign
+of his indolent son Timour, the Affghan
+yoke was shaken off by the
+<i>Ameers</i>, or chiefs of the Belooch
+family of Talpoor, who, fixing their
+residences respectively at Hydrabad,
+Meerpoor, and Khyrpoor, defied all
+the efforts of the kings of Cabul to
+reduce them to submission, though
+they more than once averted an invasion
+by the promise of tribute. It has
+been rumoured that Shah-Shoojah,
+during his long exile, made repeated
+overtures to the Cabinet of Calcutta
+for the cession of his dormant claims
+to the <i>suzeraint&eacute;</i> of Scinde, in exchange
+for an equivalent, either pecuniary
+or territorial; but the representations
+of a fugitive prince, who
+proposed to cede what was not in his
+possession, were disregarded by the
+rulers of India; and even in the
+famous manifesto preceding the invasion
+of Affghanistan, Lord Auckland
+announced, that &quot;a guaranteed independence,
+on favourable conditions,
+would be tendered to the Ameers of
+Scinde.&quot; On the appearance of our
+army on the border, however, the
+Ameers demurred, not very unreasonably,
+to the passage of this formidable
+host; and considerable delay ensued,
+from the imperfect information possessed
+by the British commanders of
+the amount of resistance to be expected;
+but at last the country and
+fortress were forcibly occupied; the
+seaport of Kurrachee (where alone
+any armed opposition was attempted)
+was bombarded and captured by our
+ships of war; and a treaty was imposed
+at the point of the bayonet on
+the Scindian rulers, by virtue of
+which they paid a contribution of
+twenty-seven laks of rupees (nearly
+&pound;300,000) to the expenses of the war,
+under the name of arrears of tribute
+to Shah-Shoojah, acknowledging, at
+the same time, the supremacy, <i>not of
+Shah-Shoojah</i>, but of the English
+Government! The tolls on the Indus
+were also abolished, and the navigation
+of the river placed, by a special
+stipulation, wholly under the control
+of British functionaries. Since this
+<a class="pagenum" name="page274" id="page274" title="274"></a>summary procedure, our predominance
+in Scinde has been undisturbed, unless
+by occasional local commotions; but
+the last advices state that the whole
+country is now &quot;in an insurrectionary
+state;&quot; and it is fully expected that
+an attempt will erelong be made to
+follow the example of the Affghans,
+and get rid of the intrusive <i>Feringhis</i>;
+in which case, as the same accounts
+inform us, &quot;the Ameers will be sent
+as state-prisoners to Benares, and the
+territory placed wholly under British
+administration.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may be thought of
+the strict legality of the conveyance,
+in virtue of which Scinde has been converted
+into an integral part of our
+Eastern empire, its geographical position,
+as well as its natural products,
+will render it a most valuable acquisition,
+both in a commercial and political
+point of view. At the beginning
+of the present century, the East-India
+Company had a factory at
+Tatta, (the Pattala of the ancients,)
+the former capital of Scinde, immediately
+above the Delta of the Indus;
+but their agents were withdrawn during
+the anarchy which preceded the
+disruption of the Doorani monarchy.
+From that period till the late occurrences,
+all the commercial intercourse
+with British India was maintained
+either by land-carriage from Cutch,
+by which mode of conveyance the
+opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast
+quantities of which are exported in
+this direction) chiefly found its way
+into Scinde and Beloochistan; or by
+country vessels of a peculiar build, with
+a disproportionately lofty poop, and an
+elongated bow instead of a bowsprit,
+which carried on an uncertain and
+desultory traffic with Bombay and
+some of the Malabar ports. To avoid
+the dangerous sandbanks at the mouths
+of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation
+through the winding streams
+of the Delta, (the course of which, as
+in the Mississippi, changes with every
+inundation,) they usually discharged
+their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence
+they were transported sixty miles
+overland to Tatta, and there embarked
+in flat-bottomed boats on the main
+stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen
+miles N.W. from the Pittee, or
+western mouth of the Indus, and
+Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the
+territory of Lus, between forty and
+fifty miles further in the same direction,
+are the only harbours of import
+in the long sea-coast of Beloochistan;
+and the possession of them gives the
+British the undivided command of a
+trade which, in spite of the late disasters,
+already promises to become
+considerable; while the interposition
+of the now friendly state of Khelat<a id="footnotetag37" name="footnotetag37" href="#footnote37"><sup>37</sup></a>
+between the coast and the perturbed
+tribes of Affghanistan, will secure the
+merchandise landed here a free passage
+into the interior. The trade
+with these ports deserves, indeed, all
+the fostering care of the Indian Government;
+since they must inevitably
+be, at least for some years to come,
+the only inlet for Indian produce into
+Beloochistan, Cabul, and the wide
+regions of Central Asia beyond them.
+The overland carrying trade through
+Scinde and the Punjab, in which (according
+to M. Masson) not less than
+6500 camels were annually employed,
+has been almost annihilated&mdash;not only
+by the confusion arising from the war,
+but from the absolute want of means
+of transport, from the unprecedented
+destruction of the camels occasioned
+<a class="pagenum" name="page275" id="page275" title="275"></a>by the exigencies of the commissariat,
+&amp;c. The rocky defiles of Affghanistan
+were heaped with the carcasses of
+these indispensable animals, 50,000 of
+which (as is proved by the official returns)
+perished in this manner in the
+course of three years; and some years
+must necessarily elapse before the
+chasm thus made in the numbers of
+the species throughout North-western
+India can be supplied. The immense
+expenditure of the Army of Occupation,
+at the same time, brought such
+an influx of specie into Affghanistan,
+as had never been known since the
+sack of Delhi by Ahmed Shah Doorani&mdash;while
+the traffic with India being
+at a stand-still for the reasons we have
+just given, the superfluity of capital
+thus produced was driven to find an
+outlet in the northern markets of
+Bokhara and Turkestan. The consequence
+of this has been, that Russian
+manufactures to an enormous
+amount have been poured into these
+regions, by way of Astrakhan and the
+Caspian, to meet this increasing demand;
+and the value of Russian commerce
+with Central Asia, which (as
+we pointed out in April 1840, p. 522)
+had for many years been progressively
+declining, was doubled during 1840
+and 1841, (<i>Bombay Times</i>, April 2,
+1842,) and is believed to be still on
+the increase! The opening of the
+navigation of the Indus, with the exertions
+of the Bombay Chamber of
+Commerce to establish depots on its
+course, and to facilitate the transmission
+of goods into the surrounding
+countries, has already done much for
+the restoration of traffic in this direction,
+in spite of the efforts of the Russian
+agents in the north to keep possession
+of the opening thus unexpectedly
+afforded them; but it cannot be
+denied that the &quot;great enlargement of
+our field of commerce,&quot; so confidently
+prognosticated by Lord Palmerston,
+from &quot;the great operations undertaken
+in the countries lying west of
+the Indus,&quot; has run a heavy risk of
+being permanently diverted into other
+channels, by the operation of the
+causes detailed above.</p>
+
+<p>Before we finally dismiss the subject
+of the Affghan war and its consequences,
+we cannot overlook one
+feature in the termination of the contest,
+which is of the highest importance,
+as indicating a return to a better
+system than that miserable course of
+reduction and parsimony, which, for
+some years past, has slowly but surely
+been alienating the attachment, and
+breaking down the military spirit, of
+our native army. We refer to the
+distribution, by order of Lord Ellenborough,
+of badges of honorary distinction,
+as well as of more substantial
+rewards, in the form of augmented
+allowances,<a id="footnotetag38" name="footnotetag38" href="#footnote38"><sup>38</sup></a> &amp;c., to the sepoy corps
+which have borne the brunt of the
+late severe campaign. Right well
+have these honours and gratuities
+been merited; nor could any measure
+have been better timed to strengthen
+in the hearts of the sepoys the bonds
+of the <i>Feringhi salt</i>, to which they
+have so long proved faithful. The
+policy, as well as the justice, of holding
+out every inducement which may
+rivet the attachment of the native
+troops to our service, obvious as it
+must appear, has in truth been of late
+too much neglected;<a id="footnotetag39" name="footnotetag39" href="#footnote39"><sup>39</sup></a> and it has become
+at this juncture doubly imperative,
+both from the severe and
+unpopular duty in which a considerable
+portion of the troops have
+recently been engaged, and from the
+widely-spread disaffection which has
+<a class="pagenum" name="page276" id="page276" title="276"></a>lately manifested itself in various quarters
+among the native population.
+We predicted in July, as the probable
+consequence of our reverses in Affghanistan,
+some open manifestation
+of the spirit of revolt constantly
+smouldering among the various races
+of our subjects in India, but the prophecy
+had already been anticipated
+by the event. The first overt resistance
+to authority appeared in Bhundelkund,
+a wild and imperfectly subjugated
+province in the centre of Hindostan,
+inhabited by a fierce people
+called Bhoondelahs. An insurrection,
+in which nearly all the native chiefs
+are believed to be implicated, broke
+out here early in April; and a desultory
+and harassing warfare has since
+been carried on in the midst of the almost
+impenetrable jungles and ravines
+which overspread the district. The
+Nawab of Banda and the Bhoondee
+Rajah, a Moslem and a Hindoo prince,
+respectively of some note in the neighbourhood
+of the disturbed tracts, have
+been placed under surveillance at
+Allahabad as the secret instigators of
+these movements, &quot;which,&quot; (says the
+<i>Agra Ukhbar</i>) &quot;appear to have been
+regularly organized all over India, the
+first intimation of which was the Nawab
+of Kurnool's affair&quot;&mdash;whose deposition
+we noticed in July. The
+valley of Berar, also, in the vicinity
+of the Nizam's frontier, has been the
+scene of several encounters between
+our troops and irregular bands of insurgents;
+and the restless Arab mercenaries
+in the Dekkan are still in
+arms, ready to take service with any
+native ruler who chooses to employ
+them against the <i>Feringhis</i>. In the
+northern provinces, the aspect of affairs
+is equally unfavourable. The
+Rohillas, the most warlike and nationally-united
+race of Moslems in India,
+have shown alarming symptoms of a
+refractory temper, fomented (as it has
+been reported) by the disbanded
+troopers of the 2d Bengal cavalry,<a id="footnotetag40" name="footnotetag40" href="#footnote40"><sup>40</sup></a>
+(a great proportion of whom were
+Rohillas,) and by Moslem deserters
+from the other regiments in Affghanistan,
+who have industriously magnified
+the amount of our losses&mdash;a pleasing
+duty, in which the native press, as
+usual, has zealously co-operated. One
+of the newspapers printed in the Persian
+language at Delhi, recently assured
+its readers that, at the forcing of
+the Khyber Pass, &quot;six thousand Europeans
+fell under the sharp swords of
+the Faithful&quot;&mdash;with other veracious
+intelligence, calculated to produce the
+belief that the campaign must inevitably
+end, like the preceding, in the defeat
+and extermination of the whole invading
+force. The fruits of these inflammatory
+appeals to the pride and bigotry
+of the Moslems, is thus painted in a letter
+from Rohilcund, which we quote from
+that excellent periodical the <i>Asiatic
+Journal</i> for September:&mdash;&quot;The Mahomedans
+throughout Rohilcund hate
+us to a degree only second to what
+the Affghans do, their interest in
+whose welfare they can scarcely conceal....
+There are hundreds of
+heads of tribes, all of whom would
+rise to a man on what they considered
+a fitting opportunity, which they are
+actually thirsting after. A hint from
+their moolahs, and the display of the
+green flag, would rally around it every
+Mussulman. In March last, the population
+<a class="pagenum" name="page277" id="page277" title="277"></a>made no scruple of declaring
+that the <i>Feringhi raj</i> (English rule)
+was at an end; and some even disputed
+payment of the revenue, saying
+it was probable they should have to
+pay it again to another Government!
+They have given out a report that
+Akhbar Khan has disbanded his army
+for the present, in order that his men
+may visit their families; but in the
+cold weather, when our troops will be
+weakened and unfit for action, he will
+return with an overwhelming force,
+aided by every Mussulman as far as
+Ispahan, when they will annihilate
+our whole force and march straight to
+Delhi, and ultimately send us to our
+ships. The whole Mussulman population,
+in fact, are filled with rejoicing
+and <i>hope</i> at our late reverses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that we are unnecessarily
+multiplying instances, and that
+these symptoms of local fermentation
+are of little individual importance; but
+nothing can be misplaced which has a
+tendency to dispel the universal and
+unaccountable error which prevails in
+England, as to the <i>popularity of our
+sway in India</i>. The signs of the times
+are tolerably significant&mdash;and the apprehensions
+of a coming commotion
+which we expressed in July, as well
+as of the quarter in which it will probably
+break out, are amply borne out
+by the language of the best-informed
+publications of India. &quot;That the
+seeds of discontent&quot; says the <i>Delhi
+Gazette</i>&mdash;&quot;have been sown by the
+Moslems, and have partially found
+root among the Hindoos, is more than
+conjecture&quot;&mdash;and the warnings of the
+<i>Agra Ukhbar</i> are still more unequivocal.
+&quot;Reports have reached Agra
+that a general rise will erelong take
+place in the Dekkan. There have
+already been several allusions made
+to a very extensive organization among
+the native states<a id="footnotetag41" name="footnotetag41" href="#footnote41"><sup>41</sup></a> against the British
+power, the resources of which will,
+no doubt, be stretched to the utmost
+during the ensuing cold season. Disaffection
+is wide and prevalent, and
+when our withdrawal from Affghanistan
+becomes known, it will ripen
+into open insurrection. With rebellion
+in Central India, and famine in
+Northern, Government have little time
+to lose in collecting their energies to
+meet the crisis.&quot; The increase of
+means which the return of the army
+from Affghanistan will place at the
+disposal of the Governor-General,
+will doubtless do much in either overawing
+or suppressing these insurrectionary
+demonstrations; but even in
+this case the snake will have been
+only &quot;scotched, not killed;&quot; and the
+most practical and effectual method of
+rendering such attempts hopeless for
+the future, will be the replacing the
+Indian army on the same efficient
+footing, as to numbers and composition,
+on which it stood before the ill-judged
+measures of Lord William Bentinck.
+The energies of the native
+troops have been heavily tasked, and
+their fidelity severely tried, during
+the Affghan war; and though they
+have throughout nobly sustained the
+high character which they had earned
+by their past achievements, the experiment
+on their endurance should
+not be carried too far. Many of the
+errors of past Indian administrations
+have already been remedied by Lord
+Ellenborough; and we cannot refrain
+from the hope, that the period of his
+Government will not be suffered to
+elapse without a return to the old system
+on this point also&mdash;the vital point
+on which the stability of our empire
+depends.</p>
+
+<p>Such have been the consequences, as
+far as they have hitherto been developed,
+to the foreign and domestic
+relations of our Eastern empire, of
+the late memorable Affghan war. In
+many points, an obvious parallel may
+be drawn between its commencement
+and progress, and that of the invasion
+of Spain by Napoleon. In both cases,
+the territory of an unoffending people
+was invaded and overrun, in the plenitude
+of (as was deemed by the aggressors)
+irresistible power, on the pretext,
+in each case, that it was necessary
+<a class="pagenum" name="page278" id="page278" title="278"></a>to anticipate an ambitious rival in
+the possession of a country which
+might be used as a vantage ground
+against us. In both cases, the usurpation
+was thinly veiled by the elevation
+of a pageant-monarch to the
+throne; till the invaded people, goaded
+by the repeated indignities offered
+to their religious and national pride,
+rose <i>en masse</i> against their oppressors
+at the same moment in the capital and
+the provinces, and either cut them off,
+or drove them to the frontier. In
+each case the intruders, by the arrival
+of reinforcements, regained for a time
+their lost ground; and if our Whig
+rulers had continued longer at the
+helm of affairs, the parallel might
+have become complete throughout.
+The strength and resources of our
+Indian empire might have been drained
+in the vain attempt to complete
+the subjugation of a rugged and impracticable
+country, inhabited by a
+fierce and bigoted population; and
+an &quot;Affghan <i>ulcer</i>.&quot; (to use the ordinary
+phrase of Napoleon himself in
+speaking of the Spanish war) might
+have corroded the vitals, and undermined
+the fabric, of British domination
+in the East. Fortunately, however,
+for our national welfare and our
+national character, better counsels are
+at length in the ascendant. The triumphs
+which have again crowned our
+arms, have not tempted our rulers to
+resume the perfidious policy which
+their predecessors, in the teeth of
+their own original declarations, have
+now openly avowed, by &quot;retaining
+military possession of the countries
+west of the Indus;&quot; and the candid
+acknowledgement of the error committed
+in the first instance, affords security
+against the repetition of such
+acts of wanton aggression, and for adherence
+to the pacific policy now laid
+down. The ample resources of India
+have yet in a great measure to be explored
+and developed, and it is impossible
+to foresee what results may be attained,
+when (in the language of the
+<i>Bombay Times</i>) &quot;wisdom guides for
+good and worthy ends, that resistless
+energy which madness has wasted on
+the opposite. We now see that, even
+with Affghanistan as a broken barrier,
+Russia dares not move her finger
+against us&mdash;that with seventeen millions
+sterling thrown away, we are
+able to recover all our mischances, if
+relieved from the rulers and the system
+which imposed them upon us!&quot;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The late proclamation of Lord
+Ellenborough has been so frequently
+referred to in the foregoing pages,
+that for the sake of perspicuity we
+subjoin it in full.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Secret Department, Simla,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oct. 1, 1842.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Government of India directed
+its army to pass the Indus, in order
+to expel from Affghanistan a chief
+believed to be hostile to British interests,
+and to replace upon his throne a
+sovereign represented to be friendly
+to those interests, and popular with
+his former subjects.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The chief believed to be hostile
+became a prisoner, and the sovereign
+represented to be popular was replaced
+upon his throne; but after
+events which brought into question
+his fidelity to the Government by
+which he was restored, he lost, by the
+hands of an assassin, the throne he
+had only held amidst insurrections,
+and his death was preceded and followed
+by still existing anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Disasters, unparalleled in their
+extent, unless by the errors in which
+they originated, and by the treachery
+by which they were completed, have
+in one short campaign been avenged
+upon every scene of past misfortune;
+and repeated victories in the field, and
+the capture of the cities and citadels
+of Ghazni and Cabul, have again attached
+the opinion of invincibility to
+the British arms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The British army in possession of
+Affghanistan will now be withdrawn
+to the Sutlej.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General will leave
+it to the Affghans themselves to create
+a government amidst the anarchy
+which is the consequence of their
+crimes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To force a sovereign upon a reluctant
+people, would be as inconsistent
+with the policy, as it is with the
+principles, of the British Government,
+tending to place the arms and resources
+of that people at the disposal
+of the first invader, and to impose the
+burden of supporting a sovereign
+without the prospect of benefit from
+his alliance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General will willingly
+recognize any government approved
+by the Affghans themselves,
+<a class="pagenum" name="page279" id="page279" title="279"></a>which shall appear desirous and capable
+of maintaining friendly relations
+with neighbouring states.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Content with the limits nature
+appears to have assigned to its empire,
+the Government of India will devote
+all its efforts to the establishment and
+maintenance of general peace, to the
+protection of the sovereigns and chiefs
+its allies, and to the prosperity and
+happiness of its own faithful subjects.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The rivers of the Punjab and the
+Indus, and the mountainous passes
+and the barbarous tribes of Affghanistan,
+will be placed between the British
+army and an enemy from the
+west, if indeed such an enemy there
+can be, and no longer between the
+army and its supplies.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The enormous expenditure required
+for the support of a large force
+in a false military position, at a distance
+from its own frontier and its resources,
+will no longer arrest every
+measure for the improvement of the
+country and of the people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The combined army of England
+and of India, superior in equipment,
+in discipline, in valour, and in the
+officers by whom it is commanded, to
+any force which can be opposed to it
+in Asia, will stand in unassailable
+strength upon its own soil, and for ever,
+under the blessing of Providence, preserve
+the glorious empire it has won,
+in security and in honour.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Governor-General cannot
+fear the misconstruction of his motives
+in thus frankly announcing to
+surrounding states the pacific and conservative
+policy of his Government.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Affghanistan and China have seen
+at once the forces at his disposal, and
+the effect with which they can be applied.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sincerely attached to peace for
+the sake of the benefits it confers upon
+the people, the Governor-General is
+resolved that peace shall be observed,
+and will put forth the whole power of
+the British Government to coerce the
+state by which it shall be infringed.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+<a class="pagenum" name="page280" id="page280" title="280"></a>
+<a name="bw328s10" id="bw328s10"></a><h2>DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.</h2>
+
+<p>There are few things more painful connected with the increase of years
+in an established periodical like our own, than to observe how &quot;friend after
+friend departs,&quot; to witness the gradual thinning of the ranks of its contributors
+by death, and the departure, from the scene, of those whose talents or
+genius had contributed to its early influence and popularity. Many years
+have not elapsed since we were called on to record the death of the upright
+and intelligent publisher, to whose energy and just appreciation of the public
+taste, its origin and success are in a great degree to be ascribed. On the
+present occasion another of these melancholy memorials is required of us; the
+accomplished author of &quot;Cyril Thornton,&quot; whose name and talents had been
+associated with the Magazine from its commencement, is no more. He died
+at Pisa on the 7th December last.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Hamilton exhibited a remarkable union of scholarship, high breeding,
+and amiability of disposition. To the habitual refinement of taste which
+an early mastery of the classics had produced, his military profession and intercourse
+with society had added the ease of the man of the world, while they
+had left unimpaired his warmth of feeling and kindliness of heart. Amidst
+the active services of the Peninsular and American campaigns, he preserved
+his literary tastes; and, when the close of the war restored him to his country,
+he seemed to feel that the peaceful leisure of a soldier's life could not be
+more appropriately filled up than by the cultivation of literature. The characteristic
+of his mind was rather a happy union and balance of qualities than
+the possession of any one in excess; and the result was a peculiar composure
+and gracefulness, pervading equally his outward deportment and his habits
+of thought. The only work of fiction which he has given to the public certainly
+indicates high powers both of pathetic and graphic delineation; but the
+qualities which first and most naturally attracted attention, were rather his
+excellent judgment of character, at once just and generous, his fine perception
+and command of wit and quiet humour, rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into
+satire or sarcasm, and the refinement, taste, and precision with which he
+clothed his ideas, whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous
+or extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society and
+in taste.</p>
+
+<p>Of his contributions to this Magazine it would be out of place here to speak,
+further than to say that they indicated a wide range and versatility of talent,
+embraced both prose and verse, and were universally popular. &quot;Cyril Thornton,&quot;
+which appeared in 1827, instantly arrested public attention and curiosity,
+even in an age eminently fertile in great works of fiction. With
+little of plot&mdash;for it pursued the desultory ramblings of military life through
+various climes&mdash;it possessed a wonderful truth and reality, great skill in the
+observation and portraiture of original character, and a peculiar charm of
+style, blending freshness and vivacity of movement with classic delicacy and
+grace. The work soon became naturally and justly popular, having reached
+a second edition shortly after publication: a third edition has recently appeared.
+The &quot;Annals of the Peninsular Campaign&quot; had the merit of clear narration,
+united with much of the same felicity of style; but the size of the work excluded
+that full development and picturesque detail which were requisite to
+give individuality to its pictures. His last work was &quot;Men and Manners in
+America,&quot; of which two German and one French translations have already
+appeared; a work eminently characterized by a tone of gentlemanly feeling,
+sagacious observation, just views of national character and institutions, and
+their reciprocal influence, and by tolerant criticism; and which, so far from
+having been superseded by recent works of the same class and on the same
+subject, has only risen in public estimation by the comparison.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+
+<a name="bw328-footnotes" id="bw328-footnotes"></a><h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag1">return</a>)
+<p> &quot;<i>Taille and the Gabelle</i>.&quot; Sully thus describes these fertile sources of crime
+and misery:&mdash;&quot;Taille, source principale d'abus et de vexations de toute esp&egrave;ce, sans
+sa repartition et sa perception. Il est bien &agrave; souhaiter, mais pas &agrave; esp&eacute;rer, qu'on change
+un jour en entier le fond de cette partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau
+avec la Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouv&eacute; de si <i>bizarrement tyrannique</i> que de faire
+acheter &agrave; un particulier, plus de sel qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de
+lui d&eacute;fendre encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a><b>Footnote 2</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag2">return</a>)
+<p> Ulysses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a><b>Footnote 3</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag3">return</a>)
+<p> Need we say to the general reader, that Oileus here alludes to the strife between
+Ajax and Ulysses, which has furnished a subject to the Greek tragic poet, who has
+depicted, more strikingly than any historian, that intense emulation for glory, and that
+mortal agony in defeat, which made the main secret of the prodigious energy of the
+Greek character? The poet, in taking his hero from the Homeric age, endowed him
+with the feelings of the Athenian republicans he addressed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a><b>Footnote 4</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag4">return</a>)
+<p> Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a><b>Footnote 5</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag5">return</a>)
+<p> Cassandra.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a><b>Footnote 6</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag6">return</a>)
+<p> Literally, &quot;<i>A judge (ein richter)</i> was again upon the earth.&quot; The word substituted
+in the translation, is introduced in order to recall to the reader the sublime
+name given, not without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., &quot;THE LIVING LAW.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a><b>Footnote 7</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag7">return</a>)
+<p> This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules
+contended in vain against Ant&aelig;us, the Son of Earth,&mdash;so long as the Earth gave her
+giant offspring new strength in every fall,&mdash;so the soul contends in vain with evil&mdash;the
+natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the
+enemy for the struggle. And as Ant&aelig;us was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him
+from the earth and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy,
+(the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring,) when bearing it from earth
+itself, and stifling it in the higher air.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a><b>Footnote 8</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag8">return</a>)
+<p> Hermes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a><b>Footnote 9</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag9">return</a>)
+<p> War-horse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a><b>Footnote 10</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag10">return</a>)
+<p> Could Sir Joshua now be permitted to visit his own Academy, and our exhibitions
+in general, he would be startled at the excess of ornament, in defiance of his rule of
+repose, succeeding the slovenliness of his own day. Whatever be the subject, history,
+landscape, or familiar life, it superabounds both in objects and colour. In established
+academies, the faults of genius are more readily adopted than their excellences; they
+are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy of imitation. We have, therefore, less
+hesitation in referring the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir
+Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more injurious the delinquency. We
+therefore adduce as examples, works of our most inventive and able artist, his &quot;Macbeth&quot;
+and his &quot;Hamlet&quot;&mdash;they are greatly overloaded with the faults of superabundance
+of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works of great power, and such as none but
+a painter of high genius could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and
+where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate, and even in the
+multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by their grouping and management, he has
+preserved a seeming moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the wholeness,
+the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The story is told, and admirably&mdash;as
+Sir Joshua says, &quot;at one blow.&quot; We speak of his &quot;Sleeping Beauty.&quot; We see at
+once that the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united by that light
+and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too prominently, the magic under whose
+working and whose light the whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the
+prince&mdash;there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the execution of the figure that
+considerably dignifies the story, and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it.
+The many groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way injure the
+simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast in not undue proportion, because
+that simplicity is preserved. Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,)
+and chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of repose, and a sunny repose,
+too, befitting the &quot;Sleeping Beauty.&quot; Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty
+and danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not in such subjects
+alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's rule; we too often see portraits where
+the dress and accessaries obtrude&mdash;there is too much lace and too little expression&mdash;and
+our painters of views follow the fashion most unaccountably&mdash;ornament is every
+where; we have not a town where the houses are not &quot;turned out of windows,&quot; and
+all the furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to show a pretty general
+bankruptcy, together with the artist's own poverty, you would imagine an auction going
+on in every other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging from the
+windows. We have even seen a &quot;Rag Fair&quot; in a turnpike road.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a><b>Footnote 11</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag11">return</a>)
+<p> The reader will remember the supposed epitaph,</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Lie heavy on him, earth, for he<br /></span>
+<span>Laid many a heavy load on thee.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a><b>Footnote 12</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag12">return</a>)
+<p> A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton Bunny.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a><b>Footnote 13</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag13">return</a>)
+<p> See Forster's Life of Cromwell.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a><b>Footnote 14</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag14">return</a>)
+<p> Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by possibility, have seen
+all the men of great genius, excepting Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has
+produced from its first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon, Shakspeare,
+Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
+intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh,
+Spenser, Hooker, Elliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke,
+were existing in his lifetime; and several more, who may be compared with the smaller
+of these.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a><b>Footnote 15</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag15">return</a>)
+<p> Chapman's <i>Homer</i>, first book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a><b>Footnote 16</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag16">return</a>)
+<p> 35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a><b>Footnote 17</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag17">return</a>)
+<p> The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no doubt, have been carried
+through by an overwhelming military force, if the country had been worth the cost;
+but if it was not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it appears to
+us that the native government was far too much interfered with&mdash;that the British
+envoy, the British officers employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army,
+stood too much between the Shah and his subjects&mdash;that we were forming a government
+which it would be impossible to work in our absence, and creating a state of things
+which, the longer it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which our
+interference could be dispensed with.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a><b>Footnote 18</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag18">return</a>)
+<p> Affghan horse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a><b>Footnote 19</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag19">return</a>)
+<p> The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about seventy juzailchees
+or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers, who had been left in the town in charge of the
+wives and children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the cantonments by
+that gallant party, who fought their way from the heart of the town.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a><b>Footnote 20</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag20">return</a>)
+<p> &quot;I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me with the rest of the
+manuscript. I have not struck out the reference, because there is hope that it still
+exists, and may yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else from
+Captain Mackenzie's pen will be regretted by all who read his other communication,
+the account of the Envoy's murder.&mdash;EDITOR.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a><b>Footnote 21</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag21">return</a>)
+<p> Affghan riflemen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a><b>Footnote 22</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag22">return</a>)
+<p> Five companies 44th; six companies 5th native infantry; six companies 37th native
+infantry; 100 sappers; 2&frac12; squadrons cavalry; one gun.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a><b>Footnote 23</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag23">return</a>)
+<p> In Mr Eyre's observations on this disastrous affair, he enumerates six errors,
+which he says must present themselves to the most unpractised military eye. &quot;The
+first, and perhaps the most fatal mistake of all, was the taking only one gun;&quot; but he
+admits that there was only one gun ready, and that, if the Brigadier had waited for the
+second, he must have postponed the enterprise for a day. This would probably have
+been the more prudent course.
+</p><p>
+The second error was, that advantage was not taken of the panic in the village, to
+storm it at once in the dark; but it appears from his own account, that there were not
+more than forty men remaining in the village when it was attacked, after daylight,
+and that the chief cause of the failure of that attack, was Major Swayne's having missed
+the gate, a misfortune which was, certainly, at least as likely to have occurred in
+the dark.
+</p><p>
+The third was, that the sappers were not employed to raise a breastwork for the
+protection of the troops. This objection appears to be well founded.
+</p><p>
+The fourth was, that the infantry were formed into squares, to resist the distant fire
+of infantry, on ground over which no cavalry could have charged with effect. It appears
+to be so utterly unintelligible that any officer should have been guilty of so
+manifest an absurdity, that the circumstances seem to require further elucidation; but
+that the formation was unfortunate, is sufficiently obvious.
+</p><p>
+Fifthly, that the position chosen for the cavalry was erroneous; and sixthly, that the
+retreat was too long deferred. Both these objections appear to be just.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a><b>Footnote 24</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag24">return</a>)
+<p> Strait of Darkness.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a><b>Footnote 25</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag25">return</a>)
+<p> See the articles &quot;Persia, Affghanistan, and India,&quot; in Jan. 1839&mdash;&quot;Khiva,
+Central Asia, and Cabul,&quot; in April 1840&mdash;&quot;Results of our Affghan Conquests,&quot;
+in Aug. 1841&mdash;&quot;Affghanistan and India,&quot; in July 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a><b>Footnote 26</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag26">return</a>)
+<p> It now seems even doubtful whether the famous letter of Dost Mohammed
+to the Emperor of Russia, which constituted the <i>gravamen</i> of the charge against
+him, was ever really written, or at least with his concurrence.&mdash;<i>Vide</i> &quot;Report of
+the Colonial Society on the Affghan War,&quot; p. 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a><b>Footnote 27</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag27">return</a>)
+<p> The particulars of Shah-Shoojah's fate, which were unknown when we last
+referred to the subject, have been since ascertained. After the retreat of the
+English from Cabul, he remained for some time secluded in the Bala-Hissar, observing
+great caution in his intercourse with the insurgent leaders; but he was
+at length prevailed upon, by assurances of loyalty and fidelity, (about the middle
+of April,) to quit the fortress, in order to head an army against Jellalabad. He
+had only proceeded, however, a short distance from the city, when his litter was
+fired upon by a party of musketeers placed in ambush by a Doorauni chief named
+Soojah-ed-Dowlah; and the king was shot dead on the spot. Such was the ultimate
+fate of a prince, the vicissitudes of whose life almost exceed the fictions of
+romance, and who possessed talents sufficient, in more tranquil times, to have
+given <i>&eacute;clat</i> to his reign. During his exile at Loodiana, he composed in Persian a
+curious narrative of his past adventures, a version of part of which appears in the
+30th volume of the <i>Asiatic Journal</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a><b>Footnote 28</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag28">return</a>)
+<p> It is singular that this proclamation was issued on the fourth anniversary
+of Lord Auckland's &quot;Declaration&quot; of Oct. 1, 1838; and from the same place,
+Simla.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a><b>Footnote 29</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag29">return</a>)
+<p> &quot;The fieldworks <i>believed to be described</i> in the despatch as 'consisting of a
+succession of breastworks, improved by a ditch and abattis&mdash;the latter being filled
+with thorns,' turned out to be a paltry stone wall, with a cut two feet deep, and
+of corresponding width, to which the designation of ditch was most grossly misapplied....
+A score or two of active men might have completed the work
+in a few days.&quot;&mdash;(Letter quoted in the <i>Asiatic Journal</i>, Sept., p. 107.) On whom
+the blame of these misrepresentations should be laid&mdash;whether on the officer who
+reconnoitred the ground, or on the general who wrote the despatch&mdash;does not very
+clearly appear: yet the political agent at Quettah was removed from his charge,
+for not having given notice of the construction in his vicinity of works which
+are now proved to have had no existence!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a><b>Footnote 30</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag30">return</a>)
+<p> It was this chief whose betrayal or destruction Sir William McNaghten is
+accused, on the authority of General Elphinstone's correspondence, of having
+meditated, on the occasion when he met with his own fate. We hope, for the
+honour of the English name, that the memory of the late Resident at Cabul may
+be cleared from this heavy imputation; but he certainly cannot be acquitted of
+having, by his wilful blindness and self-sufficiency, contributed to precipitate the
+catastrophe to which he himself fell a victim. In proof of this assertion, it is
+sufficient to refer to the tenor of his remarks on the letter addressed to him by
+Sir A. Burnes on the affairs of Cabul, August 7, 1840, which appeared some
+time since in the <i>Bombay Times</i>, and afterwards in the <i>Asiatic Journal</i> for October
+and November last.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a><b>Footnote 31</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag31">return</a>)
+<p> The kindness and humanity which these unfortunate <i>detenus</i> experienced
+from first to last at the hands of Akhbar, reflect the highest honour on the character
+of this chief, whom it has been the fashion to hold up to execration as a
+monster of perfidy and cruelty. As a contrast to this conduct of the Affghan
+<i>barbarians</i>, it is worth while to refer to Colonel Lindsay's narrative of his captivity
+in the dungeons of Hyder and Tippoo, which has recently appeared in the
+<i>Asiatic Journal</i>, September, December, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a><b>Footnote 32</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag32">return</a>)
+<p> The value still attached by the Hindoos to these relics was shown on the conclusion
+of the treaty, in 1832, between Shah-Shoojah and Runjeet Singh, previous
+to the Shah's last unaided attempt to recover his throne; in which their restoration,
+in case of his success, was an express stipulation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a><b>Footnote 33</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag33">return</a>)
+<p> The elder of these princes, Timour, who was governor of Candahar during
+the reign of his father, has accompanied General England to Hindostan, preferring,
+as he says, the life of a private gentleman under British protection to the
+perils of civil discord in Affghanistan. Of the second, Mohammed-Akhbar, (whose
+mother is said to be sister of Dost Mohammed,) we know nothing;&mdash;Futteh-Jung
+is the third, and was intended by Shah-Shoojah for his successor;&mdash;Seifdar-Jung,
+now at Candahar, is the youngest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a><b>Footnote 34</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag34">return</a>)
+<p> The war in Tibet, to which we alluded in July last, between the followers of
+the Sikh chief Zorawur Singh and the Chinese, is still in progress&mdash;and the latter
+are said to be on the point of following up their successes by an invasion of
+Cashmeer. As we are now at peace with the Celestial Empire, our mediation may
+be made available to terminate the contest.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a><b>Footnote 35</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag35">return</a>)
+<p> Bhawulpoor is so far under British protection, that it was saved from the
+arms of the Sikhs by the treaty with Runjeet Singh, which confined him to the
+other bank of the Sutlej; but it has never paid allegiance to the British Government.
+Its territory is of considerable extent, stretching nearly 300 miles along
+the river, by 100 miles average breadth; but great part of the surface consists
+of sandy desert.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a><b>Footnote 36</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag36">return</a>)
+<p> So well were the Scindians aware of this, that Burnes, when ascending the
+Indus, on his way to Lahore in 1831, frequently heard it remarked, &quot;Scinde is
+now gone, since the English have seen the river, which is the road to its conquest.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a><b>Footnote 37</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag37">return</a>)
+<p> Khelat (more properly Khelat-i-Nussear Khan, &quot;the citadel of Nussear
+Khan,&quot; by whom it was strongly fortified in 1750,) is the principal city and fortress
+of the Brahooes or Eastern Baloochee, and the residence of their chief. It
+had never been taken by any of the Affghan kings, and had even opposed a successful
+resistance to the arms of Ahmed Shah;&mdash;but on November 13, 1839, it
+was stormed by an Anglo-Indian force under General Wiltshire, and the Khan
+Mihrab was slain sword in hand, gallantly fighting to the last at the entrance of
+his zenana. The place, however, was soon after surprised and recaptured by the
+son of the fallen chief, Nussear Khan, who, though again expelled, continued to
+maintain himself with a few followers in the mountains, and at last effected an
+accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud. He has
+since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary fidelity; and as his fears of
+compulsory vassalage to the nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at
+an end, he appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian chief converted
+into a firm friend and ally.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a><b>Footnote 38</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag38">return</a>)
+<p> By a general order, issued from Simla October 4, all officers and soldiers, of
+whatever grade, who took part in the operations about Candahar, the defence of
+Khelat-i-Ghiljie, the recapture of Ghazni or Cabul, or the forcing of the Khyber
+Pass, are to receive a silver medal with appropriate inscriptions&mdash;a similar distinction
+having been previously conferred on the defenders of Jellalabad. <i>What
+is at present the value of the Order of the Doorani Empire</i>, with its showy decorations
+of the first, second, and third classes, the last of which was so rightfully
+spurned by poor Dennie?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a><b>Footnote 39</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag39">return</a>)
+<p> The following remarks of the <i>Madras United Service Gazette</i>, though intended
+to apply only to the Secunderabad disturbances, deserve general attention at
+present:&mdash;&quot;We attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for their
+European officers to <i>a diminished inclination for the service</i>, the duties whereof
+have of late years increased in about the same proportion that its advantages have
+been reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than double the
+work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;... and the infantry sepoy's
+garrison guard-work has been for years most fatiguing at every station, from the
+numerical strength of the troops being quite inadequate to the duties....
+These several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a distaste for
+the service, which has been augmented by the stagnant state of promotion, caused
+by the reductions in 1829, when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the
+cavalry, native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became supernumerary,
+thus effectually closing the door of promotion to the inferior grades for years to
+come. Hopeless of advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less
+attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as careless of a service which
+no longer held out any prospect of promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline
+were not altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of corporal
+punishment; and from the promulgation of that ill-judged order may be dated the
+decided change for the worse which has taken place in the character of the native
+soldiery.&quot;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a><b>Footnote 40</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag40">return</a>)
+<p> This corps, it will be remembered, was broken for its misconduct in the battle
+of Purwan-Durrah, against Dost Mohammed, November 2, 1840.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a><b>Footnote 41</b>: (<a href="#footnotetag41">return</a>)
+<p> The Nawab of Arcot, one of the native princes, whose fidelity is now strongly
+suspected, assured the Resident, in his reply to the official communication of
+the capture of Ghazni in 1839, that from his excessive joy at the triumph of his
+good friend the Company, his bulk of body had so greatly increased that he was
+under the necessity of providing himself with a new wardrobe&mdash;his garments having
+become too strait for his unbounded stomach! A choice specimen of oriental
+bombast.</p></div>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 100%;' />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., 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. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII.
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: July 30, 2004 [EBook #13062]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jon Ingram, Brendan O'Connor and PG Distributed
+Proofreaders. Produced from page scans provided by The Internet
+Library of Early Journals.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+NO. CCCXXVIII. FEBRUARY, 1843. VOL. LIII.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY
+    POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.--NO. V.
+    REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.
+    THE YOUNG GREY HEAD
+    IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+        OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL
+    CALEB STUKELY. PART XI.
+    THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES. PART II.
+    EYRE'S CABUL
+    THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN
+    DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+ARNOLD'S LECTURES ON HISTORY.
+
+
+If any doubt could exist as to the nature of the loss which the
+premature death of Dr Arnold has inflicted on the literature of his
+country, the perusal of the volume before us must be sufficient to show
+how great, how serious, nay, all circumstances taken together, we had
+almost said how irreparable, it ought to be considered. Recently placed
+in a situation which gave his extraordinary faculties as a teacher still
+wider scope than they before possessed, at an age when the vivacity and
+energy of a commanding intellect were matured, not chilled, by constant
+observation and long experience--gifted with industry to collect, with
+sagacity to appreciate, with skill to arrange the materials of
+history--master of a vivid and attractive style for their communication
+and display--eminent, above all, for a degree of candour and sincerity
+which gave additional value to all his other endowments--what but
+leisure did Dr Arnold require to qualify him for a place among our most
+illustrious authors? Under his auspices, we might not unreasonably have
+hoped for works that would have rivalled those of the great continental
+writers in depth and variety of research; in which the light of original
+and contemporaneous documents would be steadily flung on the still
+unexplored portions of our history; and that Oxford would have balanced
+the fame of Schloesser and Thierry and Sismondi, by the labours of a
+writer peculiarly, and, as this volume proves, most affectionately her
+own.
+
+The first Lecture in the present volume is full of striking and original
+remarks, delivered with a delightful simplicity; which, since genius has
+become rare among us, has almost disappeared from the conversation and
+writings of Englishmen. Open the pages of Herodotus, or Xenophon, or
+Caesar, and how plain, how unpretending are the preambles to their
+immortal works--in what exquisite proportion does the edifice arise,
+without apparent effort, without ostentatious struggle, without, if the
+allusion may be allowed, the sound of the axe or hammer, till "the pile
+stands fixed her stately height" before us--the just admiration of
+succeeding ages! But our modern _filosofastri_ insist upon stunning us
+with the noise of their machinery, and blinding us with the dust of
+their operations. They will not allow the smallest portion of their
+vulgar labours to escape our notice. They drag us through the chaos of
+sand and lime, and stone and bricks, which they have accumulated, hoping
+that the magnitude of the preparation may atone for the meanness of the
+performance. Very different from this is the style of Dr Arnold. We will
+endeavour to exhibit a just idea of his views, so far as they regard the
+true character of history, the manner in which it should be studied,
+and the events by which his theory is illustrated. To study history as
+it should be studied, much more to write history as it should be
+written, is a task which may dignify the most splendid abilities, and
+occupy the most extended life.
+
+Lucian in one of his admirable treatises, ridicules those who imagine
+that any one who chooses may sit down and write history as easily as he
+would walk or sleep, or perform any other function of nature,
+
+    "Thought, to the man that never thinks, may seem
+    As natural as when asleep to dream."
+
+From the remarks of this greatest of all satirists, it is manifest that,
+in his days, history had been employed, as it has in ours, for the
+purposes of slander and adulation. He selects particularly a writer who
+compared, in his account of the Persian wars, the Roman emperor to
+Achilles, his enemy to Thersites; and if Lucian had lived in the present
+day, he would have discovered that the race of such writers was not
+extinguished. He might have found ample proofs that the detestable habit
+still prevails of interweaving the names of our contemporaries among the
+accounts of former centuries, and thus corrupting the history of past
+times into a means of abuse and flattery for the present. This is to
+degrade history into the worst style of a Treasury pamphlet, or a daily
+newspaper. It is a fault almost peculiar to this country.
+
+We are told in one of these works, for instance, that the "tones of Sir
+W. Follett's voice are silvery"--a proposition that we do not at all
+intend to dispute; nor would it be easy to pronounce any panegyric on
+that really great man in which we should not zealously concur; but can
+it be necessary to mention this in a history of the eighteenth century?
+Or can any thing be more trivial or offensive, or totally without the
+shadow of justification, than this forced allusion to the "ignorant
+present time," in the midst of what ought to be an unbiassed narrative
+of events that affected former generations? We do not know whether the
+author of this ingenious allusion borrowed the idea from the
+advertisements in which our humbler artists recommend their productions
+to vulgar notice; or whether it is the spontaneous growth of his own
+happy intellect: but plagiarized or original, and however adapted it may
+be to the tone and keeping of his work, its insertion is totally
+irreconcilable with the qualities that a man should possess who means to
+instruct posterity. When gold is extracted from lead, or silver from
+tin, such a writer may become an historian. "Forget," says Lucian, "the
+present, look to future ages for your reward; let it be said of you that
+you are high-spirited, full of independence, that there is nothing about
+you servile or fulsome."
+
+Modern history is now exclusively to be considered. Modern history,
+separated from the history of Greece and Rome, and the annals of
+barbarous emigration, by the event which above all others has
+influenced, and continues still to influence, after so many centuries,
+the fate of Europe--the fall of the Western Empire--the boundary line
+which separates modern from ancient history, is not ideal and
+capricious, but definite and certain. It can neither be advanced nor
+carried back. Modern history displays a national life still in
+existence. It commences with that period in which the great elements of
+separate national existence now in being--race, language, institutions,
+and religion--can be traced in simultaneous operation. To the influences
+which pervaded the ancient world, another, at first scarcely
+perceptible, for a time almost predominant, and even now powerful and
+comprehensive, was annexed. In the fourth century of the Christian era,
+the Roman world comprised Christianity, Grecian intellect, Roman
+jurisprudence--all the ingredients, in short, of modern history, except
+the Teutonic element. It is the infusion of this element which has
+changed the quality of the compound, and leavened the whole mass with
+its peculiarities. To this we owe the middle ages, the law of
+inheritance, the spirit of chivalry, and the feudal system, than which
+no cause more powerful ever contributed to the miseries of mankind. It
+filled Europe not with men but slaves; and the tyranny under which the
+people groaned was the more intolerable, as it was wrought into an
+artificial method, confirmed by law, established by inveterate custom,
+and even supported by religion. In vain did the nations cast their eyes
+to Rome, from whom they had a right to claim assistance, or at least
+sympathy and consolation. The appeal was useless. The living waters were
+tainted in their source. Instead of health they spread abroad
+infection--instead of giving nourishment to the poor, they were the
+narcotics which drenched in slumber the consciences of the rich.
+Wretched forms, ridiculous legends, the insipid rhetoric of the Fathers,
+were the substitutes for all generous learning. The nobles enslaved the
+body; the hierarchy put its fetters on the soul. The growth of the
+public mind was checked and stunted and the misery of Europe was
+complete. The sufferer was taught to expect his reward in another world;
+their oppressor, if his bequests were liberal, was sure of obtaining
+consolation in this, and the kingdom of God was openly offered to the
+highest bidder. But to the causes which gave rise to this state of
+things, we must trace our origin as a nation.
+
+With the Britons whom Caesar conquered, though they occupied the surface
+of our soil, we have, nationally speaking, no concern; but when the
+white horse of Hengist, after many a long and desperate struggle,
+floated in triumph or in peace from the Tamar to the Tweed, our
+existence as a nation, the period to which we may refer the origin of
+English habits, language, and institutions, undoubtedly begins. So, when
+the Franks established themselves west of the Rhine, the French nation
+may be said to have come into being. True, the Saxons yielded to the
+discipline and valour of a foreign race; true, the barbarous hordes of
+the Elbe and the Saal were not the ancestors, as any one who travels in
+the south of France can hardly fail to see, of the majority of the
+present nation of the French: but the Normans and Saxons sprang from the
+same stock, and the changes worked by Clovis and his warriors were so
+vast and durable, (though, in comparison with their conquered vassals,
+they were numerically few,) that with the invasion of Hengist in the one
+case, and the battle of Poictiers in the other, the modern history of
+both countries may not improperly be said to have begun. To the student
+of that history, however, one consideration must occur, which imparts to
+the objects of his studies an interest emphatically its own. It is this:
+he has strong reason to believe that all the elements of society are
+before him. It may indeed be true that Providence has reserved some yet
+unknown tribe, wandering on the banks of the Amour or of the Amazons, as
+the instrument of accomplishing some mighty purpose--humanly speaking,
+however, such an event is most improbable. To adopt such an hypothesis,
+would be in direct opposition to all the analogies by which, in the
+absence of clearer or more precise motives, human infirmity must be
+guided. The map of the world is spread out before us; there are no
+regions which we speak of in the terms of doubt and ignorance that the
+wisest Romans applied to the countries beyond the Vistula and the Rhine,
+when in Lord Bacon's words "the world was altogether home-bred." When
+Cicero jested with Trebatius on the little importance of a Roman jurist
+among hordes of Celtic barbarians, he little thought that from that
+despised country would arise a nation, before the blaze of whose
+conquests the splendour of Roman Empire would grow pale; a nation which
+would carry the art of government and the enjoyment of freedom to a
+perfection, the idea of which, had it been presented to the illustrious
+orator, stored as his mind was with all the lore of Grecian sages, and
+with whatever knowledge the history of his own country could supply,
+would have been consigned by him, with the glorious visions of his own
+Academy, to the shady spaces of an ideal world. Had he, while bewailing
+the loss of that freedom which he would not survive, disfigured as it
+was by popular tumult and patrician insolence--had he been told that a
+figure far more faultless was one day to arise amid the unknown forests
+and marshes of Britain, and to be protected by the rude hands of her
+barbarous inhabitants till it reached the full maturity of immortal
+loveliness--the eloquence of Cicero himself would have been silenced,
+and, whatever might have been the exultation of the philosopher, the
+pride of the Roman would have died within him. But we can anticipate no
+similar revolution. The nations by which the world is inhabited are
+known to us; the regions which they occupy are limited; there are no
+fresh combinations to count upon, no reserves upon which we can
+depend;--there is every reason to suppose that, in the great conflict
+with physical and moral evil, which it is the destiny of man to wage,
+the last battalion is in the field.
+
+The course to be adopted by the student of modern history is pointed out
+in the following pages; and the remarks of Dr Arnold on this subject are
+distinguished by a degree of good sense and discrimination which it is
+difficult to overrate. Vast indeed is the difference between ancient and
+modern annals, as far as relates to the demand upon the student's time
+and attention. Instead of sailing upon a narrow channel, the shores of
+which are hardly ever beyond his view, he launches out upon an ocean of
+immeasurable extent, through which the greatest skill and most assiduous
+labour are hardly sufficient to conduct him--
+
+    "Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo,
+    Nec meminisse viae, media Palinurus in unda."
+
+Instead of a few great writers, the student is beset on all sides by
+writers of different sort and degree, from the light memorialist to the
+great historian; instead of two countries, two hemispheres are
+candidates for his attention; and history assumes a variety of garbs,
+many of which were strangers to her during the earlier period of her
+existence. To the careful study of many periods of history, not
+extending over any very wide portion of time, the labour of a tolerably
+long life would be inadequate. The unpublished Despatches of Cardinal
+Granvelle at Besancon, amount to sixty volumes. The archives of Venice
+(a mine, by the way, scarcely opened) fill a large apartment. For
+printed works it may be enough to mention the Benedictine editions and
+Munatoris Annals, historians of the dark and middle ages, relating to
+two countries only, and two periods. All history, therefore, however
+insatiable may be the intellectual _boulimia_ that devours him, can
+never be a proper object of curiosity to any man. It is natural enough
+that the first effect produced by this discovery on the mind of the
+youthful student should be surprise and mortification; nor is it before
+the conviction that his researches, to be valuable, must be limited,
+forces itself upon him, that he concentrates to some particular period,
+and perhaps to some exclusive object, the powers of his undivided
+attention. When he has thus put an end to his desultory enquiries, and
+selected the portion of history which it is his purpose to explore, his
+first object should be to avail himself of the information which other
+travellers in the same regions have been enabled to collect. Their
+mistakes will teach him caution; their wanderings will serve to keep him
+in the right path. Weak and feeble as he may be, compared with the first
+adventurers who have visited the mighty maze before him, yet he has not
+their difficulties to encounter, nor their perils to apprehend. The clue
+is in his hands which may lead him through the labyrinth in which it has
+been the lot of so many master-spirits to wander--
+
+    "And find no end, in boundless mazes lost."
+
+But it is time to hear Dr Arnold:--
+
+     "To proceed, therefore, with our supposed student's course of
+     reading. Keeping the general history which he has been reading
+     as his text, and getting from it the skeleton, in a manner, of
+     the future figure, he must now break forth excursively to the
+     right and left, collecting richness and fulness of knowledge
+     from the most various sources. For example, we will suppose
+     that where his popular historian has mentioned that an alliance
+     was concluded between two powers, or a treaty of peace agreed
+     upon, he first of all resolves to consult the actual documents
+     themselves, as they are to be found in some one of the great
+     collections of European treaties, or, if they are connected
+     with English history, in Rymer's _Foedera_. By comparing the
+     actual treaty with his historian's report of its provisions, we
+     get, in the first place, a critical process of some value,
+     inasmuch as the historian's accuracy is at once tested: but
+     there are other purposes answered besides. An historian's
+     report of a treaty is almost always an abridgement of it; minor
+     articles will probably be omitted, and the rest condensed, and
+     stripped of all their formal language. But our object now being
+     to reproduce to ourselves so far as it is possible, the very
+     life of the period which we are studying, minute particulars
+     help us to do this; nay, the very formal enumeration of titles,
+     and the specification of towns and districts in their legal
+     style, help to realize the time to us, if it be only from their
+     very particularity. Every common history records the substance
+     of the treaty of Troyes, May 1420, by which the succession to
+     the crown of France was given to Henry V. But the treaty in
+     itself, or the English version of it which Henry sent over to
+     England to be proclaimed there, gives a far more lively
+     impression of the triumphant state of the great conqueror, and
+     the utter weakness of the poor French king, Charles VI., in the
+     ostentatious care taken to provide for the recognition of his
+     formal title during his lifetime, while all real power is ceded
+     to Henry, and provision is made for the perpetual union
+     hereafter of the two kingdoms under his sole government.
+
+     "I have named treaties as the first class of official
+     instruments to be consulted, because the mention of them occurs
+     unavoidably in every history. Another class of documents,
+     certainly of no less importance, yet much less frequently
+     referred to by popular historians, consists of statutes,
+     ordinances, proclamations, acts, or by whatever various names
+     the laws of each particular period happen to be designated.
+     _That the Statute Book has not been more habitually referred to
+     by writers on English history_, has always seemed to me a
+     matter of surprise. Legislation has not perhaps been so busy in
+     every country as it has been with us; yet every where, and in
+     every period, it has done something. Evils, real or supposed,
+     have always existed, which the supreme power in the nation has
+     endeavoured to remove by the provisions of law. And under the
+     name of laws I would include the acts of councils, which form
+     an important part of the history of European nations during
+     many centuries; provincial councils, as you are aware, having
+     been held very frequently, and their enactments relating to
+     local and particular evils, so that they illustrate history in
+     a very lively manner. Now, in these and all the other laws of
+     any given period, we find in the first place, from their
+     particularity, a great additional help towards becoming
+     familiar with the times in which they were passed; we learn the
+     names of various officers, courts, and processes; and these,
+     when understood, (and I suppose always the habit of reading
+     nothing without taking pains to understand it,) help us, from
+     their very number, to realize the state of things then
+     existing; a lively notion of any object depending on our
+     clearly seeing some of its parts, and the more we people it, so
+     to speak, with distinct images, the more it comes to resemble
+     the crowded world around us. But in addition to this benefit,
+     which I am disposed to rate in itself very highly, every thing
+     of the nature of law has a peculiar interest and value,
+     _because it is the expression of the deliberate mind of the
+     supreme government of society_; and as history, as commonly
+     written, records so much of the passionate and unreflecting
+     part of human nature, we are bound in fairness to acquaint
+     ourselves with its calmer and better part also."
+
+The inner life of a nation will be determined by its end, that end being
+the security of its highest happiness, or, as it is "conceived and
+expressed more piously, a setting forth of God's glory by doing his
+appointed work." The history of a nation's internal life is the history
+of its institutions and its laws. Here, then, it is that we shall find
+the noblest lessons of history; here it is that we must look for the
+causes, direct and indirect, which have modified the characters, and
+decided the fate of nations. To this imperishable possession it is that
+the philosopher appeals for the corroboration of his theory, as it is to
+it also that the statesman ought to look for the regulation of his
+practice. Religion, property, science, commerce, literature, whatever
+can civilize and instruct rude mankind, whatever can embellish life in
+its more advanced condition, even till it exhibit the wonders of which
+it is now the theatre, may be referred to this subject, and are
+comprised under this denomination. The importance of history has been
+the theme of many a pen, but we question whether it has ever been more
+beautifully described than in the following passage:--
+
+     "Enough has been said, I think, to show that history contains
+     no mean treasures; that, as being the biography of a nation, it
+     partakes of the richness and variety of those elements which
+     make up a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the
+     final cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and
+     man's perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of
+     history. Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in
+     human nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature, or
+     sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering, whether blessed
+     or unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
+     reverses, in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied
+     powers, its courage and its patience, its genius and its
+     wisdom, its justice and its love, that also is the measure of
+     the interest and variety of history. The treasures indeed are
+     ample, but we may more reasonably fear whether we may have
+     strength and skill to win them."
+
+In passing we may observe, after Dr Arnold, that the most important
+bearing of a particular institution upon the character of a nation is
+not always limited to the effect which is most obvious; few who have
+watched the proceedings in our courts of justice can doubt that, in
+civil cases, the interference of a jury is often an obstacle, and
+sometimes an insurmountable obstacle, to the attainment of justice. Dr
+Arnold's remarks on this subject are entitled to great attention:--
+
+     "The effect," he says, "of any particular arrangement of the
+     judicial power, is seen directly in the greater or less purity
+     with which justice is administered; but there is a further
+     effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to
+     a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means
+     of moral and intellectual culture--the opportunity, namely, of
+     exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to accustom a
+     number of persons to the intellectual exercise of attending to,
+     and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to the moral exercise
+     of being placed in a high and responsible situation, invested
+     with one of God's own attributes, that of judgment, and having
+     to determine with authority between truth and falsehood, right
+     and wrong, is to furnish them with very high means of moral and
+     intellectual culture--in other words, it is providing them with
+     one of the highest kinds of education. And thus a judicial
+     constitution may secure a pure administration of justice, and
+     yet fail as an engine of national cultivation, where it is
+     vested in the hands of a small body of professional men, like
+     the old French parliament. While, on the other hand, it may
+     communicate the judicial office very widely, as by our system
+     of juries, and thus may educate, if I may so speak, a very
+     large portion of the nation, but yet may not succeed in
+     obtaining the greatest certainty of just legal decisions. I do
+     not mean that our jury system does not succeed, but it is
+     conceivable that it should not. So, in the same way, different
+     arrangements of the executive and legislative powers should be
+     always regarded in this twofold aspect--as effecting their
+     direct objects, good government and good legislation; and as
+     educating the nation more or less extensively, by affording to
+     a greater or less number of persons practical lessons in
+     governing and legislating."
+
+History is an account of the common purpose pursued by some one of the
+great families of the human race. It is the biography of a nation; as
+the history of a particular sect, or a particular body of men, describes
+the particular end which the sect or body was instituted to pursue, so
+history, in its more comprehensive sense, describes the paramount object
+which the first and sovereign society--the society to which all others
+are necessarily subordinate--endeavours to attain. According to Dr
+Arnold, a nation's life is twofold, external and internal. Its external
+life consists principally in wars. "Here history has been sufficiently
+busy. The wars of the human race have been recorded when every thing
+else has perished."
+
+Mere antiquarianism, Dr Arnold justly observes, is calculated to
+contract and enfeeble the understanding. It is a pedantic love of
+detail, with an indifference to the result, for which alone it can be
+considered valuable. It is the mistake, into which men are perpetually
+falling, of the means for the end. There are people to whom the
+tragedies of Sophocles are less precious than the Scholiast on
+Lycophron, and who prize the speeches of Demosthenes chiefly because
+they may fling light on the dress of an Athenian citizen. The same
+tendency discovers itself in other pursuits. Oxen are fattened into
+plethoras to encourage agriculture, and men of station dress like
+grooms, and bet like blacklegs, to keep up the breed of horses. It is
+true that such evils will happen when agriculture is encouraged, and a
+valuable breed of horses cherished; but they are the consequences, not
+the cause of such a state of things. So the disciples of the old
+philosophers drank hemlock to acquire pallid countenances--but they are
+as far from obtaining the wisdom of their masters by this adventitious
+resemblance, as the antiquarian is from the historian. To write well
+about the past, we must have a vigorous and lively perception of the
+present. This, says Dr Arnold, is the merit of Mitford. It is certainly
+the only one he possesses; a person more totally unqualified for writing
+history at all--to say nothing of the history of Greece--it is difficult
+for us, aided as our imagination may be by the works of our modern
+writers, to conceive. But Raleigh, whom he quotes afterwards, is indeed
+a striking instance of that combination of actual experience with
+speculative knowledge which all should aim at, but which it seldom
+happens that one man in a generation is fortunate enough to obtain.
+
+From the sixteenth century, the writers of history begin to assume a
+different character from that of their predecessors. During the middle
+ages, the elements of society were fewer and less diversified. Before
+that time the people were nothing. Popes, emperors, kings, nobles,
+bishops, knights, are the only materials about which the writer of
+history cared to know or enquire. Perhaps some exception to this rule
+might be found in the historians of the free towns of Italy; but they
+are few and insignificant. After that period, not only did the classes
+of society increase, but every class was modified by more varieties of
+individual life. Even within the last century, the science of political
+economy has given a new colouring to the thoughts and actions of large
+communities, as the different opinions held by its votaries have
+multiplied them into distinct and various classes. Modern historians,
+therefore, may be divided into two classes; the one describing a state
+of society in which the elements are few; the other the times in which
+they were more numerous. As a specimen of the first order, he selects
+Bede. Bede was born in 674, fifty years after the flight of Mahomet from
+Mecca. He died in 755, two or three years after the victory of Charles
+Martel over the Saracens. His ecclesiastical history, in five books,
+describes the period from Augustine's arrival in Kent, 597.
+
+Dr Arnold's dissertation on Bede involves him in the discussion of a
+question on which much skill and ability have been exercised. We allude
+to the question of miracles. "The question," says he, "in Bede takes
+this form--What credit is to be attached to the frequent stories of
+miracles or wonders which occur in his narrative?" He seizes at once
+upon the difficulty, without compromise or evasion. He makes a
+distinction between a wonder and a miracle: "to say that all recorded
+wonders are false, from those recorded by Herodotus to the latest
+reports of animal magnetism, would be a boldness of assertion wholly
+unjustifiable." At the same time he thinks the character of Bede, added
+to the religious difficulty, may incline us to limit miracles to the
+earliest times of Christianity, and refuse our belief to all which are
+reported by the historians of subsequent centuries. He then proceeds to
+consider the questions which suggest themselves when we read Matthew
+Paris, or still more, any of the French, German, or Italian historians
+of the same period:--
+
+     "The thirteenth century contains in it, at its beginning, the
+     most splendid period of the Papacy, the time of Innocent the
+     Third; its end coincides with that great struggle between
+     Boniface the Eighth and Philip the Fair, which marks the first
+     stage of its decline. It contains the reign of Frederick the
+     Second, and his long contest with the popes in Italy; the
+     foundation of the orders of friars, Dominican and Franciscan;
+     the last period of the crusades, and the age of the greatest
+     glory of the schoolmen. Thus, full of matters of interest as it
+     is, it will yet be found that all its interest is more or less
+     connected with two great questions concerning the church;
+     namely, the power of the priesthood in matters of government
+     and in matters of faith; the merits of the contest between the
+     Papacy and the kings of Europe; the nature and character of
+     that influence over men's minds which affected the whole
+     philosophy of the period, the whole intellectual condition of
+     the Christian world."--P. 138.
+
+The pretensions and corruptions of the Church are undoubtedly the chief
+object to which, at this period, the attention of the reader must be
+attracted. "Is the church system of Innocent III. in faith or government
+the system of the New Testament?" Is the difference between them
+inconsiderable, such as may be accounted for by the natural progress of
+society, or does the rent extend to the foundation? "The first century,"
+says Dr Arnold, "is to determine our judgment of the second and of all
+subsequent centuries. It will not do to assume that the judgment must be
+interpreted by the very practices and opinions, the merits of which it
+has to try." As a specimen of the chroniclers, he selects Philip de
+Comines, almost the last great writer of his class. In him is
+exemplified one of the peculiar distinctions of attaching to modern
+history the importance of attending to genealogies.
+
+     "For instance, Comines records the marriage of Mary, duchess
+     of Burgundy, daughter and sole heiress of Charles the Bold,
+     with Maximilian, archduke of Austria. This marriage, conveying
+     all the dominions of Burgundy to Maximilian and his heirs,
+     established a great independent sovereign on the frontiers of
+     France, giving to him on the north, not only the present
+     kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, but large portions of what is
+     now French territory, the old provinces of Artois and French
+     Flanders, French Hainault and French Luxemburg; while on the
+     east it gave him Franche Comte, thus yielding him a footing
+     within the Jura, on the very banks of the Saone. Thence ensued
+     in after ages, when the Spanish branch of the house of Austria
+     had inherited this part of its dominions--the long contests
+     which deluged the Netherlands with blood, the campaigns of King
+     William and Luxembourg, the nine years of efforts, no less
+     skilful than valiant, in which Marlborough broke his way
+     through the fortresses of the iron frontier. Again, when Spain
+     became in a manner French by the accession of the House of
+     Bourbon, the Netherlands reverted once more to Austria itself;
+     and from thence the powers of Europe advanced, almost in our
+     own days, to assail France as a republic; and on this ground,
+     on the plains of Fleurus, was won the first of those great
+     victories which, for nearly twenty years, carried the French
+     standards triumphantly over Europe. Thus the marriage recorded
+     by Comines has been working busily down to our very own times:
+     it is only since the settlement of 1814, and that more recent
+     one of 1830, that the Netherlands have ceased to be effected by
+     the union of Charles the Bold's daughter with Maximilian of
+     Austria"--P. 148.
+
+Again, in order to understand the contest which Philip de Comines
+records between a Frenchman and a Spaniard for the crown of Naples, we
+must go back to the dark and bloody page in the annals of the thirteenth
+century, which relates the extinction of the last heir of the great
+Swabian race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of Anjou, the fit and
+unrelenting instrument of Papal hatred--the dreadful expiation of that
+great crime by the Sicilian Vespers, the establishment of the House of
+Anjou in Sicily, the crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna, the new
+contest occasioned by her adoption--all these events must be known to
+him who would understand the expedition of Charles VIII. The following
+passage is an admirable description of the reasons which lend to the
+pages of Philip de Comines a deep and melancholy interest:--
+
+     "The Memoirs of Philip de Comines terminate about twenty years
+     before the Reformation, six years after the first voyage of
+     Columbus. They relate, then, to a tranquil period immediately
+     preceding a period of extraordinary movement; to the last stage
+     of an old state of things, now on the point of passing away.
+     Such periods, the lull before the burst of the hurricane, the
+     almost oppressive stillness which announces the eruption, or,
+     to use Campbell's beautiful image--
+
+     'The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below,'--
+
+     are always, I think, full of a very deep interest. But it is
+     not from the mere force of contrast with the times that follow,
+     nor yet from the solemnity which all things wear when their
+     dissolution is fast approaching--the interest has yet another
+     source; our knowledge, namely, that in that tranquil period lay
+     the germs of the great changes following, taking their shape
+     for good or for evil, and sometimes irreversibly, while all
+     wore an outside of unconsciousness. We, enlightened by
+     experience, are impatient of this deadly slumber; we wish in
+     vain that the age could have been awakened to a sense of its
+     condition, and taught the infinite preciousness of the passing
+     hour. And as, when a man has been cut off by sudden death, we
+     are curious to know whether his previous words or behaviour
+     indicated any sense of his coming fate, so we examine the
+     records of a state of things just expiring, anxious to observe
+     whether, in any point, there may be discerned an anticipation
+     of the great future, or whether all was blindness and
+     insensibility. In this respect, Comines' Memoirs are striking
+     from their perfect unconsciousness: the knell of the middle
+     ages had been already sounded, yet Comines has no other notions
+     than such as they had tended to foster; he describes their
+     events, their characters, their relations, as if they were to
+     continue for centuries. His remarks are such as the simplest
+     form of human affairs gives birth to; he laments the
+     instability of earthly fortune, as Homer notes our common
+     mortality, or in the tone of that beautiful dialogue between
+     Solon and Croesus, when the philosopher assured the king, that
+     to be rich was not necessarily to be happy. But, resembling
+     Herodotus in his simple morality, he is utterly unlike him in
+     another point; for whilst Herodotus speaks freely and honestly
+     of all men, without respect of persons, Philip de Comines
+     praises his master Louis the Eleventh as one of the best of
+     princes, although he witnessed not only the crimes of his life,
+     but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and
+     has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de
+     Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with whom the
+     crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere
+     with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and
+     respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he
+     himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on
+     his mind no impression."
+
+We now enter upon a period which may be called the modern part of modern
+history, the more complicated period, in contradistinction to the more
+simple state of things which, up to this moment, has occupied the
+student's attention. It is impossible to read, without deep regret, the
+passage in which Dr Arnold speaks of his intention--"if life and health
+be spared him, to enter into minute details; selecting some one country
+as the principal subject of his enquiries, and illustrating the lessons
+of history for the most part from its particular experience."
+
+He proceeds, however, to the performance of the task immediately before
+him. After stating that the great object, the [Greek: teleiotaton
+telos], of history is that which most nearly touches the inner life of
+civilized man, he pauses for a while at the threshold before he enters
+into the sanctuary, and undoubtedly some external knowledge is requisite
+before we penetrate into its recesses: we want some dwelling-place, as
+it were, for the mind, some local habitation in which our ideas may be
+arranged, some topics that may be firmly grasped by the memory, and on
+which the understanding may confidently rest; and thus it is that
+geography, even with a view to other purposes, must engross, in the
+first instance, a considerable share of our attention. The sense in
+which Dr Arnold understands a knowledge of geography, is explained in
+the following luminous and instructive commentary:--
+
+     "I said that geography held out one hand to geology and
+     physiology, while she held out the other to history. In fact,
+     geology and physiology themselves are closely connected with
+     history. For instance, what lies at the bottom of that question
+     which is now being discussed every where, the question of the
+     corn-laws, but the geological fact that England is more richly
+     supplied with coal-mines than any other country in the world?
+     what has given a peculiar interest to our relations with China,
+     but the physiological fact, that the tea-plant, which is become
+     so necessary to our daily life, has been cultivated with equal
+     success in no other climate or country? what is it which
+     threatens the permanence of the union between the northern and
+     southern states of the American confederacy, but the
+     physiological fact, that the soil and climate of the southern
+     states render them essentially agricultural, while those of the
+     northern states, combined with their geographical advantages as
+     to sea-ports, dispose them no less naturally to be
+     manufacturing and commercial? The whole character of a nation
+     may be influenced by its geology and physical geography. But
+     for the sake of its mere beauty and liveliness, if there were
+     no other consideration, it would be worth our while to acquire
+     this richer view of geography. Conceive only the difference
+     between a ground-plan and a picture. The mere plan geography of
+     Italy gives us its shape, as I have observed, and the position
+     of its towns; to these it may add a semicircle of mountains
+     round the northern boundary to represent the Alps, and another
+     long line stretching down the middle of the country to
+     represent the Apennines. But let us carry on this a little
+     further, and give life and meaning and harmony to what is at
+     present at once lifeless and confused. Observe, in the first
+     place, how the Apennine line, beginning from the southern
+     extremity of the Alps, runs across Italy to the very edge of
+     the Adriatic, and thus separates naturally the Italy proper of
+     the Romans, from Cisalpine Gaul. Observe again, how the Alps,
+     after running north and south, where they divide Italy from
+     France, turn then away to the eastward, running almost parallel
+     to the Apennines, till they too touch the head of the Adriatic,
+     on the confines of Istria. Thus between these two lines of
+     mountains there is enclosed one great basin or plain; enclosed
+     on three sides by mountains, open only on the east to the sea.
+     Observe how widely it spreads itself out, and then see how well
+     it is watered. One great river flows through it in its whole
+     extent, and this is fed by streams almost unnumbered,
+     descending towards it on either side, from the Alps on the one
+     side, and from the Apennines on the other. Who can wonder that
+     this large and rich and well-watered plain should be filled
+     with flourishing cities, or that it should have been contended
+     for so often by successive invaders? Then descending into Italy
+     proper, we find the complexity of its geography quite in
+     accordance with its manifold political division. It is not one
+     simple central ridge of mountains, leaving a broad belt of
+     level country on either side between it and the sea, nor yet
+     is it a chain rising immediately from the sea on one side, like
+     the Andes in South America, and leaving room, therefore, on the
+     other side for wide plains of table-land, and rivers with a
+     sufficient length of course to become at last great and
+     navigable. It is a back-bone thickly set with spines of unequal
+     length, some of them running out at regular distances parallel
+     to each other, but others twisted so strangely that they often
+     run for a long way parallel to the back-bone, or main ridge,
+     and interlace with one another in a maze almost inextricable.
+     And, as if to complete the disorder, in those spots where the
+     spines of the Apennines, being twisted round, run parallel to
+     the sea and to their own central chain, and thus leave an
+     interval of plain between their bases and the Mediterranean,
+     volcanic agency has broken up the space thus left with other
+     and distinct groups of hills of its own creation, as in the
+     case of Vesuvius, and of the Alban hills near Rome. Speaking
+     generally then, Italy is made up of an infinite multitude of
+     valleys pent in between high and steep hills, each forming a
+     country to itself, and cut off by natural barriers from the
+     others. Its several parts are isolated by nature, and no art of
+     man can thoroughly unite them. Even the various provinces of
+     the same kingdom are strangers to each other; the Abruzzi are
+     like an unknown world to the inhabitants of Naples, insomuch,
+     that when two Neapolitan naturalists, not ten years since, made
+     an excursion to visit the Majella, one of the highest of the
+     central Apennines, they found there many medicinal plants
+     growing in the greatest profusion, which the Neapolitans were
+     regularly in the habit of importing from other countries, as no
+     one suspected their existence within their own kingdom. Hence
+     arises the romantic character of Italian scenery: the constant
+     combination of a mountain outline and all the wild features of
+     a mountain country, with the rich vegetation of a southern
+     climate in the valleys. Hence too the rudeness, the pastoral
+     simplicity, and the occasional robber habits, to be found in
+     the population; so that to this day you may travel in many
+     places for miles together in the plains and valleys without
+     passing through a single town or village; for the towns still
+     cluster on the mountain sides, the houses nestling together on
+     some scanty ledge, with cliffs rising above them and sinking
+     down abruptly below them, the very 'congesta manu praeruptis
+     oppida saxis' of Virgil's description, which he even then
+     called 'antique walls,' because they had been the strongholds
+     of the primaeval inhabitants of the country, and which are still
+     inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries, nothing of the
+     stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated
+     into these lonely valleys, and tempted the people to quit their
+     mountain fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling in the
+     plain.
+
+     "I have been led on further than I intended, but I wished to
+     give an example of what I meant by a real and lively knowledge
+     of geography, which brings the whole character of a country
+     before our eyes, and enables us to understand its influence
+     upon the social and political condition of its inhabitants. And
+     this knowledge, as I said before, is very important to enable
+     us to follow clearly the external revolutions of different
+     nations, which we want to comprehend before we penetrate to
+     what has been passing within."
+
+This introductory discussion is followed by a rapid sketch of the
+different struggles for power and independence in Europe during the
+three last centuries. The general tendency of this period has been to
+consolidate severed nations into great kingdoms; but this tendency has
+been checked when the growth of any single power has become excessive,
+by the combined efforts of other European nations. Spain, France,
+England, and Austria, all in their turns have excited the jealousy of
+their neighbours, and have been attacked by their confederate strength.
+But in 1793 the peace of Europe was assailed by an enemy still more
+dangerous and energetic--still more destructive--we doubt whether in the
+English language a more vivid description is to be found of the evil,
+its progress, and its termination, than Dr Arnold has given in the
+following passage:--
+
+     "Ten years afterwards there broke out by far the most alarming
+     danger of universal dominion, which had ever threatened Europe.
+     The most military people in Europe became engaged in a war for
+     their very existence. Invasion on the frontiers, civil war and
+     all imaginable horrors raging within, the ordinary relations of
+     life went to wreck, and every Frenchman became a soldier. It
+     was a multitude numerous as the hosts of Persia, but animated
+     by the courage and skill and energy of the old Romans. One
+     thing alone was wanting, that which Pyrrhus said the Romans
+     wanted, to enable them to conquer the world--a general and a
+     ruler like himself. There was wanted a master hand to restore
+     and maintain peace at home, and to concentrate and direct the
+     immense military resources of France against her foreign
+     enemies. And such an one appeared in Napoleon. Pacifying La
+     Vendee, receiving back the emigrants, restoring the church,
+     remodelling the law, personally absolute, yet carefully
+     preserving and maintaining all the great points which the
+     nation had won at the Revolution, Napoleon united in himself,
+     not only the power, but the whole will of France; and that
+     power and will were guided by a genius for war such as Europe
+     had never seen since Caesar. The effect was absolutely magical.
+     In November 1799, he was made First Consul; he found France
+     humbled by defeats, his Italian conquests lost, his allies
+     invaded, his own frontier threatened. He took the field in May
+     1800, and in June the whole fortune of the war was changed, and
+     Austria driven out of Lombardy by the victory of Marengo. Still
+     the flood of the tide rose higher and higher, and every
+     successive wave of its advance swept away a kingdom. Earthly
+     state has never reached a prouder pinnacle than when Napoleon,
+     in June 1812, gathered his army at Dresden--that mighty host,
+     unequalled in all time, of 450,000, not men merely, but
+     effective soldiers, and there received the homage of subject
+     kings. And now, what was the principal adversary of this
+     tremendous power? by whom was it checked, and resisted, and put
+     down? By none, and by nothing, but the direct and manifest
+     interposition of God. I know of no language so well fitted to
+     describe that victorious advance to Moscow, and the utter
+     humiliation of the retreat, as the language of the prophet with
+     respect to the advance and subsequent destruction of the host
+     of Sennacherib. 'When they arose early in the morning, behold
+     they were all dead corpses,' applies almost literally to that
+     memorable night of frost, in which twenty thousand horses
+     perished, and the strength of the French army was utterly
+     broken. Human instruments, no doubt, were employed in the
+     remainder of the work; nor would I deny to Germany and to
+     Prussia the glories of the year 1813, nor to England the honour
+     of her victories in Spain, or of the crowning victory of
+     Waterloo. But at the distance of thirty years, those who lived
+     in the time of danger and remember its magnitude, and now
+     calmly review what there was in human strength to avert it,
+     must acknowledge, I think, beyond all controversy, that the
+     deliverance of Europe from the dominion of Napoleon was
+     effected neither by Russia, nor by Germany, nor by England, but
+     by the hand of God alone."
+
+The question, whether some races of men possess an inherent superiority
+over others, is mooted by Dr Arnold, in his dissertation on military
+science. Without laying down any universal rule, it may be stated that
+such a superiority can be predicated of no European nation. Frederick
+the Great defeated the French at Rosbach, as easily as Napoleon overcame
+the Prussians at Jena. If Marlborough was uniformly successful, William
+III. was always beaten by Luxembourg, and the Duke of Cumberland by
+D'Etrees and Saxe. It seems, therefore, a fair inference, that no
+civilized European nation possesses over its neighbours that degree of
+superiority which greater genius in the general, or greater discipline
+in the troops of its antagonists, will not be sufficient to counteract.
+The defeat of the Vendeans in France, by the soldiers of the garrison of
+Mentz; and the admirable conduct of our own Sepoys under British
+generals, are, no doubt, strong instances to show the prodigious
+importance of systematic discipline. Still, we cannot quite coincide
+with Dr Arnold's opinion on this subject. We are quite ready to
+admit--who, indeed, for a moment would deny?--in military as well as in
+all other subjects, the value of professional attainments and long
+experience. We cannot, however, consider them superior to those great
+qualities of our nature which discipline may regulate and embellish, but
+which it can never destroy or supersede. As every man is bound to form
+his own opinion on religious matters, though he may not be a priest,
+every man is obliged to defend his country when invaded, though he may
+not be a soldier. Nor can the miseries which such a state of things
+involves, furnish any argument against its necessity. All war must be
+attended with misfortunes, which freeze the blood and make the soul sick
+in their contemplation; but these very misfortunes deter those who wield
+the reins of empire from appealing wantonly to its determination. The
+resistance of Saragossa was not the less glorious, it does not the less
+fire the heart of every reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
+because it was not conducted according to the strict forms of military
+tactics, because citizens and even women participated in its fame. The
+inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish nation for its oppressor--which
+wore down the French armies, which no severities, no violence, no
+defeat, could subdue--will be, as long as time shall last, a terrible
+lesson to ambitious conquerors. They will learn that there is in the
+fury of an insulted nation a danger which the most exquisite military
+combinations cannot remove, which the most perfectly served artillery
+cannot sweep away, before which all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
+lines of fortification in the world are useless--and compared with which
+the science of the commander is pedantry, and strategy but a word. They
+will discover that something more than mechanical power, however
+great--something more than the skill of the practised officer, or the
+instinct of well-trained soldiers, are requisite for success--where
+every plain is a Marathon, and every valley a Thermopylae.
+
+Would to God that the same reproach urged against the Spanish
+nation--that they defended their native soil irregularly--that they
+fought like freemen rather than like soldiers--that they transgressed
+the rules of war by defending one side of a street while the artillery
+of the enemy, with its thousand mouths, was pouring death upon them from
+the other--that they struggled too long, that they surrendered too late,
+that they died too readily, could have been applied to Poland--one
+fearful instance of success would have been wanting to encourage the
+designs of despotism!
+
+Some of the rights of war are next considered--that of sacking a town
+taken by assault, and of blockading a town defended, not by the
+inhabitants, but by a military garrison--are next examined;--in both
+these cases the penalty falls upon the innocent. The Homeric description
+of a town taken by assault, is still applicable to modern warfare:--
+
+     [Greek: andras men kteinoysi, polin de te pyr amathynei
+             tekna de t' alloi agoysi, bathyzonoys te gynaikas.]
+
+The unhappy fate of Genoa is thus beautifully related--
+
+     "Some of you, I doubt not, remember Genoa; you have seen that
+     queenly city with its streets of palaces, rising tier above
+     tier from the water, girdling with the long lines of its bright
+     white houses the vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of which
+     is marked by a huge natural mole of rock, crowned by its
+     magnificent lighthouse tower. You remember how its white houses
+     rose out of a mass of fig and olive and orange trees, the glory
+     of its old patrician luxury. You may have observed the
+     mountains, behind the town, spotted at intervals by small
+     circular low towers; one of which is distinctly conspicuous
+     where the ridge of the hills rises to its summit, and hides
+     from view all the country behind it. Those towers are the forts
+     of the famous lines, which, curiously resembling in shape the
+     later Syracusan walls enclosing Epipalae, converge inland from
+     the eastern and western extremities of the city, looking
+     down--the western line on the valley of the Polcevera, the
+     eastern, on that of the Bisagno--till they meet, as I have
+     said, on the summit of the mountains, where the hills cease to
+     rise from the sea, and become more or less of a table land,
+     running off towards the interior, at the distance, as well as I
+     remember, of between two and three miles from the outside of
+     the city. Thus a very large open space is enclosed within the
+     lines, and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming a vast
+     intrenched camp, holding not so much a garrison as an army. In
+     the autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven the French out of
+     Lombardy and Piedmont; their last victory of Fossano or Genola
+     had won the fortress of Coni or Cunco, close under the Alps,
+     and at the very extremity of the plain of the Po; the French
+     clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa--the
+     narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea, which
+     extends from the frontiers of France almost to the mouth of the
+     Arno. Hither the remains of the French force were collected,
+     commanded by General Massena; and the point of chief importance
+     to his defence was the city of Genoa. Napoleon had just
+     returned from Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could
+     not be expected to take the field till the following spring,
+     and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from
+     without--every thing was to depend on his own pertinacity. The
+     strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a
+     position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the
+     population of a great city, held out to the enemy a hope of
+     reducing it by famine; and as Genoa derives most of its
+     supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British naval
+     commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance of
+     his naval force to the Austrians; and, by the vigilance of his
+     cruizers, the whole coasting trade right and left along the
+     Riviera, was effectually cut off. It is not at once that the
+     inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the daily sight of
+     well-stored shops and an abundant market, begin to realize the
+     idea of scarcity; or that the wealthy classes of society, who
+     have never known any other state than one of abundance and
+     luxury, begin seriously to conceive of famine. But the shops
+     were emptied; and the storehouses began to be drawn upon; and
+     no fresh supply, or hope of supply, appeared.
+
+     "Winter passed away and spring returned, so early and so
+     beautiful on that garden-like coast, sheltered as it is from
+     the north winds by its belts of mountains, and open to the full
+     rays of the southern sun. Spring returned and clothed the
+     hill-sides within the lines with its fresh verdure. But that
+     verdure was no longer the mere delight of the careless eye of
+     luxury, refreshing the citizens by its liveliness and softness,
+     when they rode or walked up thither from the city to enjoy the
+     surpassing beauty of the prospect. The green hill-sides were
+     now visited for a very different object; ladies of the highest
+     rank might be seen cutting up every plant which it was possible
+     to turn to food, and bearing home the common weeds of our
+     road-sides as a most precious treasure. The French general
+     pitied the distresses of the people; but the lives and strength
+     of his garrison seemed to him more important than the lives of
+     the Genoese, and such provisions as remained were reserved, in
+     the first place, for the French army. Scarcity became utter
+     want, and want became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of
+     that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of
+     its humblest poor, death was busy; not the momentary death of
+     battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but the
+     lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants died
+     before their parents' eyes, husbands and wives lay down to
+     expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825, told me,
+     that his father and two of his brothers had been starved to
+     death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the month of
+     June, when Napoleon had already descended from the Alps into
+     the plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable, and
+     Massena surrendered. But before he did so, twenty thousand
+     innocent persons, old and young, women and children, had died
+     by the most horrible of deaths which humanity can endure. Other
+     horrors which occurred besides during this blockade, I pass
+     over; the agonizing death of twenty thousand innocent and
+     helpless persons requires nothing to be added to it.
+
+     "Now, is it right that such a tragedy as this should take
+     place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify
+     the authors of it? Conceive having been an officer in Lord
+     Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed in stopping
+     the food which was being brought for the relief of such misery.
+     For the thing was done deliberately; the helplessness of the
+     Genoese was known; their distress was known; it was known that
+     they could not force Massena to surrender; it was known that
+     they were dying daily by hundreds, yet week after week, and
+     month after month, did the British ships of war keep their iron
+     watch along all the coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any
+     article of provision could escape their vigilance. One cannot
+     but be thankful that Nelson was spared from commanding at this
+     horrible blockade of Genoa.
+
+     "Now, on which side the law of nations should throw the guilt
+     of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence,
+     or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that
+     the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless
+     persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the
+     parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest
+     course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be
+     allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who
+     should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same
+     light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to
+     be in the habit of butchering women and children. For it is not
+     true that war only looks to the speediest and most effectual
+     way of attaining its object; so that, as the letting the
+     inhabitants go out would enable the garrison to maintain the
+     town longer, the laws of war authorize the keeping them in and
+     starving them. Poisoning wells might be a still quicker method
+     of reducing a place; but do the laws of war therefore sanction
+     it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to be placing the
+     guilt of the individuals concerned in the two cases which I am
+     going to compare, on an equal footing; it would be most unjust
+     to do so--for in the one case they acted, as they supposed,
+     according to a law which made what they did their duty. But,
+     take the cases themselves, and examine them in all their
+     circumstances; the degree of suffering inflicted--the innocence
+     and helplessness of the sufferers--the interests at stake--and
+     the possibility of otherwise securing them; and if any man can
+     defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the
+     inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the
+     lawfulness of the massacres of September."
+
+We rejoice to find that the great authority of Colonel W. Napier--an
+authority of which posterity will know the value--is arrayed on the side
+of those who think that war, the best school, as after all it must often
+be, of some of our noblest virtues, need not be always the cause of
+such atrocities.
+
+This enquiry shows us how the centre of external movement in Europe has
+varied; but it is not merely to the territorial struggle that our
+attention should be confined--mighty principles, Christian truth, civil
+freedom, were often partially at issue on one side, or on the other, in
+the different contests which the gold and steel of Europe were set in
+motion to determine; hence the necessity of considering not only the
+moral power, but the economical and military strength of the respective
+countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an
+encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is
+beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were
+brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned,
+not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was
+accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated
+to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land,
+besides the support of its owner and the actual demands of the State, is
+encumbered with the support of two or three persons who represent the
+creditors of the nation; and every man who would have laboured twelve
+hours, had no national debt existed, is now obliged to toil sixteen for
+the same remuneration: such a state of things may be necessary, but it
+certainly requires investigation.
+
+Other parts of the law of nations, the maritime law especially, require
+improvement. Superficial men are apt to overlook the transcendent
+importance of error on these subjects by which desolation may be spread
+from one quarter of the globe to the other. As no man can bear long the
+unanimous disapprobation of his fellows, no nation can long set at
+defiance the voice of a civilized world. But we return to history in
+military operations. A good map is essential to this study. For
+instance, to understand the wars of Frederick the Great, it is not
+enough to know that he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen, and
+Cunersdorf--that he was victorious at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf, and
+Prague--that he was opposed by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff--we must
+also comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions with regard to
+those of the allies--the importance of Saxony as covering Prussia on the
+side of Austria--the importance of Silesia as running into the Austrian
+frontier, and flanking a large part of Bohemia, should also be
+considered--this will alone enable us to account for Frederick's attack
+on Saxony, and his pertinacity in keeping possession of Silesia; nor
+should it be forgotten, that the military positions of one generation
+are not always those of the next, and that the military history of one
+period will be almost unintelligible, if judged according to the roads
+and fortresses of another. For instance, St Dizier in Champagne, which
+arrested Charles the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly
+untenable--Turin, so celebrated for the sieges it has sustained, is an
+open town, while Alexandria is the great Piedmontese fortress. The
+addition of Paris to the list of French strongholds, is, if really
+intended, a greater change than any that has been enumerated. This
+discussion leads to an allusion to mountain warfare, which has been
+termed the poetry of the military art, and of which the struggle in
+Switzerland in 1799, when the eastern part of that country was turned
+into a vast citadel, defended by the French against Suwaroff, is a most
+remarkable instance, as well as the most recent. The history by General
+Mathieu Dumas of the campaign in 1799 and 1800, is referred to as
+containing a good account and explanation of this branch of military
+science.
+
+The internal history of Europe during the three hundred and forty years
+which have elapsed since the middle ages, is the subject now proposed
+for our consideration. To the question--What was the external object of
+Europe during any part of this period? the answer is obvious, that it
+was engaged in resisting the aggression of Spain, or France, or Austria.
+But if we carry our view to the moral world, do we find any principle
+equally obvious, and a solution as satisfactory? By no means. We may,
+indeed, say, with apparent precision, that during the earliest part of
+this epoch, Europe was divided between the champions and antagonists of
+religion, as, during its latter portion, it was between the enemies and
+supporters of political reformation. But a deeper analysis will show us
+that these names were but the badges of ideas, always complex, sometimes
+contradictory--the war-cry of contending parties, by whom the reality
+was now forgotten, or to whom, compared with other purposes, it was
+altogether subordinate.
+
+Take, for instance, the exercise of political power. Is a state free in
+proportion to the number of its subjects who are admitted to rank among
+its citizens, or to the degree in which its recognised citizens are
+invested with political authority? In the latter point of view, the
+government of Athens was the freest the world has ever seen. In the
+former it was a most exclusive and jealous oligarchy. "For a city to be
+well governed," says Aristotle in his Politics, "those who share in its
+government must be free from the care of providing for their own
+support. This," he adds, "is an admitted truth."
+
+Again, the attentive reader can hardly fail to see that, in the struggle
+between Pompey and Caesar, Caesar represented the popular as Pompey did
+the aristocratical party, and that Pompey's triumph would have been
+attended, as Cicero clearly saw, by the domination of an aristocracy in
+the shape most oppressive and intolerable. The government of Rome, after
+several desperate struggles, had degenerated into the most corrupt
+oligarchy, in which all the eloquence of Cicero was unable to kindle the
+faintest gleam of public virtue. Owing to the success of Caesar, the
+civilized world exchanged the dominion of several tyrants for that of
+one, and the opposition to his design was the resistance of the few to
+the many.
+
+Or we may take another view of the subject. By freedom do we mean the
+absence of all restraint in private life, the non-interference by the
+state in the details of ordinary intercourse? According to such a view,
+the old government of Venice and the present government of Austria,
+where debauchery is more than tolerated, would be freer than the Puritan
+commonwealths in North America, where dramatic representations were
+prohibited as impious, and death was the legal punishment of
+fornication.
+
+These are specimens of the difficulties by which we are beset, when we
+endeavour to obtain an exact and faithful image from the troubled medium
+through which human affairs are reflected to us. Dr Arnold dwells on
+this point with his usual felicity of language and illustration.
+
+     "This inattention to altered circumstances, which would make us
+     be Guelfs in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, because
+     the Guelf cause had been right in the eleventh or twelfth, is a
+     fault of most universal application in all political questions,
+     and is often most seriously mischievous. It is deeply seated in
+     human nature, being, in fact, no other than an exemplification
+     of the force of habit. It is like the case of a settler,
+     landing in a country overrun with wood and undrained, and
+     visited therefore by excessive falls of rain. The evil of wet,
+     and damp, and closeness, is besetting him on every side; he
+     clears away the woods, and he drains his land, and he, by doing
+     so, mends both his climate and his own condition. Encouraged by
+     his success, he perseveres in his system; clearing a country is
+     with him synonymous with making it fertile and habitable; and
+     he levels, or rather sets fire to, his forests without mercy.
+     Meanwhile, the tide is turned without his observing it; he has
+     already cleared enough, and every additional clearance is a
+     mischief; damp and wet are no longer the evil most to be
+     dreaded, but excessive drought. The rains do not fall in
+     sufficient quantity; the springs become low, the rivers become
+     less and less fitted for navigation. Yet habit blinds him for a
+     long while to the real state of the case; and he continues to
+     encourage a coming mischief in his dread of one that is become
+     obsolete. We have been long making progress on our present
+     tack; yet if we do not go about now, we shall run ashore.
+     Consider the popular feeling at this moment against capital
+     punishment; what is it but continuing to burn the woods, when
+     the country actually wants shade and moisture? Year after year,
+     men talked of the severity of the penal code, and struggled
+     against it in vain. The feeling became stronger and stronger,
+     and at last effected all, and more than all, which it had at
+     first vainly demanded; yet still, from mere habit, it pursues
+     its course, no longer to the restraining of legal cruelty, but
+     to the injury of innocence and the encouragement of crime, and
+     encouraging that worse evil--a sympathy with wickedness justly
+     punished rather than with the law, whether of God or man,
+     unjustly violated. So men have continued to cry out against the
+     power of the Crown after the Crown had been shackled hand and
+     foot; and to express the greatest dread of popular violence
+     long after that violence was exhausted, and the anti-popular
+     party was not only rallied, but had turned the tide of battle,
+     and was victoriously pressing upon its enemy."
+
+The view which Dr Arnold gives of the parties in England during the
+sixteenth century--that great epoch of English genius--is remarkable for
+its candour and moderation. He considers the distinctions which then
+prevailed in England as political rather than religious, "inasmuch as
+they disputed about points of church government, without any reference
+to a supposed priesthood; and because even those who maintained that one
+or another form was to be preferred, because it was of divine
+appointment, were influenced in their interpretation of the doubtful
+language of the Scriptures by their own strong persuasion of what that
+language could not but mean to say."
+
+And he then concludes by the unanswerable remark, that in England,
+according to the theory of the constitution during the sixteenth
+century, church and state were one. The proofs of this proposition are
+innumerable--not merely the act by which the supremacy was conferred on
+Henry VIII.--not merely the powers, almost unlimited, in matters
+ecclesiastical, delegated to the king's vicegerent, that vicegerent
+being a layman--not merely the communion established by the sole
+authority of Edward VI.--without the least participation in it by any
+bishop or clergyman; but the still more conclusive argument furnished by
+the fact, that no point in the doctrine, discipline, or ritual of our
+church, was established except by the power of Parliament, and the power
+of Parliament alone--nay, more, that they were established in direct
+defiance of the implacable opposition of the bishops, by whom, being
+then Roman Catholics, the English Church, on the accession of Elizabeth,
+was represented--to which the omission of the names of the Lords
+Spiritual in the Act of Uniformity, which is said to be enacted by the
+"Queen's Highness," with the assent of the Lords and Commons in
+Parliament assembled, is a testimony, at once unanswerable and
+unprecedented. We have dwelt with the more anxiety on this part of Dr
+Arnold's work, as it furnishes a complete answer to the absurd opinions
+concerning the English Church, which it has been of late the object of a
+few bigots, unconsciously acting as the tools of artful and ambitious
+men, to propagate, and which would lead, by a direct and logical
+process, to the complete overthrow of Protestant faith and worship.
+Such, then, being the state of things "recognized on all hands, church
+government was no light matter, but one which essentially involved in it
+the government of the state; and the disputing the Queen's supremacy,
+was equivalent to depriving her of one of the most important portions of
+her sovereignty, and committing half of the government of the nation to
+other hands."
+
+At the accession of Henry VIII., the most profound tranquillity
+prevailed over England. The last embers of those factions by which,
+during his father's reign, the peace of the nation had been disturbed
+rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of
+that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in
+England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the
+wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation.
+The parties of York and Lancaster were no more--the Episcopal and
+Puritan factions were not yet in being--every day diminished the
+influence of the nobles--the strength of the Commons was in its
+infancy--the Crown alone remained, strong in its own prerogative,
+stronger still in the want of all competitors. Crime after crime was
+committed by the savage tyrant who inherited it; he was
+ostentatious--the treasures of the nation were lavished at his feet; he
+was vindictive--the blood of the wise, the noble, and the beautiful, was
+shed, like water, to gratify his resentment; he was rapacious--the
+accumulations of ancient piety were surrendered to glut his avarice; he
+was arbitrary--and his proclamations were made equivalent to acts of
+Parliament; he was fickle--and the religion of the nation was changed to
+gratify his lust. To all this the English people submitted, as to some
+divine infliction, in silence and consternation--the purses, lives,
+liberties, and consciences of his people were, for a time, at his
+disposal. During the times of his son and his eldest daughter, the
+general aspect of affairs was the same. But, though the hurricane of
+royal caprice and bigotry swept over the land, seemingly without
+resistance, the sublime truths which were the daily subject of
+controversy, and the solid studies with which the age was conversant,
+penetrated into every corner of the land, and were incorporated with the
+very being of the nation. Then, as the mist of doubt and persecution
+which had covered Mary's throne cleared away, the intellect of England,
+in all its health, and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed in the men
+and women of the Elizabethan age:--
+
+     "To say," observes Dr Arnold, "that the Puritans were wanting
+     in humility because they did not acquiesce in the state of
+     things which they found around them, is a mere extravagance,
+     arising out of a total misapprehension of the nature of
+     humility, and of the merits of the feeling of veneration. All
+     earnestness and depth of character is incompatible with such a
+     notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with some great
+     truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey it, cannot listen to
+     every one who may be indifferent to it, or opposed to it. There
+     is a voice to which he already owes obedience, which he serves
+     with the humblest devotion, which he worships with the most
+     intense veneration. It is not that such feelings are dead in
+     him, but that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are
+     claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question
+     of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship
+     may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his
+     opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown
+     that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may be justly
+     taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the
+     very notion of an earnest character; for its earnestness
+     consists in its devotion to some one object, as opposed to a
+     proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be meant that
+     reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects of
+     veneration we have the better is our character, this is to
+     confound the essential difference between veneration and love.
+     The excellence of love is its universality; we are told that
+     even the highest object of all cannot be loved if inferior
+     objects are hated."
+
+Opinions, in the meanwhile, not very favourable to established authority
+in the state, and marked by a rooted antipathy to ecclesiastical
+pretensions, were rapidly gaining proselytes in the nation, and even at
+the court. But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth, and, still more,
+the great veneration and esteem for that magnanimous princess, which
+were for many years the ruling principle--we might almost say, the
+darling passion--of Englishmen, enabled her to keep at bay the dangerous
+animosities which her miserable successor had neither dexterity to
+conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In his time the cravings, moral and
+intellectual, of the English nation discovered themselves in forms not
+to be mistaken--some more, some less formidable to established
+government; but all announcing that the time was come when concession to
+them was inevitable. No matter whether it was the Puritan who complained
+of the rags of popery, or the judge who questioned the prerogative of
+the sovereign, or the patriot who bewailed the profligate expenditure of
+James's polluted court, or the pamphleteer whom one of our dramatists
+has described so admirably, or the hoarse murmur of the crowd execrating
+the pusillanimous murder of Raleigh--whosesoever the voice might be,
+whatever shape it might assume, petition, controversy, remonstrance,
+address, impeachment, libel, menace, insurrection, the language it spoke
+was uniform and unequivocal; it demanded for the people a share in the
+administration of their government, civil and ecclesiastical--it
+expressed their determination to make the House of Commons a reality.
+
+The observations that follow are fraught with the most profound wisdom,
+and afford an admirable exemplification of the manner in which history
+should be read by those who wish to find in it something more than a
+mere register of facts and anecdotes:--
+
+     "Under these circumstances there were now working together in
+     the same party many principles which, as we have seen, are
+     sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance the popular
+     principle, that the influence of many should not be overborne
+     by that of one, was working side by side with the principle of
+     movement, or the desire of carrying on the work of the
+     Reformation to the furthest possible point, and not only the
+     desire of completing the Reformation, but that of shaking off
+     the manifold evils of the existing state of things, both
+     political and moral. Yet it is remarkable that the spirit of
+     intellectual movement stood as it were hesitating which party
+     it ought to join: and as the contest went on, it seemed rather
+     to incline to that party which was most opposed to the
+     political movement. This is a point in the state of English
+     party in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing,
+     and we must endeavour to comprehend it.
+
+     "We might think, _a priori_, that the spirit of political, and
+     that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go
+     on together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But the
+     Spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two in
+     this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of
+     mankind have little sympathy. Political benefits all men can
+     appreciate; and all good men, and a great many more than we
+     might well dare to call good, can appreciate also the value,
+     not of all, but of some religious truth which to them may seem
+     all: the way to obtain God's favour and to worship Him aright,
+     is a thing which great bodies of men can value, and be moved to
+     the most determined efforts if they fancy that they are
+     hindered from attaining to it. But intellectual movement in
+     itself is a thing which few care for. Political truth may be
+     dear to them, so far as it effects their common well-being; and
+     religious truth so far as they may think it their duty to learn
+     it; but truth abstractedly, and because it is truth, which is
+     the object, I suppose, of the pure intellect, is to the mass of
+     mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the workings of the intellect
+     come even to be regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we have
+     got, we say, what we want, and we are well contented with it;
+     why should we be kept in perpetual restlessness, because you
+     are searching after some new truths which, when found, will
+     compel us to derange the state of our minds in order to make
+     room for them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and
+     hated Socrates; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew that
+     Cleon's partizans, no less than his own aristocratical friends,
+     would sympathize with his satire when directed against the
+     philosophers. But if this hold in political matters, much more
+     does it hold religiously. The two great parties of the
+     Christian world have each their own standard of truth, by which
+     they try all things: Scripture on the one hand, the voice of
+     the church on the other. To both, therefore, the pure
+     intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, but they dislike
+     it. It will question what they will not allow to be questioned;
+     it may arrive at conclusions which they would regard as
+     impious. And, therefore, in an age of religious movement
+     particularly, the spirit of intellectual movement soon finds
+     itself proscribed rather than countenanced."
+
+In the extract which follows, the pure and tender morality of the
+sentiment vies with the atmosphere of fine writing that invests it. The
+passage is one which Plato might have envied, and which we should
+imagine the most hardened and successful of our modern apostates cannot
+read without some feeling like contrition and remorse. Fortunate indeed
+were the youth trained to virtue by such a monitor, and still more
+fortunate the country where such a duty was confided to such a man:--
+
+     "I have tried to analyze the popular party: I must now
+     endeavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of
+     course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly at different
+     times; when it is in the ascendant, its vilest elements are
+     sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,--just men, wise men,
+     noble-minded men,--then refuse to take part with it. But when
+     it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to imitate its
+     practices, then again many of the best and noblest spirits
+     return to it, and share its defeat though they abhorred its
+     victory. We must distinguish, therefore, very widely, between
+     the anti-popular party in 1640, before the Long Parliament met,
+     and the same party a few years, or even a few months,
+     afterwards. Now, taking the best specimens of this party in its
+     best state, we can scarcely admire them too highly. A man who
+     leaves the popular cause when it is triumphant, and joins the
+     party opposed to it, without really changing his principles and
+     becoming a renegade, is one of the noblest characters in
+     history. He may not have the clearest judgment, or the firmest
+     wisdom; he may have been mistaken, but, as far as he is
+     concerned personally, we cannot but admire him. But such a man
+     changes his party not to conquer but to die. He does not allow
+     the caresses of his new friends to make him forget that he is a
+     sojourner with them, and not a citizen: his old friends may
+     have used him ill, they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly:
+     still their faults, though they may have driven him into exile,
+     cannot banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is
+     his true home: that their cause is habitually just and
+     habitually the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray
+     by an unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly
+     against their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather
+     than in their company; but die he must, for there is no place
+     left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is
+     obliged to leave the country of his affections, and life
+     elsewhere is intolerable. This man is no renegade, no apostate,
+     but the purest of martyrs: for what testimony to truth can be
+     so pure as that which is given uncheered by any sympathy; given
+     not against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing
+     enemies. And such a martyr was Falkland!
+
+     "Others who fall off from a popular party in its triumph, are
+     of a different character; ambitious men, who think that they
+     become necessary to their opponents and who crave the glory of
+     being able to undo their own work as easily as they had done
+     it: passionate men, who, quarrelling with their old associates
+     on some personal question, join the adversary in search of
+     revenge; vain men, who think their place unequal to their
+     merits, and hope to gain a higher on the opposite side: timid
+     men, who are frightened as it were at the noise of their own
+     guns, and the stir of actual battle--who had liked to dally
+     with popular principles in the parade service of debating or
+     writing in quiet times, but who shrink alarmed when both sides
+     are become thoroughly in earnest: and again, quiet and honest
+     men, who never having fully comprehended the general principles
+     at issue, and judging only by what they see before them, are
+     shocked at the violence of their party, and think that the
+     opposite party is now become innocent and just, because it is
+     now suffering wrong rather than doing it. Lastly, men who
+     rightly understand that good government is the result of
+     popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather
+     than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim, therefore, is
+     to prevent either from going too far, and to throw their weight
+     into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful, up to the
+     moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war,
+     and the question is--which shall conquer? For no man can
+     pretend to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the
+     arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves:
+     and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the
+     whole the best, or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one
+     must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party
+     so crushed should be the worse."
+
+Dr Arnold--rightly, we hope--assumes, that in lectures addressed to
+Englishmen and Protestants, it is unnecessary to vindicate the
+principles of the Revolution; it would, indeed, be an affront to any
+class of educated Protestant freemen, to argue that our present
+constitution was better than a feudal monarchy, or the religion of
+Tillotson superior to that of Laud--in his own words, "whether the
+doctrine and discipline of our Protestant Church of England, be not
+better and truer than that of Rome." He therefore supposes the
+Revolution complete, the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act already
+passed, the authority of King William recognized in England and in
+Scotland, while in Ireland the party of King James was still
+predominant. He then bids us consider the character and object of the
+parties by which Great Britain was then divided; on the side of the
+Revolution were enlisted the great families of our aristocracy, and the
+bulk of the middle classes. The faction of James included the great mass
+of country gentlemen, the lower orders, and, (after the first dread of a
+Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed away,) except in a very few
+instances, the parochial and teaching clergy; civil and religious
+liberty was the motto of one party--hereditary right and passive
+obedience, of the other. As the Revolution had been bloodless, it might
+have been supposed that its reward would have been secure, and that our
+great deliverer would have been allowed to pursue his schemes for the
+liberty of Europe, if not without opposition, at least without
+hostility. But the old Royalist party had been surprised and confounded,
+not broken or altogether overcome. They rallied--some from pure, others
+from selfish and sordid motives--under the banner to which they had been
+so long accustomed; and, though ultimately baffled, they were able to
+place in jeopardy, and in some measure to fling away the advantages
+which the blood and treasure of England had been prodigally lavished to
+obtain.
+
+The conquest of Ireland was followed by that terrible code against the
+Catholics, the last remnant of which is now obliterated from our
+statute-book. It is singular that this savage proscription should have
+been the work of the party at whose head stood the champion of
+toleration. The account which Mr Burke has given of it, and for the
+accuracy of which he appeals to Bishop Burnet, does not entirely
+coincide with the view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke says--
+
+     "A party in this nation, enemies to the system of the
+     Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King
+     William. They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy to
+     all persecution. They knew that he came to free us from slavery
+     and Popery, out of a country where a third of the people are
+     contented Catholics, under a Protestant government. He came,
+     with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to
+     overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a
+     tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty served in every way,
+     and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own principles.
+     Whilst freedom is true to itself, every thing becomes subject
+     to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its hands.
+
+     "The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage
+     the best friends of their country) resolved to make the King
+     either violate his principles of toleration, or incur the odium
+     of protecting Papists. They, therefore, brought in this bill,
+     and made it purposely wicked and absurd, that it might be
+     rejected. The then court-party discovering their game, turned
+     the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed
+     with still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon
+     its original authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back
+     to them, kicked it back again to their adversaries. And thus
+     this act, loaded with the double injustice of two parties,
+     neither of whom intended to pass what they hoped the other
+     would be persuaded to reject, went through the legislature,
+     contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the
+     parties that composed it. In this manner these insolent and
+     profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and
+     counters, made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of
+     their fellow-creatures. Other acts of persecution have been
+     acts of malice. This was a subversion of justice from
+     wantonness."
+
+Whether Dr Arnold's theory be applicable or not to this particular case,
+it furnishes but too just a solution of Irish misgovernment in general.
+It is, that excessive severity toward conquered rebels, is by no means
+inconsistent with the principles of free government, or even with the
+triumph of a democracy. The truth of this fact is extorted from us by
+all history, and may be accounted for first, by the circumstance, that
+large bodies of men are less affected than individuals, by the feelings
+of shame and a sense of responsibility; and, secondly, that conduct the
+most selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion of which would be enough
+to brand an individual with everlasting infamy, assumes, when adopted by
+popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike wisdom and patriotic
+inflexibility. The main cause of the difference with which the lower
+orders in France and England regarded the Revolution in their respective
+countries, is to be found in the different nature of the evils which
+they were intended to remove. The English Revolution was merely
+political--the French was social also; the benefits of the Bill of
+Rights, great and inestimable as they were, were such as demanded some
+knowledge and reflection to appreciate--they did not come home directly
+to the business and bosom of the peasant; it was only in rare and great
+emergencies that he could become sensible of the rights they gave, or of
+the means of oppression they took away: while the time-honoured
+dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells were menaced and assailed,
+nothing but the most senseless tyranny could render the cottage
+insecure; but the abolition of the seignorial rights in France, free
+communication between her provinces, equal taxation, impartial
+justice--these were blessings which it required no economist to
+illustrate, and no philosopher to explain. Every labourer in France,
+whose sweat had flowed for the benefit of others, whose goods had been
+seized by the exactors of the Taille and the Gabelle,[1] the fruits of
+whose soil had been wasted because he was not allowed to sell them at
+the neighbouring market, whose domestic happiness had been polluted, or
+whose self-respect had been lowered by injuries and insults, all
+retribution for which was hopeless, might well be expected to value
+these advantages more than life itself. But when the principles of the
+Revolution were triumphant, and the House of Brunswick finally seated on
+the throne of this country, it remains to be seen what were, during the
+eighteenth century, the fruits of this great and lasting victory. The
+answer is a melancholy one. Content with what had been achieved, the
+nation seems at once to have abandoned all idea of any further moral or
+intellectual progress. In private life the grossest ignorance and
+debauchery were written upon our social habits, in the broadest and most
+legible characters. In public life, we see chicanery in the law, apathy
+in the Church, corruption in Parliament, brutality on the seat of
+justice; trade burdened with a great variety of capricious restrictions;
+the punishment of death multiplied with the most shocking indifference;
+the state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment--which might be, and
+in those days often was, the lot of the most innocent of mankind--became
+in itself a tremendous punishment; the press virtually shackled;
+education every where wanted, and no where to be found.
+
+     [1] "_Taille and the Gabelle_." Sully thus describes these
+     fertile sources of crime and misery:--"Taille, source
+     principale d'abus et de vexations de toute espece, sans sa
+     repartition et sa perception. Il est bien a souhaiter, mais pas
+     a esperer, qu'on change un jour en entier le fond de cette
+     partie des revenus. Je mets la Gabelle de niveau avec la
+     Taille. Je n'ai jamais rien trouve de si _bizarrement
+     tyrannique_ que de faire acheter a un particulier, plus de sel
+     qu'il n'en veut et n'en peut consommer, et de lui defendre
+     encore de revendre ce qu'il a de trop."
+
+The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and
+even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the
+common welfare, by the representatives of a free people. Turn to any of
+the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of
+Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the
+melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the
+delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the
+present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten
+me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and
+sordid violence. Throughout the volumes of these great writers, the
+features perpetually recur of insolence, corruption, violence, and
+debauchery in the one class, and of servility and cunning in the other.
+It is impossible for the worst quality of an aristocracy--nominally, to
+be sure, subject to the restraint of the law, but practically, almost
+wholly exempt from its operation--to be more clearly and more fearfully
+represented. The South Sea scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the
+disgraceful expeditions on the coast of France; the conduct of Lord
+George Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt on Carthagena, the
+loss of Minorca, the convention of Closterseven, the insecurity of the
+high-roads, nay, of the public streets in the metropolis itself, all
+serve to show the deplorable condition into which the nation was fast
+sinking, abroad and at home, when the "Great Commoner" once more aroused
+its energies, concentrated its strength, and carried it to a higher
+pinnacle of glory than it has ever been the lot even of Great Britain to
+attain. Yet this effect was transient--the progress of corruption was
+checked, but the disease still lurked in the heart, and tainted the
+life-blood of the community. The orgies of Medmenham Abbey, the triumphs
+of Wilkes, and the loss of America, bear fatal testimony to the want of
+decency and disregard of merit in private as well as public life which
+infected Great Britain, polluting the sources of her domestic virtues,
+and bringing disgrace upon her arms and councils during the greater part
+of the eighteenth century. It is with a masterly review of this period
+of our history that Dr Arnold closes his analysis of the three last
+centuries. His remaining lecture is dedicated to the examination of
+historical evidence--a subject on which it is not our present intention
+to offer any commentary.
+
+To trace effects to their causes, is the object of all science; and by
+this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any
+particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in
+reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human
+actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as
+that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth,
+though the connexion between cause and effect is not equally
+discernible. The depression of the nobles and the rise of the commons in
+England, after the statutes of alienation, were the result of causes as
+infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and
+the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is
+heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more
+questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely
+dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to those of
+yesterday, and those of to-morrow will be bound to those of to-day, no
+less certainly than the harvest of the present year springs from the
+grain which is the produce of former harvests. When by a severe and
+diligent analysis we have ascertained all the ingredients of any
+phenomenon, and have separated it from all that is foreign and
+adventitious, we know its true nature, and may deduce a general law from
+our experiment; for a general law is nothing more than an expression of
+the effect produced by the same cause operating under the same
+circumstances. In the reign of Louis XV., a Montmorency was convicted of
+an atrocious murder. He was punished by a short imprisonment in the
+Bastile. His servant and accomplice was, for the same offence at the
+same time, broken alive upon the wheel. Is the proposition, that the
+angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, more certain than
+the ruin of a system under which such a state of things was tolerated?
+How, then, does it come to pass, that the same people who cling to one
+set of truths reject the other with obstinate incredulity? Cicero shall
+account for it:--"Sensus nostros non parens, non nutrix, non poeta, non
+scena depravat; animis omnes tendentur insidiae." The discoveries of
+physical science, in the present day at least, allow little scope to
+prejudice and inclination. Whig and Tory, Radical and Conservative,
+agree, that fire will burn and water suffocate; nay, no tractarian, so
+far as we know, has ventured to call in question the truths established
+by Cuvier and La Place. But every proposition in moral or political
+science enlists a host of feelings in zealous support or implacable
+hostility; and the same system, according to the creed and
+prepossessions of the speaker, is put forward as self-evident, or
+stigmatized as chimerical. One set of people throw corn into the river
+and burn mills, in order to cheapen bread--another vote that sixteen
+shillings are equal to twenty-one, in order to support public
+credit--proceedings in no degree more reasonable than a denial that two
+and two make four, or using gunpowder instead of water to stop a
+conflagration. Again, in physical science, the chain which binds the
+cause to its effect is short, simple, and passes through no region of
+vapour and obscurity; in moral phenomena, it is long hidden and
+intertwined with the links of ten thousand other chains, which ramify
+and cross each other in a confusion which it requires no common patience
+and sagacity to unravel. Therefore it is that the lessons of history,
+dearly as they have been purchased, are forgotten and thrown
+away--therefore it is that nations sow in folly and reap in
+affliction--that thrones are shaken, and empires convulsed, and commerce
+fettered by vexatious restrictions, by those who live in one century,
+without enabling their descendants to become wiser or richer in the
+next. The death of Charles I. did not prevent the exile of James II.,
+and, in spite of the disasters of Charles XII., Napoleon tempted fortune
+too often and too long. It is not, then, by the mere knowledge of
+separate facts that history can contribute to our improvement or our
+happiness; it would then exchange the character of philosophy treated by
+examples, for that of sophistry misleading by empiricism. The more
+systematic the view of human events which it enables us to gain, the
+more nearly does it approach its real office, and entitle itself to the
+splendid panegyric of the Roman statesman--"Historia, testis temporum,
+lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis."
+
+But while we insist upon the certainty of those truths which a calm
+examination of history confirms, and the sure operation of those general
+laws by which Providence in its wisdom has ordained that the affairs of
+this lower world shall be controlled--let it not be supposed that we for
+a moment doubt the truth which Demosthenes took such pains to inculcate
+upon his countrymen, that fortune in human affairs is for a time
+omnipotent. That fortune, which "erring men call chance," is the name
+which finite beings must apply to those secret and unknown causes which
+no human sagacity can penetrate or comprehend. What depends upon a few
+persons, observes Mr Hume, is to be ascribed to chance; what arises from
+a great number, may often be accounted for by known and determinate
+causes; and he illustrates this position by the instance of a loaded
+die, the bias of which, however it may for a short time escape
+detection, will certainly in a great number of instances become
+predominant. The issue of a battle may be decided by a sunbeam or a
+cloud of dust. Had an heir been born to Charles II. of Spain--had the
+youthful son of Monsieur De Bouille not fallen asleep when Louis XVI.
+entered Varennes--had Napoleon, on his return from Egypt, been stopped
+by an English cruizer--how different would have been the face of Europe.
+The _poco di piu_ and _poco di meno_ has, in such contingencies, an
+unbounded influence. The trade-winds are steady enough to furnish
+grounds for the most accurate calculation; but will any man in our
+climate venture to predict from what quarter, on any particular day, the
+wind may chance to blow?
+
+Therefore, in forming our judgment of human affairs, we must apply a
+"Lesbian rule," instead of one that is inflexible. Here it is that the
+line is drawn between science, and the wisdom which has for its object
+the administration of human affairs. The masters of science explore a
+multitude of phenomena to ascertain a single cause; the statesman and
+legislator, engaged in pursuits "hardliest reduced to axiom," examine a
+multitude of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon. The
+investigations, however, to which such questions lead, are singularly
+difficult, as they require an accurate analysis of the most complicated
+class of facts which can possibly engross our attention, and to the
+complete examination of which the faculties of any one man must be
+inadequate. The finest specimens of such enquiries which we possess are
+the works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu. The latter, indeed, may be
+called a great historian. He sought in every quarter for his account of
+those fundamental principles which are common to all governments, as
+well as of those peculiarities by which they are distinguished one from
+another. The analogy which reaches from the first dim gleam of civility
+to the last and consummate result of policy and intelligence, from the
+law of the Salian Franks to the Code Napoleon, it was reserved for him
+to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the
+expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a
+tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even
+monstrous--that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the
+same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's
+project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a
+magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, and will serve
+as a landmark to future enquirers when its puny critics are not known
+enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual
+observations, detached hints--from the principles concealed in the
+intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which
+barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany--from the
+manners of the polished Athenian, and from the usages of the wandering
+Tartar--from the rudeness of savage life, and the corruptions of refined
+society--a digest of luminous and coherent evidence, by which the
+condition of man, in the different stages of his social progress, is
+exemplified and ascertained. The loss of the History of Louis XI.--a
+work which he had projected, and of which he had traced the outline--is
+a disappointment which the reader of modern history can never enough
+deplore.
+
+The province of science lies in truths that are universal and immutable;
+that of prudence in second causes that are transient and subordinate.
+What is universally true is alone necessarily true--the knowledge that
+rests in particulars must be accidental. The theorist disdains
+experience--the empiric rejects principle. The one is the pedant who
+read Hannibal a lecture on the art of war; the other is the carrier who
+knows the road between London and York better than Humboldt, but a new
+road is prescribed to him and his knowledge becomes useless. This is
+the state of mind La Fontaine has described so perfectly in his story of
+the "Cierge."
+
+    "Un d'eux, voyant la brique au feu endurcie
+    Vaincre l'effort des ans, il eut la meme envie;
+    Et nouvel Empedocle, aux flammes condamne
+        Par sa pure et propre folie,
+    Il se lanca dedans--ce fut mal raisonne,
+    Le Cierge ne savait grain de philosophie."
+
+The mere chemist or mathematician will apply his truths improperly; the
+man of detail, the mere empiric, will deal skilfully with particulars,
+while to all general truths he is insensible. The wise man, the
+philosopher in action, will use the one as a stepping-stone to the
+other, and acquire a vantage-ground from whence he will command the
+realms of practice and experience.
+
+History teems with instances that--although the general course of the
+human mind is marked out, and each succeeding phasis in which it
+exhibits itself appears inevitable--the human race cannot be considered,
+as Vico and Herder were, perhaps, inclined to look upon it, as a mass
+without intelligence, traversing its orbit according to laws which it
+has no power to modify or control. On such an hypothesis, Wisdom and
+Folly, Justice and Injustice, would be the same, followed by the same
+consequences and subject to the same destiny--no certain laws
+establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions
+of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end; the
+feelings, faculties, and instincts of man would be useless in a world
+where the wise was always as the foolish, the just as the unjust, where
+calculation was impossible, and experience of no avail.
+
+Man is no doubt the instrument, but the unconscious instrument, of
+Providence; and for the end they propose to themselves, though not for
+the result which they attain, nations as well as individuals are
+responsible. Otherwise, why should we read or speak of history? it would
+be the feverish dream of a distempered imagination, full of incoherent
+ravings, a disordered chaos of antagonist illusions--
+
+        ----"A tale
+    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
+    Signifying nothing."
+
+But on the contrary, it is in history that the lessons of morality are
+delivered with most effect. The priest may provoke our suspicion--the
+moralist may fail to work in us any practical conviction; but the
+lessons of history are not such as vanish in the fumes of unprofitable
+speculation, or which it is possible for us to mistrust, or to deride.
+Obscure as the dispensations of Providence often are, it sometimes, to
+use Lord Bacon's language--"pleases God, for the confutation of such as
+are without God in the world, to write them in such text and capital
+letters that he who runneth by may read it--that is, mere sensual
+persons which hasten by God's judgments, and never tend or fix their
+cogitations upon them, are nevertheless in their passage and race urged
+to discern it." In all historical writers, philosophical or trivial,
+sacred or profane, from the meagre accounts of the monkish chronicler,
+no less than from the pages stamped with all the indignant energy of
+Tacitus, gleams forth the light which, amid surrounding gloom and
+injustice, amid the apparent triumph of evil, discovers the influence of
+that power which the heathens personified as Nemesis. Her tread, indeed,
+is often noiseless--her form may be long invisible--but the moment at
+length arrives when the measure of forbearance is complete; the echoes
+of her step vibrate upon the ear, her form bursts upon the eye, and her
+victim--be it a savage tyrant, or a selfish oligarchy, or a hypocritical
+church, or a corrupt nation--perishes.
+
+        "Come quei che va di notte,
+    Che porta il lume dietro, _e a se non giova,
+    Ma dopo se fa le persone dotte_."
+
+And as in daily life we rejoice to trace means directed to an end, and
+proofs of sagacity and instinct even among the lower tribes of animated
+nature, with how much greater delight do we seize the proofs vouchsafed
+to us in history of that eternal law, by which the affairs of the
+universe are governed? How much more do we rejoice to find that the
+order to which physical nature owes its existence and perpetuity, does
+not stop at the threshold of national life--that the moral world is not
+_fatherless_, and that man, formed to look before and after, is not
+abandoned to confusion and insecurity?
+
+Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history, comprising
+the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction--all the
+various shapes into which man has been cast--all the different scenes in
+which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his
+weakness, his folly and his wisdom, his virtues in their meridian
+height, his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation, are
+displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely
+diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price--a vast
+repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or
+so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so
+abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation
+so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and
+elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and
+sufferings, and genius, and experience, of our species have laboured for
+successive generations to accumulate and preserve. The fruit of their
+blood, of their labour, of their doubts, and their struggles, is before
+us--a treasure that no malignity can corrupt, or violence take away. And
+above all, it is here that, when tormented by doubt, or startled by
+anomalies, stung by disappointment, or exasperated by injustice, we may
+look for consolation and encouragement. As we see the same events, that
+to those who witnessed them must have appeared isolated and capricious,
+tending to one great end, and accomplishing one specific purpose, we may
+learn to infer that those which appear to us most extraordinary, are
+alike subservient to a wise and benevolent dispensation. Poetry, the
+greatest of all critics has told us, has this advantage over history,
+that the lessons which it furnishes are not mixed and confined to
+particular cases, but pure and universal. Studied, however, in this
+spirit, history, while it improves the reason, may satisfy the heart,
+enabling us to await with patience the lesson of the great instructor,
+Time, and to employ the mighty elements it places within our reach, to
+the only legitimate purpose of all knowledge--"The advancement of God's
+glory, and the relief of man's estate."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER.
+
+No. V.
+
+THE VICTORY FEAST.
+
+
+[This noble lyric is perhaps the happiest of all those poems in which
+Schiller has blended the classical spirit with the more deep and tender
+philosophy which belongs to modern romance. The individuality of the
+heroes introduced is carefully preserved. The reader is every where
+reminded of Homer; and yet, as a German critic has observed, _there is
+an under current of sentiment_ which betrays the thoughtful _Northern_
+minstrel. This detracts from the art of the Poem viewed as an imitation,
+but constitutes its very charm as an original composition. Its
+inspiration rises from a source purely Hellenic, but the streamlets it
+receives at once adulterate and enrich, or (to change the metaphor) it
+has the costume and the gusto of the Greek, but the toning down of the
+colours betrays the German.]
+
+    The stately walls of Troy had sunken,
+      Her towers and temples strew'd the soil;
+    The sons of Hellas, victory-drunken,
+      Richly laden with the spoil,
+    Are on their lofty barks reclin'd
+      Along the Hellespontine strand;
+    A gleesome freight the favouring wind
+      Shall bear to Greece's glorious land;
+      And gleesome sounds the chaunted strain,
+        As towards the household altars, now,
+        Each bark inclines the painted prow--
+      For Home shall smile again!
+
+    And there the Trojan women, weeping,
+      Sit ranged in many a length'ning row;
+    Their heedless locks, dishevell'd, sweeping
+      Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe.
+    No festive sounds that peal along,
+      _Their_ mournful dirge can overwhelm;
+    Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song
+      Commingled, wails the ruin'd realm.
+      "Farewell, beloved shores!" it said,
+        "From home afar behold us torn,
+        By foreign lords as captives borne--
+      Ah, happy are the Dead!"
+
+    And Calchas, while the altars blaze,
+      Invokes the high gods to their feast!
+    On Pallas, mighty or to raise
+      Or shatter cities, call'd the Priest--
+    And Him, who wreathes around the land
+      The girdle of his watery world,
+    And Zeus, from whose almighty hand
+      The terror and the bolt are hurl'd.
+      Success at last awards the crown--
+        The long and weary war is past;
+        Time's destined circle ends at last--
+      And fall'n the Mighty Town!
+
+    The Son of Atreus, king of men,
+      The muster of the hosts survey'd,
+    How dwindled from the thousands, when
+      Along Scamander first array'd!
+    With sorrow and the cloudy thought,
+      The Great King's stately look grew dim--
+    Of all the hosts to Ilion brought,
+      How few to Greece return with him!
+      Still let the song to gladness call,
+        For those who yet their home shall greet!--
+        For them the blooming life is sweet:
+      Return is not for all!
+
+    Nor all who reach their native land
+      May long the joy of welcome feel--
+    Beside the household gods may stand
+      Grim Murther with awaiting steel;
+    And they who 'scape the foe, may die
+      Beneath the foul familiar glaive.
+    Thus He[2] to whose prophetic eye
+      Her light the wise Minerva gave:--
+      "Ah! blest whose hearth, to memory true,
+        The goddess keeps unstain'd and pure--
+        For woman's guile is deep and sure,
+      And Falsehood loves the New!"
+
+    The Spartan eyes his Helen's charms,
+      By the best blood of Greece recaptured;
+    Round that fair form his glowing arms--
+      (A second bridal)--wreathe enraptured.
+    "Woe waits the work of evil birth--
+      Revenge to deeds unblest is given!
+    For watchful o'er the things of earth,
+      The eternal Council-Halls of Heaven.
+      Yes, ill shall ever ill repay--
+        Jove to the impious hands that stain
+        The Altar of Man's Hearth, again
+      The doomer's doom shall weigh!"
+
+    "Well they, reserved for joy to day,"
+      Cried out Oileus' valiant son,
+    "May laud the favouring gods who sway
+      Our earth, their easy thrones upon;
+    Without a choice they mete our doom,
+      Our woe or welfare Hazard gives--
+    Patroclus slumbers in the tomb,
+      And all unharm'd Thersites lives.
+      While luck and life to every one
+        Blind Fate dispenses, well may they
+        Enjoy the life and luck to day
+      By whom the prize is won!
+
+    "Yes, war will still devour the best!--
+      Brother, remember'd in this hour!
+    His shade should be in feasts a guest,
+      Whose form was in the strife a tower!
+    What time our ships the Trojan fired,
+      Thine arm to Greece the safety gave--
+    The prize to which thy soul aspired,
+      The crafty wrested from the brave.[3]
+      Peace to thine ever-holy rest--
+        Not thine to fall before the foe!
+        Ajax alone laid Ajax low:
+      Ah--wrath destroys the best!"
+
+    To his dead sire--(the Dorian king)--
+      The bright-hair'd Pyrrhus[4] pours the wine:--
+    "Of every lot that life can bring,
+      My soul, great Father, prizes thine.
+    Whate'er the goods of earth, of all,
+      The highest and the holiest--FAME!
+    For when the Form in dust shall fall,
+      O'er dust triumphant lives the Name!
+      Brave Man, thy light of glory never
+        Shall fade, while song to man shall last;
+        The Living, soon from earth are pass'd,
+      'THE DEAD--ENDURE FOR EVER!'"
+
+    "While silent in their grief and shame,
+      The conquer'd hear the conqueror's praise,"
+    Quoth Tydeus' son, "let Hector's fame,
+      In me, his foe, its witness raise!
+    Who, battling for the altar-hearth,
+      A brave defender, bravely fell--
+    It takes not from the victor's worth,
+      If honour with the vanquish'd dwell.
+      Who falleth for the altar-hearth,
+        A rock and a defence laid low,
+        Shall leave behind him, in the foe,
+      The lips that speak his worth!"
+
+    Lo, Nestor now, whose stately age
+      Through threefold lives of mortals lives!--
+    The laurel'd bowl, the kingly sage
+      To Hector's tearful mother gives.
+    "Drink--in the draught new strength is glowing,
+      The grief it bathes forgets the smart!
+    O Bacchus! wond'rous boons bestowing,
+      Oh how thy balsam heals the heart!
+      Drink--in the draught new vigour gloweth,
+        The grief it bathes forgets the smart--
+        And balsam to the breaking heart,
+      The healing god bestoweth.
+
+    "As Niobe, when weeping mute,
+      To angry gods the scorn and prey,
+    But tasted of the charmed fruit,
+      And cast despair itself away;
+    So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
+      This stream of life enchanted flows,
+    Remember'd grief, that stung before,
+      Sinks down to Lethe's calm repose.
+      So, while unto thy lips, its shore,
+        The stream of life enchanted flows--
+        Drown'd deep in Lethe's calm repose,
+      The grief that stung before!"
+
+    Seized by the god--behold the dark
+      And dreaming Prophetess[5] arise!
+    She gazes from the lofty bark,
+      Where Home's dim vapour wraps the skies--
+    "A vapour, all of human birth!
+      As mists ascending, seen and gone,
+    So fade earth's great ones from the earth,
+      And leave the changeless gods alone!
+      Behind the steed that skirs away,
+        Or on the galley's deck--sits Care!
+        To-morrow comes--and Life is where?
+      At least--we'll live to-day!"
+
+     [2] Ulysses.
+
+     [3] Need we say to the general reader, that Oileus here alludes
+     to the strife between Ajax and Ulysses, which has furnished a
+     subject to the Greek tragic poet, who has depicted, more
+     strikingly than any historian, that intense emulation for
+     glory, and that mortal agony in defeat, which made the main
+     secret of the prodigious energy of the Greek character? The
+     poet, in taking his hero from the Homeric age, endowed him with
+     the feelings of the Athenian republicans he addressed.
+
+     [4] Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles.
+
+     [5] Cassandra.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG.--A BALLAD.
+
+
+[Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet
+grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to
+depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in
+AEgidius Tschudi--a Swiss chronicler--and Schiller (who, as Hinrichs
+suggests,) probably met with it in the researches connected with the
+compositions of his drama, "William Tell," appears to have adhered, with
+much fidelity, to the original narrative.]
+
+    At Aachen, in imperial state,
+      In that time-hallow'd hall renown'd,
+    At solemn feast King Rudolf sate,
+      The day that saw the hero crown'd!
+    Bohemia and thy Palgrave, Rhine,
+    Give this the feast, and that the wine;
+        The Arch Electoral Seven,
+    Like choral stars around the sun,
+    Gird him whose hand a world has won,
+        The anointed choice of Heaven.
+
+    In galleries raised above the pomp,
+      Press'd crowd on crowd, their panting way;
+    And with the joy-resounding tromp,
+      Rang out the million's loud hurra!
+    For closed at last the age of slaughter,
+    When human blood was pour'd as water--
+        LAW dawns upon the world![6]
+    Sharp Force no more shall right the wrong,
+    And grind the weak to crown the strong--
+        War's carnage-flag is furl'd!
+
+    In Rudolf's hand the goblet shines--
+      And gaily round the board look'd he;
+    "And proud the feast, and bright the wines,
+      My kingly heart feels glad to me!
+    Yet where the lord of sweet desire,
+    Who moves the heart beneath the lyre,
+        And dulcet Sound Divine?
+    Dear from my youth the craft of song,
+    And what as knight I loved so long,
+        As Kaisar, still be mine."
+
+    Lo, from the circle bending there,
+      With sweeping robe the Bard appears,
+    As silver, white his gleaming hair,
+      Bleach'd by the many winds of years:
+    "And music sleeps in golden strings--
+    The minstrel's hire, the LOVE he sings;
+        Well known to him the ALL
+    High thoughts and ardent souls desire!--
+    What would the Kaisar from the lyre
+        Amidst the banquet-hall?"
+
+    The Great One smiled--"Not mine the sway--
+      The minstrel owns a loftier power--
+    A mightier king inspires the lay--
+      Its hest--THE IMPULSE OF THE HOUR!
+    As through wide air the tempests sweep,
+    As gush the springs from mystic deep,
+        Or lone untrodden glen;
+    So from dark hidden fount within,
+    Comes SONG, its own wild world to win
+        Amidst the souls of men!"
+
+    Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,
+      And loud the music swept the ear:--
+    "Forth to the chase a Hero rode,
+      To hunt the bounding chamois-deer:
+    With shaft and horn the squire behind:--
+    Through greensward meads the riders wind--
+        A small sweet bell they hear.
+    Lo, with the HOST, a holy man,--
+    Before him strides the sacristan,
+        And the bell sounds near and near.
+
+    The noble hunter down-inclined
+      His reverent head and soften'd eye,
+    And honour'd with a Christian's mind
+      The Christ who loves humility!
+    Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves
+    A brook--the rains had fed the waves,
+        And torrents from the hill.
+    His sandal shoon the priest unbound,
+    And laid the Host upon the ground,
+        And near'd the swollen rill!
+
+    "What wouldst thou, priest?" the Count began,
+      As, marvelling much, he halted there.
+    "Sir Count, I seek a dying man,
+      Sore hungering for the heavenly fare.
+    The bridge that once its safety gave,
+    Rent by the anger of the wave,
+        Drifts down the tide below.
+    Yet barefoot now, I will not fear
+    (The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)
+        Through the wild wave to go!"
+
+    He gave that priest the knightly steed,
+      He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,
+    That he might serve the sick man's need,
+      Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.
+    He took the horse the squire bestrode;
+    On to the chase the hunter rode,
+        On to the sick the priest!
+    And when the morrow's sun was red,
+    The servant of the Saviour led
+        Back to its lord the beast.
+
+    "Now Heaven forefend," the hero cried,
+      "That e'er to chase or battle more
+    These limbs the sacred steed bestride,
+      That once my Maker's image bore!
+    But not for sale or barter given;
+    Henceforth its Master is the Heaven--
+        My tribute to that King,
+    From whom I hold as fiefs, since birth,
+    Honour, renown, the goods of earth,
+        Life, and each living thing."
+
+    "So may the God who faileth never
+      To hear the weak and guide the dim,
+    To thee give honour here and ever,
+      As thou hast duly honour'd Him!
+    Far-famed ev'n now through Switzerland
+    Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;
+        And fair from thine embrace
+    Six daughters bloom--six crowns to bring--
+    Blest as the Daughters of a KING--
+        The Mothers of a RACE!"
+
+    The mighty Kaisar heard amazed;
+      His heart was in the days of old:
+    Into the minstrel's eyes he gazed--
+      That tale the Kaisar's own had told.
+    Yes, in the bard, the priest he knew,
+    And in the purple veil'd from view
+        The gush of holy tears.
+    A thrill through that vast audience ran,
+    And every heart the godlike man,
+        Revering God, reveres!
+
+     [6] Literally, "_A judge (ein richter)_ was again upon the
+     earth." The word substituted in the translation, is introduced
+     in order to recall to the reader the sublime name given, not
+     without justice, to Rudolf of Hapsburg, viz., "THE LIVING LAW."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE WORDS OF ERROR.
+
+
+        Three errors there are, that for ever are found
+          On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best;
+        But empty their meaning and hollow their sound--
+          And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.
+        The fruits of existence escape from the clasp
+        Of the seeker who strives but these shadows to grasp--
+
+        So long as Man dreams of some Age in _this_ life
+          When the Right and the Good will all evil subdue;
+        For the Right and the Good lead us ever to strife,
+          And wherever they lead us, the Fiend will pursue.
+        And (till from the earth borne, and stifled at length)
+        The earth that he touches still gifts him with strength![7]
+
+        So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,
+          Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;
+        For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give--
+          And Virtue possesses no title to earth!
+        That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,
+        Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!
+
+        So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,
+          The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;
+        The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,
+          And all we can learn is--to guess and divine!
+        Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?
+        The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!
+
+        O, Noble Soul! fly from delusions like these,
+          More heavenly belief be it thine to adore;
+        Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,
+          Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore!
+        Not _without_ thee the streams--there the Dull seek them;--No!
+        Look _within_ thee--behold both the fount and the flow!
+
+     [7] This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat
+     obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the
+     Son of Earth,--so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring
+     new strength in every fall,--so the soul contends in vain with
+     evil--the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of
+     the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antaeus
+     was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and
+     strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the
+     enemy, (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's
+     offspring,) when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it
+     in the higher air.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE WORDS OF BELIEF.
+
+
+    Three Words will I name thee--around and about,
+      From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;
+    But they had not their birth in the being without,
+      And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!
+    And all worth in the man shall for ever be o'er
+    When in those Three Words he believes no more.
+
+    Man is made FREE!--Man, by birthright, is free,
+      Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.
+    Whatever the shout of the rabble may be--
+      Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool--
+    Still fear not the Slave, when he breaks from his chain,
+    For the Man made a Freeman grows safe in his gain.
+
+    And VIRTUE is more than a shade or a sound,
+      And Man may her voice, in this being, obey;
+    And though ever he slip on the stony ground,
+      Yet ever again to the godlike way.
+    Though _her_ wisdom _our_ wisdom may not perceive,
+    Yet the childlike spirit can still believe.
+
+    And a GOD there is!--over Space, over Time,
+      While the Human Will rocks, like a reed, to and fro,
+    Lives the Will of the Holy--A Purpose Sublime,
+      A Thought woven over creation below;
+    Changing and shifting the All we inherit,
+    But changeless through all One Immutable Spirit!
+
+    Hold fast the Three Words of Belief--though about
+      From the lip to the lip, full of meaning they flee;
+    Yet they take not their birth from the being without--
+      But a voice from within must their oracle be;
+    And never all worth in the Man can be o'er,
+    Till in those Three Words he believes no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE MIGHT OF SONG.
+
+
+    A rain-flood from the mountain-riven,
+      It leaps, in thunder, forth to Day,
+    Before its rush the crags are driven--
+      The oaks uprooted, whirl'd away--
+    Aw'd, yet in awe all wildly glad'ning,
+      The startled wanderer halts below;
+    He hears the rock-born waters mad'ning,
+      Nor wits the source from whence they go,--
+    So, from their high, mysterious Founts along,
+    Stream on the silenc'd world the Waves of Song!
+
+    Knit with the threads of life, for ever,
+      By those dread Powers that weave the woof,--
+    Whose art the singer's spell can sever?
+     Whose breast has mail to music proof?
+    Lo, to the Bard, a wand of wonder
+      The Herald[8] of the Gods has given:
+    He sinks the soul the death-realm under,
+      Or lifts it breathless up to heaven--
+    Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion
+    Upon the tremulous ladder of emotion.
+
+    As, when the halls of Mirth are crowded,
+      Portentous, on the wanton scene--
+    Some Fate, before from wisdom shrouded,
+      Awakes and awes the souls of Men--
+    Before that Stranger from ANOTHER,
+      Behold how THIS world's great ones bow--
+    Mean joys their idle clamour smother,
+      The mask is vanish'd from the brow--
+    And from Truth's sudden, solemn flag unfurl'd,
+    Fly all the craven Falsehoods of the World!
+
+    So, rapt from every care and folly,
+      When spreads abroad the lofty lay,
+    The Human kindles to the Holy,
+      And into Spirit soars the Clay!
+    One with the Gods the Bard: before him
+      All things unclean and earthly fly--
+    Hush'd are all meaner powers, and o'er him
+      The dark fate swoops unharming by;
+    And while the Soother's magic measures flow,
+    Smooth'd every wrinkle on the brows of Woe!
+
+    Even as a child that, after pining
+      For the sweet absent mother--hears
+    Her voice--and, round her neck entwining
+      Young arms, vents all his soul in tears;--
+    So, by harsh custom far estranged,
+      Along the glad and guileless track,
+    To childhood's happy home, unchanged,
+      The swift song wafts the wanderer back--
+    Snatch'd from the coldness of unloving Art
+    To Nature's mother arms--to Nature's glowing heart!
+
+     [8] Hermes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HONOUR TO WOMAN.
+
+
+        Honour to Woman! To her it is given
+        To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
+          All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir--
+        In the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,
+        She tends on each altar that's hallow'd to Feeling,
+          And keeps ever-living the fire!
+
+          From the bounds of Truth careering,
+            Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
+          With each hasty impulse veering,
+            Down to Passion's troubled deeps.
+          And his heart, contented never,
+            Greeds to grapple with the Far,
+          Chasing his own dream for ever,
+            On through many a distant Star!
+
+        But Woman with looks that can charm and enchain,
+        Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,
+          By the spell of her presence beguil'd--
+        In the home of the Mother her modest abode,
+        And modest the manners by Nature bestow'd
+          On Nature's most exquisite child!
+
+          Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,
+            Foe to foe, the angry strife;
+          Man the Wild One, never resting,
+            Roams along the troubled life;
+          What he planneth, still pursuing;
+            Vainly as the Hydra bleeds,
+          Crest the sever'd crest renewing--
+            Wish to wither'd wish succeeds.
+
+        But Woman at peace with all being, reposes,
+        And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses--
+          Whose sweets to her culture belong.
+        Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
+        The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,
+          And the infinite Circle of Song.
+
+          Strong, and proud, and self-depending,
+            Man's cold bosom beats alone;
+          Heart with heart divinely blending,
+            In the love that Gods have known,
+          Souls' sweet interchange of feeling,
+            Melting tears--he never knows,
+          Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
+            Arms against a world of foes.
+
+        Alive, as the wind-harp, how lightly soever
+        If woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
+          Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;
+        Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
+        How quiver the chords--how thy bosom is heaving--
+          How trembles thy glance through the tear!
+
+          Man's dominion, war and labour;
+            Might to right the Statute gave;
+          Laws are in the Scythian's sabre;
+            Where the Mede reign'd--see the Slave!
+          Peace and Meekness grimly routing,
+            Prowls the War-lust, rude and wild;
+          Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
+            Where the vanish'd Graces smil'd.
+
+        But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth--
+        Of the Senses she charmeth, the sceptre she swayeth;
+          She lulls, as she looks from above,
+        The Discord whose Hell for its victims is gaping,
+        And blending awhile the for-ever escaping,
+          Whispers Hate to the Image of Love!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE FIGHT WITH THE DRAGON.
+
+
+    Who comes?--why rushes fast and loud,
+    Through lane and street the hurtling crowd,
+    Is Rhodes on fire?--Hurrah!--along
+    Faster and fast storms the throng!
+    High towers a shape in knightly garb--
+    Behold the Rider and the Barb!
+    Behind is dragg'd a wondrous load;
+    Beneath what monster groans the road?
+    The horrid jaws--the Crocodile,
+      The shape the mightier Dragon, shows--
+    From Man to Monster all the while--
+      The alternate wonder glancing goes.
+
+    Shout thousands, with a single voice,
+    "Behold the Dragon, and rejoice,
+    Safe roves the herd, and safe the swain!
+    Lo!--there the Slayer--here the Slain!
+    Full many a breast, a gallant life,
+    Has waged against the ghastly strife,
+    And ne'er return'd to mortal sight--
+    Hurrah, then, for the Hero Knight!"
+    So to the Cloister, where the vow'd
+      And peerless Brethren of St John
+    In conclave sit--that sea-like crowd,
+      Wave upon wave, goes thundering on.
+
+    High o'er the rest, the chief is seen--
+    There wends the Knight with modest mien;
+    Pours through the galleries raised for all
+    Above that Hero-council Hall,
+    The crowd--And thus the Victor One:--
+    "Prince--the knight's duty I have done.
+    The Dragon that devour'd the land
+    Lies slain beneath thy servant's hand;
+    Free, o'er the pasture, rove the flocks--
+      And free the idler's steps may stray--
+    And freely o'er the lonely rocks,
+      The holier pilgrim wends his way!"
+
+    A lofty look the Master gave,
+    "Certes," he said; "thy deed is brave;
+    Dread was the danger, dread the fight--
+    Bold deeds bring fame to vulgar knight;
+    But say, what sways with holier laws
+    The knight who sees in Christ his cause,
+    And wears the cross?"--Then every cheek
+    Grew pale to hear the Master speak;
+    But nobler was the blush that spread
+      His face--the Victor's of the day--
+    As bending lowly--"Prince," he said;
+      "His noblest duty--TO OBEY!"
+
+    "And yet that duty, son," replied
+    The chief, "methinks thou hast denied;
+    And dared thy sacred sword to wield
+    For fame in a forbidden field."
+    "Master, thy judgment, howsoe'er
+    It lean, till all is told, forbear--
+    Thy law in spirit and in will,
+    I had no thought but to fulfil.
+    Not rash, as some, did I depart
+      A Christian's blood in vain to shed;
+    But hoped by skill, and strove by art,
+      To make my life avenge the dead.
+
+    "Five of our Order, in renown
+    The war-gems of our saintly crown,
+    The martyr's glory bought with life;
+    'Twas then thy law forbade the strife.
+    Yet in my heart there gnaw'd, like fire,
+    Proud sorrow, fed with stern desire:
+    In the still visions of the night,
+    Panting, I fought the fancied fight;
+    And when the morrow glimmering came,
+      With tales of ravage freshly done,
+    The dream remember'd, turn'd to shame,
+      That night should dare what day should shun.
+
+    "And thus my fiery musings ran--
+    'What youth has learn'd should nerve the man;
+    How lived the great in days of old,
+    Whose Fame to time by bards is told--
+    Who, heathens though they were, became
+    As gods--upborne to heaven by fame?
+    How proved they best the hero's worth?
+    They chased the monster from the earth--
+    They sought the lion in his den--
+      They pierced the Cretan's deadly maze--
+    Their noble blood gave humble men
+      Their happy birthright--peaceful days.
+
+    "'What! sacred, but against the horde
+    Of Mahound, is the Christian's sword?
+    All strife, save one, should he forbear?
+    No! earth itself the Christian's care--
+    From every ill and every harm,
+    Man's shield should be the Christian's arm.
+    Yet art o'er strength will oft prevail,
+    And mind must aid where heart may fail!'
+    Thus musing, oft I roam'd alone,
+      Where wont the Hell-born Beast to lie;
+    Till sudden light upon me shone,
+      And on my hope broke victory!
+
+    "Then, Prince, I sought thee with the prayer
+    To breathe once more my native air;
+    The license given--the ocean past--
+    I reach'd the shores of home at last.
+    Scarce hail'd the old beloved land,
+    Than huge, beneath the artist's hand,
+    To every hideous feature true,
+    The Dragon's monster-model grew.
+    The dwarf'd, deformed limbs upbore
+      The lengthen'd body's ponderous load;
+    The scales the impervious surface wore,
+      Like links of burnish'd harness, glow'd.
+
+    "Life-like, the huge neck seem'd to swell,
+    And widely, as some porch to hell
+    You might the horrent jaws survey,
+    Griesly, and greeding for their prey.
+    Grim fangs an added terror gave,
+    Like crags that whiten through a cave.
+    The very tongue a sword in seeming--
+    The deep-sunk eyes in sparkles gleaming.
+    Where the vast body ends, succeed
+      The serpent spires around it roll'd--
+    Woe--woe to rider, woe to steed,
+      Whom coils as fearful e'er enfold!
+
+    "All to the awful life was done--
+    The very hue, so ghastly, won--
+    The grey, dull tint:--the labour ceased,
+    It stood--half reptile and half beast!
+    And now began the mimic chase;
+    Two dogs I sought, of noblest race,
+    Fierce, nimble, fleet, and wont to scorn
+    The wild bull's wrath and levell'd horn;
+    These, docile to my cheering cry,
+      I train'd to bound, and rend, and spring,
+    Now round the Monster-shape to fly,
+      Now to the Monster-shape to cling!
+
+    "And where their gripe the best assails,
+    The belly left unsheath'd in scales,
+    I taught the dexterous hounds to hang
+    And find the spot to fix the fang;
+    Whilst I, with lance and mailed garb,
+    Launch'd on the beast mine Arab barb.
+    From purest race that Arab came,
+    And steeds, like men, are fired by fame.
+    Beneath the spur he chafes to rage;
+      Onwards we ride in full career--
+    I seem, in truth, the war to wage--
+      The monster reels beneath my spear!
+
+    "Albeit, when first the _destrier_[9] eyed
+    The laidly thing, it swerved aside,
+    Snorted and rear'd--and even they,
+    The fierce hounds, shrank with startled bay;
+    I ceased not, till, by custom bold,
+    After three tedious moons were told,
+    Both barb and hounds were train'd--nay, more,
+    Fierce for the fight--then left the shore!
+    Three days have fleeted since I prest
+      (Return'd at length) this welcome soil,
+    Nor once would lay my limbs to rest,
+      Till wrought the glorious crowning toil.
+
+    "For much it moved my soul to know
+    The unslack'ning curse of that grim foe.
+    Fresh rent, mens' bones lay bleach'd and bare
+    Around the hell-worm's swampy lair;
+    And pity nerved me into steel:--
+    Advice?--I had a heart to feel,
+    And strength to dare! So, to the deed.--
+    I call'd my squires--bestrode my steed,
+    And with my stalwart hounds, and by
+      Lone secret paths, we gaily go
+    Unseen--at least by human eye--
+      Against a worse than human foe!
+
+    "Thou know'st the sharp rock--steep and hoar?--
+    The abyss?--the chapel glimmering o'er?
+    Built by the Fearless Master's hand,
+    The fane looks down on all the land.
+    Humble and mean that house of prayer--
+    Yet God hath shrined a wonder there:--
+    Mother and Child, to whom of old
+    The Three Kings knelt with gifts, behold!
+    By three times thirty steps, the shrine
+      The pilgrim gains--and faint, and dim,
+    And dizzy with the height, divine
+      Strength on the sudden springs to him!
+
+    "Yawns wide within that holy steep
+    A mighty cavern dark and deep--
+    By blessed sunbeam never lit--
+    Rank foetid swamps engirdle it;
+    And there by night, and there by day,
+    Ever at watch, the fiend-worm lay,
+    Holding the Hell of its abode
+    Fast by the hallow'd House of God.
+    And when the pilgrim gladly ween'd
+      His feet had found the healing way,
+    Forth from its ambush rush'd the fiend,
+      And down to darkness dragg'd the prey.
+
+    "With solemn soul, that solemn height
+    I clomb, ere yet I sought the fight--
+    Kneeling before the cross within,
+    My heart, confessing, clear'd its sin.
+    Then, as befits the Christian knight,
+    I donn'd the spotless surplice white,
+    And, by the altar, grasp'd the spear:--
+    So down I strode with conscience clear--
+    Bade my leal squires afar the deed,
+      By death or conquest crown'd, await--
+    Leapt lightly on my lithesome steed,
+      And gave to God his soldier's fate!
+
+    "Before me wide the marshes lay--
+    Started the hounds with sudden bay--
+    Aghast the swerving charger slanting
+    Snorted--then stood abrupt and panting--
+    For curling there, in coiled fold,
+    The Unutterable Beast behold!
+    Lazily basking in the sun.
+    Forth sprang the dogs. The fight's begun!
+    But lo! the hounds in cowering fly
+      Before the mighty poison-breath--
+    A yell, most like the jackall's cry,
+      Howl'd, mingling with that wind of death!
+
+    "No halt--I gave one cheering sound;
+    Lustily springs each dauntless hound--
+    Swift as the dauntless hounds advance,
+    Whirringly skirrs my stalwart lance--
+    Whirringly skirrs; and from the scale
+    Bounds, as a reed aslant the mail.
+    Onward--but no!--the craven steed
+    Shrinks from his lord in that dread need--
+      Smitten and scared before that eye
+    Of basilisk horror, and that blast
+      Of death, it only seeks to fly--
+    And half the mighty hope is past!
+
+    "A moment, and to earth I leapt;
+    Swift from its sheath the falchion swept;
+    Swift on that rock-like mail it plied--
+    The rock-like mail the sword defied:
+    The monster lash'd its mighty coil--
+    Down hurl'd--behold me on the soil!
+    Behold the hell-jaws gaping wide--
+    When lo! they bound--the flesh is found;
+      Upon the scaleless parts they spring!
+    Springs either hound;--the flesh is found--
+      It roars; the blood-dogs cleave and cling!
+
+    "No time to foil its fast'ning foes--
+    Light, as it writhed, I sprang, and rose;
+    The all-unguarded place explored,
+    Up to the hilt I plunged the sword--
+    Buried one instant in the blood--
+    The next, upsprang the bubbling flood!
+    The next, one Vastness spread the plain--
+    Crush'd down--the victor with the slain;
+    And all was dark--and on the ground
+      My life, suspended, lost the sun,
+    Till waking--lo my squires around--
+      And the dead foe!--my tale is done."
+
+    Then burst, as from a common breast,
+    The eager laud so long supprest--
+    A thousand voices, choral-blending,
+    Up to the vaulted dome ascending--
+    From groined roof and banner'd wall,
+    Invisible echoes answering all--
+    The very Brethren, grave and high,
+    Forget their state, and join the cry.
+    "With laurel wreaths his brows be crown'd,
+      Let throng to throng his triumph tell;
+    Hail him all Rhodes!"--the Master frown'd,
+      And raised his hand--and silence fell.
+
+    "Well," said that solemn voice, "thy hand
+    From the wild-beast hath freed the land.
+    An idol to the People be!
+    A foe our Order frowns on thee!
+    For in thy heart, superb and vain,
+    A hell-worm laidlier than the slain,
+    To discord which engenders death,
+    Poisons each thought with baleful breath!
+    That hell-worm is the stubborn Will--
+      Oh! What were man and nations worth
+    If each his own desire fulfil,
+      And law be banish'd from the earth?
+
+    "_Valour_ the Heathen gives to story--
+    _Obedience_ is the Christian's glory;
+    And on that soil our Saviour-God
+    As the meek low-born mortal trod.
+    We the Apostle-knights were sworn
+    To laws thy daring laughs to scorn--
+    Not _fame_, but _duty_ to fulfil--
+    Our noblest offering--man's wild will.
+    Vain-glory doth thy soul betray--
+      Begone--thy conquest is thy loss:
+    No breast too haughty to obey,
+      Is worthy of the Christian's cross!"
+
+    From their cold awe the crowds awaken,
+    As with some storm the halls are shaken;
+    The noble brethren plead for grace--
+    Mute stands the doom'd, with downward face;
+    And mutely loosen'd from its band
+    The badge, and kiss'd the Master's hand,
+    And meekly turn'd him to depart:
+    A moist eye follow'd, "To my heart
+    Come back, my son!"--the Master cries:
+      "Thy grace a harder fight obtains;
+    When Valour risks the Christian's prize,
+      Lo, how Humility regains!"
+
+[In the ballad just presented to the reader, Schiller designed, as he
+wrote to Goethe, to depict the old Christian chivalry--half-knightly,
+half-monastic. The attempt is strikingly successful; and, even in so
+humble a translation, the unadorned simplicity and earnest vigour of a
+great poet, enamoured of his subject, may be sufficiently visible to a
+discerning critic. "The Fight of the Dragon" appears to us the most
+spirited and nervous of all Schiller's ballads, with the single
+exception of "The Diver;" and if its interest is less intense than that
+of the matchless "Diver," and its descriptions less poetically striking
+and effective, its interior meaning or philosophical conception is at
+once more profound and more elevated. The main distinction, indeed,
+between the ancient ballad and the modern, as revived and recreated by
+Goethe and Schiller, is, that the former is a simple narrative, and the
+latter a narrative which conveys some intellectual idea--some dim, but
+important truth. The one has but the good faith of the minstrel, the
+other the high wisdom of the poet. In "The Fight of the Dragon,"
+is expressed the moral of that humility which consists in
+self-conquest--even merit may lead to vain-glory--and, after vanquishing
+the fiercest enemies without, Man has still to contend with his worst
+foe,--the pride or disobedience of his own heart. "Every one," as a
+recent and acute, but somewhat over-refining critic has remarked, "has
+more or less--his own 'fight with the Dragon,'--his own double victory
+(without and within) to achieve." The origin of this poem is to be found
+in the Annals of the Order of Malta--and the details may be seen in
+Vertot's History. The date assigned to the conquest of the Dragon is
+1342. Helion de Villeneuve was the name of the Grand Master--that of the
+Knight, Dieu-Donne de Gozon. Thevenot declares, that the head of the
+monster, (to whatever species it really belonged,) or its effigies, was
+still placed over one of the gates of the city in his time.]
+
+     [9] War-horse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES. PART II.
+
+
+Having shown that the standard of Taste is in the Truth of Nature, and
+that this truth is in the mind, Sir Joshua, in the Eighth Discourse,
+proceeds to a further development of the principles of art. These
+principles, whether poetry or painting, have their foundation in the
+mind; which by its sensitive faculties and intellectual requirements,
+remodels all that it receives from the external world, vivifying and
+characterizing all with itself, and thus bringing forth into light the
+more beautiful but latent creations of nature. The "activity and
+restlessness" of the mind seek satisfaction from curiosity, novelty,
+variety, and contrast. Curiosity, "the anxiety for the future, the
+keeping the event suspended," he considers to be exclusively the
+province of poetry, and that "the painter's art is more confined, and
+has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this
+power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally
+engaged. What is done by painting must be done at one blow; curiosity
+has received at once all the satisfaction it can have." Novelty,
+variety, and contrast, however, belong to the painter. That poetry has
+this power, and operates by more extensively raising our curiosity,
+cannot be denied; but we hesitate in altogether excluding this power
+from painting. A momentary action may be so represented, as to elicit a
+desire for, and even an intimation of its event. It is true _that_
+curiosity cannot be satisfied, but it works and conjectures; and we
+suspect there is something of it in most good pictures. Take such a
+subject as the "Judgment of Solomon:" is not the "event suspended," and
+a breathless anxiety portrayed in the characters, and freely
+acknowledged by the sympathy of the spectator? Is there no mark of this
+"curiosity" in the "Cartoon of Pisa?" The trumpet has sounded, the
+soldiers are some half-dressed, some out of the water, others bathing;
+one is anxiously looking for the rising of his companion, who has just
+plunged in, and we see but his hands above the water; the very range of
+rocks, behind which the danger is shown to come, tends to excite our
+curiosity; we form conjectures of the enemy, their number, nearness of
+approach, and from among the manly warriors before us form episodes of
+heroism in the great intimated epic: and have we not seen pictures by
+Rembrandt, where "curiosity" delights to search unsatisfied and
+unsatiated into the mysteries of colour and chiaro-scuro, receding
+further as we look into an atmosphere pregnant with all uncertain
+things? We think we have not mistaken the President's meaning. Mr Burnet
+appears to agree with us: though he makes no remark upon the power of
+raising curiosity, yet it surely is raised in the very picture to which
+we presume he alludes, Raffaelle's "Death of Ananias;" the event, in
+Sapphira, is intimated and suspended. "Though," says Mr Burnet, "the
+painter has but one page to represent his story, he generally chooses
+that part which combines the most illustrative incidents with the most
+effective denouement of the event. In Raffaelle we often find not only
+those circumstances which precede it, _but its effects upon the_
+personages introduced after the catastrophe."
+
+There is, however, a natural indolence of our disposition, which seeks
+pleasure in repose, and the resting in old habits, which must not be too
+violently opposed by "variety," "reanimating the attention, which is apt
+to languish under a continual sameness;" nor by "novelty," making "more
+forcible impression on the mind than can be made by the representation
+of what we have often seen before;" nor by "contrasts," that "rouse the
+power of comparison by opposition."
+
+The mind, then, though an active principle, having likewise a
+disposition to indolence, (might we have said repose?) limits the
+quantity of variety, novelty, and contrast which it will bear;--these
+are, therefore, liable to excesses. Hence arise certain rules of art,
+that in a composition objects must not be too scattered and divided into
+many equal parts, that perplex and fatigue the eye, at a loss where to
+find the principal action. Nor must there be that "absolute unity,"
+"which, consisting of one group or mass of light only, would be as
+defective as an heroic poem without episode, or any collateral incidents
+to recreate the mind with that variety which it always requires." Sir
+Joshua instances Rembrandt and Poussin, the former as having the defect
+of "absolute unity," the latter the defect of the dispersion and
+scattering his figures without attention to their grouping. Hence there
+must be "the same just moderation observed in regard to ornaments;" for
+a certain repose must never be destroyed. Ornament in profusion, whether
+of objects or colours, does destroy it; and, "on the other hand, a work
+without ornament, instead of simplicity, to which it makes pretensions,
+has rather the appearance of poverty." "We may be sure of this truth,
+that the most ornamental style requires repose to set off even its
+ornaments to advantage." He instances, in the dialogue between Duncan
+and Banquo, Shakspeare's purpose of repose--the mention of the martlets'
+nests, and that "where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is
+delicate;" and the practice of Homer, "who, from the midst of battles
+and horrors, relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader, by
+introducing some quiet rural image, or picture of familiar domestic
+life. The writers of every age and country, where taste has begun to
+decline, paint and adorn every object they touch; are always on the
+stretch; never deviate or sink a moment from the pompous and the
+brilliant."[10]
+
+     [10] Could Sir Joshua now be permitted to visit his own
+     Academy, and our exhibitions in general, he would be startled
+     at the excess of ornament, in defiance of his rule of repose,
+     succeeding the slovenliness of his own day. Whatever be the
+     subject, history, landscape, or familiar life, it superabounds
+     both in objects and colour. In established academies, the
+     faults of genius are more readily adopted than their
+     excellences; they are more vulgarly perceptible, and more easy
+     of imitation. We have, therefore, less hesitation in referring
+     the more ambitious of our artists to this prohibition in Sir
+     Joshua's Discourse. The greater the authority the more
+     injurious the delinquency. We therefore adduce as examples,
+     works of our most inventive and able artist, his "Macbeth" and
+     his "Hamlet"--they are greatly overloaded with the faults of
+     superabundance of ornament, and want unity; yet are they works
+     of great power, and such as none but a painter of high genius
+     could conceive or execute. In a more fanciful subject, and
+     where ornament was more admissible, he has been more fortunate,
+     and even in the multiplicity of his figures and ornaments, by
+     their grouping and management, he has preserved a seeming
+     moderation, and has so ordered his composition that the
+     wholeness, the simplicity, of his subject is not destroyed. The
+     story is told, and admirably--as Sir Joshua says, "at one
+     blow." We speak of his "Sleeping Beauty." We see at once that
+     the prince and princess are the principal, and they are united
+     by that light and fainter fairy chain intimating, yet not too
+     prominently, the magic under whose working and whose light the
+     whole scene is; nothing can be better conceived than the
+     prince--there is a largeness in the manner, a breadth in the
+     execution of the figure that considerably dignifies the story,
+     and makes him, the principal, a proper index of it. The many
+     groups are all episodes, beautiful in themselves, and in no way
+     injure the simplicity. There is novelty, variety, and contrast
+     in not undue proportion, because that simplicity is preserved.
+     Even the colouring, (though there is too much white,) and
+     chiaro-scuro, with its gorgeousness, is in the stillness of
+     repose, and a sunny repose, too, befitting the "Sleeping
+     Beauty." Mr Maclise has succeeded best where his difficulty and
+     danger were greatest, and so it ever is with genius. It is not
+     in such subjects alone that our artists transgress Sir Joshua's
+     rule; we too often see portraits where the dress and
+     accessaries obtrude--there is too much lace and too little
+     expression--and our painters of views follow the fashion most
+     unaccountably--ornament is every where; we have not a town
+     where the houses are not "turned out of windows," and all the
+     furniture of every kind piled up in the streets; and as if to
+     show a pretty general bankruptcy, together with the artist's
+     own poverty, you would imagine an auction going on in every
+     other house, by the Turkey carpets and odds and ends hanging
+     from the windows. We have even seen a "Rag Fair" in a turnpike
+     road.
+
+Novelty, Variety, and Contrast are required in Art, because they are the
+natural springs that move the mind to attention from its indolent
+quiescence; but having moved, their duty is performed--the mind of
+itself will do the rest; they must not act prominent parts. In every
+work there must be a simplicity which binds the whole together, as a
+whole; and whatever comes not within that girdle of the graces, is worse
+than superfluous--it draws off and distracts the attention which should
+be concentrated. Besides that simplicity which we have spoken of--and we
+have used the word in its technical sense, as that which keeps together
+and makes one thing of many parts--there is a simplicity which is best
+known by its opposite, affectation; upon this Sir Joshua enlarges.
+"Simplicity, being a negative virtue, cannot be described or defined."
+But it is possible, even in avoiding affectation, to convert simplicity
+into the very thing we strive to avoid. N. Poussin--whom, with regard to
+this virtue, he contrasts with others of the French school--Sir Joshua
+considers, in his abhorrence of the affectation of his countrymen,
+somewhat to approach it, by "what in writing would be called pedantry."
+Du Piles is justly censured for his recipe of grace and dignity. "If,"
+says he, "you draw persons of high character and dignity, they ought to
+be drawn in such an attitude that the portraits must seem to speak to
+us of themselves, and as it were to say to us, 'Stop, take notice of
+me--I am the invincible king, surrounded by majesty.' 'I am the valiant
+commander who struck terror every where,' 'I am that great minister, who
+knew all the springs of politics.' 'I am that magistrate of consummate
+wisdom and probity.'" This is indeed affectation, and a very vulgar
+notion of greatness. We are reminded of Partridge, and his admiration of
+the overacting king. All the characters in thus seeming to say, would be
+little indeed. Not so Raffaelle and Titian understood grace and dignity.
+Simplicity he holds to be "our barrier against that great enemy to truth
+and nature, affectation, which is ever clinging to the pencil, and ready
+to drop and poison every thing it touches." Yet that, "when so very
+inartificial as to seem to evade the difficulties of art, is a very
+suspicious virtue." Sir Joshua dwells much upon this, because he thinks
+there is a perpetual tendency in young artists to run into affectation,
+and that from the very terms of the precepts offered them. "When a young
+artist is first told that his composition and his attitudes must be
+contrasted; that he must turn the head contrary to the position of the
+body, in order to produce grace and animation; that his outline must be
+undulating and swelling, to give grandeur; and that the eye must be
+gratified with a variety of colours; when he is told this with certain
+animating words of spirit, dignity, energy, greatness of style, and
+brilliancy of tints, he becomes suddenly vain of his newly-acquired
+knowledge, and never thinks he can carry those rules too far. It is then
+that the aid of simplicity ought to be called in to correct the
+exuberance of youthful ardour." We may add that hereby, too, is shown
+the danger of particular and practical rules; very few of the kind are
+to be found in the "Discourses." Indeed the President points out, by
+examples from Raffaelle, the good effect of setting aside these
+academical rules. We suspect that they are never less wanted than when
+they give direction to attitudes and forms of action. He admits that, in
+order "to excite attention to the more manly, noble, and dignified
+manner," he had perhaps left "an impression too contemptuous of the
+ornamental parts of our art." He had, to use his own expression, bent
+the bow the contrary way to make it straight. "For this purpose, then,
+and to correct excess or neglect of any kind, we may here add, that it
+is not enough that a work be learned--it must be pleasing." Pretty much
+as Horace had said of poetry,
+
+    "Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, _dulcia_ sunto."
+
+To which maxim the Latin poet has unconsciously given the grace of
+rhyme--
+
+    "Et quocunque volent animum auditoris agunto."
+
+He again shows the danger of particular practical rules.--"It is given
+as a rule by Fresnoy, that '_the principal figure of a subject must
+appear in the midst of the picture, under the principal light, to
+distinguish it from the rest._' A painter who should think himself
+obliged strictly to follow this rule, would encumber himself with
+needless difficulties; he would be confined to great uniformity of
+composition, and be deprived of many beauties which are incompatible
+with its observance. The meaning of this rule extends, or ought to
+extend, no further than this: that the principal figure should be
+immediately distinguished at the first glance of the eye; but there is
+no necessity that the principal light should fall on the principal
+figure, or that the principal figure should be in the middle of the
+picture." He might have added that it is the very place where generally
+it ought not to be. Many examples are given; we could have wished he had
+given a plate from any one in preference to that from Le Brun. Felebein,
+in praising this picture, according to preconceived recipe, gives
+Alexander, who is in shade, the principal light. "Another instance
+occurs to me where equal liberty may be taken in regard to the
+management of light. Though the general practice is to make a large mass
+about the middle of the picture surrounded by shadow, the reverse may be
+practised, and _the spirit of the rule be preserved_." We have marked in
+italics the latter part of the sentence, because it shows that the rule
+itself must be ill-defined or too particular. Indeed, we receive with
+caution all such rules as belong to the practical and mechanical of the
+art. He instances Paul Veronese. "In the great composition of Paul
+Veronese, the 'Marriage of Cana,' the figures are for the most part in
+half shadow. The great light is in the sky; and indeed the general
+effect of this picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we
+often see in landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts:
+but those principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large
+scale, to a space containing near a hundred figures as large as life,
+and conducted, to all appearance, with as much facility, and with
+attention as steadily fixed upon _the whole together_, as if it were a
+small picture immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our
+admiration, the difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged."
+We suspect that _the rule_, when it attempts to direct beyond the words
+Sir Joshua has marked in italics, refutes itself, and shackles the
+student. Infinite must be the modes of composition, and as infinite the
+modes of treating them in light and shadow and colour. "Whatever mode of
+composition is adopted, every variety and license is allowable." All
+that is absolutely necessary is, that there be no confusion or
+distraction, no conflicting masses--in fact, that the picture tell its
+tale at once and effectually. A very good plate is given by Mr Burnet of
+the "Marriage of Cana," by Paul Veronese. Sir Joshua avoids entering
+upon rules that belong to "the detail of the art." He meets with
+combatants, as might have been expected, where he is thus particular. We
+will extract the passage which has been controverted, and to oppose the
+doctrine of which, Gainsborough painted his celebrated "Blue Boy."
+
+"Though it is not my _business_ to enter into the detail of our art, yet
+I must take this opportunity of mentioning one of the means of producing
+that great effect which we observe in the works of the Venetian
+painters, as I think it is not generally known or observed, that the
+masses of light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow
+red or yellowish white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green
+colours be kept almost entirely out of these masses, and be used only to
+support and set off these warm colours; and for this purpose a small
+proportion of cold colours will be sufficient. Let this conduct be
+reversed; let the light be cold, and the surrounding colours warm, as we
+often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine painters, and it will
+be out of the power of art, even in the hands of Rubens or Titian, to
+make a picture splendid and harmonious." Le Brun and Carlo Maratti are
+censured as being "deficient in this management of colours." The
+"Bacchus and Ariadne," now in our National Gallery, has ever been
+celebrated for its harmony of colour. Sir Joshua supports his theory or
+rule by the example of this picture: the red of Ariadne's scarf, which,
+according to critics, was purposely given to relieve the figure from the
+sea, has a better object. "The figure of Ariadne is separated from the
+great group, and is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the
+sea, makes that quantity of cold colour which Titian thought necessary
+for the support and brilliancy of the great group; which group is
+composed, with very little exception, entirely of mellow colours. But as
+the picture in this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one
+half cold and the other warm, it was necessary to carry some of the
+mellow colours of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and
+a part of the cold into the great group; accordingly Titian gave Ariadne
+a red scarf, and to one of the Bacchantes a little blue drapery." As
+there is no picture more splendid, it is well to weigh and consider
+again and again remarks upon the cause of the brilliancy, given by such
+an authority as Sir Joshua Reynolds. With regard to his rule, even among
+artists, "adhuc sub judice lis est." He combats the common notion of
+relief, as belonging only to the infancy of the art, and shows the
+advance made by Coreggio and Rembrandt; though the first manner of
+Coreggio, as well as of Leonardo da Vinci and Georgione, was dry and
+hard. "But these three were among the first who began to correct
+themselves in dryness of style, by no longer considering relief as a
+principal object. As these two qualities, relief and fulness of effect,
+can hardly exist together, it is not very difficult to determine to
+which we ought to give the preference." "Those painters who have best
+understood the art of producing a good effect, have adopted one
+principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason--that a part may be
+sacrificed for the good of the whole. Thus, whether the masses consist
+of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact, and of
+a pleasing shape; to this end some parts may be made darker and some
+lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant." He
+instances a "Moonlight" by Rubens, now, we believe, in the possession of
+Mr Rogers, in which Rubens had given more light and more glowing colours
+than we recognize in nature,--"it might easily be mistaken, if he had
+not likewise added stars, for a fainter setting sun." We stop not to
+enquire if that harmony so praised, might not have been preserved had
+the resemblance to nature been closer. Brilliancy is produced. The fact
+is, the _practice_ of art is a system of compensation. We cannot exactly
+in all cases represent nature,--we have not the means, but our means
+will achieve what, though _particularly_ unlike, may, by itself or in
+opposition, produce similar effects. Nature does not present a varnished
+polished surface, nor that very transparency that our colours can give;
+but it is found that this transparency, in all its degrees, in
+conjunction and in opposition to opaque body of colour, represents the
+force of light and shade of nature, which is the principal object to
+attain. _The_ richness of nature is not the exact richness of the
+palette. The painter's success is in the means of compensation.
+
+This Discourse concludes with observations on the Prize pictures. The
+subject seems to have been the Sacrifice of Iphigenia. All had copied
+the invention of Timanthes, in hiding the face of Agamemnon. Sir Joshua
+seems to agree with Mr Falconet, in a note in his translation of Pliny,
+who would condemn the painter, but that he copied the idea from the
+authority of Euripides; Sir Joshua considers it at best a trick, that
+can only with success be practised once. Mr Fuseli criticises the
+passage, and assumes that the painter had better reason than that given
+by Mr Falconet. Mr Burnet has added but two or three notes to this
+Discourse--they are unimportant, with the exception of the last, wherein
+he combats Sir Joshua's theory of the cold and warm colours. He candidly
+prints an extract of a letter from Sir Thomas Lawrence, who differs with
+him. It is so elegantly written that we quote the passage. Sir Thomas
+says,--"Agreeing with you in so many points, I will venture to differ
+from you in your question with Sir Joshua. Infinitely various as nature
+is, there are still two or three truths that limit her variety, or,
+rather, that limit art in the imitation of her. I should instance for
+one the ascendency of white objects, which can never be departed from
+with impunity, and again, the union of colour with light. Masterly as
+the execution of that picture is (viz. the Boy in a blue dress,) I
+always feel a never-changing impression on my eye, that the "Blue Boy"
+of Gainsborough is a difficulty boldly combated, not conquered. The
+light blue drapery of the Virgin in the centre of the "Notte" is
+another instance; a check to the harmony of the celestial radiance round
+it." "Opposed to Sir Thomas's opinion," says Mr Burnet, "I might quote
+that of Sir David Wilkie, often expressed, and carried out in his
+picture of the 'Chelsea Pensioners' and other works." It strikes us,
+from our recollection of the "Chelsea Pensioners," that it is not at all
+a case in point; the blue there not being light but dark, and serving as
+dark, forcibly contrasting with warmer light in sky and other objects;
+the _colour_ of blue is scarcely given, and is too dark to be allowed to
+enter into the question. He adds, "A very simple method may be adopted
+to enable the student to perceive where the warm and red colours are
+placed by the great colourists, by his making a sketch of light and
+shade of the picture, and then touching in the warm colours with red
+chalk; or by looking on his palette at twilight, he will see what
+colours absorb the light, and those that give it out, and thus select
+for his shadows, colours that have the property of giving depth and
+richness." Unless the pictures are intended to be seen at twilight, we
+do not see how this can bear upon the question; if it does, we would
+notice what we have often observed, that at twilight blue almost
+entirely disappears, to such a degree that in a landscape where the blue
+has even been deep, and the sky by no means the lightest part of the
+picture, at twilight the whole landscape comes out too hard upon the
+sky, which with its colour has lost its tone, and become, with relation
+to the rest, by far too light. It is said that of all the pictures in
+the National Gallery, when seen at twilight, the Coreggios retire
+last--we speak of the two, the "Ecce Homo" and the "Venus, Mercury, and
+Cupid." In these there is no blue but in the drapery of the fainting
+mother, and that is so dark as to serve for black or mere shadow; the
+lighter blue close upon the neck is too small to affect the power of the
+picture. It certainly is a fact, that blue fades more than any colour at
+twilight, and, relatively speaking, leaves the image that contains it
+lighter. We should almost be inclined to ask the question, though with
+great deference to authority, is blue, when very light, necessarily
+cold; and if so, has it not an activity which, being the great quality
+of light, assimilates it with light, and thus takes in to itself the
+surrounding "radiance?" A very little positive warm colour, as it were
+set in blue, from whatever cause, gives it a surprising glow. We desire
+to see the theory of colours treated, not with regard to their
+corresponding harmony in their power one upon the other, nor in their
+light and shadow, but, if we may so express it, in their
+sentimentality--the effect they are capable of in moving the passions.
+We alluded to this in our last paper, and the more we consider the
+subject, the more we convinced that it is worth deeper investigation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The NINTH DISCOURSE is short, and general in its character; it was
+delivered at the opening of the Royal Academy in Somerset Place, October
+16, 1780. It is an elegant address; raises the aim of the artist; and
+gives a summary of the origin of arts and their use. "Let us for a
+moment take a short survey of the progress of the mind towards what is,
+or ought to be, its true object of attention. Man in his lowest state
+has no pleasures but those of sense, and no wants but those of appetite;
+afterwards, when society is divided into different ranks, and some are
+appointed to labour for the support of others, those whom their
+superiority sets free from labour begin to look for intellectual
+entertainments. Thus, while the shepherds were attending their flocks,
+their masters made the first astronomical observations; so music is said
+to have had its origin from a man at leisure listening to the strokes of
+a hammer. As the senses in the lowest state of nature are necessary to
+direct us to our support, when that support is once secure, there is
+danger in following them further; to him who has no rule of action but
+the gratification of the senses, plenty is always dangerous. It is
+therefore necessary to the happiness of individuals, and still more
+necessary to the security of society, that the mind should be elevated
+to the idea of general beauty, and the contemplation of general truth;
+by this pursuit the mind is always carried forward in search of
+something more excellent than it finds, and obtains its proper
+superiority over the common sense of life, by learning to feel itself
+capable of higher aims and nobler enjoyments." This is well said.
+Again.--"Our art, like all arts which address the imagination, is
+applied to a somewhat lower faculty of the mind, which approaches nearer
+to sensuality, but through sense and fancy it must make its way to
+reason. For such is the progress of thought, that we perceive by sense,
+we combine by fancy, and distinguish by reason; and without carrying our
+art out of its natural and true character, the more we purify it from
+every thing that is gross in sense, in that proportion we advance its
+use and dignity, and in proportion as we lower it to mere sensuality, we
+pervert its nature, and degrade it from the rank of a liberal art; and
+this is what every artist ought well to remember. Let him remember,
+also, that he deserves just so much encouragement in the state as he
+makes himself a member of it virtuously useful, and contributes in his
+sphere to the general purpose and perfection of society." Sir Joshua has
+been blamed by those who have taken lower views of art, in that he has
+exclusively treated of the Great Style, which neither he nor the
+academicians of his day practised; but he would have been unworthy the
+presidential chair had he taken any other line. His was a noble effort,
+to assume for art the highest position, to dignify it in its aim, and
+thus to honour and improve first his country, then all human kind. We
+rise from such passages as these elevated above all that is little.
+Those only can feel depressed who would find excuses for the lowness of
+their pursuits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TENTH DISCOURSE.--Sir Joshua here treats of Sculpture, a less
+extensive field than Painting. The leading principles of both are the
+same; he considers wherein they agree, and wherein they differ.
+Sculpture cannot, "with propriety and best effect, be applied to many
+subjects." Its object is "form and character." It has "one style
+only,"--that one style has relation only to one style of painting, the
+Great Style, but that so close as to differ only as operating upon
+different materials. He blames the sculptors of the last age, who
+thought they were improving by borrowing from the ornamental,
+incompatible with its essential character. Contrasts, and the
+littlenesses of picturesque effects, are injurious to the formality its
+austere character requires. As in painting, so more particularly in
+sculpture, that imitation of nature which we call illusion, is in no
+respect its excellence, nor indeed its aim. Were it so, the Venus di
+Medici would be improved by colour. It contemplates a higher, a more
+perfect beauty, more an intellectual than sensual enjoyment. The
+boundaries of the art have been long fixed. To convey "sentiment and
+character, as exhibited by attitude, and expression of the passions," is
+not within its province. Beauty of form alone, the object of sculpture,
+"makes of itself a great work." In proof of which are the designs of
+Michael Angelo in both arts. As a stronger instance:--"What artist,"
+says he, "ever looked at the Torso without feeling a warmth of
+enthusiasm as from the highest efforts of poetry? From whence does this
+proceed? What is there in this fragment that produces this effect, but
+the perfection of this science of abstract form?" Mr Burnet has given a
+plate of the Torso. The expectation of deception, of which few divest
+themselves, is an impediment to the judgment, consequently to the
+enjoyment of sculpture. "Its essence is correctness." It fully
+accomplishes its purpose when it adds the "ornament of grace, dignity of
+character, and appropriated expression, as in the Apollo, the Venus, the
+Laocoon, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and many others." Sir Joshua uses
+expression as will be afterwards seen, in a very limited sense. It is
+necessary to lay down perfect correctness as its essential character;
+because, as in the case of the Apollo, many have asserted the beauty to
+arise from a certain incorrectness in anatomy and proportion. He denies
+that there is this incorrectness, and asserts that there never ought to
+be; and that even in painting these are not the beauties, but defects,
+in the works of Coreggio and Parmegiano. "A supposition of such a
+monster as Grace begot by Deformity, is poison to the mind of a young
+artist." The Apollo and the Discobolus are engaged in the same
+purpose--the one watching the effect of his arrow, the other of his
+discus. "The graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and
+the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish a signal instance of the
+skill of the ancient sculptors in their nice discrimination of
+character. They are both equally true to nature, and equally admirable."
+Grace, character, and expression, are rather in form and attitude than
+in features; the general figure more presents itself; "it is there we
+must principally look for expression or character; _patuit in corpore
+vultus_." The expression in the countenances of the Laocoon and his two
+sons, though greater than in any other antique statues, is of pain only;
+and that is more expressed "by the writhing and contortion of the body
+than by the features." The ancient sculptors paid but little regard to
+features for their expression, their object being solely beauty of form.
+"Take away from Apollo his lyre, from Bacchus his thyrsus and
+vine-leaves, and from Meleager the boar's head, and there will remain
+little or no difference in their characters." John di Bologna, he tells
+us, after he had finished a group, called his friends together to tell
+him what name to give it: they called it the "Rape of the Sabines." A
+similar anecdote is told of Sir Joshua himself, that he had painted the
+head of the old man who attended him in his studio. Some one observed
+that it would make a Ugolino. The sons were added, and it became the
+well-known historical picture from Dante. He comments upon the
+ineffectual attempts of modern sculptors to detach drapery from the
+figure, to give it the appearance of flying in the air; to make
+different plans on the same bas-relievos; to represent the effects of
+perspective; to clothe in a modern dress. For the first attempt he
+reprehends Bernini, who, from want of a right conception of the province
+of sculpture, never fulfilled the promise given in his early work of
+Apollo and Daphne. He was ever attempting to make drapery flutter in the
+air, which the very massiveness of the material, stone, should seem to
+forbid. Sir Joshua does not notice the very high authority for such an
+attempt--though it must be confessed the material was not stone, still
+it was sculpture, and multitudinous are the graces of ornament, and most
+minutely described--the shield of Hercules, by Hesiod; even the noise of
+the furies' wings is affected. The drapery of the Apollo he considers to
+have been intended more for support than ornament; but the mantle from
+the arm he thinks "answers a much higher purpose, by preventing that
+dryness of effect which would inevitably attend a naked arm, extended
+almost at full length; to which we may add, the disagreeable effect
+which would proceed from the body and arm making a right angle." He
+conjectures that Carlo Maratti, in his love for drapery, must have
+influenced the sculptors of the Apostles in the church of St John
+Lateran. "The weight and solidity of stone was not to be overcome."
+
+To place figures on different plans is absurd, because they must still
+appear all equally near the eye; the sculptor has not adequate means of
+throwing them back; and, besides, the thus cutting up into minute parts,
+destroys grandeur. "Perhaps the only circumstance in which the modern
+have excelled the ancient sculptors, is the management of a single group
+in basso-relievo." This, he thinks, may have been suggested by the
+practice of modern painters. The attempt at perspective must, for the
+same reason, be absurd; the sculptor has not the means for this "humble
+ambition." The ancients represented only the elevation of whatever
+architecture they introduced into their bas-reliefs, "which is composed
+of little more than horizontal and perpendicular lines." Upon the
+attempt at modern dress in sculpture, he is severe in his censure.
+"Working in stone is a very serious business, and it seems to be scarce
+worth while to employ such durable materials in conveying to posterity a
+fashion, of which the longest existence scarcely exceeds a year;" and
+which, he might have added, the succeeding year makes ridiculous. We not
+only change our dresses, but laugh at the sight of those we have
+discarded. The gravity of sculpture should not be subject to contempt.
+"The uniformity and simplicity of the materials on which the sculptor
+labours, (which are only white marble,) prescribe bounds to his art, and
+teach him to confine himself to proportionable simplicity of design." Mr
+Burnet has not given a better note than that upon Sir Joshua's remark,
+that sculpture has but one style. He shows how strongly the ancient
+sculptors marked those points wherein the human figure differs from that
+of other animals. "Let us take, for example, the human foot; on
+examining, in the first instance, those of many animals, we perceive the
+toes either very long or very short in proportion; of an equal size
+nearly, and the claws often long and hooked inwards: now, in rude
+sculpture, and even in some of the best of the Egyptians, we find little
+attempt at giving a character of decided variation; but, on the
+contrary, we see the foot split up with toes of an equal length and
+thickness; while, in Greek sculpture, these points characteristic of man
+are increased, that the affinity to animals may be diminished. In the
+Greek marbles, the great toe is large and apart from the others, where
+the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and
+sweep round to the outside of the foot, with the greatest regularity of
+curve; the nails are short, and the toes broad at the points, indicative
+of pressure on the ground." Rigidity he considers to have been the
+character of the first epochs, changing ultimately as in the Elgin
+marbles, "from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified
+character of flesh." He thinks Reynolds "would have acknowledged the
+supremacy of beautiful nature, uncontrolled by the severe line of
+mathematical exactness," had he lived to see the Elgin marbles. "The
+outline of life, which changes under every respiration, seems to have
+undulated under the plastic mould of Phidias." This is well expressed.
+He justly animadverts upon the silly fashion of the day, in lauding the
+vulgar imitation of the worsted stockings by Thom. The subjects chosen
+were most unfit for sculpture,--their only immortality must be in Burns.
+We do not understand his extreme admiration of Wilkie; in a note on
+parallel perspective in sculpture, he adduces Raffaelle as an example of
+the practice, and closes by comparing him with Sir David Wilkie,--"known
+by the appellation of the Raffaelle of familiar life,"--men perfect
+antipodes to each other! There is a proper eulogy on Chantrey,
+particularly for his busts, in which he commonly represented the eye. We
+are most anxious for the arrival of the ancient sculpture from Lycia,
+collected and packed for Government by the indefatigable and able
+traveller, Mr Fellowes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The ELEVENTH DISCOURSE is upon Genius, the particular genius of the
+painter in his power of seizing and representing nature, or his subject
+as a whole. He calls it the "genius of mechanical performance." This,
+with little difference, is enforcing what has been laid down in former
+Discourses. Indeed, as far as precepts may be required, Sir Joshua had
+already performed his task; hence, there is necessary repetition. Yet
+all is said well, and conviction perpetuates the impressions previously
+made. Character is something independent of minute detail; genius alone
+knows what constitutes this character, and practically to represent it,
+is to be a painter of genius. Though it be true that he "who does not at
+all express particulars expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice
+discrimination of minute circumstances, and a punctilious delineation of
+them, whatever excellence it may have, (and I do not mean to detract
+from it,) never did confer on the artist the character of genius." The
+impression left upon the mind is not of particulars, when it would seem
+to be so; such particulars are taken out of the subject, and are each a
+whole of themselves. Practically speaking, as we before observed, genius
+will be exerted in ascertaining how to paint the "_nothing_" in every
+picture, to satisfy with regard to detail, that neither its absence nor
+its presence shall be noticeable.
+
+Our pleasure is not in minute imitation; for, in fact, that is not true
+imitation, for it forces upon our notice that which naturally we do not
+see. We are not pleased with wax-work, which may be nearer reality; "we
+are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing ends accomplished by seemingly
+inadequate means." If this be sound, we ought to be sensible of the
+inadequacy of the means, which sets aside at once the common notion that
+art is illusion. "The properties of all objects, as far as the painter
+is concerned with them, are outline or drawing, the colour, and the
+light and shade. The drawing gives the form, the colour its visible
+quality, and the light and shade its solidity:" in every one of these
+the habit of seeing as a whole must be acquired. From this habit arises
+the power of imitating by "dexterous methods." He proceeds to show that
+the fame of the greatest painters does not rest upon their high finish.
+Raffaelle and Titian, one in drawing the other in colour, by no means
+finished highly; but acquired by their genius an expressive execution.
+Most of his subsequent remarks are upon practice in execution and
+colour, in contradistinction to elaborate finish. Vasari calls Titian,
+"giudicioso, bello, e stupendo," with regard to this power. He
+generalized by colour, and by execution. "In his colouring, he was large
+and general." By these epithets, we think Sir Joshua has admitted that
+the great style comprehends colouring. "Whether it is the human figure,
+an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however
+unpromising in appearance, but may be raised into dignity, convey
+sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of a painter of genius." He
+condemns that high finish which softens off. "This extreme softening,
+instead of producing the effect of softness, gives the appearance of
+ivory, or some other hard substance, highly polished. The value set upon
+drawings, such as of Coreggio and Parmegiano, which are but slight, show
+how much satisfaction can be given without high finishing, or minute
+attention to particulars. "I wish you to bear in mind, that when I speak
+of a whole, I do not mean simply _a whole_ as belonging to composition,
+but _a whole_ with respect to the general style of colouring; _a whole_
+with regard to light and shade; and _a whole_ of every thing which may
+separately become the main object of a painter. He speaks of a landscape
+painter in Rome, who endeavoured to represent every individual leaf upon
+a tree; a few happy touches would have given a more true resemblance.
+There is always a largeness and a freedom in happy execution, that
+finish can never attain. Sir Joshua says above, that even "unpromising"
+subjects may be thus treated. There is a painter commonly thought to
+have finished highly, by those who do not look into his manner, whose
+dexterous, happy execution was perhaps never surpassed; the consequence
+is, that there is "a largeness," in all his pictures. We mean Teniers.
+The effect of the elaborate work that has been added to his class of
+subjects, is to make them heavy and fatiguing to the eye. He praises
+Titian for the same large manner which he had given to his history and
+portraits, applied to his landscapes, and instances the back-ground to
+the "Peter Martyr." He recommends the same practice in portrait
+painting--the first thing to be attained, is largeness and general
+effect. The following puts the truth clearly. "Perhaps nothing that we
+can say will so clearly show the advantage and excellence of this
+faculty, as that it confers the character of genius on works that
+pretend to no other merit, in which is neither expression, character,
+nor dignity, and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot
+refuse the character of genius to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese,
+without opposing the general sense of mankind, (great authorities have
+called it the triumph of painting,) or to the Altar of St Augustine at
+Antwerp, by Rubens, which equally deserves that title, and for the same
+reason. Neither of these pictures have any interesting story to support
+them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation of a great
+concourse of people at a dinner; and the subject of Rubens, if it may be
+called a subject where nothing is doing, is an assembly of various
+saints that lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those
+pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however, under the
+influence of that comprehensive faculty which I have so often
+mentioned."
+
+The power of _a whole_ is exemplified by the anecdote of a child going
+through a gallery of old portraits. She paid very little attention to
+the finishing, or naturalness of drapery, but put herself at once to
+mimic the awkward attitudes. "The censure of nature uninformed, fastened
+upon the greatest fault that could be in a picture, because it related
+to the character and management of the whole." What he would condemn is
+that substitute for deep and proper study, which is to enable the
+painter to conceive and execute every subject as a whole, and a finish
+which Cowley calls "laborious effects of idleness." He concludes this
+Discourse with some hints on method of study. Many go to Italy to copy
+pictures, and derive little advantage. "The great business of study is,
+to form a mind adapted and adequate to all times and all occasions, to
+which all nature is then laid open, and which may be said to possess the
+key of her inexhaustible riches."
+
+Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of the Monk flying from the scene of
+murder, in Titian's "Peter Martyr," showing how that great painter could
+occasionally adopt the style of Michael Angelo in his forms. In the same
+note he observes, that Sir Joshua had forgotten the detail of this
+picture, which detail is noticed and praised by Algarotti, for its
+minute discrimination of leaves and plants, "even to excite the
+admiration of a botanist."--Sir Joshua said they were not there. Mr
+Burnet examined the picture at Paris, and found, indeed, the detail, but
+adds, that "they are made out with the same hue as the general tint of
+the ground, which is a dull brown," an exemplification of the rule, "Ars
+est celare artem." Mr Burnet remarks, that there is the same minute
+detail in Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne."--He is right--we have noticed
+it, and suspected that it had lost the glazing which had subdued it. As
+it is, however, it is not important. Mr Burnet is fearful lest the
+authority of Sir Joshua should induce a habit of generalizing too much.
+He expresses this fear in another note. He says, "the great eagerness to
+acquire what the poet calls
+
+        'That voluntary style,
+    Which careless plays, and seems to mock at toil,'
+
+and which Reynolds describes as so captivating, has led many a student
+to commence his career at the wrong end. They ought to remember, that
+even Rubens founded this excellence upon years of laborious and careful
+study. His picture of himself and his first wife, though the size of
+life, exhibits all the detail and finish of Holbein." Sir Joshua nowhere
+recommends _careless_ style; on the contrary, he every where urges the
+student to laborious toil, in order that he may acquire that facility
+which Sir Joshua so justly calls captivating, and which afterwards
+Rubens himself did acquire, by studying it in the works of Titian and
+Paul Veronese; and singularly, in contradiction to his fears and all he
+would imply, Mr Burnet terminates his passage thus:--"Nor did he
+(Rubens) quit the dry manner of Otho Venius, till a contemplation of the
+works of Titian and Paul Veronese enabled him to display with rapidity
+those materials which industry had collected." It is strange to argue
+upon the abuse of a precept, by taking it at the wrong end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The TWELFTH DISCOURSE recurs likewise to much that had been before laid
+down. It treats of methods of study, upon which he had been consulted by
+artists about to visit Italy. Particular methods of study he considers
+of little consequence; study must not be shackled by too much method. If
+the painter loves his art, he will not require prescribed tasks;--to go
+about which sluggishly, which he will do if he have another impulse, can
+be of little advantage. Hence would follow, as he admirably expresses
+it, "a reluctant understanding," and a "servile hand." He supposes,
+however, the student to be somewhat advanced. The boy, like other
+school-boys, must be under restraint, and learn the "Grammar and
+Rudiments" laboriously. It is not such who travel for knowledge. The
+student, he thinks, may be pretty much left to himself; if he undertake
+things above his strength, it is better he should run the risk of
+discouragement thereby, than acquire "a slow proficiency" by "too easy
+tasks." He has little confidence in the efficacy of method, "in
+acquiring excellence in any art whatever." Methodical studies, with all
+their apparatus, enquiry, and mechanical labour, tend too often but "to
+evade and shuffle off real labour--the real labour of thinking." He has
+ever avoided giving particular directions. He has found students who
+have imagined they could make "prodigious progress under some particular
+eminent master." Such would lean on any but themselves. "After the
+Rudiments are past, very little of our art can be taught by others." A
+student ought to have a just and manly confidence in himself, "or rather
+in the persevering industry which he is resolved to possess." Raffaelle
+had done nothing, and was quite young, when fixed upon to adorn the
+Vatican with his works; he had even to direct the best artists of his
+age. He had a meek and gentle disposition, but it was not inconsistent
+with that manly confidence that insured him success--a confidence in
+himself arising from a consciousness of power, and a determination to
+exert it. The result is "in perpetuum."--There are, however, artists who
+have too much self-confidence, that is ill-founded confidence, founded
+rather upon a certain dexterity than upon a habit of thought; they are
+like the improvisatori in poetry; and most commonly, as Metastasio
+acknowledged of himself, had much to unlearn, to acquire a habit of
+thinking with selection. To be able to draw and to design with rapidity,
+is, indeed, to be master of the grammar of art; but in the completion,
+and in the final settlement of the design, the portfolio must again and
+again have been turned over, and the nicest judgment exercised. This
+judgment is the result of deep study and intenseness of thought--thought
+not only upon the artist's own inventions, but those of others. Luca
+Giordano and La Fage are brought as examples of great dexterity and
+readiness of invention--but of little selection; for they borrowed very
+little from others: and still less will any artist, that can distinguish
+between excellence and insipidity, ever borrow from them. Raffaelle, who
+had no lack of invention, took the greatest pains to select; and when
+designing "his greatest as well as latest works, the Cartoons," he had
+before him studies he had made from Masaccio. He borrowed from him "two
+noble figures of St Paul." The only alteration he made was in the
+showing both hands, which he thought in a principal figure should never
+be omitted. Masaccio's work was well known; Raffaelle was not ashamed to
+have borrowed. "Such men, surely, need not be ashamed of that friendly
+intercourse which ought to exist among artists, of receiving from the
+dead, and giving to the living, and perhaps to those who are yet unborn.
+The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an artist is found in the
+great works of his predecessors. 'Serpens nisi serpentem comederit, non
+fit draco.'" The fact is, the most self-sufficient of men are greater
+borrowers than they will admit, or perhaps know; their very novelties,
+if they have any, commence upon the thoughts of others, which are laid
+down as a foundation in their own minds. The common sense, which is
+called "common property," is that stock which all that have gone before
+us have left behind them; and we are but admitted to the heirship of
+what they have acquired. Masaccio Sir Joshua considers to have been "one
+of the great fathers of modern art." He was the first who gave
+largeness, and "discovered the path that leads to every excellence to
+which the art afterwards arrived." It is enough to say of him, that
+Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle,
+Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, and Pierino del Vaga, formed
+their taste by studying his works. "An artist-like mind" is best formed
+by studying the works of great artists. It is a good practice to
+consider figures in works of great masters as statues which we may take
+in any view. This did Raffaelle, in his "Sergius Paulus," from Masaccio.
+Lest there should be any misunderstanding of this sort of borrowing,
+which he justifies, he again refers to the practice of Raffaelle in this
+his borrowing from Masaccio. The two figures of St Paul, he doubted if
+Raffaelle could have improved; but "he had the address to change in some
+measure without diminishing the grandeur of their character." For a
+serene composed dignity, he has given animation suited to their
+employment. "In the same manner, he has given more animation to the
+figure of Sergius Paulus, and to that which is introduced in the picture
+of Paul preaching, of which little more than hints are given by
+Masaccio, which Raffaelle has finished. The closing the eyes of this
+figure, which in Masaccio might be easily mistaken for sleeping, is not
+in the least ambiguous in the Cartoon. His eyes, indeed are closed, but
+they are closed with such vehemence, that the agitation of a mind
+_perplexed in the extreme_ is seen at the first glance; but what is most
+extraordinary, and I think particularly to be admired, is, that the same
+idea is continued through the whole figure, even to the drapery, which
+is so closely muffled about him, that even his hands are not seen: By
+this happy correspondence between the expression of the countenance and
+the disposition of the parts, the figure appears to think from head to
+foot. Men of superior talents alone are capable of thus using and
+adapting other men's minds to their own purposes, or are able to make
+out and finish what was only in the original a hint or imperfect
+conception. A readiness in taking such hints, which escape the dull and
+ignorant, makes, in my opinion, no inconsiderable part of that faculty
+of mind which is called genius." He urges the student not even to think
+himself qualified to invent, till he is well acquainted with the stores
+of invention the world possesses; and insists that, without such study,
+he will not have learned to select from nature. He has more than once
+enforced this doctrine, because it is new. He recommends, even in
+borrowing, however, an immediate recurrence to the model, that every
+thing may be finished from nature. Hence he proceeds to give some
+directions for placing the model and the drapery--first to impress upon
+the model the purpose of the attitude required--next, to be careful not
+to alter drapery with the hand, rather trusting, if defective, to a new
+cast. There is much in being in the way of accident. To obtain the
+freedom of accident Rembrandt put on his colours with his palette-knife;
+a very common practice at the present day. "Works produced in an
+accidental manner will have the same free unrestrained air as the works
+of nature, whose particular combinations seem to depend upon accident."
+He concludes this Discourse by more strenuously insisting upon the
+necessity of ever having nature in view--and warns students by the
+example of Boucher, Director of the French Academy, whom he saw working
+upon a large picture, "without drawings or models of any kind." He had
+left off the use of models many years. Though a man of ability, his
+pictures showed the mischief of his practice. Mr Burnet's notes to this
+Discourse add little to the material of criticism; they do but reiterate
+in substance what Sir Joshua had himself sufficiently repeated. His
+object seems rather to seize an opportunity of expressing his admiration
+of Wilkie, whom he adduces as a parallel example with Raffaelle of
+successful borrowing. It appears from the account given of Wilkie's
+process, that he carried the practice much beyond Raffaelle. We cannot
+conceive any thing _very_ good coming from so very methodical a manner
+of setting to work. Would not the fire of genius be extinguished by the
+coolness of the process? "When he had fixed upon his subject, he thought
+upon _all_ pictures of that class already in existence." The after
+process was most elaborate. Now, this we should think a practice quite
+contrary to Raffaelle's, who more probably trusted to his own conception
+for the character of his picture as a whole, and whose borrowing was
+more of single figures; but, if of the whole manner of treating his
+subject, it is not likely that he would have thought of more than one
+work for his imitation. The fact is, Sir David Wilkie's pictures show
+that he did carry this practice too far--for there is scarcely a picture
+of his that does not show patches of imitations, that are not always
+congruous with each other; there is too often in one piece, a bit of
+Rembrandt, a bit of Velasquez, a bit of Ostade, or others. The most
+perfect, as a whole, is his "Chelsea Pensioners." We do not quite
+understand the brew of study fermenting an accumulation of knowledge,
+and imagination exalting it. "An accumulation of knowledge impregnated
+his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination;" this is very
+ambitious, but not very intelligible. He speaks of Wilkie attracting the
+attention of admirers and detractors. It is very absurd to consider
+criticism that is not always favourable, detraction. The following
+passage is well put. "We constantly hear the ignorant advising a student
+to study the great book of nature, without being biassed by what has
+been done by other painters; it is as absurd as if they would recommend
+a youth to learn astronomy by lying in the fields, and looking on the
+stars, without reference to the works of Kepler, Tycho Brahe, or of
+Newton." There is indeed a world of cant in the present day, that a man
+must do all to his own unprejudiced reason, contemning all that has been
+done before him. We have just now been looking at a pamphlet on
+Materialism (a pamphlet of most ambitious verbiage,) in which, with
+reference to all former education, we are "the slaves of prejudice;" yet
+the author modestly requires that minds--we beg his pardon, we have _no
+minds_--intellects must be _trained_ to his mode of thinking, ere they
+can arrive at the truth and the perfection of human nature. If this
+training is prejudice in one set of teachers, may it not be in another?
+We continually hear artists recommend nature without "a prejudice in
+favour of old masters." Such artists are not likely to eclipse the fame
+of those great men, the study of whose works has so long _prejudiced_
+the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows that art is not imitation, but is under
+the influence and direction of the imagination, and in what manner
+poetry, painting, acting, gardening, and architecture, depart from
+nature. However good it is to study the beauties of artists, this is
+only to know art through them. The principles of painting remain to be
+compared with those of other arts, all of them with human nature. All
+arts address themselves only to two faculties of the mind, its
+imagination and its sensibility. We have feeling, and an instantaneous
+judgment, the result of the experience of life, and reasonings which we
+cannot trace. It is safer to trust to this feeling and judgment, than
+endeavour to control and direct art upon a supposition of what ought in
+reason to be the end or means. We should, therefore, most carefully
+store first impressions. They are true, though we know not the process
+by which the first conviction is formed. Partial and after reasoning
+often serves to destroy that character, the truth of which came upon us
+as with an instinctive knowledge. We often reason ourselves into narrow
+and partial theories, not aware that "_real_ principles of _sound
+reason_, and of so much more weight and importance, are involved, and
+as it were lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment.
+Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine every thing; at this
+minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way
+to feeling." Sir Joshua again refers to the mistaken views of art, and
+taken too by not the poorest minds, "that it entirely or mainly depends
+on imitation." Plato, even in this respect, misleads by a partial
+theory. It is with "such a false view that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to
+distinguish even Raffaelle himself, whom our enthusiasm honours with the
+name divine. The same sentiment is adopted by Pope in his epitaph on Sir
+Godfrey Kneller; and he turns the panegyric solely on imitation as it is
+a sort of deception." It is, undoubtedly, most important that the world
+should be taught to honour art for its highest qualities; until this is
+done, the profession will be a degradation. So far from painting being
+imitation, he proceeds to show that "it is, and ought to be, in many
+points of view, and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external
+nature." Civilization is not the gross state of nature; imagination is
+the result of cultivation, of civilization; it is to this state of
+nature art must be more closely allied. We must not appeal for judgment
+upon art to those who have not acquired the faculty to admire. The
+lowest style of all arts please the uncultivated. But, to speak of the
+unnaturalness of art--let it be illustrated by poetry, which speaks in
+language highly artificial, and "a construction of measured words, such
+as never is nor ever was used by man." Now, as there is in the human
+mind "a sense of congruity, coherence, and consistency," which must be
+gratified; so, having once assumed a language and style not adopted in
+common discourse, "it is required that the sentiments also should be in
+the same proportion raised above common nature." There must be an
+agreement of all the parts with the whole. He recognizes the chorus of
+the ancient drama, and the recitative of the Italian opera as natural,
+under this view. "And though the most violent passions, the highest
+distress, even death itself, are expressed in singing or recitative, I
+would not admit as sound criticism the condemnation of such exhibitions
+on account of their being unnatural." "Shall reason stand in the way,
+and tell us that we ought not to like what we know we do like, and
+prevent us from feeling the full effect of this complicated exertion of
+art? It appears to us that imagination is that gift to man, to be
+attained by cultivation, that enables him to rise above and out of his
+apparent nature; it is the source of every thing good and great, we had
+almost said of every virtue. The parent of all arts, it is of a higher
+devotion; it builds and adorns temples more worthy of the great Maker of
+all, and praises Him in sounds too noble for the common intercourse and
+business of life, which demand of the most cultivated that they put
+themselves upon a lower level than they are capable of assuming. So
+far, therefore, is a servile imitation from being necessary, that
+whatever is familiar, or in any way reminds us of what we see and hear
+every day, perhaps does not belong to the higher provinces of art,
+either in poetry or painting. The mind is to be transported, as
+Shakspeare expresses it, _beyond the ignorant present_, to ages past.
+Another and a higher order of beings is supposed, and to those beings
+every thing which is introduced into the work must correspond." He
+speaks of a picture by Jan Steen, the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," wherein
+the common nature, with the silks and velvets, would make one think the
+painter had intended to burlesque his subject. "Ill taught reason" would
+lead us to prefer a portrait by Denner to one by Titian or Vandyke.
+There is an eloquent passage, showing that landscape painting should in
+like manner appeal to the imagination; we are only surprised that the
+author of this description should have omitted, throughout these
+Discourses, the greatest of all landscape painters, whose excellence he
+should seem to refer to by his language. "Like the poet, he makes the
+elements sympathize with his subject, whether the clouds roll in
+volumes, like those of Titian or Salvator Rosa--or, like those of
+Claude, are gilded with the setting sun; whether the mountains have
+hidden and bold projections, or are gently sloped; whether the branches
+of his trees shoot out abruptly in right angles from their trunks, or
+follow each other with only a gentle inclination. All these
+circumstances contribute to the general character of the work, whether
+it be of the elegant or of the more sublime kind. If we add to this the
+powerful materials of lightness and darkness, over which the artist has
+complete dominion, to vary and dispose them as he pleases--to diminish
+or increase them, as will best suit his purpose, and correspond to the
+general idea of his work; a landscape, thus conducted, under the
+influence of a poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the
+more ordinary and common views, as Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso"
+have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a picture
+would make a more forcible impression on the mind than the real scenes,
+were they presented before us." We have quoted the above passage,
+because it is wanted--we are making great mistakes in that delightful,
+and (may we not say?) that high branch of art. He pursues the same
+argument with regard to acting, and condemns the _ignorant_ praise
+bestowed by Fielding on Garrick. Not an idea of deception enters the
+mind of actor or author. On the stage, even the expression of strong
+passion must be without the natural distortion and screaming voice.
+Transfer, he observes, acting to a private room, and it would be
+ridiculous. "Quid enim deformius, quum scenam in vitam transferre?" Yet
+he gives here a caution, "that no art can be grafted with success on
+another art." "If a painter should endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp
+and parade of dress and attitude, instead of that simplicity which is
+not a greater beauty in life than it is in painting, we should condemn
+such pictures, as painted in the meanest style." What will our
+academician, Mr Maclise, say of this remark? He then adduces gardening
+in support of his theory,--"nature to advantage dressed," "beautiful and
+commodious for the recreation of man." We cannot, however, go with Sir
+Joshua, who adds, that "so dressed, it is no longer a subject for the
+pencil of a landscape painter, as all landscape painters know." It is
+certainly unlike the great landscape he has described, but not very
+unlike Claude's, nor out of the way of his pencil. We have in our mind's
+eye a garden scene by Vander Heyden, most delightful, most elegant. It
+is some royal garden, with its proper architecture, the arch, the steps,
+and balustrades, and marble walks. The queen of the artificial paradise
+is entering, and in the shade with her attendants, but she will soon
+place her foot upon the prepared sunshine. Courtiers are here and there
+walking about, or leaning over the balustrades. All is elegance--a scene
+prepared for the recreation of pure and cultivated beings. We cannot
+say the picture is not landscape. We are sure it gave us ten times more
+pleasure than ever we felt from any of our landscape views, with which
+modern landscape painting has covered the walls of our exhibitions, and
+brought into disrepute our "annuals." He proceeds to architecture, and
+praises Vanburgh for his poetical imagination; though he, with Perrault,
+was a mark for the wits of the day.[11] Sir Joshua points to the facade
+of the Louvre, Blenheim, and Castle Howard, as "the fairest ornaments."
+He finishes this admirable discourse with the following eloquent
+passage:--"It is allowed on all hands, that facts and events, however
+they may bind the historian, have no dominion over the poet or the
+painter. With us history is made to bend and conform to this great idea
+of art. And why? Because these arts, in their highest province, are not
+addressed to the gross senses; but to the desires of the mind, to that
+spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed
+and pent up by the world which is about us. Just so much as our art has
+of this, just so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it
+exhibits; and those of our artists who possessed this mark of
+distinction in the highest degree, acquired from thence the glorious
+appellation of divine.
+
+     [11] The reader will remember the supposed epitaph,
+             "Lie heavy on him, earth, for he
+              Laid many a heavy load on thee."
+
+Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse are not important to art. There is
+an amusing one on acting, that discusses the question of naturalness on
+the stage, and with some pleasant anecdotes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is chiefly occupied with the character of
+Gainsborough, and landscape painting. It has brought about him, and his
+name, a hornet's nest of critics, in consequence of some remarks upon a
+picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some
+degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has been said that Wilson and
+Gainsborough never liked each other. It is a well-known anecdote that
+Sir Joshua, at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough, adding "the
+greatest landscape painter of the age," to which Wilson, at whom the
+words were supposed to be aimed, dryly added, "and the greatest portrait
+painter too." We can, especially under circumstances, for there had been
+a coolness between the President and Gainsborough, pardon the too
+favourable view taken of Gainsborough's landscape pictures. He was
+unquestionably much greater as a portrait painter. The following account
+of the interview with Gainsborough upon his death-bed, is touching, and
+speaks well of both:--"A few days before he died he wrote me a letter,
+to express his acknowledgments for the good opinion I entertained of his
+abilities, and the manner in which (he had been informed) I always spoke
+of him; and desired that he might see me once before he died. I am aware
+how flattering it is to myself to be thus connected with the dying
+testimony which this excellent painter bore to his art. But I cannot
+prevail upon myself to suppress that I was not connected with him by any
+habits of familiarity. If any little jealousies had subsisted between
+us, they were forgotten in these moments of sincerity; and he turned
+towards me as one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who
+deserved his good opinion by being sensible of his excellence. Without
+entering into a detail of what passed at this last interview, the
+impression of it upon my mind was, that his regret at losing life was
+principally the regret of leaving his art; and more especially as he now
+began, he said, to see what his deficiencies were; which, he said, he
+flattered himself in his last works were in some measure supplied." When
+the Discourse was delivered, Raffaelle Mengs and Pompeo Batoni were
+great names. Sir Joshua foretells their fall from that high estimation.
+Andrea Sacchi, and "_perhaps_" Carlo Maratti, he considers the "ultimi
+Romanorum." He prefers "the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works
+of those regular graduates in the great historical style." He gives some
+account of the "customs and habits of this extraordinary man."
+Gainsborough's love for his art was remarkable. He was ever remarking to
+those about him any peculiarity of countenance, accidental combination
+of figures, effects of light and shade, in skies, in streets, and in
+company. If he met a character he liked, he would send him home to his
+house. He brought into his painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, &c. He
+even formed models of landscapes on his table, composed of broken
+stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which, magnified,
+became rocks, trees, and water. Most of this is the common routine of
+every artist's life; the modelling his landscapes in the manner
+mentioned, Sir Joshua himself seems to speak doubtingly about. It in
+fact shows, that in Gainsborough there was a poverty of invention; his
+scenes are of the commonest kind, such as few would stop to admire in
+nature; and, when we consider the wonderful variety that nature did
+present to him, it is strange that his sketches and compositions should
+have been so devoid of beauty. He was in the habit of painting by night,
+a practice which Reynolds recommends, and thought it must have been the
+practice of Titian and Coreggio. He might have mentioned the portrait of
+Michael Angelo with the candle in his cap and a mallet in his hand.
+Gainsborough was ambitious of attaining excellence, regardless of
+riches. The style chosen by Gainsborough did not require that he should
+go out of his own country. No argument is to be drawn from thence, that
+travelling is not desirable for those who choose other walks of
+art--knowing that "the language of the art must be learned somewhere,"
+he applied himself to the Flemish school, and certainly with advantage,
+and occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers, and Vandyke. Granting
+him as a painter great merit, Sir Joshua doubts whether he excelled most
+in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures. Few now will doubt upon the
+subject--next to Sir Joshua, he was the greatest portrait painter we
+have had, so as to be justly entitled to the fame of being one of the
+founders of the English School. He did not attempt historical painting;
+and here Sir Joshua contrasts him with Hogarth; who did so
+injudiciously. It is strange that Sir Joshua should have characterised
+Hogarth as having given his attention to "the Ridicule of Life." We
+could never see any thing ridiculous in his deep tragedies. Gainsborough
+is praised in that he never introduced "mythological learning" into his
+pictures. "Our late ingenious academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been
+guilty, like many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and
+goddesses, ideal beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to
+receive such personages. His landscapes were in reality too near common
+nature to admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in
+a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many
+figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress, and
+some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by lightning:
+had not the painter injudiciously, (as I think,) rather chosen that
+their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky
+with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the
+children of Niobe." This is the passage that gave so much offence;
+foolish admirers will fly into flame at the slightest spark--the
+question should have been, is the criticism just, not whether Sir Joshua
+had been guilty of the same error--but we like critics, the only true
+critics, who give their reason: and so did Sir Joshua. "To manage a
+subject of this kind a peculiar style of art is required; and it can
+only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we
+adopt the character of the landscape, and that too in all its parts, to
+the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult
+adventure, and requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, like that
+of Nicolo Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture alluded to, the first
+idea that presents itself is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so
+uncommon a situation as that in which Apollo is placed: for the clouds
+on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to support
+him--they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the receptacle
+of a human figure, and they do not possess, in any respect, that
+romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and which
+alone can harmonize with poetical stories." We presume Reynolds alludes
+to the best of the two Niobes by Wilson--that in the National Gallery.
+The other is villanously faulty as a composition, where loaf is piled
+upon loaf for rock and castle, and the tree is common and hedge-grown,
+for the purpose of making gates; but the other would have been a fine
+picture, not of the historical class--the parts are all common, the
+little blown about underwood is totally deficient in all form and
+character--rocks and trees, and they do not, as in a former
+discourse--Reynolds had laid down that they should--sympathize with the
+subject; then, as to the substance of the cloud, he is right--it is not
+voluminous, it is mere vapour. In the received adoption of clouds as
+supporting figures, they are, at least, pillowy, capacious, and
+round--here it is quite otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well call it a
+little Apollo, with that immense cloud above him, which is in fact too
+much a portrait of a cloud, too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject
+where the sky is not to be all in all. We do not say it is not fine and
+grand, and what you please; but it is not subordinate, it casts its
+lightning as from its own natural power, there was no need of a god's
+assistance.
+
+    "Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;"
+
+and the action does not take place in a "prepared" landscape. There is
+nothing to take us back to a fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust to
+Wilson's merits, for he calls it, notwithstanding this defect, "a very
+admirable picture;" which picture will, we suspect, in a few years lose
+its principal charm, if it has not lost it; the colour is sadly
+changing, there is now little aerial in the sky. It is said of Wilson,
+that he ridiculed the experiments of Sir Joshua, and spoke of using
+nothing but "honest linseed"--to which, however, he added varnishes and
+wax, as will easily be seen in those pictures of his which have so
+cracked--and now lose their colour. "Honest" linseed appears to have
+played him a sad trick, or he to have played a trick upon honest
+linseed. Sir Joshua, however, to his just criticism, adds the best
+precept, example--and instances two pictures, historical landscape,
+"Jacob's Dream"--which was exhibited a year or two ago in the
+Institution, Pall-Mall--by Salvator Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian
+Bourdon, "The Return of the Ark from Captivity," now in the National
+Gallery. The latter picture, as a composition, is not perhaps good--it
+is cut up into too many parts, and those parts are not sufficiently
+poetical; in its hue, it may be appropriate. The other, "Jacob's Dream"
+is one of the finest by the master--there is an extraordinary boldness
+in the clouds, an uncommon grandeur, strongly marked, sentient of
+angelic visitants. This picture has been recently wretchedly engraved in
+mezzotinto; all that is in the picture firm and hard, is in the print
+soft, fuzzy, and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats very tenderly the
+mistaken manner of Gainsborough in his late pictures, the "odd scratches
+and marks." "This chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a
+kind of magic at a certain distance, assumes form, and all their parts
+seem to drop into their places, so that we can hardly refuse
+acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of
+chance and heavy negligence." The _heavy_ negligence happily describes
+the fault of the manner. It is horribly manifest in that magnitude of
+vulgarity for landscape, the "Market Cart" in our National Gallery, and
+purchased at we know not what vast sum, and presented by the governors
+of the institution to the nation. We have a very high opinion of the
+genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, with
+very few exceptions. His portraits have an air of truth never exceeded,
+and that set off with great power and artistical skill; and his rustic
+children are admirable. He stands alone, and never has had a successful
+imitator. The mock sentimentality, the affected refinement, which has
+been added to his simple style by other artists, is disgusting in the
+extreme. Gainsborough certainly studied colour with great success. He is
+both praised and blamed for a lightness of manner and effect possessed
+"to an unexampled degree of excellence;" but "the sacrifice which he
+made, to this ornament of our art, was too great." We confess we do not
+understand Sir Joshua, nor can we reconcile "the _heavy_ negligence"
+with this "lightness of manner." Mr Burnet, in one of his notes,
+compares Wilson with Gainsborough; he appears to give the preference to
+Wilson--why does he not compare Gainsborough with Sir Joshua himself?
+the rivalry should have been in portrait. There is a long note upon Sir
+Joshua's remarks upon Wilson's "Niobe." We are not surprised at
+Cunningham's "Castigation." He did not like Sir Joshua, and could not
+understand nor value his character. This is evident in his Life of the
+President. Cunningham must have had but an ill-educated classic eye when
+he asserted so grandiloquently,--"He rose at once from the tame
+insipidity of common scenery into natural grandeur and magnificence; his
+streams seem all abodes for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts for the
+muses, and his temples worthy of gods,"--a passage, we think, most
+worthy the monosyllable commonly used upon such occasions by the manly
+and simple-minded Mr Burchell. That Sir Joshua occasionally transgressed
+in his wanderings into mythology, it would be difficult to deny; nor was
+it his only transgression from his legitimate ground, as may be seen in
+his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique
+upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may
+not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the
+bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the
+drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought
+against him, it is without attention to their application in his
+critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical nor
+voluminous--faults that do not attach to the clouds, if clouds they must
+be in the picture (the finest of Sir Joshua's works) of Mrs Siddons as
+the Tragic Muse. It is not our business to enter upon the supposed fact,
+that Sir Joshua was jealous of Wilson; the one was a polished, the other
+perhaps a somewhat coarse man. We have only to see if the criticism be
+just. In this Discourse Sir Joshua has the candour to admit, that there
+were at one time jealousies between him and Gainsborough; there may have
+been between him and Wilson, but, at all events, we cannot take a just
+criticism as a proof of it, or we must convict him, and all others too,
+of being jealous of artists and writers whose works they in any manner
+censure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE.--We come now to Sir Joshua's last Discourse, in
+which the President takes leave of the Academy, reviews his
+"Discourses," and concludes with recommending the study of Michael
+Angelo.
+
+Having gone along with the President of the Academy in the pursuit of
+the principles of the art in these Discourses, and felt a portion of the
+enthusiasm which he felt, and knew so well how to impart to others, we
+come to this last Discourse, with a melancholy knowledge that it was the
+last; and reflect with pain upon that cloud which so soon interposed
+between Reynolds and at least the practical enjoyment of his art. He
+takes leave of the Academy affectionately, and, like a truth-loving man
+to the last, acknowledges the little contentions (in so softening a
+manner does he speak of the "rough hostility of Barry," and "oppositions
+of Gainsborough") which "ought certainly," says he, "to be lost among
+ourselves in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements: every
+controversy ought to be--I am persuaded will be--sunk in our zeal for
+the perfection of our common art." "My age, and my infirmities still
+more than my age, make it probable that this will be the last time I
+shall have the honour of addressing you from this place." This last
+visit seemed to be threatened with a tragical end;--the circumstance
+showed the calm mind of the President; it was characteristic of the man
+who would die with dignity, and gracefully. A large assembly were
+present, of rank and importance, besides the students. The pressure was
+great--a beam in the floor gave way with a loud crash; a general rush
+was made to the door, all indiscriminately falling one over the other,
+except the President, who kept his seat "silent and unmoved." The floor
+only sunk a little, was soon supported, and Sir Joshua recommenced his
+Discourse.
+
+    "Justum et tenacem propositi
+    Impavidum ferient ruinae."
+
+He compliments the Academy upon the ability of the professors, speaks
+with diffidence of his power as a writer, (the world has in this respect
+done him justice;) but that he had come not unprepared upon the subject
+of art, having reflected much upon his own and the opinions of others.
+He found in the art many precepts and rules, not reconcilable with each
+other. "To clear away those difficulties and reconcile those contrary
+opinions, it became necessary to distinguish the greater truth, as it
+may be called, from the lesser truth; the larger and more liberal idea
+of nature from the more narrow and confined: that which addresses itself
+to the imagination, from that which is solely addressed to the eye. In
+consequence of this discrimination, the different branches of our art to
+which those different truths were referred, were perceived to make so
+wide a separation, and put on so new an appearance, that they seemed
+scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different
+rules and regulations which presided over each department of art,
+followed of course; every mode of excellence, from the grand style of
+the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still life,
+had its due weight and value--fitted to some class or other; and nothing
+was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that
+perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some
+time experienced from the variety of styles, and the variety of
+excellence with which he is surrounded, is, I should hope, in some
+measure removed, and the student better enabled to judge for himself
+what peculiarly belongs to his own particular pursuit." Besides the
+practice of art, the student must think, and speculate, and consider
+"upon what ground the fabric of our art is built." An artist suffers
+throughout his whole life, from uncertain, confused, and erroneous
+opinions. We are persuaded there would be fewer fatal errors were these
+Discourses more in the hands of our present artists--"Nocturna versate
+manu, versate diurna."--An example is given of the mischief of erroneous
+opinions. "I was acquainted at Rome, in the early part of my life, with
+a student of the French Academy, who appeared to me to possess all the
+qualities requisite to make a great artist, if he had suffered his taste
+and feelings, and I may add even his prejudices, to have fair play. He
+saw and felt the excellences of the great works of art with which we
+were surrounded, but lamented that there was not to be found that nature
+which is so admirable in the inferior schools,--and he supposed with
+Felebien, Du Piles, and other theorists, that such an union of different
+excellences would be the perfection of art. He was not aware that the
+narrow idea of nature, of which he lamented the absence in the works of
+those great artists, would have destroyed the grandeur of the general
+ideas which he admired, and which was indeed the cause of his
+admiration. My opinions being then confused and unsettled, I was in
+danger of being borne down by this plausible reasoning, though I
+remember I then had a dawning suspicion that it was not sound doctrine;
+and at the same time I was unwilling obstinately to refuse assent to
+what I was unable to confute." False and low views of art are now so
+commonly taken both in and out of the profession, that we have not
+hesitated to quote the above passage; the danger Sir Joshua confesses he
+was in, is common, and demands the warning. To make it more direct we
+should add, "Read his Discourses." Again, without intending to fetter
+the student's mind to a particular method of study, he urges the
+necessity and wisdom of previously obtaining the appropriated
+instruments of art, in a first correct design, and a plain manly
+colouring, before any thing more is attempted. He does not think it,
+however, of very great importance whether or not the student aim first
+at grace and grandeur before he has learned correctness, and adduces the
+example of Parmegiano, whose first public work was done when a boy, the
+"St Eustachius" in the Church of St Petronius, in Bologna--one of his
+last is the "Moses breaking the Tables," in Parma. The former has
+grandeur and incorrectness, but "discovers the dawnings of future
+greatness." In mature age he had corrected his defects, and the drawing
+of his Moses was equally admirable with the grandeur of the
+conception--an excellent plate is given of this figure by Mr Burnet. The
+fact is, the impulse of the mind is not to be too much restrained--it is
+better to give it its due and first play, than check it until it has
+acquired correctness--good sense first or last, and a love of the art,
+will generally insure correctness in the end; the impulses often
+checked, come with weakened power, and ultimately refuse to come at all;
+and each time that they depart unsatisfied, unemployed, take away with
+them as they retire a portion of the fire of genius. Parmegiano formed
+himself upon Michael Angelo: Michael Angelo brought the art to a
+"sudden maturity," as Homer and Shakspeare did theirs. "Subordinate
+parts of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow
+and progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour of
+imagination, generally burst forth at once in fulness of beauty."
+Correctness of drawing and imagination, the one of mechanical genius the
+other of poetic, undoubtedly work together for perfection--"a confidence
+in the mechanic produces a boldness in the poetic." He expresses his
+surprise that the race of painters, before Michael Angelo, never thought
+of transferring to painting the grandeur they admired in ancient
+sculpture. "Raffaelle himself seemed to be going on very contentedly in
+the dry manner of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael Angelo had never
+appeared, the art might still have continued in the same style." "On
+this foundation the Caracci built the truly great academical Bolognian
+school; of which the first stone was laid by Pellegrino Tibaldi." The
+Caracci called him "nostro Michael Angelo riformato." His figure of
+Polyphemus, which had been attributed to Michael Angelo in Bishop's
+"Ancient Statues," is given in a plate by Mr Burnet. The Caracci he
+considers sufficiently succeeded in the mechanical, not in "the divine
+part which addresses itself to the imagination," as did Tibaldi and
+Michael Angelo. They formed, however, a school that was "most
+respectable," and "calculated to please a greater number." The Venetian
+school advanced "the dignity of their style, by adding to their
+fascinating powers of colouring something of the strength of Michael
+Angelo." Here Sir Joshua seems to contradict his former assertion; but
+as he is here abridging, as it were, his whole Discourses, he cannot
+avoid his own observations. It was a point, however, upon which he was
+still doubtful; for he immediately adds--"At the same time it may still
+be a doubt, how far their ornamental elegance would be an advantageous
+addition to his grandeur. But if there is any manner of painting, which
+may be said to unite kindly with his (Michael Angelo's) style, it is
+that of Titian. His handling, the manner in which his colours are left
+on the canvass, appears to proceed (as far as that goes) from congenial
+mind, equally disdainful of vulgar criticism. He is reminded of a remark
+of Johnson's, that Pope's Homer, had it not been clothed with graces and
+elegances not in Homer, would have had fewer readers, thus justifying by
+example and authority of Johnson, the graces of the Venetian school.
+Some Flemish painters at "the great era of our art" took to their
+country "as much of this grandeur as they could carry." It did not
+thrive, but "perhaps they contributed to prepare the way for that free,
+unconstrained, and liberal outline, which was afterwards introduced by
+Rubens, through the medium of the Venetian painters." The grandeur of
+style first discovered by Michael Angelo passed through Europe, and
+totally "changed the whole character and style of design. His works
+excite the same sensation as the Epic of Homer. The Sybils, the statue
+of Moses, "come nearer to a comparison with his Jupiter, his demigods,
+and heroes; those Sybils and prophets being a kind of intermediate
+beings between men and angels. Though instances may be produced in the
+works of other painters, which may justly stand in competition with
+those I have mentioned, such as the 'Isaiah,' and 'Vision of Ezekiel,'
+by Raffaelle, the 'St Mark' of Frate Bartolomeo, and many others; yet
+these, it must be allowed, are inventions so much in Michael Angelo's
+manner of thinking, that they may be truly considered as so many rays
+which discover manifestly the centre from whence they emanated." The
+style of Michael Angelo is so highly artificial that the mind must be
+cultivated to receive it; having once received it, the mind is improved
+by it, and cannot go very far back. Hence the hold this great style has
+had upon all who are most learned in art, and upon nearly all painters
+in the best time of art. As art multiplies, false tastes will arise, the
+early painters had not so much to unlearn as modern artists. Where
+Michael Angelo is not felt, there is a lost taste to recover. Sir Joshua
+recommends young artists to follow Michael Angelo as he did the ancient
+sculptors. "He began, when a child, a copy of a mutilated Satyr's head,
+and finished in his model what was wanting in the original." So would he
+recommend the student to take his figures from Michael Angelo, and to
+change, and alter, and add other figures till he has caught the manner.
+Change the purpose, and retain the attitude, as did Titian. By habit of
+seeing with this eye of grandeur, he will select from nature all that
+corresponds with this taste. Sir Joshua is aware that he is laying
+himself open to sarcasm by his advice, but asserts the courage becoming
+a teacher addressing students: "they both must equally dare, and bid
+defiance to narrow criticism and vulgar opinion." It is the conceited
+who think that art is nothing but inspiration; and such appropriate it
+in their own estimation; but it is to be learned,--if so, the right
+direction to it is of vast importance; and once in the right direction,
+labour and study will accomplish the better aspirations of the artist.
+Michael Angelo said of Raffaelle, that he possessed not his art by
+nature but by long study. "Che Raffaelle non ebbe quest' arte da natura,
+ma per longo studio." Raffaelle and Michael Angelo were rivals, but ever
+spoke of each other with the respect and veneration they felt, and the
+true meaning of the passage was to the praise of Raffaelle; those were
+not the days when men were ashamed of being laborious,--and Raffaelle
+himself "thanked God that he was born in the same age with that
+painter."--"I feel a self-congratulation," adds Sir Joshua, "in knowing
+myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect,
+not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my
+admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last
+words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place,
+might be the name of Michael Angelo." They were his last words from the
+academical chair. He died about fourteen months after the delivery of
+this Discourse. Mr Burnet has given five excellent plates to this
+Discourse--one from Parmegiano, one from Tibaldi, one from Titian, one
+from Raffaelle, and one from Michael Angelo. Mr Burnet's first note
+repeats what we have again and again elsewhere urged, the advantage of
+establishing at our universities, Oxford and Cambridge, Professorships
+of Painting--infinite would be the advantage to art, and to the public.
+We do not despair. Mr Burnet seems to fear incorrect drawing will arise
+from some passages, which he supposes encourages it, in these
+Discourses; and fearing it, very properly endeavours to correct the
+error in a note. We had intended to conclude this paper with some few
+remarks upon Sir Joshua, his style, and influence upon art, but we have
+not space. Perhaps we may fulfil this part of our intention in another
+number of Maga.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE YOUNG GREY HEAD.
+
+        Grief hath been known to turn the young head grey--
+        To silver over in a single day
+        The bright locks of the beautiful, their prime
+        Scarcely o'erpast: as in the fearful time
+        Of Gallia's madness, that discrowned head
+        Serene, that on the accursed altar bled
+        Miscall'd of Liberty. Oh! martyr'd Queen!
+        What must the sufferings of that night have been--
+        _That one_--that sprinkled thy fair tresses o'er
+        With time's untimely snow! But now no more
+        Lovely, august, unhappy one! of thee--
+        I have to tell an humbler history;
+        A village tale, whose only charm, in sooth,
+        (If any) will be sad and simple truth.
+
+        "Mother," quoth Ambrose to his thrifty dame--
+        So oft our peasant's use his wife to name,
+        "Father" and "Master" to himself applied,
+        As life's grave duties matronize the bride--
+        "Mother," quoth Ambrose, as he faced the north,
+        With hard-set teeth, before he issued forth
+        To his day labour, from the cottage door--
+        "I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before,
+        There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton[12] roar?
+        It's brewing up down westward; and look there,
+        One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair;
+        And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on,
+        As threats, the waters will be out anon.
+        That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way--
+        Best let the young ones bide from school to-day."
+
+        "Do, mother, do!" the quick-ear'd urchins cried;
+        Two little lasses to the father's side
+        Close clinging, as they look'd from him, to spy
+        The answering language of the mother's eye.
+        _There_ was denial, and she shook her head:
+        "Nay, nay--no harm will come to them," she said,
+        "The mistress lets them off these short dark days
+        An hour the earlier; and our Liz, she says,
+        May quite be trusted--and I know 'tis true--
+        To take care of herself and Jenny too.
+        And so she ought--she's seven come first of May--
+        Two years the oldest: and they give away
+        The Christmas bounty at the school to-day."
+
+        The mother's will was law, (alas for her
+        That hapless day, poor soul!) _She_ could not err,
+        Thought Ambrose; and his little fair-hair'd Jane
+        (Her namesake) to his heart he hugg'd again,
+        When each had had her turn; she clinging so
+        As if that day she could not let him go.
+        But Labour's sons must snatch a hasty bliss
+        In nature's tend'rest mood. One last fond kiss,
+        "God bless my little maids!" the father said,
+        And cheerly went his way to win their bread.
+        Then might be seen, the playmate parent gone,
+        What looks demure the sister pair put on--
+        Not of the mother as afraid, or shy,
+        Or questioning the love that could deny;
+        But simply, as their simple training taught,
+        In quiet, plain straightforwardness of thought,
+        (Submissively resign'd the hope of play,)
+        Towards the serious business of the day.
+
+        To me there's something touching, I confess,
+        In the grave look of early thoughtfulness,
+        Seen often in some little childish face
+        Among the poor. Not that wherein we trace
+        (Shame to our land, our rulers, and our race!)
+        The unnatural sufferings of the factory child,
+        But a staid quietness, reflective, mild,
+        Betokening, in the depths of those young eyes,
+        Sense of life's cares, without its miseries.
+
+        So to the mother's charge, with thoughtful brow,
+        The docile Lizzy stood attentive now;
+        Proud of her years and of imputed sense,
+        And prudence justifying confidence--
+        And little Jenny, more _demurely_ still,
+        Beside her waited the maternal will.
+        So standing hand in hand, a lovelier twain
+        Gainsb'rough ne'er painted: no--nor he of Spain,
+        Glorious Murillo!--and by contrast shown
+        More beautiful. The younger little one,
+        With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair,
+        By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair,
+        Sable and glossy as the raven's wing,
+        And lustrous eyes as dark.
+
+                               "Now, mind and bring
+        Jenny safe home," the mother said--"don't stay
+        To pull a bough or berry by the way:
+        And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast
+        Your little sister's hand, till you're quite past--
+        That plank's so crazy, and so slippery
+        (If not o'erflowed) the stepping-stones will be.
+        But you're good children--steady as old folk,
+        I'd trust ye any where." Then Lizzy's cloak,
+        A good grey duffle, lovingly she tied,
+        And amply little Jenny's lack supplied
+        With her own warmest shawl. "Be sure," said she,
+        "To wrap it round and knot it carefully
+        (Like this) when you come home; just leaving free
+        One hand to hold by. Now, make haste away--
+        Good will to school, and then good right to play."
+
+        Was there no sinking at the mother's heart,
+        When all equipt, they turn'd them to depart?
+        When down the lane, she watch'd them as they went
+        Till out of sight, was no forefeeling sent
+        Of coming ill? In truth I cannot tell:
+        Such warnings _have been sent_, we know full well,
+        And must believe--believing that they are--
+        In mercy then--to rouse--restrain--prepare.
+
+        And, now I mind me, something of the kind
+        Did surely haunt that day the mother's mind,
+        Making it irksome to bide all alone
+        By her own quiet hearth. Tho' never known
+        For idle gossipry was Jenny Gray,
+        Yet so it was, that morn she could not stay
+        At home with her own thoughts, but took her way
+        To her next neighbour's, half a loaf to borrow--
+        Yet might her store have lasted out the morrow.
+        --And with the loan obtain'd, she linger'd still--
+        Said she--"My master, if he'd had his will,
+        Would have kept back our little ones from school
+        This dreadful morning; and I'm such a fool,
+        Since they've been gone, I've wish'd them back. But then
+        It won't do in such things to humour men--
+        Our Ambrose specially. If let alone
+        He'd spoil those wenches. But it's coming on,
+        That storm he said was brewing, sure enough--
+        Well! what of that?--To think what idle stuff
+        Will come into one's head! and here with you
+        I stop, as if I'd nothing else to do--
+        And they'll come home drown'd rats. I must be gone
+        To get dry things, and set the kettle on."
+
+        His day's work done, three mortal miles and more
+        Lay between Ambrose and his cottage door.
+        A weary way, God wot! for weary wight!
+        But yet far off, the curling smoke in sight
+        From his own chimney, and his heart felt light.
+        How pleasantly the humble homestead stood,
+        Down the green lane by sheltering Shirley Wood!
+        How sweet the wafting of the evening breeze
+        In spring-time, from his two old cherry-trees
+        Sheeted with blossom! And in hot July
+        From the brown moor-track, shadowless and dry,
+        How grateful the cool covert to regain
+        Of his own _avenue_--that shady lane,
+        With the white cottage, in a slanting glow
+        Of sunset glory, gleaming bright below,
+        And jasmine porch, his rustic portico!
+
+        With what a thankful gladness in his face,
+        (Silent heart-homage--plant of special grace!)
+        At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace,
+        Would Ambrose send a loving look before;
+        Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door,
+        The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat
+        In welcome, with a more rejoicing note;
+        And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed,
+        All bristle, back, and tail, but "good at need,"
+        Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear;
+        But of all welcomes pleasantest, most dear,
+        The ringing voices, like sweet silver bells,
+        Of his two little ones. How fondly swells
+        The father's heart, as, dancing up the lane,
+        Each clasps a hand in her small hand again;
+        And each must tell her tale, and "say her say,"
+        Impeding as she leads, with sweet delay,
+        (Childhood's blest thoughtlessness!) his onward way.
+
+        And when the winter day closed in so fast,
+        Scarce for his task would dreary daylight last;
+        And in all weathers--driving sleet and snow--
+        Home by that bare, bleak moor-track must he go,
+        Darkling and lonely. Oh! the blessed sight
+        (His pole-star) of that little twinkling light
+        From one small window, thro' the leafless trees,
+        Glimmering so fitfully; no eye but his
+        Had spied it so far off. And sure was he,
+        Entering the lane, a steadier beam to see,
+        Ruddy and broad as peat-fed hearth could pour,
+        Streaming to meet him from the open door.
+        Then, tho' the blackbird's welcome was unheard--
+        Silenced by winter--note of summer bird
+        Still hail'd him from no mortal fowl alive,
+        But from the cuckoo-clock just striking five--
+        And Tinker's ear and Tinker's nose were keen--
+        Off started he, and then a form was seen
+        Dark'ning the doorway; and a smaller sprite,
+        And then another, peer'd into the night,
+        Ready to follow free on Tinker's track,
+        But for the mother's hand that held her back;
+        And yet a moment--a few steps--and there,
+        Pull'd o'er the threshold by that eager pair,
+        He sits by his own hearth, in his own chair;
+        Tinker takes post beside, with eyes that say,
+        "Master! we've done our business for the day."
+        The kettle sings, the cat in chorus purs,
+        The busy housewife with her tea-things stirs;
+        The door's made fast, the old stuff curtain drawn;
+        How the hail clatters! Let it clatter on.
+        How the wind raves and rattles! What cares he?
+        Safe housed, and warm beneath his own roof-tree,
+        With a wee lassie prattling on each knee.
+
+        Such was the hour--hour sacred and apart--
+        Warm'd in expectancy the poor man's heart.
+        Summer and winter, as his toil he plied,
+        To him and his the literal doom applied,
+        Pronounced on Adam. But the bread was sweet
+        So earn'd, for such dear mouths. The weary feet
+        Hope-shod, stept lightly on the homeward way;
+        So specially it fared with Ambrose Gray
+        That time I tell of. He had work'd all day
+        At a great clearing: vig'rous stroke on stroke
+        Striking, till, when he stopt, his back seem'd broke,
+        And the strong arm dropt nerveless. What of that?
+        There was a treasure hidden in his hat--
+        A plaything for the young ones. He had found
+        A dormouse nest; the living ball coil'd round
+        For its long winter sleep; and all his thought
+        As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought
+        But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,
+        And graver Lizzy's quieter surprize,
+        When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer,
+        Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.
+
+        'Twas a wild evening--wild and rough. "I knew,"
+        Thought Ambrose, "those unlucky gulls spoke true--
+        And Gaffer Chewton never growls for nought--
+        I should be mortal 'mazed now, if I thought
+        My little maids were not safe housed before
+        That blinding hail-storm--ay, this hour and more--
+        Unless, by that old crazy bit of board,
+        They've not passed dry-foot over Shallow-ford,
+        That I'll be bound for--swollen as it must be ...
+        Well! if my mistress had been ruled by me ..."
+        But, checking the half-thought as heresy,
+        He look'd out for the Home-Star. There it shone,
+        And with a gladden'd heart he hasten'd on.
+
+        He's in the lane again--and there below,
+        Streams from the open doorway that red glow,
+        Which warms him but to look at. For his prize
+        Cautious he feels--all safe and snug it lies--
+        "Down Tinker!--down, old boy!--not quite so free--
+        The thing thou sniffest is no game for thee.--
+        But what's the meaning?--no look-out to-night!
+        No living soul a-stir!--Pray God, all's right!
+        Who's flittering round the peat-stack in such weather?
+        Mother!" you might have fell'd him with a feather
+        When the short answer to his loud--"Hillo!"
+        And hurried question--"Are they come?"--was--"No."
+
+        To throw his tools down--hastily unhook
+        The old crack'd lantern from its dusty nook,
+        And while he lit it, speak a cheering word,
+        That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,
+        Was but a moment's act, and he was gone
+        To where a fearful foresight led him on.
+        Passing a neighbour's cottage in his way--
+        Mark Fenton's--him he took with short delay
+        To bear him company--for who could say
+        What need might be? They struck into the track
+        The children should have taken coming back
+        From school that day; and many a call and shout
+        Into the pitchy darkness they sent out,
+        And, by the lantern light, peer'd all about,
+        In every road-side thicket, hole, and nook,
+        Till suddenly--as nearing now the brook--
+        Something brush'd past them. That was Tinker's bark--
+        Unheeded, he had follow'd in the dark,
+        Close at his master's heels, but, swift as light,
+        Darted before them now. "Be sure he's right--
+        He's on the track," cried Ambrose. "Hold the light
+        Low down--he's making for the water. Hark!
+        I know that whine--the old dog's found them, Mark."
+        So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on
+        Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!
+        And all his dull contracted light could show
+        Was the black void and dark swollen stream below.
+        "Yet there's life somewhere--more than Tinker's whine--
+        That's sure," said Mark. "So, let the lantern shine
+        Down yonder. There's the dog--and, hark!"
+
+                                      "Oh dear!"
+        And a low sob came faintly on the ear,
+        Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,
+        Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught
+        Fast hold of something--a dark huddled heap--
+        Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep,
+        For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd
+        By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt
+        Endways the broken plank, when it gave way
+        With the two little ones that luckless day!
+        "My babes!--my lambkins!" was the father's cry.
+        _One little voice_ made answer--"Here am I!"
+        'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouch'd, with face as white,
+        More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light,
+        Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips, drawn tight,
+        Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,
+        And eyes on some dark object underneath,
+        Wash'd by the turbid water, fix'd like stone--
+        One arm and hand stretch'd out, and rigid grown,
+        Grasping, as in the death-gripe--Jenny's frock.
+        There she lay drown'd. Could he sustain that shock,
+        The doating father? Where's the unriven rock
+        Can bide such blasting in its flintiest part
+        As that soft sentient thing--the human heart?
+
+        They lifted her from out her wat'ry bed--
+        Its covering gone, the lonely little head
+        Hung like a broken snowdrop all aside--
+        And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied,
+        Leaving _that_ free, about the child's small form,
+        As was her last injunction--"_fast_ and warm"--
+        Too well obeyed--too fast! A fatal hold
+        Affording to the scrag by a thick fold
+        That caught and pinn'd her in the river's bed,
+        While through the reckless water overhead
+        Her life-breath bubbled up.
+
+                                "She might have lived
+        Struggling like Lizzy," was the thought that rived
+        The wretched mother's heart when she knew all.
+        "But for my foolishness about that shawl--
+        And Master would have kept them back the day;
+        But I was wilful--driving them away
+        In such wild weather!"
+
+                           Thus the tortured heart,
+        Unnaturally against itself takes part,
+        Driving the sharp edge deeper of a woe
+        Too deep already. They had raised her now,
+        And parting the wet ringlets from her brow,
+        To that, and the cold cheek, and lips as cold,
+        The father glued his warm ones, ere they roll'd
+        Once more the fatal shawl--her winding-sheet--
+        About the precious clay. One heart still beat,
+        Warm'd by _his heart's_ blood. To his _only child_
+        He turn'd him, but her piteous moaning mild
+        Pierced him afresh--and now she knew him not.--
+        "Mother!"--she murmur'd--"who says I forgot?
+        Mother! indeed, indeed, I kept fast hold,
+        And tied the shawl quite close--she can't be cold--
+        But she won't move--we slipt--I don't know how--
+        But I held on--and I'm so weary now--
+        And it's so dark and cold! oh dear! oh dear!--
+        And she won't move--if daddy was but here!"
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+        Poor lamb--she wander'd in her mind, 'twas clear--
+        But soon the piteous murmur died away,
+        And quiet in her father's arms she lay--
+        They their dead burthen had resign'd, to take
+        The living so near lost. For her dear sake,
+        And one at home, he arm'd himself to bear
+        His misery like a man--with tender care,
+        Doffing his coat her shivering form to fold--
+        (His neighbour bearing _that_ which felt no cold,)
+        He clasp'd her close--and so, with little said,
+        Homeward they bore the living and the dead.
+
+        From Ambrose Gray's poor cottage, all that night,
+        Shone fitfully a little shifting light,
+        Above--below:--for all were watchers there,
+        Save one sound sleeper.--_Her_, parental care,
+        Parental watchfulness, avail'd not now.
+        But in the young survivor's throbbing brow,
+        And wandering eyes, delirious fever burn'd;
+        And all night long from side to side she turn'd,
+        Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,
+        With now and then the murmur--"She won't move"--
+        And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright
+        Shone on that pillow, passing strange the sight--
+        That young head's raven hair was streak'd with white!
+        No idle fiction this. Such things have been
+        We know. And _now I tell what I have seen_.
+
+        Life struggled long with death in that small frame,
+        But it was strong, and conquer'd. All became
+        As it had been with the poor family--
+        All--saving that which never more might be--
+        There was an empty place--they were but three.
+
+C.
+
+     [12] A fresh-water spring rushing into the sea called Chewton
+     Bunny.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
+
+OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.
+
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--How many saints and Sions dost carry under thy cloak,
+lad? Ay, what dost groan at? What art about to be delivered of? Troth,
+it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery which findeth no
+issue at such capacious quarters. I never thought to see thy face again.
+Prythee what, in God's name, hath brought thee to Ramsey, fair Master
+Oliver?
+
+_Oliver_.--In His name verily I come, and upon His errand; and the love
+and duty I bear unto my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a sort,
+unto my zeal.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy conscience with 'em. I
+have heard an account of a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his
+devotions was lifted up several yards from the ground. Now I do suspect,
+Nol, thou wilt finish by being a saint of his order; and nobody will
+promise or wish thee the luck to come down on thy feet again, as he did.
+So! because a rabble of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as
+their representative in Parliament, thou art free of all men's houses,
+forsooth! I would have thee to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter
+for the house they have chaired thee unto than for mine. Yet I do not
+question but thou wilt be as troublesome and unruly there as here. Did I
+not turn thee out of Hinchinbrook when thou wert scarcely half the rogue
+thou art latterly grown up to? And yet wert thou immeasurably too big a
+one for it to hold.
+
+_Oliver_.--It repenteth me, O mine uncle! that in my boyhood and youth
+the Lord had not touched me.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Touch thee! thou wast too dirty a dog by half.
+
+_Oliver_.--Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me that I was then of ill
+conditions, and that my name--even your godson's--stank in your
+nostrils.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Ha! polecat! it was not thy name, although bad enough,
+that stank first; in my house, at least.[13] But perhaps there are worse
+maggots in stauncher mummeries.
+
+_Oliver_.--Whereas in the bowels of your charity you then vouchsafed me
+forgiveness, so the more confidently may I crave it now in this my
+urgency.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--More confidently! What! hast got more confidence? Where
+didst find it? I never thought the wide circle of the world had within
+it another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason why thou shouldst
+stand before me with thy hat off, in the courtyard and in the sun,
+counting the stones of the pavement. Thou hast some knavery in thy head,
+I warrant thee. Come, put on thy beaver.
+
+_Oliver_.--Uncle Sir Oliver! I know my duty too well to stand covered
+in the presence of so worshipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered
+at baptism for my good behaviour.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--God forgive me for playing the fool before Him so
+presumptuously and unprofitably! Nobody shall ever take me in again to
+do such an absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some left-hand
+business in the neighbourhood, no doubt, or thou wouldst never more have
+come under my archway.
+
+_Oliver_.--These are hard times for them that seek peace. We are clay in
+the hand of the potter.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I wish your potters sought nothing costlier, and dug in
+their own grounds for it. Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the
+wheel of these artificers; and little was left but rags when we got off.
+Sanctified folks are the cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and
+their Jordan tans and constringes us to the averdupoise of mummies.
+
+_Oliver_.--The Lord hath chosen his own vessels.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I wish heartily He would pack them off, and send them
+anywhere on ass-back or cart, (cart preferably,) to rid our country of
+'em. But now again to the point: for if we fall among the potsherds we
+shall hobble on but lamely. Since thou art raised unto a high command in
+the army, and hast a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and stately piece
+of horse-flesh, I cannot but take it into my fancy that thou hast some
+commission of array or disarray to execute hereabout.
+
+_Oliver_.--With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch well-nigh of
+swounding, and with a sight of bitter tears, which will not be put back
+nor staid in anywise, as you bear testimony unto me, uncle Oliver.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--No tears, Master Nol, I beseech thee! Thou never art more
+pery than when it rains with thee. Wet days, among those of thy kidney,
+portend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at?
+
+_Oliver_.--That I, that I, of all men living, should be put upon this
+work!
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--What work, prythee?
+
+_Oliver_.--I am sent hither by them who (the Lord in his loving-kindness
+having pity and mercy upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand,
+administer unto our necessities and righteously command us, _by the
+aforesaid as aforesaid_ (thus runs the commission) hither am I deputed
+(woe is me!) to levy certain fines in this county, or shire, on such as
+the Parliament in its wisdom doth style malignants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--If there is anything left about the house, never be over
+nice: dismiss thy modesty and lay hands upon it. In this county or
+shire, we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.
+
+_Oliver_.--O mine uncle and godfather! be witness for me.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Witness for thee! not I indeed. But I would rather be
+witness than surety, lad, where thou art docketed.
+
+_Oliver_.--From the most despised doth the Lord ever choose his
+servants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Then, faith! thou art his first butler.
+
+_Oliver_.--Serving Him with humility, I may peradventure be found worthy
+of advancement.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Ha! now if any devil speaks from within thee, it is thy
+own: he does not sniffle: to my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or
+unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it. Come in; at least for an
+hour's rest. Formerly thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest
+heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank it might: and my
+wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty near as commodious as that over-yonder at
+Hinchinbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and places too! yet the
+cellar holds good.
+
+_Oliver_.--Many and great thanks! But there are certain men on the other
+side of the gate, who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Let them enter also, or eat their victuals where they
+are.
+
+_Oliver_.--They have proud stomachs: they are recusants.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Recusants of what? of beef and ale? We have claret, I
+trust, for the squeamish, if they are above the condition of
+tradespeople. But of course you leave no person of higher quality in the
+outer court.
+
+_Oliver_.--Vain are they and worldly, although such wickedness is the
+most abominable in their cases. Idle folks are fond of sitting in the
+sun: I would not forbid them this indulgence.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--But who are they?
+
+_Oliver_.--The Lord knows. May-be priests, deacons, and such like.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And the commission you
+bear from the parliamentary thieves, to sack and pillage my
+mansion-house, is far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your
+behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-door. With your
+permission, or without it, I shall take the liberty to invite them to
+partake of my poor hospitality.
+
+_Oliver_.--But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules and ordinances whereby
+it must be manifested that they lie under displeasure--not mine--not
+mine--but my milk must not flow for them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--You may enter the house or remain where you are at your
+option; I make my visit to these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired
+of standing. If thou ever reachest my age,[14] Oliver! (but God will not
+surely let this be,) thou wilt know that the legs become at last of
+doubtful fidelity in the service of the body.
+
+_Oliver_.--Uncle Sir Oliver! now that, as it seemeth, you have been
+taking a survey of the courtyard and its contents, am I indiscreet in
+asking your worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping the
+_men-at-belly_ under the custody of the _men-at-arms_? This pestilence,
+like unto one I remember to have read about in some poetry of Master
+Chapman's,[15] began with the dogs and the mules, and afterwards crope
+up into the breasts of men.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I call such treatment barbarous; their troopers will not
+let the gentlemen come with me into the house, but insist on sitting
+down to dinner with them. And yet, having brought them out of their
+colleges, these brutal half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
+
+_Oliver_.--Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well met. Out of their
+superfluities they give nothing to the Lord or his Saints; no, not even
+stirrup or girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and go forth against
+those who thirst for our blood. Their eyes are fat, and they raise not
+up their voices to cry for our deliverance.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Art mad? What stirrups and girths are hung up in college
+halls and libraries? For what are these gentlemen brought hither?
+
+_Oliver_.--They have elected me, with somewhat short of unanimity, not
+indeed to be one of themselves, for of that distinction I acknowledge
+and deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor scholar, to which,
+unless it be a very poor one, I have almost as small pretension, but
+simply to undertake awhile the heavier office of burser for them, to
+cast up their accounts; to overlook the scouring of their plate; and to
+lay a list thereof, with a few specimens, before those who fight the
+fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abasement of the proud
+and the chastisement of worldlymindedness, may rejoice.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--I am grown accustomed to such saints and such rejoicings.
+But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty
+and jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing
+a jocularity. Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who
+lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering
+and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant,
+but they were not all hypocritical; they had not always "_the Lord_" in
+their mouths.
+
+_Oliver_.--According to their own notions, they might have had at an
+outlay of a farthing.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Art facetious, Nol? for it is as hard to find that out as
+any thing else in thee, only it makes thee look, at times, a little the
+grimmer and sourer.
+
+But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge. Not being such as, by
+their habits and professions, could have opposed you in the field, I
+hold it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any restraint, and so
+lead them away from their peaceful and useful occupations.
+
+_Oliver_.--I alway bow submissively before the judgment of mine elders;
+and the more reverentially when I know them to be endowed with greater
+wisdom, and guided by surer experience than myself. Alas! those
+collegians not only are strong men, as you may readily see if you
+measure them round the waistband, but boisterous and pertinacious
+challengers. When we, who live in the fear of God, exhorted them
+earnestly unto peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision. Thus
+far indeed it might be an advantage to us, teaching us forbearance and
+self-seeking, but we cannot countenance the evil spirit moving them
+thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark most wisely, might have been
+useful and peaceful, and had formerly been so. Why then did they gird
+the sword of strife about their loins against the children of Israel? By
+their own declaration, not only are they our enemies, but enemies the
+most spiteful and untractable. When I came quietly, lawfully, and in the
+name of the Lord, for their plate, what did they? Instead of
+surrendering it like honest and conscientious men, they attacked me and
+my people on horseback, with syllogisms and centhymemes, and the Lord
+knows with what other such gimcracks, such venemous and rankling old
+weapons as those who have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to
+lay aside. Learning should not make folks mockers--should not make folks
+malignants--should not harden their hearts. We came with bowels for
+them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--That ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within
+them all the plate on board of a galloon. Tankards and wassil-bowls had
+stuck between your teeth, you would not have felt them.
+
+_Oliver_.--We did feel them; some at least: perhaps we missed too many.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--How can these learned societies raise the money you exact
+from them, beside plate? dost think they can create and coin it?
+
+_Oliver_.--In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that
+college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed
+Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors
+or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious
+metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young
+lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this they
+bring about by certain gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps.
+Of said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they make a vain and
+sumptuous use; so that, finally, they are afraid of cutting their lips
+with glass. But indeed it is high time to call them.
+
+_Sir Oliver_.--Well--at last thou hast some mercy.
+
+_Oliver_ (_aloud_.)--Cuffsatan Ramsbottom! Sadsoul Kiteclan! advance!
+Let every gown, together with the belly that is therein, mount up behind
+you and your comrades in good fellowship. And forasmuch as you at the
+country-places look to bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable
+that ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the mancipular office
+of discharging the account. If there be any spare beds at the inns,
+allow the doctors and dons to occupy the same--they being used to lie
+softly; and be not urgent that more than three lie in each--they being
+mostly corpulent. Let pass quietly and unreproved any light bubble of
+pride or impetuosity, seeing that they have not alway been accustomed to
+the service of guards and ushers. The Lord be with ye!--Slow trot! And
+now, uncle Sir Oliver, I can resist no longer your loving-kindness. I
+kiss you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's duty; and most humbly and
+gratefully do I accept of your invitation to dine and lodge with you,
+albeit the least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. After the
+refreshment of needful food, more needful prayer, and that sleep which
+descendeth on the innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at daybreak
+I proceed on my journey Londonward.
+
+_Sir Oliver_ (_aloud_.)--Ho, there! (_To a servant_.)--Let dinner be
+prepared in the great diningroom; let every servant be in waiting, each
+in full livery; let every delicacy the house affords be placed upon the
+table in due courses; arrange all the plate upon the side-board: a
+gentleman by descent--a stranger, has claimed my hospitality. (_Servant
+goes_.)
+
+Sir! you are now master. Grant me dispensation, I entreat you, from a
+further attendance on you.
+
+     [13] See Forster's Life of Cromwell.
+
+     [14] Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might, by
+     possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, excepting
+     Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has produced from its
+     first discovery down to our own times. Francis Bacon,
+     Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, and the prodigious shoal that
+     attended these leviathans through the intellectual deep. Newton
+     was but in his thirteenth year at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh,
+     Spenser, Hooker, Elliot, Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney,
+     Shaftesbury, and Locke, were existing in his lifetime; and
+     several more, who may be compared with the smaller of these.
+
+     [15] Chapman's _Homer_, first book.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CALEB STUKELY.
+
+PART XI.
+
+SAINTS AND SINNERS.
+
+
+The history of my youth is the history of my life. My contemporaries
+were setting out on their journey when my pilgrimage was at an end. I
+had drained the cup of experience before other men had placed it to
+their lips. The vicissitudes of all seasons occurred in one, and, before
+my spring had closed, I had felt the winter's gloominess and cold. The
+scattered and separated experiences that diversify and mark the passage
+of the "threescore years and ten," were collected and thrust into the
+narrow period of my nonage. Within that boundary, existence was
+condensed. It was the time of action and of suffering. I have passed
+from youth to maturity and decline gently and passively; and now, in the
+cool and quiet sunset, I repose, connected with the past only by the
+adhering memories that will not be excluded from my solitude. I have
+gathered upon my head the enduring snow of age; but it has settled there
+in its natural course, with no accompaniment of storm and tempest. I
+look back to the land over which I have journeyed, and through which I
+have been conveyed to my present humble resting-place, and I behold a
+broad extent of plain, spreading from my very feet, into the hazy
+distance, where all is cloud, mountain, tumult, and agitation. Heaven be
+praised, I can look back with gratitude, chastened and informed!
+
+Amongst all the startling and stirring events that crowded into the
+small division of time to which I refer, none had so confounded,
+perplexed, alarmed, and grieved me, as the discovery of Mr Clayton's
+criminality and falsehood. There are mental and moral concussions,
+which, like physical shocks, stun and stupify with their suddenness and
+violence. This was one of them. Months after I had been satisfied of his
+obliquity, it was difficult to _realize_ the conviction that truth and
+justice authoritatively demanded. When I thought of the minister--when
+his form presented itself to my mind's eye, as it did, day after day,
+and hour after hour, it was impossible to contemplate it with the
+aversion and distaste which were the natural productions of his own base
+conduct. I could see nothing but the figure and the lineaments of him,
+whose eloquence had charmed, whose benevolent hand had nourished and
+maintained me. There are likewise, in this mysterious state of life,
+paroxysms and intervals of disordered consciousness, which memory
+refuses to acknowledge or record; the epileptic's waking dream is
+one--an unreal reality. And similar to this was my impression of the
+late events. They lacked substantiality. Memory took no account of them,
+discarded them, and would connect the present only with the bright
+experience she had treasured up, prior to the dark distempered season. I
+could not hate my benefactor. I could not efface the image, which months
+of apparent love had engraven on my heart.
+
+Thrust from Mr Clayton's chapel, and unable to obtain admission
+elsewhere, I felt how insecure was my tenure of office. I prepared
+myself for dismissal, and hoped that, when the hour arrived, I should
+submit without repining. In the meanwhile, I was careful in the
+performance of every duty, and studious to give no cause, not the
+remotest, for complaint or dissatisfaction. It was not long, however,
+before signs of an altered state of things presented themselves to view.
+A straw tells which way the wind blows, and wisps began to fly in all
+directions. I found at length that I could do nothing right. To-day I
+was too indolent; to-morrow, too officious:--now I was too much of a
+gentlemen; and now not half gentlemanly enough. The hardest infliction
+to bear was the treatment of my new friend and colleague--of him who had
+given me kind warning and advice, when mischief was only threatening,
+but who, on the first appearance of trouble, took alarm, and deserted my
+side. The moment that he perceived my inevitable fate, he decided upon
+leaving me alone to fight my hard battle. At first he spoke to me with
+shyness and reserve; afterwards coolly, and soon, he said nothing at
+all. Sometimes, perhaps, if we were quite alone, and there was no chance
+whatever of discovery, he would venture half a word or so upon the
+convenient subject of the weather; but these occasions were very rare.
+If a superior were present, hurricanes would not draw a syllable from
+his careful lips; and, under the eye of the stout and influential Mr
+Bombasty, it was well for me if frowns and sneers were the only
+exhibitions of rudeness on the part of my worldly and far-seeing friend.
+Ah, Jacob Whining! With all your policy and sagacious selfishness, you
+found it difficult to protract your own official existence a few months
+longer. He had hardly congratulated himself upon the dexterity which had
+kept him from being involved in my misfortunes, before _he_ fell under
+the ban of _his_ church, like me was persecuted, and driven into the
+world a branded and excommunicated outcast. Mr Whining, however, who had
+learnt much in the world, and more in his _connexion_, was a cleverer
+and more fortunate man than this friend and coadjutor. He retired with
+his experience into Yorkshire, drew a small brotherhood about him, and
+in a short time became the revered and beloved founder of the numerous
+and far-spread sect of _Whiningtonians_!
+
+It was just a fortnight after my expulsion from the _Church_, that
+matters were brought to a crisis as far as I was concerned, by the
+determined tone and conduct of the gentleman at the head of our society.
+Mr Bombasty arrived one morning at the office, in a perturbed and
+anxious state, and requested my attendance in his private room. I waited
+upon him. Perspiration hung about his fleshy face--he wiped it off, and
+then began:
+
+"Young man," said he, "this won't do at all."
+
+"What, sir?" I asked.
+
+"Come, don't be impudent. You are done for, I can tell you."
+
+"How, sir?" I enquired. "What have I done?"
+
+"Where are the subscriptions that were due last Saturday?"
+
+"Not yet collected, sir."
+
+"What money have you belonging to the society?"
+
+"Not a sixpence, sir."
+
+"Young man," continued the lusty president in a solemn voice, "you are
+in a woeful state; you are living in the world without _a security_."
+
+"What is the matter, sir."
+
+"Matter!" echoed the gentleman.--"Matter with a man that has lost his
+security! Are you positive you have got no funds about you? Just look
+into your pocket, my friend, and make sure."
+
+"I have nothing, sir. Pray, tell me what I have done?"
+
+"Young man, holding the office that I hold, feeling as I feel, and
+knowing what I know, it would be perfect madness in me to have any thing
+to do with a man who has been given over by his security. Don't you
+understand me? Isn't that very good English? Mr Clayton will have
+nothing more to say to you. The society gives you warning."
+
+"May I not be informed, sir, why I am so summarily dismissed?"
+
+"Why, my good fellow, what is the matter with you? You seem remarkably
+stupid this morning. I can't beat about the bush with you. You must go."
+
+"Without having committed a fault?" I added, mournfully.
+
+"Sir," said the distinguished president, looking libraries at me, "when
+one mortal has become security for another mortal, and suddenly annuls
+and stultifies his bond, to say that the other mortal has committed a
+_fault_ is just to call brandy--_water_. Sir," continued Mr Bombasty,
+adjusting his India cravat, "that man has perpetrated a crime--a crime
+_primy facey--exy fishio_."
+
+I saw that my time was come, and I said nothing.
+
+"If," said Mr Bombasty, "you had lost your intellect, I am a voluntary
+contributor, and could have got you chains and a keeper in Bedlam. If
+you had broken a limb, I am a life-governor, and it would have been a
+pleasure to me to send you to the hospital. But you may as well ask me
+to put life into a dead man, as to be of service to a creature who has
+lost his security. You had better die at once. It would be a happy
+release. I speak as a friend."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said I.
+
+"I hear complaints against you, but I don't listen to them. Every thing
+is swallowed up in one remarkable fact. Your security has let you down.
+You must go about your business. I speak as the president of this
+Christian society, and not, I hope, without the feelings of a man. The
+treasurer will pay your salary immediately, and we dispense with your
+services."
+
+"What am I to do?" I asked, half aloud.
+
+"Just the best you can," answered the gentleman. "The audience is at an
+end."
+
+Mr Bombasty said no more, but drew from his coat pocket a snuff-box of
+enormous dimensions. From it he grasped between his thumb and finger a
+moderate handful of stable-smelling dust. His nose and India
+handkerchief partook of it in equal shares, and then he rang his bell
+with presidential dignity, and ordered up his customary lunch of chops
+and porter. A few hours afterwards I was again upon the world, ready to
+begin the fight of life anew, and armed with fifteen guineas for the
+coming struggle. Mr Clayton had kept his word with me, and did not
+desert me until I was once more fairly on the road to ruin.
+
+One of the first consequences of my unlooked-for meeting with the
+faithful Thompson, was the repayment of the five shillings which he had
+so generously spared me when I was about to leave him for Birmingham,
+without as many pence in my scrip. During my absence, however, fortune
+had placed my honest friend in a new relation to a sum of this value.
+Five shillings were not to him, as before, sixty pence. The proprietor
+of the house in which he lived, and which he had found it so difficult
+to let out to his satisfaction, had died suddenly, and had thought
+proper to bequeath to his tenant the bulk of his property, amounting,
+perhaps, to five thousand pounds. Thompson, who was an upholsterer by
+trade, left the workshop in which he was employed as journeyman
+immediately, and began to work upon his own account. He was a prosperous
+and a thriving man when I rejoined him. His manner was, as the reader
+has seen, kind and straightforward as ever, and the only change that his
+wealth had wrought in him, was that which gold may be supposed to work a
+heart alive to its duties, simple and honest in its intentions, and
+lacking only the means to make known its strong desire of usefulness.
+His generosity had kept pace with his success, his good wishes
+outstripped both. His home was finer, yet scarcely more sightly and
+happier than the one large room, which, with its complement of ten
+children, sire and dame, had still a nook for the needy and friendless
+stranger. The old house had been made over for a twelvemonth to the
+various tenants, free of all charge. At the end of that period it was
+the intention of Thompson to pull it down, and build a better in its
+place. A young widow, with her three orphans, lodged on the attic floor,
+and the grateful prayers of the four went far to establish the buoyancy
+of the landlord's spirit, and to maintain the smile that seldom departed
+from his manly cheek. Well might the poor creature, whom I once visited
+in her happy lodging, talk of the sin of destroying so comfortable a
+residence, and feel assured, that "let them build a palace, they would
+never equal the present house, or make a sleeping-room where a body
+might rest so peacefully and well." Thompson's mode of life had scarcely
+varied. He was not idle amongst his men. When labour was suspended, he
+was with his children; another had been added to the number, and there
+were now eleven to relieve him of the superabundant profits created in
+the manufactory. Mrs Thompson was still a noble housewife, worthy of her
+husband. All was care, cleanliness, and economy at home. Griping stint
+would never have been tolerated by the hospitable master, and virtuous
+plenty only was admitted by the prudent wife. Had there been a oneness
+in the religious views of this good couple, _Paradise_ would have been a
+word fit to write beneath the board that made known to men John
+Thompson's occupation; but this, alas! was wanting to complete a scene
+that otherwise looked rather like perfection. The great enemy of man
+seeks in many ways to defeat the benevolent aims of Providence. Thompson
+had remained at home one Sunday afternoon to smoke a friendly pipe with
+an old acquaintance, when he should have gone to church. His wife set
+out alone. Satan took advantage of her husband's absence, drew her to
+chapel, and made her--a _dissenter_. This was Thompson's statement of
+the case, and severer punishment, he insisted, had never been inflicted
+on a man for Sabbath-breaking.
+
+When I was dismissed by Mr Bombasty, it was a natural step to walk
+towards the abode of the upholsterer. I knew his hour for supper, and
+his long hour after that for ale, and pipe, and recreation. I was not in
+doubt as to my welcome. Mrs Thompson had given me a general invitation
+to supper, "because," she said, "it did Thompson good to chat after a
+hard day's work;" and the respected Thompson himself had especially
+invited me to the long hour afterwards, "because," he added, "it did the
+ale and 'baccy good, who liked it so much better to go out of this here
+wicked world in company." About seven o'clock in the evening I found
+myself under their hospitable roof, seated in the room devoted to the
+general purposes of the house. It was large, and comfortably furnished.
+The walls were of wainscot, painted white, and were graced with two
+paintings. One, a family group, consisting of Thompson, wife, and eight
+children, most wretchedly executed, was the production of a slowly
+rising artist, a former lodger of my friend's, who had contrived to
+compound with his easy landlord for two years and three quarters' rent,
+with this striking display of his ability. Thompson was prouder of this
+picture than of the originals themselves, if that were possible. The
+design had been his own, and had cost him, as he was ready and even
+anxious to acknowledge, more time and trouble than he had ever given
+before, or meant to give again, to any luxury in life. The artist, as I
+was informed, had endeavoured to reduce to form some fifty different
+schemes that had arisen in poor Thompson's brain, but had failed in
+every one, so difficult he found it to introduce the thousand and one
+effects that the landlord deemed essential to the subject. His first
+idea had been to bring upon the canvass every feature of his life from
+boyhood upwards. This being impracticable, he wished to bargain for at
+least the workshop and the private residence. The lodgers, he thought,
+might come into the background well, and the tools, peeping from a
+basket in the corner, would look so much like life and nature. The
+upshot of his plans was the existing work of art, which Thompson
+considered matchless, and pronounced "dirt cheap, if he had even given
+the fellow a seven years' lease of the entire premises." The situations
+were striking certainly. In the centre of the picture were two high
+chairs, on which were seated, as grave as judges, the heads of the
+establishment. They sat there, drawn to their full height, too dignified
+to look at one another, and yet displaying a fond attachment, by a
+joining of the hands. The youngest child had clambered to the father's
+knee, and, with a chisel, was digging at his nose, wonderful to say,
+without disturbing the stoic equanimity that had settled on the father's
+face. This was the favourite son. Another, with a plane larger than
+himself, was menacing the mother's knee. The remaining six had each a
+tool, and served in various ways to effect most artfully the beloved
+purpose of the vain upholsterer's heart--viz. the introduction of the
+entire workshop. The second painting in the centre of the opposite wall,
+represented Mr Clayton. The likeness was a failure, and the colours were
+coarse and glaring; but there needed no instruction to know that the
+carefully framed production attempted to portray the unenviable man,
+who, in spite of his immorality and shameless life, was still revered
+and idolized by the blind disciples who had taken him for their guide.
+This portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar property. There were no other
+articles of _virtu_ in the spacious apartment; but cleanliness and
+decorum bestowed upon it a grace, the absence of which no idle
+decoration could supply. Early as the hour was, a saucepan was on the
+fire, whose bubbling water was busy with the supper that at half-past
+eight must meet the assault of many knives and forks. John Thompson and
+two sons--the eldest--were working in the shop. They had been there with
+little intermission since six that morning. The honest man was fond of
+work; so was he of his children--yes, dearly fond of _them_, and they
+must share with him the evening meal; and he must have them all about
+him; and he must help them all, and see them eat, and look with manly
+joy and pride upon the noisy youngsters, for whom his lusty arm had
+earned the bread that came like manna to him--so wholesome and so sweet!
+Three girls, humbly but neatly dressed, the three first steps of this
+great human ladder, were seated at a table administering to the
+necessities of sundry shirts and stockings that had suffered sensibly in
+their last week's struggle through the world. _They_ were indeed a
+picture worth the looking at. You grew a better man in gazing on their
+innocence and industry. What a lesson stole from their quiet and
+contented looks, their patient perseverance, their sweet unity! How
+shining smooth the faces, how healthy, and how round, and how impossible
+it seemed for wrinkles ever to disturb the fine and glossy surface!
+Modesty never should forsake the humble; the bosom of the lowly born
+should be her home. Here she had enshrined herself, and given to
+simplicity all her dignity and truth. They worked and worked on; who
+should tell which was the most assiduous--which the fairest--which the
+most eager and successful to increase the happiness of all! And turn to
+Billy there, that half-tamed urchin! that likeness in little of his
+sire, rocking not so much against his will, as against conviction, the
+last of all the Thompsons--a six months' infant in the wicker cradle.
+How, obedient to his mother's wish, like a little man at first, he rocks
+with all his might, and then irregularly, and at long intervals--by fits
+and starts--and ceases altogether very soon, bobbing his curly head, and
+falling gently into a deep mesmeric sleep. The older lads are making
+wooden boats, and two, still older, stand on either side their mother. A
+book is in the hands of each, full of instruction and fine learning. It
+was the source of all their knowledge, the cause of all their earliest
+woes. Good Mrs Thompson had been neglected as a child, and was
+enthusiastic in the cause of early education. Sometimes they looked into
+the book, but oftener still they cast attentive eyes upon the fire, as
+if "the book of knowledge fair" was there displayed, and not a noisy
+saucepan, almost unable to contain itself for joy of the cod's head and
+shoulders, that must be ready by John Thompson's supper time. The whole
+family were my friends--with the boys I was on terms of warmest
+intimacy, and smiles and nods, and shouts and cheers, welcomed me
+amongst them.
+
+"Now, close your book, Bob," said the mother, soon after I was seated,
+"and, Alec, give me yours. Put your hands down, turn from the fire, and
+look up at me, dears. What is the capital of Russia?"
+
+"The Birman empire," said Alec, with unhesitating confidence.
+
+"The Baltic sea," cried Bob, emulous and ardent.
+
+"Wait--not so fast; let me see, my dears, which of you is right."
+
+Mrs Thompson appealed immediately to her book, after a long and private
+communication with which, she emphatically pronounced both wrong.
+
+"Give us a chance, mother," said Bob in a wheedling tone, (Bob knew his
+mother's weaknesses.) "Them's such hard words. I don't know how it is,
+but I never can remember 'em. Just tell us the first syllable--oh, do
+now--please."
+
+"Oh, I know now!" cried Alec. "It's something with a G in it."
+
+"Think of the apostles, dears. What are the names of the apostles?"
+
+"Why, there's Moses," began Bob, counting on his fingers, "and there's
+Sammywell, and there's Aaron, and Noah's ark"----
+
+"Stop, my dear," said Mrs Thompson, who was very busy with her manual,
+and contriving a method of rendering a solution of her question easy.
+"Just begin again. I said--who was Peter--no, not that--who was an
+apostle?"
+
+"Oh, I know now!" cried Alec again, (Alec was the sharp boy of the
+family.) "It's Peter. Peter's the capital of Russia."
+
+"No, not quite my dear. You are very warm--very warm indeed, but not
+quite hot. Try again."
+
+"Paul," half murmured Robert, with a reckless hope of proving right.
+
+"No, Peter's right; but there's something else. What has your father
+been taking down the beds for?"
+
+There was a solemn silence, and the three industrious sisters blushed
+the faintest blush that could be raised upon a maiden's cheek.
+
+"To rub that stuff upon the walls," said the ready Alec.
+
+"Yes, but what was it to kill?" continued the instructress.
+
+"The fleas," said Bob.
+
+"Worse than that, my dear."
+
+"Oh, I know now," shrieked Alec, for the third time. "_Petersbug's_ the
+capital of Russia."
+
+Mrs Thompson looked at me with pardonable vanity and triumph, and I
+bestowed upon the successful students a few comfits which I had
+purchased on my road for my numerous and comfit-loving friends. The mere
+sight of this sweet "reward of merit" immediately inspired the two boys
+at work upon the boats with a desire for knowledge, and especially for
+learning the capitals of countries, that was most agreeable to
+contemplate. The lesson was continued, more to my amusement, I fear,
+than the edification of the pupils. The boys were unable to answer a
+single question until they had had so many _chances_, and had become so
+very _hot_, that not to have answered at length would have bordered on
+the miraculous. The persevering governess was not displeased at this,
+for she would not have lost the opportunity of displaying her own skill
+in metaphorical illustration, for a great deal, I am very sure. The
+clock struck eight; there was a general movement. The three sisters
+folded their work, and lodged it carefully in separate drawers. The
+eldest then produced the table-cloth, knives, forks, and spoons. The
+second exhibited bibs and pinafores; and the third brought from their
+hiding-places a dozen modest chairs, and placed them round the table.
+Bob assured the company "he was _so_ hungry;" Alec said, "so was he;"
+and the boatmen, in an under tone, settled what should be done with the
+great cod's eyes, which, they contended, were the best parts of the
+fish, and "shouldn't they be glad if father would give 'em one a-piece."
+The good woman must enquire, of course, how nearly the much-relished
+dainty had reached the critical and interesting state when it became
+most palatable to John Thompson; for John Thompson was an epicure, "and
+must have his little bits of things done to a charm, or not at all."
+Half-past eight had struck. The family were bibbed and pinafored; the
+easy coat and slippers were at the fire, and warmed through and
+through--it was a season of intenseness. "Here's father!" shouted Alec,
+and all the bibs and pinafores rushed like a torrent to the door. Which
+shall the father catch into his ready arms, which kiss, which hug, which
+answer?--all are upon him; they know their playmate, their companion,
+and best friend; they have hoarded up, since the preceding night, a
+hundred things to say, and now they have got their loving and attentive
+listener. "Look what I have done, father," says the chief boatman, "Tom
+and I together." "Well done, boys!" says the father--and Tom and he are
+kissed. "I have been _l_ocking baby," lisps little Billy, who, in
+return, gets rocked himself. "Father, what's the capital of Russia?"
+shrieks Alec, tugging at his coat. "What do you mean, you dog?" is the
+reply, accompanied by a hearty shake of his long flaxen hair.
+"Petersburg," cry Tom and Alec both, following him to the hearth, each
+one endeavouring to relieve him of his boots as soon as he is seated
+there. The family circle is completed. The flaky fish is ready, and
+presented for inspection. The father has served them all, even to little
+Billy--their plates are full and smoking. "Mother" is called upon to ask
+a blessing. She rises, and assumes the looks of Jabez Buster--twenty
+blessings might be asked and granted in half the time she takes--so
+think and look Bob, Alec, and the boatmen; but at length she pauses--the
+word is given, and further ceremony is dispensed with. In childhood,
+supper is a thing to look forward to, and to _last_ when it arrives; but
+not in childhood, any more than in old age, can sublunary joys endure
+for ever. The meal is finished. A short half-hour flies, like lightning,
+by. The children gather round their father; and in the name of all, upon
+his knees, he thanks his God for all the mercies of the day. Thompson is
+no orator. His heart is warm; his words are few and simple. The three
+attendant graces take charge of their brethren, detach them from their
+father's side, and conduct them to their beds. Happy father! happy
+children! May Providence be merciful, and keep the grim enemy away from
+your fireside! Let him not come now in the blooming beauty and the
+freshness of your loves! Let him not darken and embitter for ever the
+life that is still bright, beautiful, and glorious in the power of
+elevating and sustaining thought that leads beyond it. Let him wait the
+matured and not unexpected hour, when the shock comes, not to crush, to
+overwhelm, and to annihilate, but to warn, to teach, and to encourage;
+not to alarm and stagger the untaught spirit, but to bring to the
+subdued and long-tried soul its last lesson on the vanity and
+evanescence of its early dreams!
+
+It is half-past nine o'clock. Thompson, his wife, and two eldest boys
+are present, and, for the first time, I have an opportunity to make
+known the object of my visit.
+
+"And so they have turned you off," said Thompson, when I had finished.
+"And who's surprised at that? Not I, for one. Missus," continued he,
+turning to his wife, "why haven't you got a curtain yet for that ere
+pictur? I can't abear the sight of it."
+
+Mrs Thompson looked plaintively towards the painting, and heaved a sigh.
+
+"Ah, dear good man! He has got his enemies," said she.
+
+"Mrs Thompson!" exclaimed her husband, "I have done with that good man
+from this day for'ards; and I do hope, old 'ooman, that you'll go next
+Sunday to church with me, as we used to do afore you got that pictur
+painted."
+
+"It's no good talking, Thompson," answered the lady, positively and
+firmly. "I can't sit under a cold man, and there's an end of it."
+
+"There, that's the way you talk, missus."
+
+"Why, you know, Thompson, every thing in the church is cold."
+
+"No, not now, my dear--they've put up a large stove. You'll recollect
+you haven't been lately."
+
+"Besides, do you think I can sit in a place of worship, and hear a man
+say, '_Let us pray_,' in the middle of the service, making a fool of
+one, as if we hadn't been praying all the time? As that dear and
+persecuted saint says, (turning to the picture,) it's a common assault
+to our understandings."
+
+"Now, Polly, that's just always how you go off. If you'd only listen to
+reason, that could all be made out right in no time. The clergyman
+doesn't mean to say, _let us pray_, because he hasn't been praying
+afore;--what he means is--we have been praying all this time, and so
+we'll go on praying again--no, not again exactly--but don't leave off.
+That isn't what I mean either. Let me see, _let us pray_. Oh, yes!
+Why--stay. Where is it he does say, _let us pray_? There, I say,
+Stukely, you know it all much better than I do. Just make it right to
+the missus."
+
+"It is not difficult," said I.
+
+"Oh no, Mr Stukely, I daresay not!" added Mrs Thompson, interrupting me.
+"Mr Clayton says, Satan has got his janysarries abroad, and has a reason
+for every thing. It is very proper to say, too, I suppose, that it is an
+_imposition_ when the bishops ordain the ministers? What a word to make
+use of. It's truly frightful!"
+
+"Well, I'm blessed," exclaimed Thompson, "if I don't think you had
+better hold your tongue, old girl, about impositions; for sich oudacious
+robbers as your precious brothers is, I never come across, since I was
+stopped that ere night, as we were courting, on Shooter's Hill. It's a
+system of imposition from beginning to end."
+
+"Look to your Bible, Thompson; what does that say? Does that tell
+ministers to read their sermons? There can't be no truth and right
+feeling when a man puts down what he's going to say; the vital warmth is
+wanting, I'm sure. And then to read the same prayers Sunday after
+Sunday, till a body gets quite tired at hearing them over and over
+again, and finding nothing new! How can you improve an occasion if you
+are tied down in this sort of way."
+
+"Did you ever see one of the brothers eat, Stukely?" asked Thompson,
+avoiding the main subject. "Don't you ask one of them to dinner--that's
+all. That nice boy Buster ought to eat for a wager. I had the pleasure
+of his company to dinner one fine afternoon. I don't mean to send him
+another invitation just yet, at all events."
+
+"Yes," proceeded the fair, but stanch nonconformist; "what does the
+Bible say, indeed! 'Take no thought of what you should say.' Why, in the
+church, I am told they are doing nothing else from Monday morning to
+Saturday night but writing the sermon they are going to read on the
+Sabbath. To _read_ a sermon! What would the apostles say to that?"
+
+"Why, didn't you tell me, my dear, that the gentleman as set for that
+pictur got all his sermons by heart before he preached 'em?"
+
+"Of course I did--but that's a very different thing. Doesn't it all pour
+from him as natural as if it had come to him that minute? He doesn't
+fumble over a book like a schoolboy. His beautiful eyes, I warrant you,
+ain't looking down all the time, as if he was ashamed to hold 'em up.
+Isn't it a privilege to see his blessed eyes rolling all sorts of ways;
+and don't they speak wolumes to the poor benighted sinner? Besides,
+don't tell me, Thompson; we had better turn Catholics at once, if we are
+to have the minister dressing up like the Pope of Rome, and all the rest
+of it."
+
+"You are the gal of my heart," exclaimed the uxorious Thompson; "but I
+must say you have got some of the disgracefulest notions out of that ere
+chapel as ever I heard on. Why, it's only common decency to wear a dress
+in the pulpit; and I believe in my mind, that that's come down to us
+from time immemorable, like every thing else in human natur. What's your
+opinion, Stukely?"
+
+"Yes; and what's your opinion, Mr Stukely," added the lady immediately,
+"about calling a minister of the gospel--a _priest_? Is that
+Paperistical or not?"
+
+"That isn't the pint, Polly," proceeded John. "We are talking about the
+silk dress now. Let's have that out first."
+
+"And then the absolution"----
+
+"No, Poll. Stick to the silk dress."
+
+"Ah, Thompson, it's always the way!" continued the mistress of the
+house, growing red and wroth, and heedless of the presence of the
+eager-listening children; "it's always the way. Satan is ruining of you.
+You'll laugh at the elect, and you'll not find your mistake out till
+it's too late to alter. Mr Clayton says, that the Establishment is the
+hothouse of devils; and the more I see of its ways, the more I feel he
+is right. Thompson, you are in the sink of iniquity."
+
+"Come, I can't stand no more of this!" exclaimed Thompson, growing
+uneasy in his chair, but without a spark of ill-humour. "Let's change
+the topic, old 'ooman; I'm sure it can't do the young un's any good to
+hear this idle talk. Let's teach 'em nothing at all, if we can't larn
+'em something better than wrangling about religion. Now, Jack," he
+continued, turning to his eldest boy, "what is the matter with you? What
+are you sitting there for with your mouth wide open?"
+
+"What's the meaning of Paperist, father?" asked the boy, who had been
+long waiting to propose the question.
+
+"What's that to you, you rascal?" was the reply; "mind your own
+business, my good fellow, and leave the Paperist to mind his'n; that's
+your father's maxim, who got it from his father before him. You'll learn
+to find fault with other people fast enough without my teaching you. I
+tell you what, Jack, if you look well after yourself, you'll find little
+time left to bother about others. If your hands are ever idle--recollect
+you have ten brothers and sisters about you. Look about you--you are the
+oldest boy--and see what you can do for them. Do you mind that?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Very well, old chap. Then just get out the bottle, and give your father
+something to coax the cod down. Poll, that fish won't settle."
+
+The long hour was beginning. That bottle was the signal. A gin and water
+nightcap, on this occasion, officiated for the ale. Jack and his brother
+received a special invitation to a sip or two, which they at once
+unhesitatingly accepted. The sturdy fellows shook their father and
+fellow-labourer's hand, and were not loth to go to rest. Their mother
+was their attendant. The ruffle had departed from her face. It was as
+pleasant as before. She was but half a dissenter. So Thompson thought
+when he called her back again, and bade his "old 'ooman give her hobby
+one of her good old-fashioned busses, and think no more about it."
+
+Thompson and I were left together.
+
+"And what do you mean to do, sir, now?" was his first question.
+
+"I hardly know." I answered.
+
+"Of course, you'll cut the gang entirely--that's a nat'ral consequence."
+
+"No, Thompson, not at present. I must not seem so fickle and inconstant.
+I must not seem so to myself. I joined this sect not altogether without
+deliberation. I must have further proof of the unsoundness of its
+principles. A few of its professors have been faithless even to their
+own position. Of what religious profession may not the same be said? I
+will be patient, and examine further."
+
+"I was a-thinking," said Thompson, musingly, "I was a-thinking, 'till
+you've got something else to do----but no, never mind, you won't like
+that."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Why, I was thinking about the young un's. They're shocking back'ard in
+their eddication, and, between you and me, the missus makes them
+back'arder. I don't understand the way she has got of larning 'em at
+all. I don't want to make scholards of 'em. Nobody would but a fool.
+Bless 'em, they'll have enough to do to get their bread with sweating
+and toiling, without addling their brains about things they can't
+understand. But it is a cruelty, mind you, for a parent to hinder his
+child from reading his Bible on a Sunday afternoon, and to make him
+stand ashamed of himself before his fellow workman when he grows up, and
+finds that he can't put _paid_ to a bill on a Saturday night. The boys
+should all know how to read and write, and keep accounts, and a little
+summut of human nature. This is what I wants to give 'em, and nobody
+should I like better to put it into 'em than you, my old friend, if
+you'd just take the trouble 'till you've got something better to do."
+
+"Thompson," I answered instantly, "I will do it with pleasure. I ought
+to have made the offer. It did not occur to me. I shall rejoice to repay
+you, in this trifling way, for all your good feeling and kindness."
+
+"Oh no!" answered my friend, "none of that. We must have an
+understanding. Don't you think I should have asked the question, if I
+meant to sneak out in that dirty sort of way. No, that won't do. It's
+very kind of you, but we must make all that right. We sha'n't quarrel, I
+dare say. If you mean you'll do it, I have only just a word or two to
+say before you begin."
+
+"I shall be proud to serve you, Thompson, and on any terms you please."
+
+"Well, it is a serving me--I don't deny it--but, mind you, only till you
+have dropped into something worth your while. What I wish to say is as
+this: As soon as ever my missus hears of what you are going to do, I
+know as well what she'll be at as I know what I am talking of now.
+She'll just be breaking my heart to have the boys larned French. Now,
+I'd just as soon bind 'em apprentice to that ere Clayton. I've seen too
+much of that ere sort of thing in my time. I'm as positive as I sit
+here, that when a chap begins to talk French he loses all his English
+spirit, and feels all over him as like a mounseer as possible. I'm sure
+he does. I've seen it a hundred times, and that I couldn't a-bear.
+Besides, I've been told that French is the language the thieves talk,
+and I solemnly believe it. That's one thing. Now, here's another. You'll
+excuse me, my dear fellow. In course you know more than I do, but I must
+say that you have got sometimes a very roundabout way of coming to the
+pint. I mean no offence, and I don't blame you. It's all along of the
+company you have kept. You are--it's the only fault you have got--you
+are oudaciously fond of hard words. Don't let the young uns larn 'em.
+That's all I have to say, and we'll talk of the pay some other time."
+
+At this turn of the conversation, Thompson insisted upon my lighting a
+pipe and joining him in the gin and water. We smoked for many minutes in
+silence. My friend had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and had drawn the table
+nearer to his warm and hospitable fire. A log of wood was burning slowly
+and steadily away, and a small, bright--very bright--copper kettle
+overlooked it from the hob. My host had fixed his feet upon the
+fender--the unemployed hand was in his corduroys. His eyes were three
+parts closed, enjoying what from its origin may be called--a pure
+tobacco-born soliloquy. The smoke arose in thin white curls from the
+clay cup, and at regular periods stole blandly from the corner of his
+lips. The silent man was blessed. He had been happy at his work; he had
+grown happier as the sun went down; his happiness was ripening at the
+supper table; _now_, half-asleep and half-awake--half conscious and half
+dreaming--wholly free from care, and yet not free from pregnant
+thought--the labourer had reached the summit of felicity, and was at
+peace--intensely.
+
+A few evenings only had elapsed after this interesting meeting, before
+I was again spending a delicious hour or two with the simple-hearted and
+generous upholsterer. There was something very winning in these moments
+snatched and secured from the hurricane of life, and passed in thorough
+and undisturbed enjoyment. My friend, notwithstanding that he had
+engaged my services, and was pleased to express his satisfaction at the
+mode in which I rendered them, was yet alive to my interests, and too
+apprehensive of injuring them by keeping me away from loftier
+employment. He did not like my being _thrown out_ of the chapel,
+especially after he had heard my determination not to forsake
+immediately the sect to which I had attached myself. He was indifferent
+to his own fate. His worldly prospects could not be injured by his
+expulsion; on the contrary, he slyly assured me that "his neighbours
+would begin to think better of him, and give him credit for having
+become an honester and more trustworthy man." But with regard to myself
+it was a different thing. I should require "a character" at some time or
+another, and there was a body of men primed and ready to vilify and
+crush me. He advised me, whilst he acknowledged it was a hard thing to
+say, and "it went agin him to do it," to apply once more respectfully
+for my dismission. "It won't do," he pertinently said, "to bite your
+nose off to be revenged on your tongue." I was certainly in a mess, and
+must get out of it in the best way that I could. Buster and Tomkins had
+great power in _the Church_, and if I represented my case to either or
+both of them, he did hope they might be brought to consent not to injure
+me, or stand in the way of my getting bread. "In a quarrel," he said, in
+conclusion, "some one must give in. I was a young man, and had my way to
+make, and though he should despise his-self if he recommended me to do
+any thing mean and dirty in the business, yet, he thought, as the father
+of a numerous family, he ought to advise me to be civil, and to do the
+best for myself in this unfortunate dilemmy."
+
+I accepted his advice, and determined to wait upon the dapper deacon. I
+was physically afraid to encounter Buster, not so much on account of
+what I had seen of his spiritual pretension, as of what I had heard of
+his domestic behaviour. It was not a very difficult task to obtain from
+Mrs Thompson the secret history of many of her highly privileged
+acquaintances and brethren. She enjoyed, in a powerful degree, the
+peculiar virtue of her amiable sex, and to communicate secrets,
+delivered to her in strictest confidence, and imparted by her again with
+equal caution and provisory care, was the choicest recreation of her
+well employed and useful life. It was through this lady that I was
+favoured with a glance into the natural heart of Mr Buster; or into what
+he would himself have called, with a most unfilial disgust, "HIS OLD
+MAN." It appeared that, like most great _actors_, he was a very
+different personage before and behind the curtain. Kings, who are
+miserable and gloomy through the five acts of a dismal tragedy, and who
+must needs die at the end of it, are your merriest knaves over a tankard
+at the Shakspeare's Head. Your stage fool shall be the dullest dog that
+ever spoiled mirth with sour and discontented looks. Jabez Buster, his
+employment being over at Mr Clayton's theatre, his dress thrown aside,
+his mask put by, was not to be recognised by his nearest friend. This is
+the perfection of art. A greater tyrant on a small scale, with limited
+means, never existed than the saintly Buster when his character was
+done, and he found himself again in the bosom of his family. Unhappy
+bosom was it, and a sad flustration did his presence, nine times out of
+ten, produce there. He had four sons, and a delicate creature for a
+wife, born to be crushed. The sons were remarkable chiefly for their
+hypocrisy, which promised, in the fulness of time, to throw their
+highly-gifted parent's far into the shade; and, secondarily, for their
+persecution of their helpless and indulgent mother. They witnessed and
+approved so much the success of Jabez in this particular, that during
+his absence they cultivated the affectionate habit until it became a
+kind of second nature, infinitely more racy and agreeable than the
+primary. In proportion to their deliberate oppression of their mother
+was their natural dread and terror of their father. Mrs Thompson
+pronounced it "the shockingest thing in this world to be present when
+the young blue-beards were worryting their mother's soul out with
+saying, '_I sha'n't_' and '_I won't_' to every thing, and swearing
+'_they'd tell their father this_,' '_and put him up to that, and then
+wouldn't he make a jolly row about it_,' with hollering out for nothing
+at all, only to frighten the poor timid cretur, and then making a
+holabaloo with the chairs, or perhaps falling down, roaring and kicking,
+just to drive the poor thing clean out of her wits, on purpose to laugh
+at her for being so taken in. Well, but it was a great treat, too," she
+added, "to hear, in the midst of all this, Buster's heavy foot in the
+passage, and to see what a scrimmage there was at once amongst all the
+young hypocrites. How they all run in different directions--one to the
+fire--one to the table--one out at the back-door--one any where he
+could--all of 'em as silent as mice, and afeard of the very eye of the
+blacksmith, who knew, good man, how to keep every man Jack of 'em in
+order, and, if a word didn't do, wasn't by no means behind hand with
+blows. Buster," she continued, "had his faults like other men, but he
+was a saint if ever there was one. To be sure he did like to have his
+own way at home, and wasn't it natural? And if he was rather overbearing
+and cruel to his wife, wasn't that, she should like to know, Satan
+warring with the new man, and sometimes getting the better of it? And if
+he was, as Thompson had hinted, rayther partial to the creature, and
+liked good living, what was this to the purpose? it was an infirmity
+that might happen to the best Christian living. Nobody could say that he
+wasn't a renewed man, and a chosen vessel, and faithful to his call. A
+man isn't a backslider because he's carnally weak, and a man isn't a
+saint because he's moral and well-behaved. 'Good works,' Mr Clayton
+said, 'was filthy rags,' and so they were. To be sure, between
+themselves, there were one or two things said about Buster that she
+couldn't approve of. For instance, she had been told--but _this_ was
+quite in confidence, and really must _not_ go further--that he
+was--that--that, in fact, he was overtaken now and then with liquor, and
+then the house could hardly hold him, he got so furious, and, they did
+say, used such horrid language. But, after all, what was this? If a
+man's elected, he is not so much the worse. Besides, if one listened to
+people, one might never leave off. She had actually heard, she wouldn't
+say from whom, that Buster very often kept out late at night--sometimes
+didn't come home at all, and sometimes did at two o'clock in the
+morning, very hungry and ill-tempered, and then forced his poor wife out
+of bed, and made the delicate and shivering creature light a fire, cook
+beefsteaks, go into the yard for beer, and wait upon him till he had
+even eat every morsel up. She for one would never believe all this,
+though Mrs Buster herself had told her every word with tears in her
+eyes, and in the greatest confidence; so she trusted I wouldn't repeat
+it, as it wouldn't look well in her to be found out telling other
+people's secrets." Singular, perhaps, to say, the tale did not go
+further. I kept the lady's secret, and at the same time declined to
+approach Mr Jabez Buster in the character of a suppliant. If his
+advocate and panegyrist had nothing more to say for him, it could not be
+uncharitable to conclude that the pretended saint was as bold a sinner
+as ever paid infamous courtship to religion, and as such was studiously
+to be avoided. I turned my attention from him to Tomkins. There was no
+grossness about him, no brutality, no abominable vice. In the hour of my
+defeat and desertion, he had extended to me his sympathy, and, more in
+sorrow than in anger, I am convinced he voted for my expulsion from the
+church when he found that his vote, and twenty added to it, would not
+have been sufficient to protect me. He could not act in opposition to
+the wishes of his friend and patron, Mr Clayton, but very glad would he
+have been, as every word and look assured me, to meet the wishes of us
+both, had that been practicable. If the great desire of Jehu Tomkins'
+heart could have been gratified, he never would have been at enmity with
+a single soul on earth. He was a soft, good-natured, easy man; most
+desirous to be let alone, and not uneasily envious or distressed to see
+his neighbours jogging on, so long as he could do his own good stroke of
+business, and keep a little way before them. Jehu was a Liberal too--in
+politics and in religion--in every thing, in fact, but the one small
+article of _money_, and here, I must confess, the good dissenter
+dissented little from the best of us. He was a stanch Conservative in
+matters connected with the _till_. For his private life it was
+exemplary--at least it looked so to the world, and the world is
+satisfied with what it sees. Jehu was attentive to his business--yes,
+very--and a business life is not monotonous and dull, if it be relieved,
+as it was in this case, by dexterous arts, that give an interest and
+flavour to the commonest pursuits. Sometimes a customer would die--a
+natural state of things, but a great event for Jehu. First, he would
+"improve the occasion" to the surviving relatives--condole and pray with
+them. Afterwards he would _improve_ it to himself, in his own little
+room, at night, when all the children were asleep, and no one was awake
+but Mrs Tomkins and himself. Then he would get down his ledger, and turn
+to the deceased's account--
+
+    "----How _long_ it is thou see'st,
+    And he would gaze 'till it became _much longer_;"
+
+"For who could tell whether six shirts or twelve were bought in July
+last, and what could be the harm of making those eight handkerchiefs a
+dozen? He was a strange old gentleman; lived by himself--and the books
+might be referred to, and speak boldly for themselves." Yes, cunning
+Jehu, so they might, with those interpolations and erasures that would
+confound and overcome a lawyer. When customers did not die, it was
+pastime to be dallying with the living. In adding up a bill with haste,
+how many times will four and four make _nine_? They generally did with
+Jehu. The best are liable to errors. It cost a smirk or smile; Jehu had
+hundreds at command, and the accident was amended. How easy is it
+sometimes to give no bill at all! How very easy to apply, a few months
+afterwards, for second payment; how much more easy still to pocket it
+without a word; or, if discovered and convicted, to apologize without a
+blush for the _mistake_! No, Jehu Tomkins, let me do you justice--this
+is not so easy--it requires all your zeal and holy intrepidity to reach
+this pitch of human frailty and corruption. With regard to the domestic
+position of my interesting friend, it is painful to add, that the less
+that is said about it the better. In vain was his name in full, painted
+in large yellow letters, over the shop front. In vain was _Bot. of Jehu
+Tomkins_ engraven on satin paper, with flourishes innumerable beneath
+the royal arms; he was no more the master of his house than was the
+small boy of the establishment, who did the dirty work of the place for
+nothing a-week and the broken victuals. If Jehu was deacon abroad, he
+was taught to acknowledge an _arch_deacon at home--one to whom he was
+indebted for his success in life, and for reminding him of that
+agreeable fact about four times during every day of his existence. I was
+aware of this delicate circumstance when I ventured to the
+linen-draper's shop on my almost hopeless mission; but, although I had
+never spoken to Mrs Tomkins, I had often seen her in the chapel, and I
+relied much on the feeling and natural tenderness of the female heart.
+The respectable shop of Mr Tomkins was in Fleet Street. The
+establishment consisted of Mrs Tomkins, _premiere_; Jehu,
+under-secretary; and four sickly-looking young ladies behind the
+counter. It is to be said, to the honour of Mrs Tomkins, that she
+admitted no young woman into her service whose character was not
+_decided_, and whose views were not very clear. Accordingly, the four
+young ladies were members of the chapel. It is pleasing to reflect,
+that, in this well-ordered house of business, the ladies took their
+turns to attend the weekly prayer meetings of the church. Would that I
+might add, that they were _not_ severally met on these occasions by
+their young men at the corner of Chancery Lane, and invariably escorted
+by them some two or three miles in a totally opposite direction. Had Mrs
+Tomkins been born a man, it is difficult to decide what situation she
+would have adorned the most. She would have made a good man of
+business--an acute lawyer--a fine casuist--a great divine. Her
+attainments were immense; her self-confidence unbounded. She was a woman
+of middle height, and masculine bearing. She was not prepossessing,
+notwithstanding her white teeth and large mouth, and the intolerable
+grin that a customer to the amount of a halfpenny and upwards could
+bring upon her face under any circumstances, and at any hour of the day.
+Her complexion might have been good originally. Red blotches scattered
+over her cheek had destroyed its beauty. She wore a modest and becoming
+cap, and a gold eyeglass round her neck. She was devoted to
+money-making--heart and soul devoted to it during business hours. What
+time she was not in the shop, she passed amongst dissenting ministers,
+spiritual brethren, and deluded sinners. It remains to state the fact,
+that, whilst a customer never approached the lady without being repelled
+by the offensive smirk that she assumed, no dependent ever ventured near
+her without the fear of the scowl that sat naturally (and fearfully,
+when she pleased) upon her dark and inauspicious brow. What wonder that
+little Jehu was crushed into nothingness, behind his own counter, under
+the eye of his own wife!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF LONDON. SECOND SERIES.
+
+PART II.
+
+
+In our last, we had occasion to speak sharply of that class of our
+aristocratic youth known by the name of fast fellows, and it may be
+thought that we characterized their foibles rather pointedly, and
+tinctured our animadversions with somewhat of undue asperity. This
+charge, however, can be made with no ground of reason or justice: the
+fact is, we only lashed the follies for which that class of men are
+pre-eminent, but left their vices in the shade, in the hope that the
+_raw_ we have already established, will shame the fast fellows into a
+sense of the proprieties of conduct due to themselves and their station.
+
+The misfortune is, that these fast fellows forget, in the pursuit of
+their favourite follies, that the mischief to society begins only with
+themselves: that man is naturally a servile, imitative animal; and that
+he follows in the track of a great name, as vulgar muttons run at the
+heels of a belwether. The poison of fashionable folly runs comparatively
+innocuous while it circulates in fashionable veins; but when vulgar
+fellows are innoculated with the virus, it becomes a plague, a moral
+small-pox, distorting, disfiguring the man's mind, pockpitting his small
+modicum of brains, and blinding his mind's eye to the supreme contempt
+his awkward vagaries inspire.
+
+The fast fellows rejoice exceedingly in the spread of their servile
+imitation of fashionable folly, this gentlemanly profligacy at
+second-hand; and perhaps this is the worst trait in their character, for
+it is at once malicious and unwise: malicious, because the contemplation
+of humanity, degraded by bad example in high station, should rather be a
+source of secret shame than of devilish gratification: unwise, because
+their example is a discredit to their order, and a danger. To posses
+birth, fashion, station, wealth, power, is title enough to envy, and
+handle sufficient for scandal. How much stronger becomes that title--how
+much longer that handle--when men, enjoying this pre-eminence, enjoy it,
+not using, but abusing their good fortune!
+
+We should not have troubled our heads with the fast fellows at all, if
+it were not absolutely essential to the full consideration of our
+subject, widely to sever the prominent classes of fashionable life, and
+to have no excuse for continuing in future to confound them. We have now
+done with the fast fellows, and shall like them the more the less we
+hear of them.
+
+
+
+CONCERNING SLOW FELLOWS.
+
+
+The SLOW SCHOOL of fashionable or aristocratic life, comprises those who
+think that, in the nineteenth century, other means must be taken to
+preserve their order in its high and responsible position than those
+which, in dark ages, conferred honour upon the tallest or the bravest.
+They think, and think wisely, that the only method of keeping above the
+masses, in this active-minded age, is by soaring higher and further into
+the boundless realms of intellect; or at the least forgetting, in a fair
+neck-and-neck race with men of meaner birth, their purer blood, and
+urging the generous contest for fame, regardless of the allurements of
+pleasure, or the superior advantages of fortune. In truth, we might
+ask, what would become of our aristocratic classes ere long, if they
+came, as a body, to be identified with their gambling lords, their
+black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of
+Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the
+platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these
+harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there
+was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately happens that
+there is better.
+
+We can boast among our nobles and aristocratic families, a few men of
+original, commanding, and powerful intellect; many respectable in most
+departments of intellectual rivalry; many more laborious, hard-working
+men; and about the same proportion of dull, stupid, fat-headed, crabbed,
+conceited, ignorant, insolent men, that you may find among the same
+given number of those commonly called the educated classes. We refer you
+to the aristocracies of other countries, and we think we may safely say,
+that we have more men of that class, in this country, who devote
+themselves to the high duties of their station, regardless of its
+pleasures, than in any other: men who recognize practically the
+responsibility of their rank, and do not shirk from them; men who think
+they have something to do, and something to repay, for the accidents of
+birth and fortune--who, in the senate, in the field, or in the less
+prominent, but not less noble, career of private life, act, as they
+feel, with the poet:
+
+    "At heros, et decus, et quae non fecimus ipsi,
+    Vix ea nostra voco."
+
+It has been admirably remarked, by some one whose name we forget, that
+the grand advantage of high birth is, placing a man as far forward at
+twenty-five as another man is at fifty. We might, as a corollary to this
+undeniable proposition, add, that birth not only places, but keeps a man
+in that advance of his fellows, which in the sum of life makes such vast
+ultimate difference in the prominence of their position.
+
+This advantage enjoyed by the aristocracy of birth, of early enrolling
+themselves among the aristocracy of power, has, like every thing in the
+natural and moral world, its compensating disadvantage: they lose in one
+way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent
+in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter
+the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by
+virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they
+must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest
+and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy
+responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the
+burden of responsible power.
+
+One striking example of the force of birth, station, and association in
+public life, never fails to occur to us, as an extraordinary example of
+the magnifying power of these extrinsic qualities, in giving to the
+aristocracy of birth a consideration, which, though often well bestowed,
+is yet oftener bestowed without any desert whatever; and that title to
+admiration and respect, which has died with ancestry, patriotism, and
+suffering in the cause of freedom, is transferred from the illustrious
+dead to the undistinguished living.
+
+Without giving a catalogue _raisonne_ of the slow fellows, (we use the
+term not disrespectfully, but only in contradistinction to the others,)
+we may observe that, besides the public service in which the great names
+are sufficiently known, you have poets, essayists, dramatists,
+astronomers, geologists, travellers, novelists, and, what is better than
+all, philanthropists. In compliment to human nature, we take the liberty
+merely to mention the names of Lord Dudley Stuart and Lord Ashley. The
+works of the slow fellows, especially their poetry, indicate in a
+greater or less degree the social position of the authors; seldom or
+never deficient in good taste, and not without feeling, they lack power
+and daring. The smooth style has their preference, and their verses
+smack of the school of Lord Fanny; indeed, we know not that, in poetry
+or prose, we can point out one of our slow fellows of the present day
+rising above judicious mediocrity. It is a curious fact, that the most
+daring and original of our noble authors have, in their day, been fast
+fellows; it is only necessary to name Rochester, Buckingham, and Byron.
+
+
+Among the slow fellows, are multitudes of pretenders to intellect in a
+small way. These patronize a drawing-master, not to learn to draw, but
+to learn to talk of drawing; they also study the _Penny Magazine_ and
+other profound works, to the same purpose; they patronize the London
+University, and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, as
+far as lending their names; for, being mostly of the class of
+fashionable _screws_, they take care never to subscribe to any thing.
+They have a refined taste in shawls, and are consequently in the
+confidence of dressy old women, who hold them up as examples of every
+thing that is good. They take chocolate of a morning, and tea in the
+evening; drink sherry with a biscuit, and wonder how people _can_ eat
+those hot lunches. They take constitutional walks and Cockle's pills;
+and, by virtue of meeting them at the Royal Society, are always
+consulting medical men, but take care never to offer them a guinea. They
+talk of music, of which they know something--of books, of which they
+know little--and of pictures, of which they know less; they have always
+read "the last novel," which is as much as they can well carry; they
+know literary, professional, and scientific men at Somerset House, but,
+if they meet them in Park Lane, look as if they never saw them before;
+they are very peevish, have something to say against every man, and
+always say the worst first; they are very quiet in their manner, almost
+sly, and never use any of the colloquialisms of the fast fellows; they
+treat their inferiors with great consideration, addressing them, "honest
+friend," "my good man," and so on, but have very little heart, and less
+spirit.
+
+They equally abhor the fast fellows and the pretenders to fashion. They
+are afraid of the former, who are always ridiculing them and their
+pursuits, by jokes theoretical and practical. If the fast fellows
+ascertain that a slow fellow affects sketching, they club together to
+annoy him, talking of the "autumnal tints," and "the gilding of the
+western hemisphere;" if a botanist, they send him a cow-cabbage, or a
+root of mangel-wurzel, with a serious note, stating, that they hear it
+is a great curiosity in _his line_; if an entomologist, they are sure to
+send him away "with a flea in his ear." If he affects poetry, the fast
+fellows make one of their servants transcribe, from _Bell's Life_,
+Scroggins's poetical version of the fight between Bendigo and Bungaree,
+or some such stuff; and, having got the slow fellow in a corner, insist
+upon having his opinion, and drive him nearly mad. All these, and a
+thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren,
+not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "_gagging_," and
+genteel people "_quizzing_," but with a seriousness and gravity that
+heightens all the joke, and makes the slow fellow inexpressibly
+ridiculous.
+
+It is astonishing, considering the opportunities of the slow fellows,
+that they do not make a better figure; it seems wonderful, that they who
+glide swiftly down the current of fortune with wind and tide, should be
+distanced by those who, close-hauled upon a wind, are beating up against
+it all their lives; but so it is;--the compensating power that rules
+material nature, governs the operations of the mind. To whom much is
+given of opportunity, little is bestowed of the exertion to improve it.
+Those who rely more or less on claims extrinsic, are sure to be
+surpassed by those whose power is from within. After all, the great
+names of our nation (with here and there an exception to prove the rule)
+are plebeian.
+
+
+
+OF THE ARISTOCRACY OF POWER.
+
+
+In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the
+present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common
+butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
+
+They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their
+inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress
+of rational liberty, and of----but, in short, you have only to glance
+over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the
+horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England.
+
+The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too
+broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it
+exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim
+lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity
+as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of
+thought or action, especially in state affairs.
+
+Since our late lamented friends, the Whigs, have gone to enjoy a
+virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in
+politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days--no quackery, no
+mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot
+fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and
+now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst _quondam_ leaders of
+the Treasury Benech--now that the camp-followers have followed the
+leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have nobody to
+laugh at; and, like our departed friends, have too little of the
+statesman to be serious about serious matters.
+
+With regard to the aristocracy in their public capacity, this is the way
+we always look at them.
+
+In the first place, they govern us through the tolerance of public
+opinion, as men having station, power, property, much to lose, and
+little comparatively to gain--men who have put in bail to a large amount
+for their good behaviour: and, in the second place, they govern us,
+because really and truly there are so many outrageously discordant
+political quacks, desirous of taking our case in hand, that we find it
+our interest to entrust our public health to an accomplished physician,
+even although he charges a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure a
+perfect cure with a box of pills costing thirteenpence-halfpenny. There
+can be no doubt whatever, that the most careful men are the men who have
+most to care for: he that has a great deal to lose, will think twice,
+where he that has nothing to lose, will not think at all: and the
+government of this vast and powerful empire, we imagine, with great
+deference, must require a good deal of thinking. In a free press, we
+have a never-dying exponent of public opinion, a perpetual advocate of
+rational liberty, and a powerful engine for the exposure, which is
+ultimately the redress, of wrong: and although this influential member
+of our government receives no public money, nor is called right
+honourable, nor speaks in the House, yet in fact and in truth it has a
+seat in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous occasions, a voice of thunder.
+
+That the aristocracy of power should be in advance of public opinion, is
+not in the nature of things, and should no more be imputed as a crime to
+them, than to us not to run when we are not in a hurry: they cannot, as
+a body, move upwards, because they stand so near the top, that dangerous
+ambition is extinguished; and it is hardly to be expected that, as a
+body, they should move downwards, unless they find themselves supported
+in their position upon the right of others, in which case we have always
+seen that, although they descend gradually, they descend at last.
+
+This immobility of our aristocracy is the origin of the fixity of our
+political institutions, which has been, is, and will continue to be, the
+great element of our pre-eminence as a nation: it possesses a force
+corrective and directive, and at once restrains the excess, while it
+affords a point of resistance, to the current of the popular will. And
+this immobility, it should never be forgotten, is owing to that very
+elevation so hated and so envied: wanting which the aristocracy would be
+subject to the vulgar ambitions, vulgar passions, and sordid desires of
+meaner aspirants after personal advantage and distinction. It is a
+providential blessing, we firmly believe, to a great nation to possess a
+class, by fortune and station, placed above the unseemly contentions of
+adventurers in public life: looked up to as men responsible without hire
+for the public weal, and, without sordid ambitions of their own,
+solicitous to preserve it: looked up to, moreover, as examples of that
+refinement of feeling, jealous sense of honour, and manly independence,
+serving as detersives of the grosser humours of commercial life, and
+which, filtering through the successive _strata_ of society, clarify and
+purify in their course, leaving the very dregs the cleaner for their
+passage.
+
+A body thus by habit and constitution opposed to innovation, and
+determined against the recklessness of inconsiderate reforms, has
+furnished a stock argument to those who delight in "going a-head" faster
+than their feet, which are the grounds of their arguments, can carry
+them. We hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks in the way of
+legislative improvements, and, with greater propriety of metaphor,
+likened to drags upon the wheel of progressive reform; and so on,
+through all the regions of illustration, until we are in at the death of
+the metaphor. How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this
+anti-progressive barrier, to the concentration and deepening of the
+flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt
+altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too
+eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which
+gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and reckless
+enthusiasm, and the dregs of agitation, quietly to subside; and, for all
+that, bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with
+accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the
+barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time, only
+to withdraw when the time for interposition is past, we should live in a
+vortex of revolution and counter-revolution. Our whole time, and our
+undivided energies, would be employed in acting hastily, and repenting
+at leisure; in repining either because our biennial revolutions went too
+far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the
+unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with
+adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with
+every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would
+follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and
+trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in
+the eyes of the world what France now is--a people ready to sacrifice
+every solid advantage, every gradual, and therefore permanent,
+improvement, every ripening fruit that time and care, and the sunshine
+of peace only can mature, to a genius for revolution.
+
+This turbulent torrent of headlong reform, to-day flooding its banks,
+to-morrow dribbling in a half-dry channel, the aristocracy of power
+collects, concentrates, and converts into a power, even while it
+circumscribes it, and represses. So have we seen a mountain stream
+useless in summer, dangerous in winter, now a torrent now a puddle,
+wasting its unprofitable waters in needless brawling; let a barrier be
+opposed to its downward course, let it be dammed up, let a point of
+resistance be afforded where its waters may be gathered together, and
+regulated, you find it turned to valuable account, acting with men's
+hands, becoming a productive labourer, and contributing its time and its
+industry to advance the general sum of rational improvement.
+
+From the material to the moral world you may always reason by analogy.
+If you study the theory of revolutions, you will not fail to observe
+that, wherever, in constructing your barrier, you employ ignorant
+engineers, who have not duly calculated the depth and velocity of the
+current; whenever you raise your dam to such a height that no flood will
+carry away the waste waters; whenever you talk of finality to the
+torrent, saying, thus long shalt thou flow, and no longer; whenever you
+put upon your power a larger wheel than it can turn--you are slowly but
+surely preparing for that flood which will overwhelm your work, destroy
+your mills, your dams, and your engines; in a word, you are the remote
+cause of a revolution.
+
+This is the danger into which aristocracies of power are prone to fall:
+the error of democracies is, to delight in the absolutism of liberty;
+but thus it is with liberty itself, that true dignity of man, that
+parent of all blessings: absolute and uncontrolled, a tyranny beyond the
+power to endure itself, the worst of bad masters, a fool who is his own
+client; restrained and tempered, it becomes a wholesome discipline, a
+property with its rights and its duties, a sober responsibility,
+bringing with it, like all other responsibilities, its pleasures and its
+cares; not a toy to be played with, nor even a jewel to be worn in the
+bonnet, but a talent to be put out to interest, and enjoyed in the
+unbroken tranquillity of national thankfulness and peace.
+
+Another defect in the aristocracy of power is, the narrow sphere of
+their sympathies, extending only to those they know, and are familiar
+with; that is to say, only as far as the circumference of their own
+limited circle. This it is that renders them keenly apprehensive of
+danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which
+menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are
+comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles
+along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to
+the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from
+above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their
+position, and there to establish themselves in permanent security.
+
+As a remedy for this short-sightedness, the result of their isolated
+position, the aristocracy of power is always prompt to borrow from the
+aristocracy of talent that assistance in the practical working of its
+government which it requires; they are glad to find safe men among the
+people to whom they can delegate the cares of office, the annoyances of
+patronage, and the odium of power; and, the better to secure these men,
+they are always ready to lift them among themselves, to identify them
+with their exclusive interests, and to give them a permanent
+establishment among the nobles of the land.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS.
+
+
+Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of
+fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their
+manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint;
+staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with
+elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out
+of doors _in cuerpo_, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided
+military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they
+indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that
+these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man
+of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops
+the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as
+an "unsafe" fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our
+men of fashion originate any thing _outre_, or likely to attract
+attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to
+scrupulosity.
+
+Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than
+ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well
+dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a
+Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered
+pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it
+fits him--not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been
+born in it.
+
+There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an
+unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has
+always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the
+artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have
+seen--coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long
+credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the
+world--coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter,
+spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary
+foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly
+executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!
+
+Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into
+the _atelier_ of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in
+his hand, to order such a coat! _Order_ such a coat, forsooth! order a
+Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat--we say it with the
+generous indignation of a free Briton--is one of the exclusive
+privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!
+
+The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited
+approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which
+those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision
+we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age,
+or poverty of customers, _vested_ the office of trouser-cutter and coat
+architect in the same functionary, coats were without _soul_, and
+"inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said,
+"ridiculous exceedingly." In our day, on the contrary, we have attained
+to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give
+expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for
+life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.
+
+The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the
+excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in
+nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which
+people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West
+End fashionable _artistes_ in riding coats, in dress coats, in
+cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers
+of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third
+gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a
+barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other
+men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion
+turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards'
+and of Foot Guards' jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives
+these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a
+marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style
+of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not
+shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these
+disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which
+latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one
+gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of
+box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring,
+which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James's,
+within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a
+high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their
+vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays
+his tailors' bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of
+insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill;
+in a word, to make it pounds--"Excuse me, sir," said Snip, "but pray,
+let _us_ not talk of pounds--pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but
+artists, sir, _artists_ are always remunerated with guineas!"
+
+To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose
+peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in
+tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of
+elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire,
+extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is
+deficient in aught, the accessorial _toggery_, such as hats, boots,
+_choker_, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this
+department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as
+ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never
+see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan
+beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by
+no means allowable latitude of brim--besides, borrowing the fashion of a
+hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is
+with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and
+leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion:
+content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or
+behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man
+of fashion sedulously escheweth--a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a
+gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a
+four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of
+the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk
+worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
+putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of
+rain, has "taken the shine out of it."
+
+In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher
+Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are
+never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think
+their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of
+the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see
+him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days
+proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling
+along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to
+the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been
+attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and
+he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for
+stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want
+that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well
+tied _choker_. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the
+pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical
+investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment.
+A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a
+cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display
+gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than
+wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of
+a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming _choker, fine_ if
+you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour
+harmonizing with his residual _toggery_: this he ties with an easy,
+unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford
+men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not
+know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement
+of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a
+laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the
+principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these,
+as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher
+departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this
+important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the
+bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both
+the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying
+their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as
+possible.
+
+Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be
+sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese
+Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone,
+or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost
+not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever
+make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of
+his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below
+his waistband, as much as to say, "_if you only knew what a watch I have
+inside_!" Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he
+wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they
+are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.
+
+A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double
+stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like
+himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men
+of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take
+care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair
+a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the
+thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose
+kids, and desire to see no more of them.
+
+If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not
+put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the
+ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose
+completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays
+he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as
+possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by
+the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt
+cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by
+supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a
+pleasing contrast with that portion of the original _chemise_, vainly
+attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
+stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at
+the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
+wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a
+sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.
+
+A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble
+inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half
+shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his
+clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly
+_propre_, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:"
+he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the
+same, and has never been other than he now appears.
+
+You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the
+man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I
+will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
+_degage_, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou
+mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
+will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you
+plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in "topping
+the part."
+
+We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
+into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of
+fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving
+to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto:
+just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall
+merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered
+the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more
+properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human
+species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his
+father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention
+to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional
+dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best _artistes_,
+seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken
+heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating
+propriety of toggery--not at all: the whole secret consists in _never
+paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor_!
+
+Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three
+suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those
+who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand,
+for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to
+consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only
+from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring
+under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible
+depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain,
+and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy
+collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time
+must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to
+them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of
+shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
+walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure.
+They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling
+against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so
+much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the
+proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful
+indifference.
+
+But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never
+thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which
+the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of
+the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon
+themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants,
+the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest
+infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the
+people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be
+victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace
+and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home
+to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which
+you have not the most remote idea of paying for, _in secula seculorum_.
+So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies,
+when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather
+pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow
+you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The
+innate cruelty of the human animal is gratified, and the idea of a
+tailor's suffering is never conceived by a customer without involuntary
+cachinnation. Not only is he denied the attribute of integral
+manhood--which even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys--but that
+principle which induces a few men of enthusiastic temperament to pay
+debts, is always held a fault when applied to the bills of tailors. And,
+what is a curious and instructive fact in the natural history of London
+fashionable tailors, and altogether unnoticed by the Rev. Leonard
+Jenyns, in his _Manual of British Vertebrate Animals_, if you go to one
+of these gentlemen, requesting him to "execute," and professing your
+readiness to pay his bill on demand or delivery, he will be sure to give
+your order to the most scurvy botch in his establishment, put in the
+worst materials, and treat you altogether as a person utterly
+unacquainted with the usages of polite society. But if, on the contrary,
+you are recommended to him by Lord Fly-by-night, of Denman Priory--if
+you give a thundering order, and, instead of offering to pay for it,
+pull out a parcel of bill-stamps, and _promise_ fifty per cent for a few
+hundreds down, you will be surprised to observe what delight will
+express itself in the radiant countenance of your victim: visions of
+cent per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams of bonds with penalties, and
+all those various shapes in which security delights to involve the
+extravagant, rise flatteringly before the inward eye of the man of
+shreds and patches. By these transactions with the great, he becomes
+more and more a man, less and less a tailor; instead of cutting patterns
+and taking measures, he flings the tailoring to his foreman, becoming
+first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to peers of
+the realm.
+
+With a few more of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the
+gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A
+gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military
+man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as
+possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon
+horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who
+always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts higher than a
+threepenny stride on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a gentleman ever wear
+a _moustache_, unless he belongs to one of the regiments of hussars, or
+the household cavalry, who alone are ordered to display that ornamental
+exuberance. Foreigners, military or non-military, are recognized as
+wearing hair on the upper lip with propriety, as is the custom of their
+country. But no gentleman here thinks of such a thing, any more than he
+would think of sporting the uniform of the Tenth Hussars.
+
+There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the
+_moustache_, which they clip and cut _a la Vandyk_: this is useful, as
+affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an
+ass--the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like
+an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair,
+exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like
+an ourang-outang as possible.
+
+Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the
+gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better
+sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and
+behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not
+the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more
+nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and
+gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba
+or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.
+
+In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale
+the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for
+however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed
+when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more
+disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.
+
+Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar
+_habitat_: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the
+hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he
+venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on
+business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in
+Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James's.
+
+
+OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.
+
+     "Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare,
+     taste, high life and the musical glasses."--_Vicar of
+     Wakefield_.
+
+We will venture to assert, that in the course of these essays on the
+aristocracies of London life, we have never attempted to induce any of
+our readers to believe that there was any cause for him to regret,
+whatever condition of life it had pleased Providence to place him in, or
+to suppose, for one moment, that reputable men, though in widely
+different circumstances, are not equally reputable. We have studiously
+avoided portraying fashionable life according to the vulgar notions,
+whether depreciatory or panegyrical. We have shown that that class is
+not to be taken and treated of as an integral quantity, but to be
+analyzed as a component body, wherein is much sterling ore and no little
+dross. We have shown by sufficient examples, that whatever in our eyes
+makes the world of fashion really respectable, is solely owing to the
+real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever
+contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the
+misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible.
+
+Of the former, the example is of infinite value to society, in refining
+its tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed ease, which, if not
+true politeness, is its true substitute; and, of the latter, the
+mischief done to society is enhanced by the multitude of low people
+ready to imitate their vices, inanities, and follies.
+
+Pretenders to fashion, who hang upon the outskirts of fashionable
+society, and whose lives are a perpetual but unavailing struggle to jump
+above their proper position, are horrid nuisances; and they abound,
+unfortunately, in London.
+
+In a republic, where practical equality is understood and acted upon,
+this pretension would be intolerable; in an aristocratic state of
+society, with social gradations pointedly defined and universally
+recognized, it is merely ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the
+pretenders, it is a source of much and deserved misery and isolation.
+
+There are ten thousand varying shades and degrees of this pretension,
+from the truly fashionable people who hanker after the _exclusives_, or
+seventh heaven of high life, down to the courier out of place, who, in a
+pot-house, retails Debrett by heart, and talks of lords, and dukes, and
+earls, as of his particular acquaintance, and how and where he met them
+when on his travels.
+
+The _exclusives_ are a queer set, some of them not by any means people
+of the best pretensions to lead the _ton_. Lady L---- and Lady B---- may
+be very well as patronesses of Almack's; but what do you say to Lady
+J----, a plebeian, and a licensed dealer in money, keeping her shop by
+deputy in a lane somewhere behind Cornhill? Almack's, as every body
+knows who has been there, or who has talked with any observing _habitue_
+of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in
+somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least
+effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men,
+and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes
+they wear: yet, by mere dint of difficulty, by the simple circumstance
+of making admission to this assembly a matter of closeting, canvassing,
+balloting, black-balling, and so forth, people of much better fashion
+than many of the exclusives make it a matter of life and death to have
+their admission secured. Admission to Almack's is to a young _debutante_
+of fashion as great an object as a seat at the Privy Council Board to a
+flourishing politician: your _ton_ is stamped by it, you are of the
+exclusive _set_, and, by virtue of belonging to that set, every other is
+open to you as a matter of course, when you choose to condescend to
+visit it. The room in which Almack's balls are held we need not
+describe, because it has been often described before, and because the
+doorkeeper, any day you choose to go to Duke Street, St James's, will be
+too happy to show it you for sixpence; but we will give you in his own
+words, all the information we could contrive to get from a man of the
+highest fashion, who is a subscriber.
+
+"Why, I really don't know," said he, "that I have any thing to tell you
+about Almack's, except that all that the novel-writers say about it is
+ridiculous nonsense: the lights are good, the refreshments not so good,
+the music excellent; the women dress well, dance a good deal, and talk
+but little. There is a good deal of envy, jealousy, and criticism of
+faces, figures, fortunes, and pretensions: one, or at most two, of the
+balls in a season are pleasant; the others _slow_ and very dull. The
+point of the thing seems to be, that people of rank choose to like it
+because it stamps a set, and low people talk about it because they
+cannot by any possibility know any thing about it."
+
+Such is Almack's, of which volumes have been spun, of most effete and
+lamentable trash, to gratify the morbid appetites of the pretenders to
+fashion.
+
+We must not omit to inform our rural readers, that no conventional rank
+gives any one in London a patent of privilege in truly fashionable
+society. An old baronet shall be exclusive, when a young peer shall have
+no fashionable society at all: a lord is by no means necessarily a man
+in what the fashionable sets call good society: we have many lords who
+are not men of fashion, and many men of fashion who are not lords.
+
+Professional peers, whether legal, naval, or military, bishops, judges,
+and all that class of men who attain by talents, interest, and good
+fortune, or all, or any of these, a lofty social position, have no more
+to do with the exclusive or merely fashionable sets than you or I. A man
+may be a barrister in full practice to-day, an attorney-general
+to-morrow, a chief-justice the day after with a peerage: yet his wife
+and daughter visit the same people, and are visited by the same people,
+that associated with them before. If men of fashion know them, it is
+because they have business to transact or favours to seek for, or
+because it is part of their system to keep up a qualified intimacy with
+all whom they think proper to lift to their own level: but this intimacy
+is only extended by the man of birth to the man of talent. His family do
+not become people of fashion until the third or fourth generation: he
+remains the man of business, the useful, working, practical,
+brains-carrying man that he was; and his family, if they are wise, seek
+not to become the familiars of the old aristocracy, and if they are
+foolish, become the most unfortunate pretenders to fashion. They are too
+near to be pleasant; and the gulf which people of hereditary fashion
+place between is impassable, even though they flounder up to their necks
+in servile mud.
+
+It is the same with baronets, M.P.'s, and all that sort of people. These
+handles to men's names go down very well in the country, where it is
+imagined that a baronet or an M.P. is, _ex officio_, a man of
+consequence, and that, rank being equal, consequence is also equal. In
+London, on the contrary, people laugh at the idea of a man pluming
+himself upon such distinctions without a difference: in town we have
+baronets of all sorts--the "Heathcotes, and such large-acred men," Sir
+Watkyn, and the territorial baronetage: then we have the Hanmers, and
+others of undoubted fashion, to which their patent is the weakest of
+their claims: then we have the military, naval, and medical baronet:
+descending, through infinite gradations, we come down to the
+tallow-chandling, the gin-spinning, the banking, the pastry-cooking
+baronetage.
+
+What is there, what can there be, in common with these widely severed
+classes, save that they equally enjoy _Sir_ at the head and _Bart_. at
+the tail of their sponsorial and patronymic appellations? Do you think
+the landed Bart. knows any more of the medical Bart. than that, when he
+sends for the other to attend his wife, he calls him generally "doctor,"
+and seldom Sir James: or that the military Bart. does not much like the
+naval Bart.? and do not all these incongruous Barts. shudder at the bare
+idea of been seen on the same side of the street with a gin-spinning,
+Patent-British-Genuine-Foreign-Cognac Brandy-making Bart.? and do not
+each and every one of these Barts. from head to tail, even including the
+last-mentioned, look down with immeasurable disdain upon the poor Nova
+Scotia baronets, who move heaven and earth to get permission to wear a
+string round their necks, and a badge like the learned fraternity of
+cabmen?
+
+Then as to the magic capitals M.P., which provincial people look upon as
+embodying in the wearer the concentrated essence of wisdom, eloquence,
+personal distinction, and social eminence. Who, in a country town, on a
+market day, has not seen tradesmen cocking their eye, apprentices
+glowering through the shop front, and ladies subdolously peeping behind
+the window-shutter to catch a glimpse of the "member for our town," and,
+having seen him, think they are rather happier then they were before?
+The greatest fun in the world is to go to a _cul-de-sac_ off a dirty
+lane near Palace Yard, called Manchester Buildings, a sort of senatorial
+pigeon-house, where the meaner fry of houseless M.P.'s live, each in his
+one pair, two pair, three pair, as the case may be, and give a postman's
+knock at every door in rapid succession. In a twinkling, the "collective
+wisdom" of Manchester Buildings and the Midland Counties poke out their
+heads. Cobden appears on the balcony; Muntz glares out of a second
+floor, like a live bear in a barber's window; Wallace of Greenock comes
+to the door in a red nightcap; and a long "tail" of the other immortals
+of a session. You may enjoy the scene as much as you please; but when
+you hear one or two of the young Irish patriotic "mimbers" floundering
+from the attics, the wisest course you can take will be incontinently to
+"mizzle." These men, however, have one redeeming quality--that they
+live in Manchester Buildings, and don't care who knows it; they are out
+of fashion, and don't care who are in; they are minding their business,
+and not hanging at the skirts of people ever ready and willing to kick
+them off.
+
+Then there are the "dandy" M.P.'s, who ride hack-horses, associate with
+fashionable actresses, and hang about the clubs. Then there is the
+chance or accidental M.P., who has been elected he hardly knows how or
+when, and wonders to find himself in Parliament. Then there is the
+desperate, adventuring, ear-wigging M.P., whose hope of political
+existence, and whose very livelihood, depend upon getting or continuing
+in place. Then there is the legal M.P., with one eye fixed on the
+Queen's, the other squinting at the Treasury Bench. Then there is the
+lounging M.P., who is usually the scion of a noble family, and who comes
+now and then into the House, to stare vacantly about, and go out again.
+Then there is the military M.P., who finds the House an agreeable
+lounge, and does not care to join his regiment on foreign service. Then
+there is the bustling M.P. of business, the M.P. of business without
+bustle, and the independent country gentleman M.P., who wants nothing
+for himself or any body else, and who does not care a turnip-top for the
+whole lot of them.
+
+The aggregate distinction, as a member of Parliament, is totally sunk in
+London. It is the man, and not the two letters after his name, that any
+body whose regard is worth the having in the least regard. There are
+M.P.s never seen beyond the exclusive set, except on a committee of the
+House, and then they know and speak to nobody save one of themselves.
+There are other M.P.s that you will find in no society except Tom
+Spring's or Owen Swift's, at the Horse-shoe in Litchborne Street.
+
+These observations upon baronets and M.P.s may be extended upwards to
+the peerage, and downwards to the professional, commercial, and all
+other the better classes. Every man hangs, like a herring, by his own
+tail; and every class would be distinct and separate, but that the
+pretenders to fashion, like some equivocal animals in the chain of
+animated nature, connect these different classes by copying
+pertinaciously the manners, and studying to adopt the tastes and habits
+of the class immediately above them.
+
+Of pretenders to fashion, perhaps the most successful in their imitative
+art are the
+
+SHEENIES.--By this term, as used by men of undoubted _ton_ with
+reference to the class we are about to consider, you are to understand
+runagate Jews rolling in riches, who profess to love roast pork above
+all things, who always eat their turkey with sausages, and who have
+_cut_ their religion for the sake of dangling at the heels of
+fashionable Christians. These people are "swelling" upon the profits of
+the last generation in St Mary Axe or Petticoat Lane. The founders of
+their families have been loan-manufacturers, crimps, receivers of stolen
+goods, wholesale nigger-dealers, clippers and sweaters, rag-merchants,
+and the like, and conscientious Israelites; but their children, not
+having fortitude to abide by their condition, nor right principle to
+adhere to their sect, come to the west end of the town, and, by right of
+their money, make unremitting assaults upon the loose fish of
+fashionable society, who laugh at, and heartily despise them, while they
+are as ashes in the mouths of the respectable members of the persuasion
+to which they originally belonged.
+
+HEAVY SWELLS are another very important class of pretenders to fashion,
+and are divided into civil and military. Professional men, we say it to
+their honour, seldom affect the heavy swell, because the feeblest
+glimmerings of that rationality of thinking which results from among the
+lowest education, preserves them from the folly of the attempt, and, in
+preserving from folly, saves them from the self-reproaching misery that
+attends it. Men of education or of common sense, look upon pretension to
+birth, rank, or any thing else to which they have no legitimate claim,
+as little more than moral forgery; it is with them an uttering base
+coin upon false pretences. It is generally the wives and families of
+professional men who are afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which
+we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of
+gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the
+son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a
+marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains,
+deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and
+bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He
+is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he is--never so
+completely in his element as when acting the thing he is not, nor can
+ever be. He spends his life in jumping, like a cat, at shadows on the
+wall. He has day and night dreams of people, who have not the least idea
+that such a man is in existence, and he comes in time, by mere dint of
+thinking of nobody else, to think that he is one of them. He acquaints
+himself with the titles of lords, as other men do those of books, and
+then boasts largely of the extent of his acquaintance.
+
+Let us suppose that he is an officer of a hard-fighting,
+foreign-service, neglected infantry regiment. This, which to a soldier
+would be an honest pride, is the shame of the Heavy Military Swell. His
+chief business in life, next to knowing the names and faces of lords, is
+concealing from you the corps to which he has the dishonour, he thinks,
+to belong. He talks mightily of the service, of hussars and light
+dragoons; but when he knows that you know better, when you poke him hard
+about the young or old buffs, or the dirty half-hundred, he whispers in
+your ear that "my fellows," as he calls them, are very "fast," and that
+they are "all known in town, very well known indeed"--a piece of
+information you will construe in the case of the heavy swell to mean,
+better known than trusted.
+
+When he is on full pay, the heavy swell is known to the three old women
+and five desperate daughters who compose good society in country
+quarters. He affects a patronizing air at small tea-parties, and is
+wonderfully run after by wretched un-idea'd girls, that is, by ten girls
+in twelve; he is eternally striving to get upon the "staff," or anyhow
+to shirk his regimental duty; he is a whelp towards the men under his
+command, and has a grand idea of spurs, steel scabbards, and flogging;
+to his superiors he is a spaniel, to his brother officers an intolerable
+ass; he makes the mess-room a perfect hell with his vanity, puppyism,
+and senseless bibble-babble.
+
+On leave, or half-pay, he "mounts mustaches," to help the hussar and
+light-dragoon idea, or to delude the ignorant into a belief that he may
+possibly belong to the household cavalry. He hangs about doors of
+military clubs, with a whip in his hand; talks very loud at the "Tiger"
+or the "Rag and famish," and never has done shouting to the waiter to
+bring him a "Peerage;" carries the "Red Book" and "Book of Heraldry" in
+his pocket; sees whence people come, and where they go, and makes them
+out somehow; in short, he is regarded with a thrill of horror by people
+of fashion, fast or slow, civil or military.
+
+The Civil Heavy Swell affects fashionable curricles, and enjoys all the
+consideration a pair of good horses can give. He rides a blood bay in
+Rotten Row, but rides badly, and is detected by galloping, or some other
+solecism; his dress and liveries are always overdone, the money shows on
+every thing about him. He has familiar abbreviations for the names of
+all the fast men about town; calls this Lord "Jimmy," 'tother Chess, a
+third Dolly, and thinks he knows them; keeps an expensive mistress,
+because "Jimmy" and Chess are supposed to do the same, and when he is
+out of the way, his mistress has some of the fast fellows to supper, at
+the heavy swell's expense. He settles the point whether claret is to be
+drank from a jug or black bottle, and retails the merits of a _plateau_
+or _epergne_ he saw, when last he dined with a "fellow" in Belgrave
+Square.
+
+The _Foreigneering_ Heavy Swell has much more spirit, talent, and
+manner, than the home-grown article; but he is poor in a like ratio, and
+is therefore obliged to feather his nest by denuding the pigeon tribe of
+their metallic plumage. He is familiarly known to all the fast fellows,
+who _cut_ him, however, as soon as they marry, but is not accounted good
+_ton_ by heads of families. He is liked at the Hells and Clubs, where he
+has a knack of distinguishing himself without presumption or
+affectation. He is a dresser by right divine, and dresses ridiculously.
+The fashionable fellows affect loudly to applaud his taste, and laugh to
+see the vulgar imitate the foreigneering swell. He is the idol of
+equivocal women, and condescends to patronize unpresentable
+gentility-mongers. He is not unhappy at heart, like the indigenous heavy
+swell, but enjoys his intimacy with the fast fellows, and uses it.
+
+There is an infallible test we should advise you to apply, whenever you
+are bored to desperation by any of these heavy swells. When he talks of
+"my friend, the Duke of Bayswater," ask him, in a quiet tone, where he
+last met the _Duchess_. If he says Hyde-Park (meaning the Earl of) is
+an honest good fellow, enquire whether he prefers Lady Mary or Lady
+Seraphina Serpentine. This drops him like a shot--he can't get over it.
+
+It is a rule in good society that you know the set only when you know
+the women of that set; however you may work your way among the men,
+whatever you may do at the Hells and Clubs, goes for nothing--the
+_women_ stamp you counterfeit or current, and--
+
+     "Not to know _them_, argues yourself unknown."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+EYRE'S CABUL.
+
+
+     The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat
+     and Destruction of the British Army, January 1842; with a
+     Journal of Imprisonment in Affghanistan. By Lieutenant Vincent
+     Eyre, Bengal Artillery, late Deputy-Commissary of Ordnance at
+     Cabul. London: John Murray.
+
+This is the first connected account that has appeared of the military
+disasters that befell the British army at Cabul--by far the most signal
+reverse our arms have ever sustained in Asia. The narrative is full of a
+deep and painful interest, which becomes more and more intense as we
+approach the closing catastrophe. The simple detail of the daily
+occurrences stirs up our strongest feelings of indignation, pity; scorn,
+admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any
+attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and
+gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is
+highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion
+both of his head and of his heart.
+
+That a British army of nearly six thousand fighting men--occupying a
+position chosen and fortified by our own officers, and having
+possession, within two miles of this fortified cantonment, of a strong
+citadel commanding the greater part of the town of Cabul, a small
+portion only of whose population rose against us at the commencement of
+the revolt--should not only have made no vigorous effort to crush the
+insurrection; but that it should ultimately have been driven by an
+undisciplined Asiatic mob, destitute of artillery, and which never
+appears to have collected in one place above 10,000 men, to seek safety
+in a humiliating capitulation, by which it surrendered the greater part
+of its artillery, military stores, and treasure, and undertook to
+evacuate the whole country on condition of receiving a safe conduct from
+the rebel chiefs, on whose faith they placed, and could place, no
+reliance; and finally, that, of about 4500 armed soldiers and twelve
+thousand camp-followers, many of whom were also armed, who set out from
+Cabul, only one man, and he wounded, should have arrived at Jellalabad;
+is an amount of misfortune so far exceeding every rational anticipation
+of evil, that we should have been entitled to assume that these
+unparalleled military disasters arose from a series of unparalleled
+errors, even if we had not had, as we now have, the authority of Lord
+Ellenborough for asserting the fact.
+
+But every nation, and more particularly the British nation, is little
+inclined to pardon the men under whose command any portion of its army
+or of its navy may have been beaten. Great Britain, reposing entire
+confidence in the courage of her men, and little accustomed to see them
+overthrown, is keenly jealous of the reputation of her forces; and, as
+she is ever prompt to reward military excellence and success, she heaps
+unmeasured obloquy on those who may have subjected her to the
+degradation of defeat. When our forces have encountered a reverse, or
+even when the success has not been commensurate with the hopes that had
+been indulged; the public mind has ever been prone to condemn the
+commanders; and wherever there has been reason to believe that errors
+have been committed which have led to disaster, there has been little
+disposition to make any allowances for the circumstances of the case, or
+for the fallibility of man; but, on the contrary, the nation has too
+often evinced a fierce desire to punish the leaders for the
+mortification the country has been made to endure.
+
+This feeling may tend to elevate the standard of military character, but
+it must at the same time preclude the probability of calm or impartial
+examination, so far as the great body of the nation is concerned; and it
+is therefore the more obviously incumbent on those who, from a more
+intimate knowledge of the facts, or from habits of more deliberate
+investigation, are not carried away by the tide of popular indignation
+and invective, to weigh the circumstances with conscientious caution,
+and to await the result of judicial enquiry before they venture to
+apportion the blame or even to estimate its amount.
+
+     "The following notes," says Lieutenant Eyre in his preface,
+     "were penned to relieve the monotony of an Affghan prison,
+     while yet the events which they record continued fresh in my
+     memory. I now give them publicity, in the belief that the
+     information which they contain on the dreadful scenes lately
+     enacted in Affghanistan, though clothed in a homely garb, will
+     scarcely fail to be acceptable to many of my countrymen, both
+     in India and England, who may be ignorant of the chief
+     particulars. The time, from the 2d November 1841, on which day
+     the sudden popular outbreak at Cabul took place, to the 13th
+     January 1842, which witnessed the annihilation of the last
+     small remnant of our unhappy force at Gundamuk, was one
+     continued tragedy. The massacre of Sir Alexander Burnes and his
+     associates,--the loss of our commissariat fort--the defeat of
+     our troops under Brigadier Shelton at Beymaroo--the treacherous
+     assassination of Sir William Macnaghten, our envoy and
+     minister--and lastly, the disastrous retreat and utter
+     destruction of a force consisting of 5000 fighting men and
+     upwards of 12,000 camp-followers,--are events which will
+     assuredly rouse the British Lion from his repose, and excite an
+     indignant spirit of enquiry in every breast. Men will not be
+     satisfied, in this case, with a bare statement of the facts,
+     but they will doubtless require to be made acquainted with the
+     causes which brought about such awful effects. We have lost six
+     entire regiments of infantry, three companies of sappers, a
+     troop of European horse-artillery, half the mountain-train
+     battery, nearly a whole regiment of regular cavalry, and four
+     squadrons of irregular horse, besides a well-stocked magazine,
+     which _alone_, taking into consideration the cost of transport
+     up to Cabul, may be estimated at nearly a million sterling.
+     From first to last, not less than 104 British officers have
+     fallen: their names will be found in the Appendix. I glance but
+     slightly at the _political_ events of this period, not having
+     been one of the initiated; and I do not pretend to enter into
+     _minute_ particulars with regard to even our _military_
+     transactions, more especially those not immediately connected
+     with the sad catastrophe which it has been my ill fortune to
+     witness, and whereof I now endeavour to portray the leading
+     features. In these notes I have been careful to state only what
+     I know to be undeniable facts. I have set down nothing on mere
+     hearsay evidence, nor any thing which cannot be attested by
+     living witnesses or by existing documentary evidence. In
+     treating of matters which occurred under my personal
+     observation, it has been difficult to avoid _altogether_ the
+     occasional expression of my own individual opinion: but I hope
+     it will be found that I have made no observations bearing hard
+     on men or measures, that are either uncalled for, or will not
+     stand the test of future investigation."
+
+After the surrender of Dost Mahomed Khan, there remained in Affghanistan
+no chief who possessed a dominant power or influence that made him
+formidable to the government of Shah Shoojah, or to his English allies;
+and the kingdom of Cabul seemed to be gradually, though slowly,
+subsiding into comparative tranquillity. In the summer of the year 1841,
+the authority of the sovereign appears to have been acknowledged in
+almost every part of his dominions. A partial revolt of the Giljyes was
+speedily suppressed by our troops. The Kohistan, or more correctly,
+Koohdaman of Cabul, a mountainous tract, inhabited by a warlike people,
+over whom the authority of the governments of the country had long been
+imperfect and precarious, had submitted, or had ceased to resist. A
+detachment from the British force at Kandahar, after defeating Akter
+Khan, who had been instigated by the Vezeer of Herat to rebel, swept the
+country of Zemindawer, drove Akter Khan a fugitive to Herat, received
+the submission of all the chiefs in that part of the kingdom, and
+secured the persons of such as it was not thought prudent to leave at
+large in those districts.
+
+The Shah's authority was not believed to be so firmly established, that
+both Sir William Macnaghten, the British envoy at Cabul, who had
+recently been appointed governor of Bombay, and Sir Alexander Burnes, on
+whom the duties of the envoy would have devolved on Sir W. Macnaghten's
+departure, thought that the time had arrived when the amount of the
+British force in Affghanistan, which was so heavy a charge upon the
+revenues of India, might with safety be reduced, and General Sale's
+brigade was ordered to hold itself in readiness to march to Jellalabad,
+on its route to India.
+
+Even at this time, however, Major Pottinger, the political agent in
+Kohistan, including, we presume, the Koohdaman, thought the force at his
+disposal too small to maintain the tranquillity of the district; and the
+chiefs of the valley of Nijrow, or Nijrab, a valley of Kohistan Proper,
+had not only refused to submit, but had harboured the restless and
+disaffected who had made themselves obnoxious to the Shah's government.
+But although Major Pottinger had no confidence in the good feelings of
+the people of his own district to the government, and even seems to have
+anticipated insurrection, no movement of that description had yet taken
+place.
+
+Early in September, however, Captain Hay, who was with a small force in
+the Zoormut valley, situated nearly west from Ghuznee and south from
+Cabul, having been induced by the representations of Moollah Momin--the
+collector of the revenues, who was a Barikzye, and a near relation of
+one of the leaders of the insurrection, in which he afterwards himself
+took an active part--to move against a fort in which the murderers of
+Colonel Herring were said to have taken shelter, the inhabitants
+resisted his demands, and fired upon the troops. His force was found
+insufficient to reduce it, and he was obliged to retire; a stronger
+force was therefore sent, on the approach of which the people fled to
+the hills, and the forts they had evacuated were blown up. This
+occurrence was not calculated seriously to disturb the confident hopes
+that were entertained of the permanent tranquillity of the country; but
+before the force employed upon that expedition had returned to Cabul, a
+formidable insurrection had broken out in another quarter.
+
+     "Early in October," says Lieutenant Eyre, "three Giljye chiefs
+     of note suddenly quitted Cabul, after plundering a rich cafila
+     at Tezeen, and took up a strong position in the difficult
+     defile of Khoord-Cabul, about ten miles from the capital, thus
+     blocking up the pass, and cutting off our communication with
+     Hindostan. Intelligence had not very long previously been
+     received that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the ex-ruler
+     Dost Mahomed Khan, had arrived at Bameean from Khooloom, for
+     the supposed purpose of carrying on intrigues against the
+     Government. It is remarkable that he is nearly connected by
+     marriage with Mahomed Shah Khan and Dost Mahomed Khan, also
+     Giljyes, who almost immediately joined the above-mentioned
+     chiefs. Mahomed Akber had, since the deposition of his father,
+     never ceased to foster feelings of intense hatred towards the
+     English nation; and, though often urged by the fallen ruler to
+     deliver himself up, had resolutely preferred the life of a
+     houseless exile to one of mean dependence on the bounty of his
+     enemies. It seems, therefore, in the highest degree probable
+     that this hostile movement on the part of the Eastern Giljyes
+     was the result of his influence over them, combined with other
+     causes which will be hereafter mentioned."
+
+The other causes here alluded to, appear to be "the deep offence given
+to the Giljyes by the ill-advised reduction of their annual stipends, a
+measure which had been forced upon Sir William Macnaghten by Lord
+Auckland. This they considered, and with some show of justice, as a
+breach of faith on the part of our Government."
+
+We presume that it is not Mr Eyre's intention to assert that this
+particular measure was ordered by Lord Auckland, but merely that the
+rigid economy enforced by his lordship, led the Envoy to have recourse
+to this measure as one of the means by which the general expenditure
+might be diminished.
+
+Formidable as this revolt of the Giljyes was found to be, we are led to
+suspect that both Sir W. Macnaghten and Sir A. Burnes were misled,
+probably by the Shah's government, very greatly to underrate its
+importance and its danger. The force under Colonel Monteath,[16] which
+in the first instance was sent to suppress it, was so small that it was
+not only unable to penetrate into the country it was intended to
+overawe or to subdue, but it was immediately attacked in its camp,
+within ten miles of Cabul, and lost thirty-five sepoys killed and
+wounded.
+
+     [16] 35th Reg. N.I.; 100 sappers; 1 squadron 5th Cav.; 2 guns.
+
+Two days afterwards, the 11th October, General Sale marched from Cabul
+with H.M.'s 13th light infantry, to join Colonel Monteath's camp at
+Bootkhak; and the following morning the whole proceeded to force the
+pass of Khoord-Cabul, which was effected with some loss. The 13th
+returned through the pass to Bootkhak, suffering from the fire of
+parties which still lurked among the rocks. The remainder of the brigade
+encamped at Khoord-Cabul, at the further extremity of the defile. In
+this divided position the brigade remained for some days, and both camps
+had to sustain night attacks from the Affghans--"that on the 35th native
+infantry being peculiarly disastrous, from the treachery of the Affghan
+horse, who admitted the enemy within their lines, by which our troops
+were exposed to a fire from the least suspected quarter. Many of our
+gallant sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus met their death."
+
+On the 20th October, General Sale, having been reinforced, marched to
+Khoord-Cabul; "and about the 22d, the whole force there assembled, with
+Captain Macgregor, political agent, marched to Tezeen, encountering much
+determined opposition on the road."
+
+"By this time it was too evident that the whole of the Eastern Giljyes
+had risen in one common league against us." The treacherous proceedings
+of their chief or viceroy, Humza Khan, which had for some time been
+suspected, were now discovered, and he was arrested by order of Shah
+Shoojah.
+
+     "It must be remarked," says Lieutenant Eyre, "that for some
+     time previous to these overt acts of rebellion, the always
+     strong and ill-repressed personal dislike of the Affghans
+     towards Europeans, had been manifested in a more than usually
+     open manner in and about Cabul. Officers had been insulted and
+     attempts made to assassinate them. Two Europeans had been
+     murdered, as also several camp-followers; but these and other
+     signs of the approaching storm had unfortunately been passed
+     over as mere ebullitions of private angry feeling. This
+     incredulity and apathy is the more to be lamented, as it was
+     pretty well known that on the occasion of the _shub-khoon_, or
+     first night attack on the 35th native infantry at Bootkhak, a
+     large portion of our assailants consisted of the armed
+     retainers of the different men of consequence in Cabul itself,
+     large parties of whom had been seen proceeding from the city to
+     the scene of action on the evening of the attack, and
+     afterwards returning. Although these men had to pass either
+     through the heart or round the skirts of our camp at Seeah
+     Sung, it was not deemed expedient even to question them, far
+     less to detain them.
+
+     "On the 26th October, General Sale started in the direction of
+     Gundamuk, Captain Macgregor having half-frightened,
+     half-cajoled the refractory Giljye chiefs into what proved to
+     have been a most hollow truce."
+
+On the same day, the 37th native infantry, three companies of the Shah's
+sappers under Captain Walsh, and three guns of the mountain train under
+Lieutenant Green, retraced their steps towards Cabul, where the sappers,
+pushing on, arrived unopposed; but the rest of the detachment was
+attacked on the 2d November--on the afternoon of which day, Major
+Griffiths, who commanded it, received orders to force his way to Cabul,
+where the insurrection had that morning broken out. His march through
+the pass, and from Bootkhak to Cabul, was one continued conflict; but
+the gallantry of his troops, and the excellence of his own dispositions,
+enabled him to carry the whole of his wounded and baggage safe to the
+cantonments at Cabul, where he arrived about three o'clock on the
+morning of the 3d November, followed almost to the gates by about 3000
+Giljyes.
+
+The causes of the insurrection in the capital are not yet fully
+ascertained, or, if ascertained, they have not been made public.
+Lieutenant Eyre does not attempt to account for it; but he gives us the
+following memorandum of Sir W. Macnaghten's, found, we presume, amongst
+his papers after his death:--
+
+     "The immediate cause of the outbreak in the capital was a
+     seditious letter addressed by Abdoollah Khan to several chiefs
+     of influence at Cabul, stating that it was the design of the
+     Envoy to seize and send them all to London! The principal
+     rebels met on the previous night, and, relying on the
+     inflammable feelings of the people of Cabul, they pretended
+     that the King had issued an order to put all infidels to death;
+     having previously forged an order from him for our destruction,
+     by the common process of washing out the contents of a genuine
+     paper, with the exception of the seal, and substituting their
+     own wicked inventions."
+
+But this invention, though it was probably one of the means employed by
+the conspirators to increase the number of their associates, can hardly
+be admitted to account for the insurrection. The arrival of Akber Khan
+at Bameean, the revolt of the Giljyes, the previous flight of their
+chiefs from Cabul, and the almost simultaneous attack of our posts in
+the Koohdaman, (called by Lieutenant Eyre, Kohistan,) on the 3d
+November--the attack of a party conducting prisoners from Candahar to
+Ghuznee--the immediate interruption of every line of communication with
+Cabul--and the selection of the season of the year the most favourable
+to the success of the insurrection, with many other less important
+circumstances, combine to force upon us the opinion, that the intention
+to attack the Cabul force, so soon as it should have become isolated by
+the approach of winter, had been entertained, and the plan of operations
+concerted, for some considerable time before the insurrection broke out.
+That many who wished for its success may have been slow to commit
+themselves, is to be presumed, and that vigorous measures might, if
+resorted to on the first day, have suppressed the revolt, is probable;
+but it can hardly be doubted that we must look far deeper, and further
+back, for the causes which united the Affghan nation against us.
+
+The will of their chiefs and spiritual leaders--fanatical zeal, and
+hatred of the domination of a race whom they regarded as infidels--may
+have been sufficient to incite the lower orders to any acts of violence,
+or even to the persevering efforts they made to extirpate the English.
+In their eyes the contest would assume the character of a religious
+war--of a crusade; and every man who took up arms in that cause, would
+go to battle with the conviction that, if he should be slain, his soul
+would go at once to paradise, and that, if he slew an enemy of the
+faith, he thereby also secured to himself eternal happiness. But the
+chiefs are not so full of faith; and although we would not altogether
+exclude religious antipathy as an incentive, we may safely assume that
+something more immediately affecting their temporal and personal
+concerns must with them, or at least with the large majority, have been
+the true motives of the conspiracy--of their desire to expel the English
+from their country. Nor is it difficult to conceive what some of these
+motives may have been. The former sovereigns of Affghanistan, even the
+most firmly-established and the most vigorous, had no other means of
+enforcing their commands, than by employing the forces of one part of
+the nation to make their authority respected in another; but men who
+were jealous of their own independence as chiefs, were not likely to aid
+the sovereign in any attempt to destroy the substantial power, the
+importance, or the independence of their class; and although a
+refractory chief might occasionally, by the aid of his feudal enemies,
+be taken or destroyed, and his property plundered, his place was filled
+by a relation, and the order remained unbroken. The Affghan chiefs had
+thus enjoyed, under their native governments, an amount of independence
+which was incompatible with the system we introduced--supported as that
+system was by our military means. These men must have seen that their
+own power and importance, and even their security against the caprices
+of their sovereign, could not long be preserved--that they were about to
+be subjected as well as governed--to be deprived of all power to resist
+the oppressions of their own government, because its will was enforced
+by an army which had no sympathy with the nation, and which was
+therefore ready to use its formidable strength to compel unqualified
+submission to the sovereign's commands.
+
+The British army may not have been employed to enforce any unjust
+command--its movements may have been less, far less, injurious to the
+countries through which it passed than those of an Affghan army would
+have been, and its power in the moment of success may have been far less
+abused; but still it gave a strength to the arm of the sovereign, which
+was incompatible with the maintenance of the pre-existing civil and
+social institutions or condition of the country, and especially of the
+relative positions of the sovereign and the noble. In the measures we
+adopted to establish the authority of Shah Shoojah, we attempted to
+carry out a system of government which could only have been made
+successful by a total revolution in the social condition of the people,
+and in the relative positions of classes; and as these revolutions are
+not effected in a few years, the attempt failed.[17]
+
+     [17] The system, unpalatable as it was to the nation, might, no
+     doubt, have been carried through by an overwhelming military
+     force, if the country had been worth the cost; but if it was
+     not intended to retain permanent possession of Affghanistan, it
+     appears to us that the native government was far too much
+     interfered with--that the British envoy, the British officers
+     employed in the districts and provinces, and the British army,
+     stood too much between the Shah and his subjects--that we were
+     forming a government which it would be impossible to work in
+     our absence, and creating a state of things which, the longer
+     it might endure, would have made more remote the time at which
+     our interference could be dispensed with.
+
+But if the predominance of our influence and of our military power, and
+the effects of the system we introduced, tended to depress the chiefs,
+it must have still more injuriously affected or threatened the power of
+the priesthood.
+
+This we believe to have been one of the primary and most essential
+causes of the revolt--this it was that made the insurrection spread with
+such rapidity, and that finally united the whole nation against us. With
+the aristocracy and the hierarchy of the country, it must have been but
+a question of courage and of means--a calculation of the probability of
+success; and as that probability was greatly increased by the results of
+the first movement at Cabul, and by the inertness of our army after the
+first outbreak, all acquired courage enough to aid in doing what all had
+previously desired to see done.
+
+But if there be any justice in this view of the state of feeling in
+Affghanistan, even in the moments of its greatest tranquillity, it is
+difficult to account for the confidence with which the political
+authorities charged with the management of our affairs in that country
+looked to the future, and the indifference with which they appear to
+have regarded what now must appear to every one else to have been very
+significant, and even alarming, intimations of dissaffection in Cabul,
+and hostility in the neighbouring districts.
+
+But it is time we should return to Lieutenant Eyre, whose narrative of
+facts is infinitely more attractive than any speculations we could
+offer.
+
+     "At an early hour this morning, (2d November 1841,) the
+     startling intelligence was brought from the city, that a
+     popular outbreak had taken place; that the shops were all
+     closed; and that a general attack had been made on the houses
+     of all British officers residing in Cabul. About 8 A.M., a
+     hurried note was received by the Envoy in cantonments from Sir
+     Alexander Burnes, stating that the minds of the people had been
+     strongly excited by some mischievous reports, but expressing a
+     hope that he should succeed in quelling the commotion. About 9
+     A.M., however, a rumour was circulated, which afterwards proved
+     but too well founded, that Sir Alexander had been murdered, and
+     Captain Johnson's treasury plundered. Flames were now seen to
+     issue from that part of the city where they dwelt, and it was
+     too apparent that the endeavour to appease the people by quiet
+     means had failed, and that it would be necessary to have
+     recourse to stronger measures. The report of firearms was
+     incessant, and seemed to extend through the town from end to
+     end.
+
+     "Sir William Macnaghten now called upon General Elphinstone to
+     act. An order was accordingly sent to Brigadier Shelton, then
+     encamped at Seeah Sung, about a mile and a half distant from
+     cantonments, to march forthwith to the _Bala Hissar_, or _royal
+     citadel_, where his Majesty Shah Shoojah resided, commanding a
+     large portion of the city, with the following troops:--viz. one
+     company of H.M. 44th foot; a wing of the 54th regiment native
+     infantry, under Major Ewart; the 6th regiment Shah's infantry,
+     under Captain Hopkins; and four horse-artillery guns, under
+     Captain Nicholl; and on arrival there, to act according to his
+     own judgment, after consulting with the King.
+
+     "The remainder of the troops encamped at Seeah Sung were at the
+     same time ordered into cantonments: viz. H.M. 44th foot, under
+     Lieutenant-Colonel Mackerell; two horse-artillery guns, under
+     Lieutenant Waller; and Anderson's irregular horse. A messenger
+     was likewise dispatched to recall the 37th native infantry from
+     Khoord-Cabul without delay. The troops at this time in
+     cantonments were as follows: viz. 5th regiment native infantry,
+     under Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver; a wing of 54th native
+     infantry; five six-pounder field guns, with a detachment of the
+     Shah's artillery, under Lieutenant Warburton; the Envoy's
+     body-guard; a troop of Skinner's horse, and another of local
+     horse, under Lieutenant Walker; three companies of the Shah's
+     sappers, under Captain Walsh; and about twenty men of the
+     Company's sappers, attached to Captain Paton,
+     assistant-quartermaster-general.
+
+     "Widely spread and formidable as this insurrection proved to be
+     afterwards, it was at first a mere insignificant ebullition of
+     discontent on the part of a few desperate and restless men,
+     which military energy and promptitude ought to have crushed in
+     the bud. Its commencement was an attack by certainly not 300
+     men on the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes and Captain
+     Johnson, paymaster to the Shah's force; and so little did Sir
+     Alexander himself apprehend serious consequences, that he not
+     only refused, on its first breaking out, to comply with the
+     earnest entreaties of the wuzeer to accompany him to the Bala
+     Hissar, but actually forbade his guard to fire on the
+     assailants, attempting to check what he supposed to be a mere
+     riot, by haranguing the attacking party from the gallery of his
+     house. The result was fatal to himself; for in spite of the
+     devoted gallantry of the sepoys, who composed his guard, and
+     that of the paymaster's office and treasury on the opposite
+     side of the street, who yielded their trust only with their
+     latest breath, the latter were plundered, and his two
+     companions, Lieutenant William Broadfoot of the Bengal European
+     regiment, and his brother, Lieutenant Burnes of the Bombay
+     army, were massacred, in common with every man, woman, and
+     child found on the premises, by these bloodthirsty miscreants.
+     Lieutenant Broadfoot killed five or six men with his own hand,
+     before he was shot down.
+
+     "The King, who was in the Bala Hissar, being somewhat startled
+     by the increasing number of the rioters, although not at the
+     time aware, so far as we can judge, of the assassination of Sir
+     A. Burnes, dispatched one of his sons with a number of his
+     immediate Affghan retainers, and that corps of Hindoostanees
+     commonly called Campbell's regiment, with two guns, to restore
+     order: no support, however, was rendered to these by our
+     troops, whose leaders appeared so thunderstruck by the
+     intelligence of the outbreak, as to be incapable of adopting
+     more than the most puerile defensive measures. Even Sir William
+     Macnaghten seemed, from a note received at this time from him
+     by Captain Trevor, to apprehend little danger, as he therein
+     expressed his perfect confidence as to the speedy and complete
+     success of Campbell's Hindoostanees in putting an end to the
+     disturbance. Such, however, was not the case; for the enemy,
+     encouraged by our inaction, increased rapidly in spirit and
+     numbers, and drove back the King's guard with great slaughter,
+     the guns being with difficulty saved.
+
+     "It must be understood that Captain Trevor lived at this time
+     with his family in a strong _bourge_ or tower, situated by the
+     river side, near the Kuzzilbash quarter, which, on the west, is
+     wholly distinct from the remainder of the city. Within
+     musket-shot, on the opposite side of the river, in the
+     direction of the strong and populous village of Deh Affghan, is
+     a fort of some size, then used as a godown, or storehouse, by
+     the Shah's commissariat, part of it being occupied by Brigadier
+     Anquetil, commanding the Shah's force. Close to this fort,
+     divided by a narrow watercourse, was the house of Captain
+     Troup, brigade-major of the Shah's force, perfectly defensible
+     against musketry. Both Brigadier Anquetil and Captain Troup had
+     gone out on horseback early in the morning towards cantonments,
+     and were unable to return; but the above fort and house
+     contained the usual guard of sepoys; and in a garden close at
+     hand, called the _Yaboo-Khaneh_, or lines of the
+     baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of the Shah's sappers
+     and miners, and a party of Captain Ferris's juzailchees.
+     Captain Trevor's tower was capable of being made good against a
+     much stronger force than the rebels at this present time could
+     have collected, had it been properly garrisoned.
+
+     "As it was, the Hazirbash,[18] or King's lifeguards, were,
+     under Captain Trevor, congregated round their leader, to
+     protect him and his family; which duty, it will be seen, they
+     well performed under very trying circumstances. For what took
+     place in this quarter I beg to refer to a communication made to
+     me at my request by Captain Colin Mackenzie,[19] assistant
+     political agent at Peshawur, who then occupied the godown
+     portion of the fort above mentioned, which will be found
+     hereafter.[20]
+
+     "I have already stated that Brigadier Shelton was, early in the
+     day, directed to proceed with part of the Seeah Sung force to
+     occupy the Bala Hissar, and, if requisite, to lead his troops
+     against the insurgents. Captain Lawrence, military secretary to
+     the Envoy, was at the same time sent forward to prepare the
+     King for that officer's reception. Taking with him four
+     troopers of the body-guard, he was galloping along the main
+     road, when, shortly after crossing the river, he was suddenly
+     attacked by an Affghan, who, rushing from behind a wall, made a
+     desperate cut at him with a large two-handed knife. He
+     dexterously avoided the blow by spurring his horse on one side;
+     but, passing onwards, he was fired upon by about fifty men,
+     who, having seen his approach, ran out from the Lahore gate of
+     the city to intercept him. He reached the Bala Hissar safe,
+     where he found the King apparently in a state of great
+     agitation, he having witnessed the assault from the window of
+     his palace. His Majesty expressed an eager desire to conform to
+     the Envoy's wishes in all respects in this emergency.
+
+     "Captain Lawrence was still conferring with the King, when
+     Lieutenant Sturt, our executive engineer, rushed into the
+     palace, stabbed in three places about the face and neck. He had
+     been sent by Brigadier Shelton to make arrangements for the
+     accommodation of the troops, and had reached the gate of the
+     _Dewan Khaneh_, or hall of audience, when the attempt at his
+     life was made by some one who had concealed himself there for
+     that purpose, and who immediately effected his escape. The
+     wounds were fortunately not dangerous, and Lieutenant Sturt was
+     conveyed back to cantonments in the King's own palanquin, under
+     a strong escort. Soon after this Brigadier Shelton's force
+     arrived; but the day was suffered to pass without any thing
+     being done demonstrative of British energy and power. The
+     murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation of public and
+     private property, was perpetrated with impunity within a mile
+     of our cantonment, and under the very walls of the Bala Hissar.
+
+     "Such an exhibition on our part taught the enemy their
+     strength--confirmed against us those who, however disposed to
+     join in the rebellion, had hitherto kept aloof from prudential
+     motives, and ultimately encouraged the nation to unite as one
+     man for our destruction.
+
+     "It was, in fact, the crisis of all others calculated to test
+     the qualities of a military commander. Whilst, however, it is
+     impossible for an unprejudiced person to approve the military
+     dispositions of this eventful period, it is equally our duty to
+     discriminate. The most _responsible_ party is not always the
+     most culpable. It would be the height of injustice to a most
+     amiable and gallant officer not to notice the long course of
+     painful and wearing illness, which had materially affected the
+     nerves, and probably even the intellect, of General
+     Elphinstone; cruelly incapacitating him, so far as he was
+     personally concerned, from acting in this sudden emergency with
+     the promptitude and vigour necessary for our preservation.
+
+     "Unhappily, Sir William Macnaghten at first made light of the
+     insurrection, and, by his representations as to the general
+     feeling of the people towards us, not only deluded himself, but
+     misled the General in council. The unwelcome truth was soon
+     forced upon us, that in the whole Affghan nation we could not
+     reckon on a single friend.
+
+     "But though no active measures of aggression were taken, all
+     necessary preparations were made to secure the cantonment
+     against attack. It fell to my own lot to place every available
+     gun in position round the works. Besides the guns already
+     mentioned, we had in the magazine 6 nine-pounder iron guns, 3
+     twenty-four pounder howitzers, 1 twelve-pounder ditto, and 3
+     5-1/2-inch mortars; but the detail of artillerymen fell very
+     short of what was required to man all these efficiently,
+     consisting of only 80 Punjabees belonging to the Shah, under
+     Lieutenant Warburton, very insufficiently instructed, and of
+     doubtful fidelity."
+
+     [18] Affghan horse.
+
+     [19] The detachment under Captain Mackenzie consisted of about
+     seventy juzailchees or Affghan riflemen, and thirty sappers,
+     who had been left in the town in charge of the wives and
+     children of the corps, all of whom were brought safe into the
+     cantonments by that gallant party, who fought their way from
+     the heart of the town.
+
+     [20] "I am sorry to say that this document has not reached me
+     with the rest of the manuscript. I have not struck out the
+     reference, because there is hope that it still exists, and may
+     yet be appended to this narrative. The loss of any thing else
+     from Captain Mackenzie's pen will be regretted by all who read
+     his other communication, the account of the Envoy's
+     murder.--EDITOR."
+
+The fortified cantonment occupied by the British troops was a quadrangle
+of 1000 yards long by 600 broad, with round flanking bastions at each
+corner, every one of which was commanded by some fort or hill. To one
+end of this work was attached the Mission compound and enclosure, about
+half as large as the cantonment, surrounded by a simple wall. This space
+required to be defended in time of war, and it rendered the whole of one
+face of the cantonment nugatory for purposes of defence. The profile of
+the works themselves was weak, being in fact an ordinary field-work. But
+the most strange and unaccountable circumstance recorded by Lieutenant
+Eyre respecting these military arrangements, is certainly the fact, that
+the commissariat stores, containing whatever the army possessed of food
+or clothing, was not within the circuit of these fortified cantonments,
+but in a detached and weak fort, the gate of which was commanded by
+another building at a short distance. Our author thus sums up his
+observations on these cantonments:--
+
+     "In fact, we were so hemmed in on all sides, that, when the
+     rebellion became general, the troops could not move out a dozen
+     paces from either gate without being exposed to the fire of
+     some neighbouring hostile fort, garrisoned, too, by marksmen
+     who seldom missed their aim. The country around us was likewise
+     full of impediments to the movements of artillery and cavalry,
+     being in many places flooded, and every where closely
+     intersected by deep water-cuts.
+
+     "I cannot help adding, in conclusion, that almost all the
+     calamities that befell our ill-starred force may be traced more
+     or less to the defects of our position; and that our cantonment
+     at Cabul, whether we look to its situation or its construction,
+     must ever be spoken of as a disgrace to our military skill and
+     judgment."
+
+_Nov_. 3.--The 37th native infantry arrived in cantonments, as
+previously stated.
+
+     "Early in the afternoon, a detachment under Major Swayne,
+     consisting of two companies 5th native infantry, one of H.M.
+     44th, and two H.A. guns under Lieutenant Waller, proceeded out
+     of the western gate towards the city, to effect, if possible, a
+     junction at the Lahore gate with a part of Brigadier Shelton's
+     force from the Bala Hissar. They drove back and defeated a
+     party of the enemy who occupied the road near the Shah Bagh,
+     but had to encounter a sharp fire from the Kohistan gate of the
+     city, and from the walls of various enclosures, behind which a
+     number of marksmen had concealed themselves, as also from the
+     fort of Mahmood Khan, commanding the road along which they had
+     to pass. Lieutenant Waller and several sepoys were wounded.
+     Major Swayne, observing the whole line of road towards the
+     Lahore gate strongly occupied by some Affghan horse and
+     juzailchees, and fearing that he would be unable to effect the
+     object in view with so small a force unsupported by cavalry,
+     retired into cantonments. Shortly after this, a large body of
+     the rebels having issued from the fort of Mahmood Khan, 900
+     yards southeast of cantonments, extended themselves in a line
+     along the bank of the river, displaying a flag; an iron
+     nine-pounder was brought to bear on them from our southeast
+     bastion, and a round or two of shrapnell caused them to seek
+     shelter behind some neighbouring banks, whence, after some
+     desultory firing on both sides, they retired.
+
+     "Whatever hopes may have been entertained, up to this period,
+     of a speedy termination to the insurrection, they began now to
+     wax fainter every hour, and an order was dispatched to the
+     officer commanding at Candahar to lose no time in sending to
+     our assistance the 16th and 43d regiments native infantry,
+     (which were under orders for India,) together with a troop of
+     horse-artillery and half a regiment of cavalry; an order was
+     likewise sent off to recall General Sale with his brigade from
+     Gundamuk. Captain John Conolly, political assistant to the
+     Envoy, went into the Bala Hissar early this morning, to remain
+     with the King, and to render every assistance in his power to
+     Brigadier Shelton."
+
+On this day Lieutenants Maule and Wheeler were murdered at Kahdarrah in
+Koohdaman; the Kohistan regiment of Affghans which they commanded,
+offering no resistance to the rebels. The two officers defended
+themselves resolutely for some time, but fell under the fire of the
+enemy. Lieutenant Maule had been warned of his danger by a friendly
+native, but refused to desert his post.
+
+On this day also Lieutenant Rattray, Major Pottinger's assistant, was
+treacherously murdered at Lughmanee, during a conference to which he had
+been invited, and within sight of the small fort in which these two
+gentlemen resided. This act was followed by a general insurrection in
+Kohistan and Koohdaman, which terminated in the destruction of the
+Goorkha regiment at Charikar, and the slaughter of all the Europeans in
+that district except Major Pottinger and Lieutenant Haughton, both
+severely wounded, who, with one sepoy and one or two followers,
+succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Affghan parties, who were
+patrolling the roads for the purpose of intercepting them, and at length
+arrived in cantonments, having actually passed at night through the town
+and bazars of Cabul. For the details of this interesting and afflicting
+episode in Mr Eyre's narrative, we must refer our readers to the work
+itself. Major Pottinger appears on this occasion to have exhibited the
+same high courage and promptitude and vigour in action, and the same
+resources in difficulty, that made him conspicuous at Herat, and
+Lieutenant Haughton was no unworthy companion of such a man.
+
+     "_November_ 4.--The enemy having taken strong possession of the
+     _Shah Bagh_, or King's Garden, and thrown a garrison into the
+     fort of Mahomed Shereef, nearly opposite the bazar, effectually
+     prevented any communication between the cantonment and
+     commissariat fort, the gate of which latter was commanded by
+     the gate of the Shah Bagh on the other side of the road.
+
+     "Ensign Warren of the 5th native infantry at this time occupied
+     the commissariat fort with 100 men, and having reported that he
+     was very hard pressed by the enemy, and in danger of being
+     completely cut off, the General, either forgetful or unaware at
+     the moment of the important fact, that upon the possession of
+     this fort we were entirely dependent for provisions, and
+     anxious only to save the lives of men whom he believed to be in
+     imminent peril, hastily gave directions that a party under the
+     command of Captain Swayne, of H.M.'s 44th regiment, should
+     proceed immediately to bring off Ensign Warren and his garrison
+     to cantonments, abandoning the fort to the enemy. A few minutes
+     previously an attempt to relieve him had been made by Ensign
+     Gordon, with a company of the 37th native infantry and eleven
+     camels laden with ammunition; but the party were driven back,
+     and Ensign Gordon killed. Captain Swayne now accordingly
+     proceeded towards the spot with two companies of H.M.'s 44th;
+     scarcely had they issued from cantonments ere a sharp and
+     destructive fire was poured upon them from Mahomed Shereef's
+     fort which, as they proceeded, was taken up by the marksmen in
+     the Shah Bagh, under whose deadly aim both officers and men
+     suffered severely; Captains Swayne and Robinson of the 44th
+     being killed, and Lieutenants Hallahan, Evans, and Fortye
+     wounded in this disastrous business. It now seemed to the
+     officer, on whom the command had devolved, impracticable to
+     bring off Ensign Warren's party without risking the
+     annihilation of his own, which had already sustained so rapid
+     and severe a loss in officers; he therefore returned forthwith
+     to cantonments. In the course of the evening another attempt
+     was made by a party of the 5th light cavalry; but they
+     encountered so severe a fire from the neighbouring enclosures
+     as obliged them to return without effecting their desired
+     object, with the loss of eight troopers killed and fourteen
+     badly wounded. Captain Boyd, the assistant commissary-general,
+     having meanwhile been made acquainted with the General's
+     intention to give up the fort, hastened to lay before him the
+     disastrous consequences that would ensue from so doing. He
+     stated that the place contained, besides large supplies of
+     wheat and attah, all his stores of rum, medicine, clothing,
+     &c., the value of which might be estimated at four lacs of
+     rupees; that to abandon such valuable property would not only
+     expose the force to the immediate want of the necessaries of
+     life, but would infallibly inspire the enemy with tenfold
+     courage. He added that we had not above two days' supply of
+     provisions in cantonments, and that neither himself nor Captain
+     Johnson of the Shah's commissariat had any prospect of
+     procuring them elsewhere under existing circumstances. In
+     consequence of this strong representation on the part of
+     Captain Boyd, the General sent immediate orders to Ensign
+     Warren to hold out the fort to the last extremity. (Ensign
+     Warren, it must be remarked, denied having received this note.)
+     Early in the night a letter was received from him to the effect
+     that he believed the enemy were busily engaged in mining one of
+     the towers, and that such was the alarm among the sepoys that
+     several of them had actually made their escape over the wall to
+     cantonments; that the enemy were making preparations to burn
+     down the gate; and that, considering the temper of his men, he
+     did not expect to be able to hold out many hours longer, unless
+     reinforced without delay. In reply to this he was informed
+     that he would be reinforced by two A.M.
+
+     "At about nine o'clock P.M., there was an assembly of staff and
+     other officers at the General's house, when the Envoy came in
+     and expressed his serious conviction, that unless Mahomed
+     Shereef's fort were taken that very night, we should lose the
+     commissariat fort, or at all events be unable to bring out of
+     it provisions for the troops. The disaster of the morning
+     rendered the General extremely unwilling to expose his officers
+     and men to any similar peril; but, on the other hand, it was
+     urged that the darkness of the night would nullify the enemy's
+     fire, who would also most likely be taken unawares, as it was
+     not the custom of the Affghans to maintain a very strict watch
+     at night. A man in Captain Johnson's employ was accordingly
+     sent out to reconnoitre the place. He returned in a few minutes
+     with the intelligence that about twenty men were seated outside
+     the fort near the gate, smoking and talking; and, from what he
+     overheard of their conversation, he judged the garrison to be
+     very small, and unable to resist a sudden onset. The debate was
+     now resumed, but another hour passed and the General could not
+     make up his mind. A second spy was dispatched, whose report
+     tended to corroborate what the first had said. I was then sent
+     to Lieutenant Sturt, the engineer, who was nearly recovered
+     from his wounds, for his opinion. He at first expressed himself
+     in favour of an immediate attack, but, on hearing that some of
+     the enemy were on the watch at the gate, he judged it prudent
+     to defer the assault till an early hour in the morning: this
+     decided the General, though not before several hours had
+     slipped away in fruitless discussion.
+
+     "Orders were at last given for a detachment to be in readiness
+     at four A.M. at the Kohistan gate; and Captain Bellew,
+     deputy-assistant quartermaster-general, volunteered to blow
+     open the gate; another party of H.M.'s 44th were at the same
+     time to issue by a cut in the south face of the rampart, and
+     march simultaneously towards the commissariat fort, to
+     reinforce the garrison. Morning had, however, well dawned ere
+     the men could be got under arms; and they were on the point of
+     marching off, when it was reported that Ensign Warren had just
+     arrived in cantonments with his garrison, having evacuated the
+     fort. It seems that the enemy had actually set fire to the
+     gate; and Ensign Warren, seeing no prospect of a reinforcement,
+     and expecting the enemy every moment to rush in, led out his
+     men by a hole which he had prepared in the wall. Being called
+     upon in a public letter from the assistant adjutant-general to
+     state his reasons for abandoning his post, he replied that he
+     was ready to do so before a court of enquiry, which he
+     requested might be assembled to investigate his conduct; it was
+     not, however, deemed expedient to comply with his request.
+
+     "It is beyond a doubt that our feeble and ineffectual defence
+     of this fort, and the valuable booty it yielded, was the first
+     _fatal_ blow to our supremacy at Cabul, and at once determined
+     those chiefs--and more particularly the Kuzzilbashes--who had
+     hitherto remained neutral, to join in the general combination
+     to drive us from the country."
+
+"_Nov_. 5.--It no sooner became generally known that the commissariat
+fort, upon which we were dependent for supplies, had been abandoned,
+than one universal feeling of indignation pervaded the garrison. Nor can
+I describe," says Lieutenant Eyre, "the impatience of the troops, but
+especially of the native portion, to be led out for its recapture--a
+feeling that was by no means diminished by seeing the Affghans crossing
+and re-crossing the road between the commissariat fort and the gate of
+the _Shah Bagh_, laden with the provisions upon which had depended our
+ability to make a protracted defence."
+
+That the whole commissariat should have been deposited in a detached
+fort is extraordinary and inexcusable, but that the garrison of that
+fort should not have been reinforced, is even more unintelligible; and
+that a sufficient force was not at once sent to succour and protect it
+when attacked, is altogether unaccountable. General Elphinstone was
+disabled by his infirmities from efficiently discharging the duties that
+had devolved upon him, but he appears to have been ready to act upon the
+suggestion of others. What then were his staff about?--some of them are
+said to have had little difficulty or delicacy in urging their own views
+upon their commander. Did they not suggest to him in time the
+importance, the necessity, of saving the commissariat at all hazards?
+
+At the suggestion of Lieutenant Eyre, it was determined to attempt the
+capture of Mahomed Shereef's fort by blowing open the gate, Mr Eyre
+volunteering to keep the road clear for the storming party with the
+guns. "The General agreed; a storming party under Major Swayne, 6th
+native infantry, was ordered; the powder bags were got ready, and at
+noon we issued from the western gate." "For twenty minutes the guns were
+worked under a very sharp fire from the fort;" but "Major Swayne,
+instead of rushing forward with his men as had been agreed, had in the
+mean time remained stationary, under cover of the wall by the
+road-side." The General, seeing that the attempt had failed, recalled
+the troops into cantonments.
+
+"_Nov_. 6.--It was now determined to take the fort of Mahomed Shereef by
+regular breach and assault." A practicable breach was effected, and a
+storming party composed of one company H.M. 44th, under Ensign Raban,
+one ditto 5th native infantry, under Lieutenant Deas, and one ditto 37th
+native infantry, under Lieutenant Steer, the whole commanded by Major
+Griffiths, speedily carried the place. "Poor Raban was shot through the
+heart when conspicuously waving a flag on the summit of the breach."
+
+As this fort adjoined the Shah Bagh, it was deemed advisable to dislodge
+the enemy from the latter if possible. This was partially effected, and,
+had advantage been taken of the opportunity to occupy the buildings of
+the garden gateway, "immediate re-possession could have been taken of
+the commissariat fort opposite, which had not yet been emptied of half
+its contents."
+
+In the mean time, our cavalry were engaged in an affair with the enemy's
+horse, in which we appear to have had the advantage. "The officers
+gallantly headed their men, and encountered about an equal number of the
+enemy who advanced to meet them. A hand-to-hand encounter took place,
+which ended in the Affghan horse retreating to the plain, leaving the
+hill in our possession. In this affair, Captain Anderson personally
+engaged and slew the brother in-law of Abdoolah Khan."
+
+But the Affghans collected from various quarters; the juzailchees,[21]
+under Captain Mackenzie, were driven with great loss from the Shah Bagh
+which they had entered; and a gun which had been employed to clear that
+enclosure was with difficulty saved. Our troops having been drawn up on
+the plain, remained prepared to receive an attack from the enemy, who
+gradually retired as the night closed in.
+
+     [21] Affghan riflemen.
+
+_Nov_. 8.--An attempt was made by the enemy to mine a tower of the fort
+that had been taken, which they could not have done had the gate of the
+Shah Bagh been occupied. The chief cause of anxiety now was the empty
+state of the granary. Even with high bribes and liberal payment, the
+Envoy could not procure sufficient for daily consumption. The plan of
+the enemy now was to starve us out, and the chiefs exerted all their
+influence to prevent our being supplied.
+
+_Nov_. 9.--The General's weak state of health rendered it necessary to
+relieve him from the command of the garrison, and at the earnest request
+of the Envoy, Brigadier Shelton was summoned from the Bala Hissar, "in
+the hope that, by heartily co-operating with the Envoy and General, he
+would strengthen their hands and rouse the sinking confidence of the
+troops. He entered cantonments this morning, bringing with him one H.A.
+gun, one mountain-train ditto, one company H.M.'s 44th, the Shah's 6th
+infantry, and a small supply of attah (flour.)"
+
+     "_November_ 10.--Henceforward Brigadier Shelton bore a
+     conspicuous part in the drama, upon the issue of which so much
+     depended. He had, however, from the very first, seemed to
+     despair of the force being able to hold out the winter at
+     Cabul, and strenuously advocated an immediate retreat to
+     Jellalabad.
+
+     "This sort of despondency proved, unhappily, very infectious.
+     It soon spread its baneful influence among the officers, and
+     was by them communicated to the soldiery. The number of
+     _croakers_ in garrison became perfectly frightful, lugubrious
+     looks and dismal prophecies being encountered every where. The
+     severe losses sustained by H.M.'s 44th under Captain Swayne, on
+     the 4th instant, had very much discouraged the men of that
+     regiment; and it is a lamentable fact that some of those
+     European soldiers, who were naturally expected to exhibit to
+     their native brethren in arms an example of endurance and
+     fortitude, were among the first to loose confidence, and give
+     vent to feelings of discontent at the duties imposed on them.
+     The evil seed, once sprung up, became more and more difficult
+     to eradicate, showing daily more and more how completely
+     demoralizing to the British soldier is the very idea of a
+     retreat.
+
+     "Sir William Macnaghten and his suite were altogether opposed
+     to Brigadier Shelton in this matter, it being in his (the
+     Envoy's) estimation a duty we owed the Government to retain our
+     post, at whatsoever risk. This difference of opinion, on a
+     question of such vital importance, was attended with unhappy
+     results, inasmuch as it deprived the General, in his hour of
+     need, of the strength which unanimity imparts, and produced an
+     uncommunicative and disheartening reserve in an emergency which
+     demanded the freest interchange of counsel and ideas."
+
+On the morning of this day, large parties of the enemy's horse and foot
+occupied the heights to the east and to the west of the cantonments,
+which, it was supposed, they intended to assault. No attack was made;
+but "on the eastern quarter, parties of the enemy, moving down into the
+plain, occupied all the forts in that direction. ... At this time, not
+above two days' provisions remained in garrison; and it was very clear,
+that unless the enemy were quickly driven out from their new possession,
+we should soon be completely hemmed in on all sides." At the Envoy's
+urgent desire, he taking the entire responsibility on himself, the
+General ordered a force, under Brigadier Shelton, to storm the
+Rikabashee fort, which was within musket-shot of the cantonments, and
+from which a galling fire had been poured into the Mission compound by
+the Affghans. About noon, the troops assembled at the eastern gate; a
+storming party of two companies from each regiment taking the lead,
+preceded by Captain Bellew, who hurried forward to blow open the
+gate--but missing the gate, he blew open a small wicket, through which
+not more than two or three men could enter abreast, and these in a
+stooping posture. A sharp fire was kept up from the walls, and many of
+the bravest fell in attempting to force their entrance through the
+wicket; but Colonel Mackerell of the 44th, and Lieutenant Bird of the
+Shah's 6th infantry, with a handful of Europeans and a few sepoys,
+forced their way in--the garrison fled through the gate which was at the
+opposite side, and Colonel Mackerell and his little party closed it,
+securing the chain with a bayonet; but, at this moment, some Affghan
+horse charged round the corner--the cry of cavalry was raised--"the
+Europeans gave way simultaneously with the sepoys--a bugler of the 6th
+infantry, through mistake, sounded the retreat--and it became for a
+time, a scene of _sauve qui peut_." In vain did the officers endeavour
+to rally the men, and to lead them back to the rescue of their
+commanding-officer and their comrades; only one man, private Stewart of
+the 44th, listened to the appeal and returned.
+
+"Let me here (says Lieutenant Eyre) do Brigadier Shelton justice: his
+acknowledged courage redeemed the day." After great efforts, at last he
+rallied them--again advancing to the attack, again they faltered. A
+third time did the Brigadier bring on his men to the assault, which now
+proved successful; but while this disgraceful scene was passing outside
+the fort, the enemy had forced their way into it, and had cut to pieces
+Colonel Mackerell and all his little party, except Lieutenant Bird, who,
+with one sepoy, was found in a barricaded apartment, where these two
+brave men had defended themselves till the return of the troops, killing
+above thirty of the enemy by the fire of their two muskets.
+
+Our loss on this occasion was not less than 200 killed and wounded; but
+the results of this success, though dearly purchased, were important.
+Four neighbouring forts were immediately evacuated by the enemy, and
+occupied by our troops: they were found to contain 1400 maunds of grain,
+of which about one-half was removed into cantonments immediately; but
+Brigadier Shelton not having thought it prudent to place a guard for the
+protection of the remainder, it was carried off during the night by the
+Affghans. "Permanent possession was, however, taken of the Rikabashee
+and Zoolfikar forts, and the towers of the remainder were blown up on
+the following day."
+
+It cannot fail to excite surprise, that these forts, which do not seem
+to have been occupied by the enemy till the 10th, were not either
+occupied or destroyed by the British troops before that day.
+
+_Nov_. 13.--The enemy appeared in great force on the western heights,
+where, having posted two guns, they fired into cantonments with
+considerable precision. At the entreaty of the Envoy, it was determined
+to attack them--a force, under Brigadier Shelton, moved out for that
+purpose--the advance, under Major Thain, ascended the hill with great
+gallantry; "but the enemy resolutely stood their ground at the summit of
+the ridge, and unflinchingly received the discharge of our musketry,
+which, strange to say, even at the short range of ten or twelve yards,
+did little or no execution."
+
+The fire of our guns, however, threw the Affghans into confusion. A
+charge of cavalry drove them up the hill, and the infantry advancing,
+carried the height, the enemy retreating along the ridge, closely
+followed by our troops, and abandoning their guns to us; but, owing to
+the misconduct of the troops, only one of them was carried away, the men
+refusing to advance to drag off the other, which was therefore spiked by
+Lieutenant Eyre, with the aid of one artilleryman.
+
+     "This was the last success our arms were destined to
+     experience. Henceforward it becomes my weary task to relate a
+     catalogue of errors, disasters, and difficulties, which,
+     following close upon each other, disgusted our officers,
+     disheartened our soldiers, and finally sunk us all into
+     irretrievable ruin, as though Heaven itself, by a combination
+     of evil circumstances, for its own inscrutable purposes, had
+     planned our downfall.
+
+     "_November 16th_.--The impression made by the enemy by the
+     action of the 13th was so far salutary, that they did not
+     venture to annoy us again for several days. Advantage was taken
+     of this respite to throw magazine supplies from time to time
+     into the Bala Hissar, a duty which was ably performed by
+     Lieutenant Walker, with a resalah of irregular horse, under
+     cover of night. But even in this short interval of comparative
+     rest, such was the wretched construction of the cantonment,
+     that the mere ordinary routine of garrison duty, and the
+     necessity of closely manning our long line of rampart both by
+     day and night, was a severe trial to the health and patience of
+     the troops; especially now that the winter began to show
+     symptoms of unusual severity. There seemed, indeed, every
+     probability of an early fall of snow, to which all looked
+     forward with dread, as the harbinger of fresh difficulties and
+     of augmented suffering.
+
+     "These considerations, and the manifest superiority of the Bala
+     Hissar as a military position, led to the early discussion of
+     the expediency of abandoning the cantonment, and consolidating
+     our forces in the above-mentioned stronghold. The Envoy himself
+     was, from the first, greatly in favour of this move, until
+     overruled by the many objections urged against it by the
+     military authorities; to which, as will be seen by a letter
+     from him presently quoted, he learned by degrees to attach some
+     weight himself; but to the very last it was a measure that had
+     many advocates, and I venture to state my own firm belief that,
+     had we at this time moved into the Bala Hissar, Cabul would
+     have been still in our possession.
+
+     "But Brigadier Shelton having firmly set his face against the
+     movement from the first moment of its proposition, all serious
+     idea of it was gradually abandoned, though it continued to the
+     very last a subject of common discussion."
+
+"_Nov_. 18. Accounts were this day received from Jellalabad, that
+General Sale, having sallied from the town, had repulsed the enemy with
+considerable loss.... The hope of his return has tended much to support
+our spirits; our disappointment was therefore great, to learn that all
+expectation of aid from that quarter was at an end. Our eyes were now
+turned towards the Kandahar force as our last resource though an advance
+from that quarter seemed scarcely practicable so late in the year."
+
+The propriety of attacking Mahomed Khan's fort, the possession of which
+would have opened an easy communication with the Bala Hissar, was
+discussed; but, on some sudden objection raised by Lieutenant Sturt of
+the engineers, the project was abandoned.
+
+On the 19th, a letter was addressed by the Envoy to the General, the
+object of which seems not to be very apparent. He raises objections to a
+retreat either to Jellalabad or to the Bala Hissar, and expresses a
+decided objection to abandon the cantonment under any circumstances, if
+food can be procured; but, nevertheless, it is sufficiently evident
+that his hopes of successful resistance had even now become feeble, and
+he refers to the possibility that succours may arrive from Kandahar, or
+that "something might turn up in our favour."
+
+The village of Beymaroo, (or Husbandless, from a beautiful virgin who
+was nursed there,) within half a mile of the cantonments, had been our
+chief source of supply, to which the enemy had in some measure put a
+stop by occupying it every morning. It was therefore determined to
+endeavour to anticipate them by taking possession of it before their
+arrival. For this purpose, a party moved out under Major Swayne of the
+5th native infantry; but the Major, "it would seem, by his own account,
+found the village already occupied, and the entrance blocked up in such
+a manner that he considered it out of his power to force a passage." It
+does not appear that the attempt was made. Later in the day there was
+some skirmishing in the plain, in the course of which Lieutenant Eyre
+was wounded.
+
+"It is worthy of note that Mahomed Akber Khan, second son of the late
+Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan, arrived in Cabul this night (22d Nov.) from
+Bameean. This man was destined to exercise an evil influence over our
+future fortunes. The crisis of our struggle was already nigh at hand."
+
+"_Nov_. 23.--This day decided the fate of the Cabul force." It had been
+determined by a council, at the special recommendation of the Envoy,
+that a force under Brigadier Shelton should storm the village of
+Beymaroo, and maintain the hill above it against any numbers of the
+enemy that might appear. At two A.M., the troops[22] moved out of
+cantonments, ascended the hill by the gorge, dragging up the gun, and
+moved along the ridge to a point overlooking the village. A sharp fire
+of grape created great confusion, and it was suggested by Captain Bellew
+and others to General Shelton, to storm the village, while the evident
+panic of the enemy lasted. To this the Brigadier did not accede.
+
+     [22] Five companies 44th; six companies 5th native infantry;
+     six companies 37th native infantry; 100 sappers; 2-1/2
+     squadrons cavalry; one gun.
+
+When day broke, the enemy, whose ammunition had failed, were seen
+hurrying from the village--not 40 men remained. A storming party, under
+Majors Swayne and Kershaw, was ordered to carry the village; but Major
+Swayne missed the gate, which was open, and arrived at a barricaded
+wicket, which he had no means of forcing. Major Swayne was wounded, and
+lost some men, and was ultimately recalled. Leaving a reserve of three
+companies of the 37th native infantry, under Major Kershaw, at the point
+overhanging Beymaroo, the Brigadier moved back with the rest of the
+troops and the gun to the part of the hill which overlooked the gorge.
+It was suggested to raise a sungar or breastwork to protect the troops,
+for which purpose the sappers had been taken out, but it was not done.
+Immense numbers of the enemy, issuing from the city, had now crowned the
+opposite hill--in all, probably 10,000 men. Our skirmishers were kept
+out with great difficulty, and chiefly by the exertions and example of
+Colonel Oliver. The remainder of the troops were formed into two
+squares, and the cavalry drawn up _en masse_ immediately in their rear,
+and all suffered severely--the vent of the only gun became too hot to be
+served. A party of cavalry under Lieutenant Walker was recalled to
+prevent its destruction, and a demonstration of the Affghan cavalry on
+our right flank, which had been exposed by the recall of Lieutenant
+Walker, was repulsed by a fire of shrapnell, which mortally wounded a
+chief of consequence. The enemy surrounded the troops on three sides.
+The men were faint with fatigue and thirst--the Affghan skirmishers
+pressed on, and our's gave way. The men could not be got to charge
+bayonets. The enemy made a rush at the guns, the cavalry were ordered to
+charge, but would not follow their officers. The first square and the
+cavalry gave way, and were with difficulty rallied behind the second
+square, leaving the gun in the hands of the enemy, who immediately
+carried off the limber and horses. News of Abdoolah Khan's wound spread
+amongst the Affghans, who now retired. Our men resumed courage, and
+regained possession of the gun; and fresh ammunition having arrived from
+cantonments, it again opened on the enemy: but our cavalry would not
+act, and the infantry were too much exhausted and disheartened to make a
+forward movement, and too few in number. The whole force of the enemy
+came on with renewed vigour--the front of the advanced square had been
+literally mowed down, and most of the gallant artillerymen had fallen.
+The gun was scarcely limbered up preparatory to retreat, when a rush
+from the Ghazees broke the first square. All order was at an end, the
+entreaties and commands of the officers were unheeded, and an utter rout
+ensued down the hill towards the cantonments, the enemy's cavalry making
+a fearful slaughter among the unresisting fugitives. The retreat of
+Major Kershaw's party was cut off, and his men were nearly all
+destroyed. The mingled tide of flight and pursuit seemed to be about to
+enter the cantonments together; but the pursuers were checked by the
+fire of the Shah's 5th infantry and the juzailchees, and by a charge of
+a fresh troop of cavalry under Lieutenant Hardyman, and fifteen or
+twenty of his own men rallied by Lieutenant Walker, who fell in that
+encounter. Osman Khan, too, a chief whose men were amongst the foremost,
+voluntarily halted them and drew them off, "which may be reckoned,
+indeed, (says Lieutenant Eyre,) the chief reason why _all_ of our people
+who on that day went forth to battle were not destroyed." The gun and
+the second limber which had arrived from the cantonments, in attempting
+to gallop down hill, was overturned and lost. "Our loss was
+tremendous--the greater part of the wounded, including Colonel Oliver,
+having been left in the field, where they were miserably cut to
+pieces."[23]
+
+     [23] In Mr Eyre's observations on this disastrous affair, he
+     enumerates six errors, which he says must present themselves to
+     the most unpractised military eye. "The first, and perhaps the
+     most fatal mistake of all, was the taking only one gun;" but he
+     admits that there was only one gun ready, and that, if the
+     Brigadier had waited for the second, he must have postponed the
+     enterprise for a day. This would probably have been the more
+     prudent course.
+
+     The second error was, that advantage was not taken of the panic
+     in the village, to storm it at once in the dark; but it appears
+     from his own account, that there were not more than forty men
+     remaining in the village when it was attacked, after daylight,
+     and that the chief cause of the failure of that attack, was
+     Major Swayne's having missed the gate, a misfortune which was,
+     certainly, at least as likely to have occurred in the dark.
+
+     The third was, that the sappers were not employed to raise a
+     breastwork for the protection of the troops. This objection
+     appears to be well founded.
+
+     The fourth was, that the infantry were formed into squares, to
+     resist the distant fire of infantry, on ground over which no
+     cavalry could have charged with effect. It appears to be so
+     utterly unintelligible that any officer should have been guilty
+     of so manifest an absurdity, that the circumstances seem to
+     require further elucidation; but that the formation was
+     unfortunate, is sufficiently obvious.
+
+     Fifthly, that the position chosen for the cavalry was
+     erroneous; and sixthly, that the retreat was too long deferred.
+     Both these objections appear to be just.
+
+Thus terminated in disaster the military struggle at Cabul, and then
+commenced that series of negotiations not less disastrous, which led to
+the murder of the Envoy, to the retreat of the army, and to its ultimate
+annihilation. In Lieutenant Eyre's account of their military operations,
+we look in vain for any evidence of promptitude, vigour, or decision,
+skill or judgment, in the commanders; and we have abundant evidence of a
+lamentable want of discipline and proper spirit in the troops,
+especially amongst the Europeans. Instances of high personal courage and
+gallantry amongst the officers are numerous, and they always will be,
+when the occasion requires them; but if the facts of this narrative had
+been given without the names, no man would have recognised in it the
+operations of a British army.
+
+     "_Nov_. 24.--Our troops (says Eyre) had now lost all
+     confidence; and even such of the officers as had hitherto
+     indulged the hope of a favourable turn in our affairs, began at
+     last reluctantly to entertain gloomy forebodings as to our
+     future fate. Our force resembled a ship in danger of wrecking
+     among rocks and shoals, for want of an able pilot to guide it
+     safely through them. Even now, at the eleventh hour, had the
+     helm of affairs been grasped by a hand competent to the
+     important task, we might perhaps have steered clear of
+     destruction; but, in the absence of any such deliverer, it was
+     but too evident that Heaven alone could save us by some
+     unforeseen interposition. The spirit of the men was gone; the
+     influence of the officers over them declined daily; and that
+     boasted discipline, which alone renders a handful of our troops
+     superior to an irregular multitude, began fast to disappear
+     from among us. The enemy, on the other hand, waxed bolder every
+     day and every hour; nor was it long ere we got accustomed to be
+     bearded with impunity from under the very ramparts of our
+     garrison.
+
+     "Never were troops exposed to greater hardships and dangers;
+     yet, sad to say, never did soldiers shed their blood with less
+     beneficial result than during the investment of the British
+     lines at Cabul."
+
+Captain Conolly now wrote from the Bala Hissar, urging an immediate
+retreat thither; "but the old objections were still urged against the
+measure by Brigadier Shelton and others," though several of the chief
+military, and all the political officers, approved of it. Shah Shoojah
+was impatient to receive them.
+
+The door to negotiation was opened by a letter to the Envoy from Osman
+Khan Barukzye, a near relation of the new king, Nuwab Mahomed Zuman
+Khan, who had sheltered Captain Drummond in his own house since the
+first day of the outbreak. He took credit to himself for having checked
+the ardour of his followers on the preceding day, and having thus saved
+the British force from destruction; he declared that the chiefs only
+desired we should quietly evacuate the country, leaving them to govern
+it according to their own rules, and with a king of their own choosing.
+The General, on being referred to, was of opinion that the cantonments
+could not be defended throughout the winter, and approved of opening a
+negotiation on the basis of the evacuation of the country. On the 27th,
+two deputies were sent by the assembled chiefs to confer with Sir W.
+Macnaghten; but the terms they proposed were such as he could not
+accept. The deputies took leave of the Envoy, with the exclamation, that
+"we should meet again in battle." "We shall at all events meet," replied
+Sir William, "at the day of judgment."
+
+At night the Envoy received a letter, proposing "that we should deliver
+up Shah Shoojah and all his family--lay down our arms, and make an
+unconditional surrender--when they might, perhaps, be induced to spare
+our lives, and allow us to leave the country on condition of never
+returning."
+
+The Envoy replied, "that these terms were too dishonourable to be
+entertained for a moment; and that, if they were persisted in, he must
+again appeal to arms, leaving the result to the God of battles."
+
+Active hostilities were not renewed till the 1st of December, when a
+desperate effort was made by the enemy to gain possession of the Bala
+Hissar; but they were repulsed by Major Ewart with considerable
+slaughter. On the 4th, they cannonaded the cantonment from the Beymaroo
+hills, but did little mischief, and at night they made an unsuccessful
+attempt on Mahomed Shereef's fort. On the 5th, they completed, without
+opposition, the destruction of the bridge over the Cabul river. On the
+6th, the garrison of Mahomed Shereef's fort disgracefully abandoned it,
+the men of the 44th apparently being the first to fly; and a garrison of
+the same regiment, in the bazar village, was with difficulty restrained
+from following their example. On the 7th, this post of honour was
+occupied by the 37th native infantry; the 44th, who had hitherto been
+intrusted with it, being no longer considered worthy to retain it.
+
+It is but justice to Mr Eyre to give in his own words some remarks which
+he has thought it right to make, with reference to what he has recorded
+of the conduct of that unhappy regiment:--
+
+     "In the course of this narrative, I have been compelled by
+     stern truth to note down facts nearly affecting the honour and
+     interests of a British regiment. It may, or rather I fear it
+     must, inevitably happen, that my unreserved statements of the
+     Cabul occurrences will prove unacceptable to many, whose
+     private or public feelings are interested in glossing over or
+     suppressing the numerous errors committed and censures
+     deservedly incurred. But my heart tells me that no paltry
+     motives of rivalry or malice influence my pen; rather a sincere
+     and honest desire to benefit the public service, by pointing
+     out the rocks on which our reputation was wrecked, the means by
+     which our honour was sullied, and our Indian empire endangered,
+     as a warning to future actors in similar scenes. In a word, I
+     believe that more good is likely to ensue from the publication
+     of the whole unmitigated truth, than from a mere garbled
+     statement of it. A kingdom has been lost--an army slain;--and
+     surely, if I can show that, had we been but true to ourselves,
+     and had vigorous measures been adopted, the result might have
+     been widely different, I shall have written an instructive
+     lesson to rulers and subjects, to generals and armies, and
+     shall not have incurred in vain the disapprobation of the
+     self-interested or the proud."
+
+The Envoy having again appealed to the General, again received an
+answer, stating the impossibility of holding out, and recommending that
+the Envoy should lose no time in entering into negotiations. This letter
+was countersigned by Brigadiers Shelton and Anquetil, and Colonel
+Chambers.
+
+On the 11th December, the Envoy, accompanied by Captains Lawrence,
+Trevor, and Mackenzie, and a few troopers, went out by agreement to meet
+the chiefs on the plain towards the Seah Sung hills. A conciliatory
+address from the Envoy was met by professions of personal esteem and
+approbation of the views he had laid before them, and of gratitude for
+the manner in which the Ameer Dost Mahomed Khan had been treated. The
+Envoy then read to them a sketch of the proposed treaty, which was to
+the following effect:--
+
+     "That the British should evacuate Affghanistan, including
+     Candahar, Ghuznee, Cabul, Jellalabad, and all the other
+     stations absolutely within the limits of the country so called;
+     that they should be permitted to return not only unmolested to
+     India, but that supplies of every description should be
+     afforded them in their road thither, certain men of consequence
+     accompanying them as hostages; that the Ameer Dost Mahomed
+     Khan, his family, and every Affghan now in exile for political
+     offences, should be allowed to return to their country; that
+     Shah Shoojah and his family should be allowed the option of
+     remaining at Cabul, or proceeding with the British troops to
+     Loodiana, in either case receiving from the Affghan Government
+     a pension of one lac of rupees per annum; that means of
+     transport, for the conveyance of our baggage, stores, &c.,
+     including that required by the royal family, in case of their
+     adopting the latter alternative, should be furnished by the
+     existing Affghan Government: that an amnesty should be granted
+     to all those who had made themselves obnoxious on account of
+     their attachment to Shah Shoojah and his allies, the British;
+     that all prisoners should be released; that no British force
+     should be ever again sent into Affghanistan, unless called for
+     by the Affghan government, between whom and the British nation
+     perpetual friendship should be established on the sure
+     foundation of mutual good offices."
+
+After some objections on the part of Mahomed Akber Khan, the terms were
+agreed to, and it was further arranged that provisions should be
+supplied to our troops, and that they should evacuate the cantonment in
+three days.
+
+Preparations were immediately commenced for the retreat. Arms were
+ordered to be distributed from the stores, now about to be abandoned, to
+some of the camp-followers, and such of the soldiers as might require
+them; and a disgraceful scene of confusion and tumult followed, which
+showed the fearful extent to which the army was disorganized.
+
+The troops in the Bala Hissar were moved into cantonments, not without a
+foretaste of what they had to expect on their march to Jellalabad, under
+the safe conduct of Akber Khan.
+
+The demands of the chiefs now rose from day to day. They refused to
+supply provisions until we should further assure them of our sincerity,
+by giving up every fort in the immediate vicinity of the cantonment. The
+troops were accordingly withdrawn, the forts were immediately occupied
+by the Affghans, and the cantonment thus placed at their mercy. On the
+18th, the promised cattle for carriage had not yet been supplied, and a
+heavy fall of snow rendered the situation of the troops more desperate.
+On the 19th, the Envoy wrote an order for the evacuation of Ghuznee. On
+the 20th, the Envoy had another interview with the chiefs, who now
+demanded that a portion of the guns and ammunition should be given up.
+This also was agreed to. At this stage of the proceedings, Lieutenant
+Sturt of the engineers proposed to the General to break off the treaty,
+and march forthwith to Jellalabad; but the proposal was not approved.
+The arrangements for giving effect to the treaty were still carried on;
+and the Envoy again met Akber Khan and Osman Khan on the plain, when
+Captains Conolly and Airey were given up as hostages, and the Envoy sent
+his carriage and horses, and a pair of pistols, as presents to Akber
+Khan, who further demanded an Arab horse, the property of Captain Grant,
+assistant adjutant-general:--
+
+     "Late in the evening of the 22d December," (says Capt.
+     Mackenzie, in a letter to Lieut. Eyre,) "Capt. James Skinner,
+     who, after having been concealed in Cabul during the greater
+     part of the siege, had latterly been the guest of Mahomed
+     Akber, arrived in cantonments, accompanied by Mahomed Sudeeq
+     Khan, a first cousin of Mahomed Akber, and by Sirwar Khan, the
+     Arhanee merchant, who, in the beginning of the campaign, had
+     furnished the army with camels, and who had been much in the
+     confidence of Sir A. Burnes, being, in fact, one of our
+     stanchest friends. The two latter remained in a different
+     apartment, while Skinner dined with the Envoy. During dinner,
+     Skinner jestingly remarked that he felt as if laden with
+     combustibles, being charged with a message from Mahomed Akber
+     to the Envoy of a most portentous nature.
+
+     "Even then I remarked that the Envoy's eye glanced eagerly
+     towards Skinner with an expression of hope. In fact, he was
+     like a drowning man catching at straws. Skinner, however,
+     referred him to his Affghan companions, and after dinner the
+     four retired into a room by themselves. My knowledge of what
+     there took place is gained from poor Skinner's own relation, as
+     given during my subsequent captivity with him in Akber's house.
+     Mahomed Sudeeq disclosed Mahomed Akber's proposition to the
+     Envoy, which was, that the following day Sir William should
+     meet him (Mahomed Akber) and a few of his immediate friends,
+     viz. the chiefs of the Eastern Giljyes, outside the
+     cantonments, when a final agreement should be made, so as to be
+     fully understood by both parties; that Sir William should have
+     a considerable body of troops in readiness, which, on a given
+     signal, were to join with those of Mahomed Akber and the
+     Giljyes, assault and take Mahmood Khan's fort, and secure the
+     person of Ameenoolah. At this stage of the proposition Mahomed
+     Sudeeq signified that, for a certain sum of money, the head of
+     Ameenoolah should be presented to the Envoy; but from this Sir
+     William shrunk with abhorrence, declaring that it was neither
+     his custom nor that of his country to give a price for blood.
+     Mahomed Sudeeq then went on to say, that, after having subdued
+     the rest of the khans, the English should be permitted to
+     remain in the country eight months longer, so as to save their
+     _purdah_, (veil, or credit,) but that they were then to
+     evacuate Affghanistan, as if of their own accord; that Shah
+     Shoojah was to continue king of the country, and that Mahomed
+     Akber was to be his wuzeer. As a further reward for his
+     (Mahomed Akber's) assistance, the British Government were to
+     pay him thirty lacs of rupees, and four lacs of rupees per
+     annum during his life! To this extraordinary and wild proposal,
+     Sir William gave ear with an eagerness which nothing can
+     account for but the supposition, confirmed by many other
+     circumstances, that his strong mind had been harassed until it
+     had in some degree lost its equipoise; and he not only assented
+     fully to these terms, but actually gave a Persian paper to that
+     effect, written in his own hand, declaring as his motives that
+     it was not only an excellent opportunity to carry into effect
+     the real wishes of Government--which were to evacuate the
+     country with as much credit to ourselves as possible--but that
+     it would give England time to enter into a treaty with Russia,
+     defining the bounds beyond which neither were to pass in
+     Central Asia. So ended this fatal conference, the nature and
+     result of which, contrary to his usual custom, Sir William
+     communicated to none of those who, on all former occasions,
+     were fully in his confidence, viz. Trevor, Lawrence, and
+     myself. It seemed as if he feared that we might insist on the
+     impracticability of the plan, which he must have studiously
+     concealed from himself. All the following morning his manner
+     was distracted and hurried, in a way that none of us had ever
+     before witnessed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "After breakfast, Trevor, Lawrence, and myself were summoned to
+     attend the Envoy during his conference with Mahomed Akber Khan.
+     I found him alone, when, for the first time, he disclosed to me
+     the nature of the transaction he was engaged in. I immediately
+     warned him that it was a plot against him. He replied hastily,
+     'A plot! let me alone for that--trust me for that!' and I
+     consequently offered no further remonstrance. Sir William then
+     arranged with General Elphinstone that the 54th regiment, under
+     Major Ewart, should be held in readiness for immediate service.
+     The Shah's 6th, and two guns, were also warned."
+
+Sir W. Macnaghten, halting the troopers of the escort, advanced about
+500 or 600 yards from the eastern rampart of the cantonment, and there
+awaited Akber Khan and his party:--
+
+     "Close by where some hillocks, on the further side of which
+     from the cantonment a carpet was spread where the snow lay
+     least thick, and there the khans and Sir William sat down to
+     hold their conference. Men talk of presentiment; I suppose it
+     was something of the kind which came over me, for I could
+     scarcely prevail upon myself to quit my horse. I did so,
+     however, and was invited to sit down among the Sirdars. After
+     the usual salutations, Mahomed Akber commenced business by
+     asking the Envoy if he was perfectly ready to carry into effect
+     the proposition of the preceding night? The Envoy replied, 'Why
+     not?' My attention was then called off by an old Affghan
+     acquaintance of mine, formerly chief of the Cabul police, by
+     name Gholam Moyun-ood-deen. I rose from my recumbent posture,
+     and stood apart with him conversing. I afterwards remembered
+     that my friend betrayed much anxiety as to where my pistols
+     were, and why I did not carry them on my person. I answered,
+     that although I wore my sword for form, it was not necessary to
+     be armed _cap-a-pie_. His discourse was also full of
+     extravagant compliments, I suppose for the purpose of lulling
+     me to sleep. At length my attention was called off from what he
+     was saying, by observing that a number of men, armed to the
+     teeth, had gradually approached to the scene of conference, and
+     were drawing round in a sort of circle. This Lawrence and
+     myself pointed out to some of the chief men, who affected at
+     first to drive them off with whips; but Mahomed Akber observed,
+     that it was of no consequence, as they were in the secret. I
+     again resumed my conversation with Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, when
+     suddenly I heard Mahomed Akber call out, 'Begeer, begeer,'
+     (seize! seize!) and, turning round, I saw him grasp the Envoy's
+     left hand, with an expression in his face of the most
+     diabolical ferocity. I think it was Sultan Jan who laid hold of
+     the Envoy's right hand. They dragged him in a stooping posture
+     down the hillock; the only words I heard poor Sir William utter
+     being, 'Az barae Khooda' (for God's sake!) I saw his face,
+     however, and it was full of horror and astonishment. I did not
+     see what became of Trevor, but Lawrence was dragged past me by
+     several Affghans, whom I saw wrest his weapons from him. Up to
+     this moment I was so engrossed in observing what was taking
+     place, that I actually was not aware that my own right arm was
+     mastered, that my urbane friend held a pistol to my temple, and
+     that I was surrounded by a circle of Ghazees, with drawn swords
+     and cocked juzails. Resistance was in vain, so, listening to
+     the exhortations of Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, which were enforced
+     by the whistling of divers bullets over my head, I hurried
+     through the snow with him to the place where his horse was
+     standing, being despoiled _en route_ of my sabre, and narrowly
+     escaping divers attempts made on my life. As I mounted behind
+     my captor, now my energetic defender, the crowd increased
+     around us, the cries of 'Kill the Kafir' became more vehement,
+     and, although we hurried on at a fast canter, it was with the
+     utmost difficulty Gholam Moyun-ood-deen, although assisted by
+     one or two friends or followers, could ward off and avoid the
+     sword-cuts aimed at me, the rascals being afraid to fire lest
+     they should kill my conductor. Indeed he was obliged to wheel
+     his horse round once, and taking off his turban, (the last
+     appeal a Mussulman can make,) to implore them for God's sake to
+     respect the life of his friend. At last, ascending a slippery
+     bank, the horse fell. My cap had been snatched off, and I now
+     received a heavy blow on the head from a bludgeon, which
+     fortunately did not quite deprive me of my senses. I had
+     sufficient sense left to shoot a-head of the fallen horse,
+     where my protector with another man joined me, and clasping me
+     in their arms, hurried me towards the wall of Mahomed Khan's
+     fort. How I reached the spot where Mahomed Akber was receiving
+     the gratulations of the multitude I know not, but I remember a
+     fanatic rushing on me, and twisting his hand in my collar until
+     I became exhausted from suffocation. I must do Mahomed Akber
+     the Justice to say, that, finding the Ghazees bent on my
+     slaughter, even after I had reached his stirrup, he drew his
+     sword and laid about him right manfully, for my conductor and
+     Meerza Baoodeen Khan were obliged to press me up against the
+     wall, covering me with their own bodies, and protesting that no
+     blow should reach me but through their persons.
+
+     "Pride, however, overcame Mahomed Akber's sense of courtesy,
+     when he thought I was safe, for he then turned round to me, and
+     repeatedly said, in a tone of triumphant derision, 'Shuma
+     moolk-i-ma me geered!' (_You'll_ seize my country, will
+     you!)--he then rode off, and I was hurried towards the gate of
+     the fort. Here new dangers awaited me, for Moolah Momin, fresh
+     from the slaughter of poor Trevor, who was killed riding close
+     behind me--Sultan Jan having the credit of having given him the
+     first sabre-cut--stood here with his followers, whom he
+     exhorted to slay me, setting them the example by cutting
+     fiercely at me himself. Fortunately a gun stood between us, but
+     still he would have effected his purpose, had not Mahomed Shah
+     Khan at that instant, with some followers, come to my
+     assistance. These drew their swords in my defence, the chief
+     himself throwing his arm round my neck, and receiving on his
+     shoulder a cut aimed by Moollah Momin at my head. During the
+     bustle I pushed forward into the fort, and was immediately
+     taken to a sort of dungeon, where I found Lawrence safe, but
+     somewhat exhausted by his hideous ride and the violence he had
+     sustained, although unwounded. Here the Giljye chiefs, Mahomed
+     Shah Khan, and his brother Dost Mahomed Khan, presently joined
+     us, and endeavoured to cheer up our flagging spirits, assuring
+     us that the Envoy and Trevor were not dead, but on the contrary
+     quite well. They stayed with us during the afternoon, their
+     presence being absolutely necessary for our protection. Many
+     attempts were made by the fanatics to force the door to
+     accomplish our destruction. Others spit at us and abused us
+     through a small window, through which one fellow levelled a
+     blunderbuss at us, which was struck up by our keepers and
+     himself thrust back. At last Ameenoollah made his appearance,
+     and threatened us with instant death. Some of his people most
+     officiously advanced to make good his word, until pushed back
+     by the Giljye chiefs, who remonstrated with this iniquitous old
+     monster, their master, whom they persuaded to relieve us from
+     his hateful presence. During the afternoon, a human hand was
+     held up in mockery to us at the window. We said that it had
+     belonged to an European, but were not aware at the time that it
+     was actually the hand of the poor Envoy. Of all the Mahomedans
+     assembled in the room discussing the events of the day, one
+     only, an old moollah, openly and fearlessly condemned the acts
+     of his brethren, declaring that the treachery was abominable,
+     and a disgrace to Islam. At night they brought us food, and
+     gave us each a postheen to sleep on. At midnight we were
+     awakened to go to the house of Mahomed Akber in the city.
+     Mahomed Shah Khan then, with the meanness common to all
+     Affghans of rank, robbed Lawrence of his watch, while his
+     brother did me a similar favour. I had been plundered of my
+     rings and every thing else previously, by the understrappers.
+
+     "Reaching Mahomed Akber's abode, we were shown into the room
+     where he lay in bed. He received us with great outward show of
+     courtesy, assuring us of the welfare of the Envoy and Trevor,
+     but there was a constraint in his manner for which I could not
+     account. We were shortly taken to another apartment, where we
+     found Skinner, who had returned, being on parole, early in the
+     morning. Doubt and gloom marked our meeting, and the latter was
+     fearfully deepened by the intelligence which we now received
+     from our fellow-captive of the base murder of Sir William and
+     Trevor. He informed us that the head of the former had been
+     carried about the city in triumph. We of course spent a
+     miserable night. The next day we were taken under a strong
+     guard to the house of Zuman Khan, where a council of the Khans
+     were being held. Here we found Captains Conolly and Airey, who
+     had some days previously been sent to the hurwah's house as
+     hostage for the performance of certain parts of the treaty
+     which was to have been entered into. A violent discussion took
+     place, in which Mahomed Akber bore the most prominent part. We
+     were vehemently accused of treachery, and every thing that was
+     bad, and told that the whole of the transactions of the night
+     previous had been a trick of Mahomed Akber, and Ameenoollah, to
+     ascertain the Envoy's sincerity. They declared that they would
+     now grant us no terms, save on the surrender of the whole of
+     the married families as hostages, all the guns, ammunition, and
+     treasure. At this time Conolly told me that on the preceding
+     day the Envoy's head had been paraded about in the court-yard;
+     that his and Trevor's bodies had been hung up in the public
+     bazar, or _chouk_; and that it was with the greatest difficulty
+     that the old hurwah, Zuman Khan, had saved him and Airey from
+     being murdered by a body of fanatics, who had attempted to rush
+     into the room where they were. Also, that previous to the
+     arrival of Lawrence, Skinner, and myself, Mahomed Akber had
+     been relating the events of the preceding day to the _Jeerga_
+     or council, and that he had unguardedly avowed having, while
+     endeavouring to force the Envoy either to mount on horseback or
+     to move more quickly, _struck_ him; and that, seeing Conolly's
+     eyes fastened upon him with an expression of intense
+     indignation, he had altered the phrase and said, 'I mean I
+     _pushed_ him.' After an immense deal of gabble, a proposal for
+     a renewal of the treaty, not, however, demanding all the guns,
+     was determined to be sent to the cantonments, and Skinner,
+     Lawrence, and myself were marched back to Akber's house,
+     enduring _en route_ all manner of threats and insults. Here we
+     were closely confined in an inner apartment, which was indeed
+     necessary for our safety. That evening we received a visit from
+     Mahomed Akber, Sultan Jan, and several other Affghans. Mahomed
+     Akber exhibited his double-barrelled pistols to us, which he
+     had worn the previous day, requesting us to put their locks to
+     rights, something being amiss. _Two of the barrels had been
+     recently discharged_, which he endeavoured in a most confused
+     way to account for by saying, that he had been charged by a
+     havildar of the escort, and had fired both barrels at him. Now
+     all the escort had run away without even attempting to charge,
+     the only man who advanced to the rescue having been a Hindoo
+     Jemadar of Chuprassies, who was instantly cut to pieces by the
+     assembled Ghazees. This defence he made without any accusation
+     on our part, betraying the anxiety of a liar to be believed. On
+     the 26th, Captain Lawrence was taken to the house of
+     Ameenoollah, whence he did not return to us. Captain Skinner
+     and myself remained in Akber's house until the 30th. During
+     this time we were civilly treated, and conversed with numbers
+     of Affghan gentlemen who came to visit us. Some of them
+     asserted that the Envoy had been murdered by the unruly
+     soldiery. Others could not deny that Akber himself was the
+     assassin. For two or three days we had a fellow-prisoner in
+     poor Sirwar Khan, who had been deceived throughout the whole
+     matter, and out of whom they were then endeavouring to screw
+     money. He, of course, was aware from his countrymen, that not
+     only had Akber committed the murder, but that he protested to
+     the Ghazees that he gloried in the deed. On one occasion a
+     moonshee of Major Pottinger, who had escaped from Charekhar,
+     named Mohun Beer, came direct from the presence of Mahomed
+     Akber to visit us. He told us that Mahomed Akber had begun to
+     see the impolicy of having murdered the Envoy, which fact he
+     had just avowed to him, shedding many tears, either of
+     pretended remorse or of real vexation at having committed
+     himself. On several occasions Mahomed Akber personally, and by
+     deputy, besought Skinner and myself to give him advice as to
+     how he was to extricate himself from the dilemma in which he
+     was placed, more than once endeavouring to excuse himself for
+     not having effectually protected the Envoy, by saying that Sir
+     William had drawn a sword-stick upon him. It seems that
+     meanwhile the renewed negotiations with Major Pottinger, who
+     had assumed the Envoy's place in cantonments, had been brought
+     to a head; for on the night of the 30th, Akber furnished me
+     with an Affghan dress, (Skinner already wore one,) and sent us
+     both back to cantonments. Several Affghans, with whom I fell in
+     afterwards, protested to me that they had seen Mahomed Akber
+     shoot the Envoy with his own hand; amongst them Meerza Baoodeen
+     Khan, who, being an old acquaintance, always retained a
+     sneaking kindness for the English.
+
+     "I am, my dear Eyre, yours very truly,
+
+     "C. MACKENZIE.
+
+     "Cabul, 29th July, 1842."
+
+The negotiations were now renewed by Major Pottinger, who had been
+requested by General Elphinstone to assume the unenviable office of
+political agent and adviser.
+
+     "The additional clauses in the treaty now proposed for our
+     renewed acceptance were--1st. That we should leave behind our
+     guns, excepting six. 2nd. That we should immediately give up
+     all our treasures. 3d. That the hostages should be all
+     exchanged for married men, with their wives and families. The
+     difficulties of Major Pottinger's position will be readily
+     perceived, when it is borne in mind that he had before him the
+     most conclusive evidence of the late Envoy's ill-advised
+     intrigue with Mahomed Akber Khan, in direct violation of that
+     very treaty which was now once more tendered for
+     consideration."
+
+A sum of fourteen lacs of rupees, about L.140,000, was also demanded,
+which was said to be payable to the several chiefs on the promise of the
+late Envoy.
+
+Major Pottinger, at a council of war convened by the General, "declared
+his conviction that no confidence could be placed in any treaty formed
+with the Affghan chiefs; that, under such circumstances, to bind the
+hands of the Government by promising to evacuate the country, and to
+restore the deposed Ameer, and to waste, moreover, so much public money
+merely to save our own lives and property, would be inconsistent with
+the duty we owed to our country and the Government we served; and that
+the only honourable course would be, either to hold out at Cabul, or to
+force our immediate retreat to Jellalabad."
+
+"This however, the officers composing the council, one and all declared
+to be impracticable, owing to the want of provisions, the surrender of
+the surrounding forts, and the insuperable difficulties of the road at
+the present season." The new treaty was therefore, forthwith accepted.
+The demand of the chiefs, that married officers with their families
+should be left as hostages, was successfully resisted. Captains
+Drummond, Walsh, Warburton, and Webb, were accepted in their place, and
+on the 29th went to join Captains Conolly and Airey at the house of
+Nuwab Zuman Khan. Lieutenant Haughton and a portion of the sick and
+wounded, were sent into the city, and placed under the protection of the
+chiefs. "Three of the Shah's guns, with the greater portion of our
+treasure, were made over during the day, much to the evident disgust of
+the soldiery." On the following day, "the remainder of the sick went
+into the city, Lieutenant Evans, H.M. 44th foot, being placed in
+command, and Dr Campbell, 54th native infantry, with Dr Berwick of the
+mission, in medical charge of the whole. Two more of the Shah's guns
+were given up. It snowed hard the whole day."
+
+"_January_ 5.--Affairs continued in the same unsettled state to this
+date. The chiefs postponed our departure from day to day on various
+pretexts.... Numerous cautions were received from various well-wishers,
+to place no confidence in the professions of the chiefs, who had sworn
+together to accomplish our entire destruction."
+
+It is not our intention to offer any lengthened comments on these
+details. They require none. The facts, if they be correctly stated,
+speak for themselves; and, for reasons already referred to, we are
+unwilling to anticipate the result of the judicial investigation now
+understood to be in progress. This much, however, we may be permitted to
+say, that the traces of fatal disunion amongst ourselves will, we fear,
+be made every where apparent. It is notorious that Sir William
+Macnaghten and Sir Alexander Burnes were on terms the reverse of
+cordial. The Envoy had no confidence in the General. The General was
+disgusted with the authority the Envoy had assumed, even in matters
+exclusively military--and, debilitated by disease, was unable always to
+assert his authority even in his own family. The arrival of General
+Shelton in the cantonments does not appear to have tended to restore
+harmony, cordiality, or confidence, or even to have revived the drooping
+courage of the troops, or to have renovated the feelings of obedience,
+and given effect to the bonds of discipline, which had been too much
+relaxed. But, even after admitting all these things, much more still
+remains to be explained before we can account for all that has
+happened--before we can understand how the political authorities came to
+reject every evidence of approaching danger, and therefore to be quite
+unprepared for it when it came. Why no effort was made on the first day
+to put down the insurrection: Why, in the arrangements for the defence
+of the cantonments, the commisariat fort was neglected, and the other
+forts neither occupied nor destroyed: Why almost every detachment that
+was sent out was too small to effect its object: Why, with a force of
+nearly six thousand men, we should never on any one occasion have had
+two thousand in the field, and, as in the action at Beymaroo, only one
+gun: Why so many orders appear to have been disregarded; why so few were
+punctually obeyed.
+
+     "At last the fatal morning dawned (the 6th January) which was
+     to witness the departure of the Cabul force from the
+     cantonments in which it had endured a two months' siege.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     "Dreary indeed was the scene over which, with drooping spirits
+     and dismal forebodings, we had to bend our unwilling steps.
+     Deep snow covered every inch of mountain and plain with one
+     unspotted sheet of dazzling whiteness; and so intensely bitter
+     was the cold, as to penetrate and defy the defences of the
+     warmest clothing."
+
+Encumbered with baggage, crowded with 12,000 camp-followers, and
+accompanied by many helpless women and children, of all ranks and of all
+ages--with misery before, and death behind, and treachery all around
+them--with little hope of successful resistance if attacked, without
+tents enough to cover them, and without food or fuel for the march, 4500
+fighting men, with nine guns, set out on this march of death.
+
+At 9 A.M. the advance moved out, but was delayed for upwards of an hour
+at the river, having found the temporary bridge incomplete; and it was
+noon ere the road was clear for the main column, which, with its long
+train of loaded camels, continued to pour out of the gate until the
+evening, by which time thousands of Affghans thronged the area of the
+cantonment rending the air with exulting cries, and committing every
+kind of atrocity. Before the rearguard commenced its march it was night;
+but by the light of the burning buildings the Affghan marksmen laid
+Lieut. Hardyman, and fifty rank and file, lifeless on the snow. The
+order of march was soon lost; scores of sepoys and camp-followers sat
+down in despair to perish, and it was 2 A.M. before the rearguard
+reached the camp at Bygram, a distance of five miles. Here all was
+confusion; different regiments, with baggage, camp-followers, camels,
+and horses, mixed up together. The cold towards morning became more
+intense, and thousands were lying on the bare snow, without shelter,
+fire, or food. Several died during the night, amongst whom was an
+European conductor; and the proportion of those who escaped without
+frostbites was small. Yet this was but the _beginning_ of sorrows.
+
+_January 7th_.--At 8 A.M. the force moved on in the same inextricable
+confusion. Already nearly half the sepoys, from sheer inability to keep
+their ranks, had joined the crowd of non-combatants. The rearguard was
+attacked, and much baggage lost, and one of the guns having been
+overturned, was taken by the Affghans, whose cavalry charged into the
+very heart of the column.
+
+Akber Khan said, that the force had been attacked because it had marched
+contrary to the wish of the chiefs. He insisted that it should halt, and
+promised to supply food, forage, and fuel for the troops, but demanded
+six more hostages, which were given. These terms having been agreed to,
+the firing ceased for the present, and the army encamped at Bootkhak,
+where the confusion was indescribable. "Night again," says Lieutenant
+Eyre, "closed over us, with its attendant horrors--starvation, cold,
+exhaustion, death."
+
+At an early hour on the 8th the Affghans commenced firing into the camp;
+and as they collected in considerable numbers, Major Thain led the 44th
+to attack them. In this business the regiment behaved with a resolution
+and gallantry worthy of British soldiers. Again Akber Khan demanded
+hostages. Again they were given, and again the firing ceased. This seems
+to prove that Akber Khan had the power, if he had chosen to exert it, to
+restrain those tribes. Once more the living mass of men and animals was
+put in motion. The frost had so crippled the hands and feet of the
+strongest men, as to prostrate their powers and to incapacitate them for
+service.
+
+The Khoord-Cabul pass, which they were about to enter, is about five
+miles long, shut in by lofty hills, and by precipices of 500 or 600 feet
+in height, whose summits approach one another in some parts to within
+about fifty or sixty yards. Down the centre dashed a torrent, bordered
+with ice, which was crossed about eight-and-twenty times.
+
+While in this dark and narrow gorge, a hot fire was opened upon the
+advance, with whom were several ladies, who, seeing no other chance of
+safety, galloped forwards, "running the gauntlet of the enemy's bullets,
+which whizzed in hundreds about their ears, until they were fairly out
+of the pass. Providentially the whole escaped, except Lady Sale, who was
+slightly wounded in the arm." Several of Akber Khan's chief adherents
+exerted themselves in vain to restrain the Giljyes; and as the crowd
+moved onward into the thickest of the fire, the slaughter was fearful.
+Another horse-artillery gun was abandoned, and the whole of its
+artillerymen slain, and some of the children of the officers became
+prisoners. It is supposed that 3000 souls perished in the pass, amongst
+whom were many officers.
+
+     "On the force reaching Khoord-Cabul, snow began to fall, and
+     continued till morning. Only four small tents were saved, of
+     which one belonged to the General: two were devoted to the
+     ladies and children, and one was given up to the sick; but an
+     immense number of poor wounded wretches wandered about the camp
+     destitute of shelter, and perished during the night. Groans of
+     misery and distress assailed the ear from all quarters. We had
+     ascended to a still colder climate than we had left behind, and
+     we were without tents, fuel, or food: the snow was the only bed
+     for all, and of many, ere morning, it proved the
+     _winding-sheet_. It is only marvellous that any should have
+     survived that fearful night!
+
+     "_January 9th_.--Another morning dawned, awakening thousands to
+     increased misery; and many a wretched survivor cast looks of
+     envy at his comrades, who lay stretched beside him in the
+     quiet sleep of death. Daylight was the signal for a renewal of
+     that confusion which attended every movement of the force."
+
+Many of the troops and followers moved without orders at 8 A.M., but
+were recalled by the General, in consequence of an arrangement with
+Akber Khan. "This delay, and prolongation of their sufferings in the
+snow, of which one more march would have carried them clear, made a very
+unfavourable impression on the minds of the native soldiery, who now,
+for the first time, began very generally to entertain the idea of
+deserting." And it is not to be wondered at, that the instinct of
+self-preservation should have led them to falter in their fealty when
+the condition of the whole army had become utterly hopeless.
+
+Akber Khan now proposed that the ladies and children should be made over
+to his care; and, anxious to save them further suffering, the General
+gave his consent to the arrangement, permitting their husbands and the
+wounded officers to accompany them.
+
+     "Up to this time scarcely one of the ladies had tasted a meal
+     since leaving Cabul. Some had infants a few days old at the
+     breast, and were unable to stand without assistance. Others
+     were so far advanced in pregnancy, that, under ordinary
+     circumstances, a walk across a drawing-room would have been an
+     exertion; yet these helpless women, with their young families,
+     had already been obliged to rough it on the backs of camels,
+     and on the tops of the baggage yaboos: those who had a horse to
+     ride, or were capable of sitting on one, were considered
+     fortunate indeed. Most had been without shelter since quitting
+     the cantonment--their servants had nearly all deserted or been
+     killed--and, with the exception of Lady Macnaghten and Mrs
+     Trevor, they had lost all their baggage, having nothing in the
+     world left but the clothes on their backs; _those_, in the case
+     of some of the invalids, consisted of _night dresses_ in which
+     they had started from Cabul in their litters. Under such
+     circumstances, a few more hours would probably have seen some
+     of them stiffening corpses. The offer of Mahomed Akber was
+     consequently their only chance of preservation. The husbands,
+     better clothed and hardy, would have infinitely preferred
+     taking their chance with the troops; but where is the man who
+     would prefer his own safety, when he thought he could by his
+     presence assist and console those near and dear to him?
+
+     "It is not, therefore, wonderful, that from persons so
+     circumstanced the General's proposal should have met with
+     little opposition, although it was a matter of serious doubt
+     whether the whole were not rushing into the very jaws of death,
+     by placing themselves at the mercy of a man who had so lately
+     imbrued his hands in the blood of a British envoy, whom he had
+     lured to destruction by similar professions of peace and
+     good-will."
+
+Anticipating an attack, the troops paraded to repel it, and it was now
+found that the 44th mustered only 100 files, and the native infantry
+regiments about sixty each. "The promises of Mahomed Akber to provide
+food and fuel were unfulfilled, and another night of starvation and cold
+consigned more victims to a miserable death."
+
+_January_ 10.--At break of day all was again confusion, every one
+hurrying to the front, and dreading above all things to be left in the
+rear. The Europeans were the only efficient men left, the Hindostanees
+having suffered so severely from the frost in their hands and feet, that
+few could hold a musket, much less pull a trigger. The enemy had
+occupied the rocks above the gorge, and thence poured a destructive fire
+upon the column as it slowly advanced. Fresh numbers fell at every
+volley. The sepoys, unable to use their arms, cast them away, and, with
+the followers, fled for their lives.
+
+     "The Affghans now rushed down upon their helpless and
+     unresisting victims sword in hand, and a general massacre took
+     place. The last small remnant of the native infantry regiments
+     were here scattered and destroyed; and the public treasure,
+     with all the remaining baggage, fell into the hands of the
+     enemy. Meanwhile, the advance, after pushing through the Tungee
+     with great loss, had reached Kubbur-i-Jubbar, about five miles
+     a-head, without more opposition. Here they halted to enable the
+     rear to join, but, from the few stragglers who from time to
+     time came up, the astounding truth was brought to light, that
+     of all who had that morning marched from Khoord-Cabul they were
+     almost the sole survivors, nearly the whole of the main and
+     rear columns having been cut off and destroyed. About 50
+     horse-artillerymen, with one twelve-pounder howitzer, 70 files
+     H.M.'s 44th, and 150 cavalry troopers, now composed the whole
+     Cabul force; but, notwithstanding the slaughter and dispersion
+     that had taken place, the camp-followers still formed a
+     considerable body."
+
+Another remonstrance was now addressed to Akber Khan. He declared, in
+reply, his inability to restrain the Giljyes. As the troops entered a
+narrow defile at the foot of the Huft Kotul, they found it strewn with
+the dead bodies of their companions. A destructive fire was maintained
+on the troops from the heights on either side, and fresh numbers of dead
+and wounded lined the course of the stream. "Brigadier Shelton commanded
+the rear with a few Europeans, and but for his persevering energy and
+unflinching fortitude in repelling the assailants, it is probable the
+whole would have been there sacrificed." They encamped in the Tezeen
+valley, having lost 12,000 men since leaving Cabul; fifteen officers had
+been killed and wounded in this day's march.
+
+After resting three hours, they marched, under cover of the darkness, at
+seven P.M. Here the last gun was abandoned, and with it Dr Cardew, whose
+zeal and gallantry had endeared him to the soldiers; and a little
+further on Dr Duff was left on the road in a state of utter exhaustion.
+
+     "Bodies of the neighbouring tribes were by this time on the
+     alert, and fired at random from the heights, it being
+     fortunately too dark for them to aim with precision; but the
+     panic-stricken camp-followers now resembled a herd of startled
+     deer, and fluctuated backwards and forwards, _en masse_, at
+     every shot, blocking up the entire road, and fatally retarding
+     the progress of the little body of soldiers who, under
+     Brigadier Shelton, brought up the rear.
+
+     "At Burik-ab a heavy fire was encountered by the hindmost from
+     some caves near the road-side, occasioning fresh disorder,
+     which continued all the way to Kutter-Sung, where the advance
+     arrived at dawn of day, and awaited the junction of the rear,
+     which did not take place till 8 A.M."
+
+_January_ 11.-- ...
+
+     "From Kutter-Sung to Jugdulluk it was one continued conflict;
+     Brigadier Shelton, with his brave little band in the rear,
+     holding overwhelming numbers in check, and literally performing
+     wonders. But no efforts could avail to ward off the withering
+     fire of juzails, which from all sides assailed the crowded
+     column, lining the road with bleeding carcasses. About three
+     P.M. the advance reached Jugdulluk, and took up its position
+     behind some ruined walls that crowned a height by the
+     road-side. To show an imposing front, the officers extended
+     themselves in line, and Captain Grant, assistant
+     adjutant-general, at the same moment received a wound in the
+     face. From this eminence they cheered their comrades under
+     Brigadier Shelton in the rear, as they still struggled their
+     way gallantly along every foot of ground, perseveringly
+     followed up by their merciless enemy, until they arrived at
+     their ground. But even here rest was denied them; for the
+     Affghans, immediately occupying two hills which commanded the
+     position, kept up a fire from which the walls of the enclosure
+     afforded but a partial shelter.
+
+     "The exhausted troops and followers now began to suffer greatly
+     from thirst, which they were unable to satisfy. A tempting
+     stream trickled near the foot of the hill, but to venture down
+     to it was certain death. Some snow that covered the ground was
+     eagerly devoured, but increased, instead of alleviating, their
+     sufferings. The raw flesh of three bullocks, which had
+     fortunately been saved, was served out to the soldiers, and
+     ravenously swallowed."
+
+About half-past three Akber Khan sent for Capt. Skinner, who promptly
+obeyed the call, hoping still to effect some arrangement for the
+preservation of those who survived. The men now threw themselves down,
+hoping for a brief repose, but the enemy poured volleys from the heights
+into the enclosures in rapid succession. Captain Bygrave, with about
+fifteen brave Europeans, sallied forth, determined to drive the enemy
+from the heights or perish in the attempt. They succeeded; but the
+enemy, who had fled before them, returned and resumed their fatal fire.
+At five P.M. Captain Skinner returned with a message from Akber Khan,
+requesting the presence of the General at a conference, and demanding
+Brigadier Shelton and Capt. Johnson as hostages for the surrender of
+Jellalabad. The troops saw the departure of these officers with despair,
+feeling assured that these treacherous negotiations "were preparatory to
+fresh sacrifices of blood." The General and his companions were received
+with every outward token of kindness, and they were supplied with food,
+but they were not permitted to return. The Sirdar put the General off
+with promises; and at seven P.M. on the 12th, firing being heard, it was
+ascertained that the troops, impatient of further delay, had actually
+moved off. Before their departure Captain Skinner had been treacherously
+shot. They had been exposed during the whole day to the fire of the
+enemy--"sally after sally had been made by the Europeans, bravely led by
+Major Thain, Captain Bygrave, and Lieutenants Wade and Macartney, but
+again and again the enemy returned to worry and destroy. Night came, and
+all further delay in such a place being useless, the whole sallied
+forth, determined to pursue the route to Jellalabad at all risks."
+
+The sick and the wounded were necessarily abandoned to their fate. For
+some time the Giljyes seemed not to be on the alert; but in the defile,
+at the top of the rise, further progress was obstructed by barriers
+formed of prickly trees. This caused great delay, and "a terrible fire
+was poured in from all quarters--a massacre even worse than that of the
+Tunga Tarikee[24] commenced, the Affghans rushing in furiously upon the
+pent-up crowd of troops and followers, and committing wholesale
+slaughter. A miserable remnant managed to clear the barriers. Twelve
+officers, amongst whom was Brigadier Anquetil, were killed. Upwards of
+forty others succeeded in pushing through, about twelve of whom, being
+pretty well mounted, rode on a-head of the rest with the few remaining
+cavalry, intending to make the best of their way to Jellalabad."
+
+     [24] Strait of Darkness.
+
+The country now became more open--the Europeans dispersed, in small
+parties under different officers. The Giljyes were too much occupied in
+plundering the dead to pursue them, but they were much delayed by the
+amiable anxiety of the men to carry on their wounded comrades. The
+morning of the 13th dawned as they approached Gundamuk, revealing to the
+enemy the insignificance of their numerical strength; and they were
+compelled, by the vigorous assaults of the Giljyes, to take up a
+defensive position on a height to the left of the road, "where they
+made a resolute stand, determined to sell their lives at the dearest
+possible price. At this time they could only muster about twenty
+muskets." An attempt to effect an amicable arrangement terminated in a
+renewal of hostilities, and "the enemy marked off man after man, and
+officer after officer, with unerring aim. Parties of Affghans rushed up
+at intervals to complete the work of extermination, but were as often
+driven back by the still dauntless handful of invincibles. At length,
+all being wounded more or less, a final onset of the enemy, sword in
+hand, terminated the unequal struggle and completed the dismal tragedy."
+Captain Souter, who was wounded, and three or four privates, were spared
+and led away captive. Major Griffiths and Captain Blewitt, having
+descended to confer with the enemy, had been previously led off. Of the
+twelve officers who had gone on in advance eleven were destroyed, and Dr
+Brydon alone of the whole Cabul force reached Jellalabad.
+
+"Such was the memorable retreat of the British army from Cabul, which,
+viewed in all its circumstances--in the military conduct which preceded
+and brought about such a consummation, the treachery, disaster, and
+suffering which accompanied it--is, perhaps, without a parallel in
+history."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE EVACUATION OF AFFGHANISTAN.
+
+
+Since the day when Lord Auckland, by his famous proclamation in October
+1838, "directed the assemblage of a British force for service across the
+Indus," we have never ceased to denounce the invasion and continued
+occupation of Affghanistan as equally unjust and impolitic[25]--unjust,
+as directed against a people whose conduct had afforded us no legitimate
+grounds of hostility, and against a ruler whose only offence was, that
+he had accepted[26] the proffer from another quarter of that support and
+alliance which we had denied to his earnest entreaty--and impolitic, as
+tending not only to plunge us into an endless succession of ruinous and
+unprofitable warfare, but to rouse against us an implacable spirit of
+enmity, in a nation which had hitherto shown every disposition to
+cultivate amicable relations with our Anglo-Indian Government. In all
+points, our anticipations have been fatally verified. After more than
+two years consumed in unavailing efforts to complete the reduction of
+the country, our army of occupation was at last overwhelmed by the
+universal and irresistible outbreak of an indignant and fanatic
+population; and the restored monarch, Shah-Shoojah, ("whose popularity
+throughout Affghanistan had been proved to the Governor-general by the
+strong and unanimous testimony of the best authorities") perished, as
+soon as he lost the protection of foreign bayonets, by the hands of his
+outraged countrymen.[27]
+
+     [25] See the articles "Persia, Affghanistan, and India," in
+     Jan. 1839--"Khiva, Central Asia, and Cabul," in April
+     1840--"Results of our Affghan Conquests," in Aug.
+     1841--"Affghanistan and India," in July 1842.
+
+     [26] It now seems even doubtful whether the famous letter of
+     Dost Mohammed to the Emperor of Russia, which constituted the
+     _gravamen_ of the charge against him, was ever really written,
+     or at least with his concurrence.--_Vide_ "Report of the
+     Colonial Society on the Affghan War," p. 35.
+
+     [27] The particulars of Shah-Shoojah's fate, which were unknown
+     when we last referred to the subject, have been since
+     ascertained. After the retreat of the English from Cabul, he
+     remained for some time secluded in the Bala-Hissar, observing
+     great caution in his intercourse with the insurgent leaders;
+     but he was at length prevailed upon, by assurances of loyalty
+     and fidelity, (about the middle of April,) to quit the
+     fortress, in order to head an army against Jellalabad. He had
+     only proceeded, however, a short distance from the city, when
+     his litter was fired upon by a party of musketeers placed in
+     ambush by a Doorauni chief named Soojah-ed-Dowlah; and the king
+     was shot dead on the spot. Such was the ultimate fate of a
+     prince, the vicissitudes of whose life almost exceed the
+     fictions of romance, and who possessed talents sufficient, in
+     more tranquil times, to have given _eclat_ to his reign. During
+     his exile at Loodiana, he composed in Persian a curious
+     narrative of his past adventures, a version of part of which
+     appears in the 30th volume of the _Asiatic Journal_.
+
+The tottering and unsubstantial phantom of a _Doorauni kingdom_ vanished
+at once and for ever--and the only remaining alternative was, (as we
+stated the case in our number of last July,) "either to perpetrate a
+second act of violence and national injustice, by reconquering
+Affghanistan _for the vindication_ (as the phrase is) _of our military
+honour_, and holding it without disguise as a province of our empire--or
+to make the best of a bad bargain, by contenting ourselves with the
+occupation of a few posts on the frontier, and leaving the unhappy
+natives to recover, without foreign interference, from the dreadful
+state of anarchy into which our irruption has thrown them." Fortunately
+for British interests in the East, the latter course has been adopted.
+After a succession of brilliant military triumphs, which, in the words
+of Lord Ellenborough's recent proclamation, "have, in one short
+campaign, avenged our late disasters upon every scene of past
+misfortune," the evacuation of the country has been directed--not,
+however, before a fortunate chance had procured the liberation of _all_
+the prisoners who had fallen into the power of the Affghans in January
+last; and ere this time, we trust, not a single British regiment remains
+on the bloodstained soil of Affghanistan.
+
+The proclamation above referred to,[28] (which we have given at length
+at the conclusion of this article,) announcing these events, and
+defining the line of policy in future to be pursued by the Anglo-Indian
+Government, is in all respects a remarkable document. As a specimen of
+frankness and plain speaking, it stands unique in the history of
+diplomacy; and, accordingly, both its matter and its manner have been
+made the subjects of unqualified censure by those scribes of the
+Opposition press who, "content to dwell in forms for ever," have
+accustomed themselves to regard the mystified protocols of Lord
+Palmerston as the models of official style. The _Morning Chronicle_,
+with amusing ignorance of the state of the public mind in India,
+condemns the Governor-general for allowing it to become known to the
+natives that the abandonment of Affghanistan was in consequence of a
+change of policy! conceiving (we suppose) that our Indian subjects would
+otherwise have believed the Cabul disasters to have formed part of the
+original plan of the war, and to have veiled some purpose of inscrutable
+wisdom; while the _Globe_, (Dec. 3,) after a reluctant admission that
+"the policy itself of evacuating the country _may be wise_," would fain
+deprive Lord Ellenborough of the credit of having originated this
+decisive step, by an assertion that "we have discovered no proof that a
+permanent possession of the country beyond the Indus was contemplated by
+his predecessor." It would certainly have been somewhat premature in
+Lord Auckland to have announced his ultimate intentions on this point
+while the country in question was as yet but imperfectly subjugated, or
+when our troops were subsequently almost driven out of it; but the views
+of the then home Government, from which it is to be presumed that Lord
+Auckland received his instructions, were pretty clearly revealed in the
+House of Commons on the 10th of August last, by one whose authority the
+_Globe_, at least, will scarcely dispute--by Lord Palmerston himself.
+To prevent the possibility of misconstruction, we quote the words
+attributed to the late Foreign Secretary. After drawing the somewhat
+unwarrantable inference, from Sir Robert Peel's statement, "that no
+immediate withdrawal of our troops from Candahar and Jellalabad was
+contemplated," that an order had at one time been given for the
+abandonment of Affghanistan, he proceeds--"I do trust that her Majesty's
+Government will not carry into effect, either immediately or at _any_
+future time, the arrangement thus contemplated. It was all very well
+when we were in power, and it was suited to party purposes, to run down
+any thing we had done, and to represent as valueless any acquisition on
+which we may have prided ourselves--it was all very well to raise an
+outcry against the Affghan expedition, and to undervalue the great
+advantages which the possession of the country was calculated to afford
+us--but I trust the Government will rise above any consideration of that
+sort, and that they will give the matter their fair, dispassionate, and
+deliberate consideration. I must say, I never was more convinced of any
+thing in the whole course of my life--and I may be believed when I speak
+my earnest conviction--that the most important interests of this
+country, both commercial and political, would be sacrificed, if we were
+to sacrifice the military possession of the country of Eastern
+Affghanistan." Is it in the power of words to convey a clearer
+admission, that the pledge embodied in Lord Auckland's manifesto--"to
+withdraw the British army as soon as the independence and integrity of
+Affghanistan should be secured by the establishment of the Shah"--was in
+fact mere moonshine: and the real object of the expedition was the
+conquest of a country advantageously situated for the defence of our
+Indian frontier against (as it now appears) an imaginary invader? Thus
+Napoleon, in December 1810, alleged "the necessity, in consequence of
+the new order of things which has arisen, of new guarantees for the
+security of my empire," as a pretext for that wholesale measure of
+territorial spoliation in Northern Germany, which, from the umbrage it
+gave Russia, proved ultimately the cause of his downfall: but it was
+reserved for us of the present day, to hear a _British_ minister avow
+and justify a violent and perfidious usurpation on the plea of political
+expediency. It must indeed be admitted that, in the early stages of the
+war, the utter iniquity of the measure met with but faint reprobation
+from any party in the state: the nation, dazzled by the long-disused
+splendours of military glory, was willing, without any very close
+enquiry, to take upon trust all the assertions so confidently put forth
+on the popularity of Shah-Shoojah, the hostile machinations of Dost
+Mohammed, and the philanthropic and disinterested wishes of the Indian
+Government for (to quote a notable phrase to which we have more than
+once previously referred) "_the reconstruction of the social edifice_"
+in Affghanistan. But now that all these subterfuges, flimsy as they were
+at best, have been utterly dissipated by this undisguised declaration of
+Lord Palmerston, that the real object of the war was to seize and hold
+the country on our own account, the attempt of the _Globe_ to claim for
+Lord Auckland the credit of having from the first contemplated a measure
+thus vehemently protested against and disclaimed by the late official
+leader of his party, is rather too barefaced to be passed over without
+comment.
+
+     [28] It is singular that this proclamation was issued on the
+     fourth anniversary of Lord Auckland's "Declaration" of Oct. 1,
+     1838; and from the same place, Simla.
+
+Without, however, occupying ourselves further in combating the attacks
+of the Whig press on this proclamation, which may very well be left to
+stand on its own merits, we now proceed to recapitulate the course of
+the events which have, in a few months, so completely changed the aspect
+of affairs beyond the Indus. When we took leave, in July last, of the
+subject of the Affghan campaign, we left General Pollock, with the force
+which had made its way through the Khyber Pass, still stationary at
+Jellalabad, for want (as it was said) of camels and other means of
+transport: while General Nott, at Candahar, not only held his ground,
+but victoriously repulsed in the open field the Affghan _insurgents_,
+(as it is the fashion to call them,) who were headed by the prince
+Seifdar-Jung, son of Shah Shoojah! and General England, after his
+repulse on the 28th of March at the Kojuck Pass, remained motionless at
+Quettah. The latter officer (in consequence, as it is said, of
+peremptory orders from General Nott to meet him on a given day at the
+further side of the Pass) was the first to resume active operations; and
+on the 28th of April, the works at Hykulzie in the Kojuck, which had
+been unaccountably represented on the former occasion as most formidable
+defences,[29] were carried without loss or difficulty, and the force
+continued its march uninterrupted to Candahar. The fort of
+Khelat-i-Ghiljie, lying about halfway between Candahar and Ghazni, was
+at the sane time gallantly and successfully defended by handful of
+Europeans and sepoys, till relieved by the advance of a division from
+Candahar, which brought off the garrison, and razed the fortifications
+of the place. Girishk, the hereditary stronghold of the Barukzye chiefs,
+about eighty miles west of Candahar, was also dismantled and abandoned;
+and all the troops in Western Affghanistan were thus concentrated under
+the immediate command of General Nott, whose success in every encounter
+with the Affghans continued to be so decisive, that all armed opposition
+disappeared from the neighbourhood of Candahar; and the prince
+Seifdar-Jung, despairing of the cause, of which he had perhaps been from
+the first not a very willing supporter, came in and made his submission
+to the British commander.
+
+     [29] "The fieldworks _believed to be described_ in the despatch
+     as 'consisting of a succession of breastworks, improved by a
+     ditch and abattis--the latter being filled with thorns,' turned
+     out to be a paltry stone wall, with a cut two feet deep, and of
+     corresponding width, to which the designation of ditch was most
+     grossly misapplied.... A score or two of active men might have
+     completed the work in a few days."--(Letter quoted in the
+     _Asiatic Journal_, Sept., p. 107.) On whom the blame of these
+     misrepresentations should be laid--whether on the officer who
+     reconnoitred the ground, or on the general who wrote the
+     despatch--does not very clearly appear: yet the political agent
+     at Quettah was removed from his charge, for not having given
+     notice of the construction in his vicinity of works which are
+     now proved to have had no existence!
+
+During the progress of these triumphant operations in Western
+Affghanistan, General Pollock still lay inactive at Jellalabad; and some
+abortive attempts were made to negotiate with the dominant party at
+Cabul for the release of the prisoners taken the preceding winter. Since
+the death of Shah-Shoojah, the throne had been nominally filled by his
+third son, Futteh-Jung, the only one of the princes who was on the spot;
+but all the real power was vested, with the rank of vizier, in the hands
+of Akhbar Khan, who had not only possessed himself of the Bala-Hissar
+and the treasure of the late king, but had succeeded in recruiting the
+forces of the Affghan league, by a reconciliation with Ameen-ullah
+Khan,[30] the original leader of the outbreak, with whom he had formerly
+been at variance. All efforts, however, to procure the liberation of the
+captives, on any other condition than the liberation of Dost Mohammed,
+and the evacuation of Affghanistan by the English, (as hostages for
+which they had originally been given,) proved fruitless; and at length,
+after more than four months' delay, during which several sharp affairs
+had taken place with advanced bodies of the Affghans, General Pollock
+moved forward with his whole force, on the 20th of August, against
+Cabul. This city had again in the mean time become a scene of tumult and
+disorder--the Kizilbashes or Persian inhabitants, as well as many of the
+native chiefs, resisting the exactions of Akhbar Khan; who, at last,
+irritated by the opposition to his measures, imprisoned the titular
+shah, Futteh-Jung, in the Bala-Hissar; whence he succeeded after a time
+in escaping, and made his appearance, in miserable plight, (Sept. 1,) at
+the British headquarters at Futtehabad, between Jellalabad and
+Gundamuck. The advance of the army was constantly opposed by detached
+bodies of the enemy, and several spirited skirmishes took place:--till,
+on the 13th of September, the main Affghan force, to the number of
+16,000 men, under Akhbar Khan and other leaders, was descried on the
+heights near Tazeen, (where the slaughter of our troops had taken place
+in January,) at the entrance of the formidable defiles called the
+Huft-Kothul, or Seven Passes. It is admitted on all hands that in this
+last struggle, (as they believed, for independence,) the Affghans fought
+with most distinguished gallantry, frequently charging sword in hand
+upon the bayonets; but their irregular valour eventually gave way before
+the discipline of their opponents, and a total rout took place. The
+chiefs fled in various directions, "abandoning Cabul to the _avengers of
+British wrongs_," who entered the city in triumph on the 15th, and
+hoisted the British colours on the Bala-Hissar. The principal point now
+remaining to be effected was the rescue of the prisoners whom Akhbar
+Khan had carried off with him in his flight, with the intention (as was
+rumoured) of transporting them into Turkestan; but from this peril they
+were fortunately delivered by the venality of the chief to whose care
+they had been temporarily intrusted; and on the 21st they all reached
+the camp in safety, with the exception of Captain Bygrave, who was also
+liberated, a few days later, by the voluntary act of Akhbar himself.[31]
+
+     [30] It was this chief whose betrayal or destruction Sir
+     William McNaghten is accused, on the authority of General
+     Elphinstone's correspondence, of having meditated, on the
+     occasion when he met with his own fate. We hope, for the honour
+     of the English name, that the memory of the late Resident at
+     Cabul may be cleared from this heavy imputation; but he
+     certainly cannot be acquitted of having, by his wilful
+     blindness and self-sufficiency, contributed to precipitate the
+     catastrophe to which he himself fell a victim. In proof of this
+     assertion, it is sufficient to refer to the tenor of his
+     remarks on the letter addressed to him by Sir A. Burnes on the
+     affairs of Cabul, August 7, 1840, which appeared some time
+     since in the _Bombay Times_, and afterwards in the _Asiatic
+     Journal_ for October and November last.
+
+     [31] The kindness and humanity which these unfortunate
+     _detenus_ experienced from first to last at the hands of
+     Akhbar, reflect the highest honour on the character of this
+     chief, whom it has been the fashion to hold up to execration as
+     a monster of perfidy and cruelty. As a contrast to this conduct
+     of the Affghan _barbarians_, it is worth while to refer to
+     Colonel Lindsay's narrative of his captivity in the dungeons of
+     Hyder and Tippoo, which has recently appeared in the _Asiatic
+     Journal_, September, December, 1842.
+
+General Nott, meanwhile, in pursuance of his secret orders from the
+Supreme Government, had been making preparations for abandoning
+Candahar; and, on the 7th and 8th of August, the city was accordingly
+evacuated, both by his corps and by the division of General England--the
+Affghan prince, Seifdar-Jung, being left in possession of the place. The
+routes of the two commanders were now separated. General England, with
+an immense train of luggage, stores, &c., directed his march through the
+Kojuck Pass to Quettah, which he reached with little opposition;--while
+Nott, with a more lightly-equipped column, about 7000 strong, advanced
+by Khelat-i-Ghiljie against Ghazni. This offensive movement appears to
+have taken the Affghans at first by surprise; and it was not till he
+arrived within thirty-eight miles of Ghazni that General Nott found his
+progress opposed (August 30) by 12,000 men under the governor,
+Shams-o-deen Khan, a cousin of Mohammed Akhbar. The dispersion of this
+tumultuary array was apparently accomplished (as far as can be gathered
+from the extremely laconic despatches of the General) without much
+difficulty; and, on the 6th of September, after a sharp skirmish in the
+environs, the British once more entered Ghazni. In the city and
+neighbouring villages were found not fewer than 327 sepoys of the former
+garrison, which had been massacred to a man (according to report)
+immediately after the surrender; but notwithstanding this evidence of
+the moderation with which the Affghans had used their triumph, General
+Nott, (in obedience, as is said, to the _positive tenor of his
+instructions_,) "directed the city of Ghazni, with the citadel and the
+whole of its works, to be destroyed;" and this order appears, from the
+engineer's report, to have been rigorously carried into effect. The mace
+of Mamood Shah Ghaznevi, the first Moslem conqueror of Hindostan, and
+the famous sandal-wood portals of his tomb, (once the gates of the great
+Hindoo temple at Somnaut,[32]) were carried off as trophies: the ruins
+of Ghazni were left as a monument of British vengeance; and General Nott,
+resuming his march, and again routing Shams-o-deen Khan at the defiles
+of Myden, effected his junction with General Pollock, on the 17th of
+September, at Cabul; whence the united corps, together mustering 18,000
+effective men, were to take the route for Hindostan through the Punjab
+early in October.
+
+     [32] The value still attached by the Hindoos to these relics
+     was shown on the conclusion of the treaty, in 1832, between
+     Shah-Shoojah and Runjeet Singh, previous to the Shah's last
+     unaided attempt to recover his throne; in which their
+     restoration, in case of his success, was an express
+     stipulation.
+
+Such have been the principal events of the brief but brilliant campaign
+which has concluded the Affghan war, and which, if regarded solely in a
+military point of view, must be admitted to have amply vindicated the
+lustre of the British arms from the transient cloud cast on them by the
+failures and disasters of last winter.
+
+The Affghan tragedy, however, may now, we hope, be considered as
+concluded, so far as related to our own participation in its crimes and
+calamities; but for the Affghans themselves, "left to create a
+government in the midst of anarchy," there can be at present little
+chance of even comparative tranquillity, after the total dislocation of
+their institutions and internal relations by the fearful torrent of war
+which has swept over the country. The last atonement now in our power to
+make, both to the people and the ruler whom we have so deeply injured,
+as well as the best course for our own interests, would be at once to
+release Dost Mohammed from the unmerited and ignominious confinement to
+which he has been subjected in Hindostan, and to send him back in honour
+to Cabul; where his own ancient partisans, as well as those of his son,
+would quickly rally round him; and where his presence and accustomed
+authority might have some effect in restraining the crowd of fierce
+chiefs, who will be ready to tear each other to pieces as soon as they
+are released from the presence of the _Feringhis_. There would thus be
+at least a possibility of obtaining a nucleus for the re-establishment
+of something like good order; while in no other quarter does there
+appear much prospect of a government being formed, which might be either
+"approved by the Affghans themselves," or "capable of maintaining
+friendly relations with neighbouring states." If the accounts received
+may be depended upon, our troops had scarcely cleared the Kojuck Pass,
+on their way from Candahar to the Indus, when that city became the scene
+of a contest between the Prince Seifdar-Jung and the Barukzye chiefs in
+the vicinity; and though the latter are said to have been worsted in the
+first instance, there can be little doubt that our departure will be the
+signal for the speedy return of the quondam _Sirdars_, or rulers of
+Candahar, (brothers of Dost Mohammed,) who have found an asylum in
+Persia since their expulsion in 1839, but who will scarcely neglect so
+favourable an opportunity for recovering their lost authority. Yet
+another competitor may still, perhaps, be found in the same quarter--one
+whose name, though sufficiently before the public a few years since, has
+now been almost forgotten in the strife of more mighty interests. This
+is Shah Kamran of Herat, the rumours of whose death or dethronement
+prove to have been unfounded, and who certainly would have at this
+moment a better chance than he has ever yet had, for regaining at least
+Candahar and Western Affghanistan. He was said to be on the point of
+making the attempt after the repulse of the Persians before Herat, just
+before our adoption of Shah-Shoojah; and his title to the crown is at
+least as good as that of the late Shah, or any of his sons. It will be
+strange if this prince, whose danger from Persia was the original
+pretext for crossing the Indus, should be the only one of all the
+parties concerned, whose condition underwent no ultimate change, through
+all the vicissitudes of the tempest which has raged around him.
+
+Nor are the elements of discord less abundant and complicated on the
+side of Cabul. The defeat of Tazeen will not, any more than the
+preceding ones, have annihilated Akhbar Khan and his confederate
+chiefs:--they are still hovering in the Kohistan, and will doubtless
+lose no time in returning to Cabul as soon as the retreat of the English
+is ascertained. It is true that the civil wars of the Affghans, though
+frequent, have never been protracted or sanguinary:--like the
+Highlanders, as described by Bailie Nicol Jarvie, "though they may
+quarrel among themselves, and gie ilk ither ill names, and may be a
+slash wi' a claymore, they are sure to join in the long run against a'
+civilized folk:"--but it is scarcely possible that so many conflicting
+interests, now that the bond of common danger is removed, can be
+reconciled without strife and bloodshed. It is possible, indeed, that
+Futteh-Jung (whom the last accounts state to have remained at Cabul when
+our troops withdrew, in the hope of maintaining himself on the musnud,
+and who is said to be the most acceptable to the Affghans of the four
+sons[33] of Shah-Shoojah) may be allowed to retain for a time the title
+of king; but he had no treasure and few partizans; and the rooted
+distaste of the Affghans for the titles and prerogatives of royalty is
+so well ascertained, that Dost Mohammed, even in the plenitude of his
+power, never ventured to assume them. All speculations on these points,
+however, can at present amount to nothing more than vague conjecture;
+the troubled waters must have time to settle, before any thing can be
+certainly prognosticated as to the future destinies of Affghanistan.
+
+     [33] The elder of these princes, Timour, who was governor of
+     Candahar during the reign of his father, has accompanied
+     General England to Hindostan, preferring, as he says, the life
+     of a private gentleman under British protection to the perils
+     of civil discord in Affghanistan. Of the second,
+     Mohammed-Akhbar, (whose mother is said to be sister of Dost
+     Mohammed,) we know nothing;--Futteh-Jung is the third, and was
+     intended by Shah-Shoojah for his successor;--Seifdar-Jung, now
+     at Candahar, is the youngest.
+
+The kingdom of the Punjab will now become the barrier between
+Affghanistan and our north-western frontier in India; and it is said
+that the Sikhs, already in possession of Peshawer and the rich plain
+extending to the foot of the Khyber mountains, have undertaken in future
+to occupy the important defiles of this range, and the fort of
+Ali-Musjid, so as to keep the Affghans within bounds. It seems to us
+doubtful, however, whether they will be able to maintain themselves
+long, unaided, in this perilous advanced post: though the national
+animosity which subsists between them and the Affghans is a sufficient
+pledge of their good-will for the service--and their co-operation in the
+late campaign against Cabul has been rendered with a zeal and
+promptitude affording a strong contrast to their lukewarmness at the
+beginning of the war, when they conceived its object to be the
+re-establishment of the monarchy and national unity of their inveterate
+foes. But the vigour of the Sikh kingdom, and the discipline and
+efficiency of their troops, have greatly declined in the hands of the
+present sovereign, Shere Singh, who, though a frank and gallant soldier,
+has little genius for civil government, and is thwarted and overborne in
+his measures by the overweening power of the minister, Rajah Dhian
+Singh, who originally rose to eminence by the favour of Runjeet. At
+present, our information as to the state of politics in the Punjab is
+not very explicit, the intelligence from India during several months,
+having been almost wholly engrossed by the details of the campaign in
+Affghanistan; but as far as can be gathered from these statements, the
+country has been brought, by the insubordination of the troops, and the
+disputes of the Maharajah and his Minister, to a state not far removed
+from anarchy. It is said that the fortress of Govindghur, where the vast
+treasures amassed by Runjeet are deposited, has been taken possession
+of by the malecontent faction, and that Shere Singh has applied for the
+assistance of our troops to recover it; and the _Delhi Gazette_ even
+goes so far as to assert that this prince, "disgusted with the perpetual
+turmoil in which he is embroiled, and feeling his incapacity of ruling
+his turbulent chieftains, is willing to cede his country to us, and
+become a pensioner of our Government." But this announcement, though
+confidently given, we believe to be at least premature. That the Punjab
+must inevitably, sooner or later, become part of the Anglo-Indian
+empire, either as a subsidiary power, like the Nizam, or directly, as a
+province, no one can doubt; but its incorporation at this moment, in the
+teeth of our late declaration against any further extension of
+territory, and at the time when the Sikhs are zealously fulfilling their
+engagements as our allies, would be both injudicious and unpopular in
+the highest degree. An interview, however, is reported to have been
+arranged between Lord Ellenborough and Shere Singh, which is to take
+place in the course of the ensuing summer, and at which some definitive
+arrangements will probably be entered into, on the future political
+relations of the two Governments.[34]
+
+     [34] The war in Tibet, to which we alluded in July last,
+     between the followers of the Sikh chief Zorawur Singh and the
+     Chinese, is still in progress--and the latter are said to be on
+     the point of following up their successes by an invasion of
+     Cashmeer. As we are now at peace with the Celestial Empire, our
+     mediation may be made available to terminate the contest.
+
+The only permanent accession of territory, then, which will result from
+the Affghan war, will consist in the extension of our frontier along the
+whole course of the Sutlej and Lower Indus--"the limits which nature
+appears to have assigned to the Indian empire"--and in the altered
+relations with some of the native states consequent on these
+arrangements. As far as Loodeana, indeed, our frontier on the Sutlej has
+long been well established, and defined by our recognition of the Sikh
+kingdom on the opposite bank;--but the possessions of the chief of
+Bhawulpoor, extending on the left bank nearly from Loodeana to the
+confluence of the Sutlej with the Indus, have hitherto been almost
+exempt from British interference;[35] as have also the petty Rajpoot
+states of Bikaneer, Jesulmeer, &c., which form oases in the desert
+intervening between Scinde and the provinces more immediately under
+British control. These, it is to be presumed, will now be summarily
+taken under the _protection_ of the Anglo-Indian Government:--but more
+difficulty will probably be experienced with the fierce and imperfectly
+subdued tribes of Scindians and Belooches, inhabiting the lower valley
+of the Indus;--and, in order to protect the commerce of the river, and
+maintain the undisputed command of its course, it will be necessary to
+retain a sufficient extent of vantage-ground on the further bank, and to
+keep up in the country an amount of force adequate to the effectual
+coercion of these predatory races. For this purpose, a _place d'armes_
+has been judiciously established at Sukkur, a town which, communicating
+with the fort of Bukkur on an island of the Indus, and with Roree on the
+opposite bank, effectually secures the passage of the river; and the
+ports of Kurrachee and Sonmeani on the coast, the future marts of the
+commerce of the Indus, have also been garrisoned by British troops.
+
+     [35] Bhawulpoor is so far under British protection, that it was
+     saved from the arms of the Sikhs by the treaty with Runjeet
+     Singh, which confined him to the other bank of the Sutlej; but
+     it has never paid allegiance to the British Government. Its
+     territory is of considerable extent, stretching nearly 300
+     miles along the river, by 100 miles average breadth; but great
+     part of the surface consists of sandy desert.
+
+
+It has long since been evident[36] that Scinde, by that _principle of
+unavoidable expansion_ to which we had so often had occasion to refer,
+must eventually have been absorbed into the dominions of the Company;
+but the process by which it at last came into our hands is so curious a
+specimen of our Bonapartean method of dealing with reluctant or
+refractory neutrals, that we cannot pass it altogether without notice.
+Scinde, as well as Beloochistan, had formed part of the extensive empire
+subdued by Ahmed Shah, the founder of the Doorani monarchy; but in the
+reign of his indolent son Timour, the Affghan yoke was shaken off by the
+_Ameers_, or chiefs of the Belooch family of Talpoor, who, fixing their
+residences respectively at Hydrabad, Meerpoor, and Khyrpoor, defied all
+the efforts of the kings of Cabul to reduce them to submission, though
+they more than once averted an invasion by the promise of tribute. It
+has been rumoured that Shah-Shoojah, during his long exile, made
+repeated overtures to the Cabinet of Calcutta for the cession of his
+dormant claims to the _suzerainte_ of Scinde, in exchange for an
+equivalent, either pecuniary or territorial; but the representations of
+a fugitive prince, who proposed to cede what was not in his possession,
+were disregarded by the rulers of India; and even in the famous
+manifesto preceding the invasion of Affghanistan, Lord Auckland
+announced, that "a guaranteed independence, on favourable conditions,
+would be tendered to the Ameers of Scinde." On the appearance of our
+army on the border, however, the Ameers demurred, not very unreasonably,
+to the passage of this formidable host; and considerable delay ensued,
+from the imperfect information possessed by the British commanders of
+the amount of resistance to be expected; but at last the country and
+fortress were forcibly occupied; the seaport of Kurrachee (where alone
+any armed opposition was attempted) was bombarded and captured by our
+ships of war; and a treaty was imposed at the point of the bayonet on
+the Scindian rulers, by virtue of which they paid a contribution of
+twenty-seven laks of rupees (nearly L300,000) to the expenses of the
+war, under the name of arrears of tribute to Shah-Shoojah,
+acknowledging, at the same time, the supremacy, _not of Shah-Shoojah_,
+but of the English Government! The tolls on the Indus were also
+abolished, and the navigation of the river placed, by a special
+stipulation, wholly under the control of British functionaries. Since
+this summary procedure, our predominance in Scinde has been undisturbed,
+unless by occasional local commotions; but the last advices state that
+the whole country is now "in an insurrectionary state;" and it is fully
+expected that an attempt will erelong be made to follow the example of
+the Affghans, and get rid of the intrusive _Feringhis_; in which case,
+as the same accounts inform us, "the Ameers will be sent as
+state-prisoners to Benares, and the territory placed wholly under
+British administration."
+
+     [36] So well were the Scindians aware of this, that Burnes,
+     when ascending the Indus, on his way to Lahore in 1831,
+     frequently heard it remarked, "Scinde is now gone, since the
+     English have seen the river, which is the road to its
+     conquest."
+
+But whatever may be thought of the strict legality of the conveyance, in
+virtue of which Scinde has been converted into an integral part of our
+Eastern empire, its geographical position, as well as its natural
+products, will render it a most valuable acquisition, both in a
+commercial and political point of view. At the beginning of the present
+century, the East-India Company had a factory at Tatta, (the Pattala of
+the ancients,) the former capital of Scinde, immediately above the Delta
+of the Indus; but their agents were withdrawn during the anarchy which
+preceded the disruption of the Doorani monarchy. From that period till
+the late occurrences, all the commercial intercourse with British India
+was maintained either by land-carriage from Cutch, by which mode of
+conveyance the opium of Malwa and Marwar (vast quantities of which are
+exported in this direction) chiefly found its way into Scinde and
+Beloochistan; or by country vessels of a peculiar build, with a
+disproportionately lofty poop, and an elongated bow instead of a
+bowsprit, which carried on an uncertain and desultory traffic with
+Bombay and some of the Malabar ports. To avoid the dangerous sandbanks
+at the mouths of the Indus, as well as the intricate navigation through
+the winding streams of the Delta, (the course of which, as in the
+Mississippi, changes with every inundation,) they usually discharged
+their cargoes at Kurrachee, whence they were transported sixty miles
+overland to Tatta, and there embarked in flat-bottomed boats on the main
+stream. The port of Kurrachee, fourteen miles N.W. from the Pittee, or
+western mouth of the Indus, and Sonmeani, lying in a deep bay in the
+territory of Lus, between forty and fifty miles further in the same
+direction, are the only harbours of import in the long sea-coast of
+Beloochistan; and the possession of them gives the British the undivided
+command of a trade which, in spite of the late disasters, already
+promises to become considerable; while the interposition of the now
+friendly state of Khelat[37] between the coast and the perturbed tribes
+of Affghanistan, will secure the merchandise landed here a free passage
+into the interior. The trade with these ports deserves, indeed, all the
+fostering care of the Indian Government; since they must inevitably be,
+at least for some years to come, the only inlet for Indian produce into
+Beloochistan, Cabul, and the wide regions of Central Asia beyond them.
+The overland carrying trade through Scinde and the Punjab, in which
+(according to M. Masson) not less than 6500 camels were annually
+employed, has been almost annihilated--not only by the confusion arising
+from the war, but from the absolute want of means of transport, from the
+unprecedented destruction of the camels occasioned by the exigencies of
+the commissariat, &c. The rocky defiles of Affghanistan were heaped with
+the carcasses of these indispensable animals, 50,000 of which (as is
+proved by the official returns) perished in this manner in the course of
+three years; and some years must necessarily elapse before the chasm
+thus made in the numbers of the species throughout North-western India
+can be supplied. The immense expenditure of the Army of Occupation, at
+the same time, brought such an influx of specie into Affghanistan, as
+had never been known since the sack of Delhi by Ahmed Shah
+Doorani--while the traffic with India being at a stand-still for the
+reasons we have just given, the superfluity of capital thus produced was
+driven to find an outlet in the northern markets of Bokhara and
+Turkestan. The consequence of this has been, that Russian manufactures
+to an enormous amount have been poured into these regions, by way of
+Astrakhan and the Caspian, to meet this increasing demand; and the value
+of Russian commerce with Central Asia, which (as we pointed out in April
+1840, p. 522) had for many years been progressively declining, was
+doubled during 1840 and 1841, (_Bombay Times_, April 2, 1842,) and is
+believed to be still on the increase! The opening of the navigation of
+the Indus, with the exertions of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce to
+establish depots on its course, and to facilitate the transmission of
+goods into the surrounding countries, has already done much for the
+restoration of traffic in this direction, in spite of the efforts of the
+Russian agents in the north to keep possession of the opening thus
+unexpectedly afforded them; but it cannot be denied that the "great
+enlargement of our field of commerce," so confidently prognosticated by
+Lord Palmerston, from "the great operations undertaken in the countries
+lying west of the Indus," has run a heavy risk of being permanently
+diverted into other channels, by the operation of the causes detailed
+above.
+
+     [37] Khelat (more properly Khelat-i-Nussear Khan, "the citadel
+     of Nussear Khan," by whom it was strongly fortified in 1750,)
+     is the principal city and fortress of the Brahooes or Eastern
+     Baloochee, and the residence of their chief. It had never been
+     taken by any of the Affghan kings, and had even opposed a
+     successful resistance to the arms of Ahmed Shah;--but on
+     November 13, 1839, it was stormed by an Anglo-Indian force
+     under General Wiltshire, and the Khan Mihrab was slain sword in
+     hand, gallantly fighting to the last at the entrance of his
+     zenana. The place, however, was soon after surprised and
+     recaptured by the son of the fallen chief, Nussear Khan, who,
+     though again expelled, continued to maintain himself with a few
+     followers in the mountains, and at last effected an
+     accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud.
+     He has since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary
+     fidelity; and as his fears of compulsory vassalage to the
+     nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at an end, he
+     appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian
+     chief converted into a firm friend and ally.
+
+Before we finally dismiss the subject of the Affghan war and its
+consequences, we cannot overlook one feature in the termination of the
+contest, which is of the highest importance, as indicating a return to a
+better system than that miserable course of reduction and parsimony,
+which, for some years past, has slowly but surely been alienating the
+attachment, and breaking down the military spirit, of our native army.
+We refer to the distribution, by order of Lord Ellenborough, of badges
+of honorary distinction, as well as of more substantial rewards, in the
+form of augmented allowances,[38] &c., to the sepoy corps which have
+borne the brunt of the late severe campaign. Right well have these
+honours and gratuities been merited; nor could any measure have been
+better timed to strengthen in the hearts of the sepoys the bonds of the
+_Feringhi salt_, to which they have so long proved faithful. The policy,
+as well as the justice, of holding out every inducement which may rivet
+the attachment of the native troops to our service, obvious as it must
+appear, has in truth been of late too much neglected;[39] and it has
+become at this juncture doubly imperative, both from the severe and
+unpopular duty in which a considerable portion of the troops have
+recently been engaged, and from the widely-spread disaffection which has
+lately manifested itself in various quarters among the native
+population. We predicted in July, as the probable consequence of our
+reverses in Affghanistan, some open manifestation of the spirit of
+revolt constantly smouldering among the various races of our subjects in
+India, but the prophecy had already been anticipated by the event. The
+first overt resistance to authority appeared in Bhundelkund, a wild and
+imperfectly subjugated province in the centre of Hindostan, inhabited by
+a fierce people called Bhoondelahs. An insurrection, in which nearly all
+the native chiefs are believed to be implicated, broke out here early
+in April; and a desultory and harassing warfare has since been carried
+on in the midst of the almost impenetrable jungles and ravines which
+overspread the district. The Nawab of Banda and the Bhoondee Rajah, a
+Moslem and a Hindoo prince, respectively of some note in the
+neighbourhood of the disturbed tracts, have been placed under
+surveillance at Allahabad as the secret instigators of these movements,
+"which," (says the _Agra Ukhbar_) "appear to have been regularly
+organized all over India, the first intimation of which was the Nawab of
+Kurnool's affair"--whose deposition we noticed in July. The valley of
+Berar, also, in the vicinity of the Nizam's frontier, has been the scene
+of several encounters between our troops and irregular bands of
+insurgents; and the restless Arab mercenaries in the Dekkan are still in
+arms, ready to take service with any native ruler who chooses to employ
+them against the _Feringhis_. In the northern provinces, the aspect of
+affairs is equally unfavourable. The Rohillas, the most warlike and
+nationally-united race of Moslems in India, have shown alarming symptoms
+of a refractory temper, fomented (as it has been reported) by the
+disbanded troopers of the 2d Bengal cavalry,[40] (a great proportion of
+whom were Rohillas,) and by Moslem deserters from the other regiments in
+Affghanistan, who have industriously magnified the amount of our
+losses--a pleasing duty, in which the native press, as usual, has
+zealously co-operated. One of the newspapers printed in the Persian
+language at Delhi, recently assured its readers that, at the forcing of
+the Khyber Pass, "six thousand Europeans fell under the sharp swords of
+the Faithful"--with other veracious intelligence, calculated to produce
+the belief that the campaign must inevitably end, like the preceding, in
+the defeat and extermination of the whole invading force. The fruits of
+these inflammatory appeals to the pride and bigotry of the Moslems, is
+thus painted in a letter from Rohilcund, which we quote from that
+excellent periodical the _Asiatic Journal_ for September:--"The
+Mahomedans throughout Rohilcund hate us to a degree only second to what
+the Affghans do, their interest in whose welfare they can scarcely
+conceal.... There are hundreds of heads of tribes, all of whom would
+rise to a man on what they considered a fitting opportunity, which they
+are actually thirsting after. A hint from their moolahs, and the display
+of the green flag, would rally around it every Mussulman. In March last,
+the population made no scruple of declaring that the _Feringhi raj_
+(English rule) was at an end; and some even disputed payment of the
+revenue, saying it was probable they should have to pay it again to
+another Government! They have given out a report that Akhbar Khan has
+disbanded his army for the present, in order that his men may visit
+their families; but in the cold weather, when our troops will be
+weakened and unfit for action, he will return with an overwhelming
+force, aided by every Mussulman as far as Ispahan, when they will
+annihilate our whole force and march straight to Delhi, and ultimately
+send us to our ships. The whole Mussulman population, in fact, are
+filled with rejoicing and _hope_ at our late reverses."
+
+     [38] By a general order, issued from Simla October 4, all
+     officers and soldiers, of whatever grade, who took part in the
+     operations about Candahar, the defence of Khelat-i-Ghiljie, the
+     recapture of Ghazni or Cabul, or the forcing of the Khyber
+     Pass, are to receive a silver medal with appropriate
+     inscriptions--a similar distinction having been previously
+     conferred on the defenders of Jellalabad. _What is at present
+     the value of the Order of the Doorani Empire_, with its showy
+     decorations of the first, second, and third classes, the last
+     of which was so rightfully spurned by poor Dennie?
+
+     [39] The following remarks of the _Madras United Service
+     Gazette_, though intended to apply only to the Secunderabad
+     disturbances, deserve general attention at present:--"We
+     attribute the lately-diminished attachment of the sepoys for
+     their European officers to _a diminished inclination for the
+     service_, the duties whereof have of late years increased in
+     about the same proportion that its advantages have been
+     reduced. The cavalry soldier of the present day has more than
+     double the work to do that a trooper had forty years ago;...
+     and the infantry sepoy's garrison guard-work has been for years
+     most fatiguing at every station, from the numerical strength of
+     the troops being quite inadequate to the duties.... These
+     several unfavourable changes have gradually given the sepoy a
+     distaste for the service, which has been augmented by the
+     stagnant state of promotion, caused by the reductions in 1829,
+     when one-fifth of the infantry, and one-fourth of the cavalry,
+     native commissioned and non-commissioned officers, became
+     supernumerary, thus effectually closing the door of promotion
+     to the inferior grades for years to come. Hopeless of
+     advancement, the sepoy from that time became gradually less
+     attentive to his duties, less respectful to his superiors, as
+     careless of a service which no longer held out any prospect of
+     promotion. Still, however, the bonds of discipline were not
+     altogether loosened, till Lord W. Bentinck's abolition of
+     corporal punishment; and from the promulgation of that
+     ill-judged order may be dated the decided change for the worse
+     which has taken place in the character of the native soldiery."
+
+     [40] This corps, it will be remembered, was broken for its
+     misconduct in the battle of Purwan-Durrah, against Dost
+     Mohammed, November 2, 1840.
+
+It may be said that we are unnecessarily multiplying instances, and that
+these symptoms of local fermentation are of little individual
+importance; but nothing can be misplaced which has a tendency to dispel
+the universal and unaccountable error which prevails in England, as to
+the _popularity of our sway in India_. The signs of the times are
+tolerably significant--and the apprehensions of a coming commotion which
+we expressed in July, as well as of the quarter in which it will
+probably break out, are amply borne out by the language of the
+best-informed publications of India. "That the seeds of discontent" says
+the _Delhi Gazette_--"have been sown by the Moslems, and have partially
+found root among the Hindoos, is more than conjecture"--and the
+warnings of the _Agra Ukhbar_ are still more unequivocal. "Reports have
+reached Agra that a general rise will erelong take place in the Dekkan.
+There have already been several allusions made to a very extensive
+organization among the native states[41] against the British power, the
+resources of which will, no doubt, be stretched to the utmost during the
+ensuing cold season. Disaffection is wide and prevalent, and when our
+withdrawal from Affghanistan becomes known, it will ripen into open
+insurrection. With rebellion in Central India, and famine in Northern,
+Government have little time to lose in collecting their energies to meet
+the crisis." The increase of means which the return of the army from
+Affghanistan will place at the disposal of the Governor-General, will
+doubtless do much in either overawing or suppressing these
+insurrectionary demonstrations; but even in this case the snake will
+have been only "scotched, not killed;" and the most practical and
+effectual method of rendering such attempts hopeless for the future,
+will be the replacing the Indian army on the same efficient footing, as
+to numbers and composition, on which it stood before the ill-judged
+measures of Lord William Bentinck. The energies of the native troops
+have been heavily tasked, and their fidelity severely tried, during the
+Affghan war; and though they have throughout nobly sustained the high
+character which they had earned by their past achievements, the
+experiment on their endurance should not be carried too far. Many of the
+errors of past Indian administrations have already been remedied by Lord
+Ellenborough; and we cannot refrain from the hope, that the period of
+his Government will not be suffered to elapse without a return to the
+old system on this point also--the vital point on which the stability of
+our empire depends.
+
+     [41] The Nawab of Arcot, one of the native princes, whose
+     fidelity is now strongly suspected, assured the Resident, in
+     his reply to the official communication of the capture of
+     Ghazni in 1839, that from his excessive joy at the triumph of
+     his good friend the Company, his bulk of body had so greatly
+     increased that he was under the necessity of providing himself
+     with a new wardrobe--his garments having become too strait for
+     his unbounded stomach! A choice specimen of oriental bombast.
+
+Such have been the consequences, as far as they have hitherto been
+developed, to the foreign and domestic relations of our Eastern empire,
+of the late memorable Affghan war. In many points, an obvious parallel
+may be drawn between its commencement and progress, and that of the
+invasion of Spain by Napoleon. In both cases, the territory of an
+unoffending people was invaded and overrun, in the plenitude of (as was
+deemed by the aggressors) irresistible power, on the pretext, in each
+case, that it was necessary to anticipate an ambitious rival in the
+possession of a country which might be used as a vantage ground against
+us. In both cases, the usurpation was thinly veiled by the elevation of
+a pageant-monarch to the throne; till the invaded people, goaded by the
+repeated indignities offered to their religious and national pride, rose
+_en masse_ against their oppressors at the same moment in the capital
+and the provinces, and either cut them off, or drove them to the
+frontier. In each case the intruders, by the arrival of reinforcements,
+regained for a time their lost ground; and if our Whig rulers had
+continued longer at the helm of affairs, the parallel might have become
+complete throughout. The strength and resources of our Indian empire
+might have been drained in the vain attempt to complete the subjugation
+of a rugged and impracticable country, inhabited by a fierce and bigoted
+population; and an "Affghan _ulcer_." (to use the ordinary phrase of
+Napoleon himself in speaking of the Spanish war) might have corroded the
+vitals, and undermined the fabric, of British domination in the East.
+Fortunately, however, for our national welfare and our national
+character, better counsels are at length in the ascendant. The triumphs
+which have again crowned our arms, have not tempted our rulers to resume
+the perfidious policy which their predecessors, in the teeth of their
+own original declarations, have now openly avowed, by "retaining
+military possession of the countries west of the Indus;" and the candid
+acknowledgement of the error committed in the first instance, affords
+security against the repetition of such acts of wanton aggression, and
+for adherence to the pacific policy now laid down. The ample resources
+of India have yet in a great measure to be explored and developed, and
+it is impossible to foresee what results may be attained, when (in the
+language of the _Bombay Times_) "wisdom guides for good and worthy ends,
+that resistless energy which madness has wasted on the opposite. We now
+see that, even with Affghanistan as a broken barrier, Russia dares not
+move her finger against us--that with seventeen millions sterling thrown
+away, we are able to recover all our mischances, if relieved from the
+rulers and the system which imposed them upon us!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The late proclamation of Lord Ellenborough has been so frequently
+referred to in the foregoing pages, that for the sake of perspicuity we
+subjoin it in full.
+
+"Secret Department, Simla,
+
+"Oct. 1, 1842.
+
+"The Government of India directed its army to pass the Indus, in order
+to expel from Affghanistan a chief believed to be hostile to British
+interests, and to replace upon his throne a sovereign represented to be
+friendly to those interests, and popular with his former subjects.
+
+"The chief believed to be hostile became a prisoner, and the sovereign
+represented to be popular was replaced upon his throne; but after events
+which brought into question his fidelity to the Government by which he
+was restored, he lost, by the hands of an assassin, the throne he had
+only held amidst insurrections, and his death was preceded and followed
+by still existing anarchy.
+
+"Disasters, unparalleled in their extent, unless by the errors in which
+they originated, and by the treachery by which they were completed, have
+in one short campaign been avenged upon every scene of past misfortune;
+and repeated victories in the field, and the capture of the cities and
+citadels of Ghazni and Cabul, have again attached the opinion of
+invincibility to the British arms.
+
+"The British army in possession of Affghanistan will now be withdrawn to
+the Sutlej.
+
+"The Governor-General will leave it to the Affghans themselves to create
+a government amidst the anarchy which is the consequence of their
+crimes.
+
+"To force a sovereign upon a reluctant people, would be as inconsistent
+with the policy, as it is with the principles, of the British
+Government, tending to place the arms and resources of that people at
+the disposal of the first invader, and to impose the burden of
+supporting a sovereign without the prospect of benefit from his
+alliance.
+
+"The Governor-General will willingly recognize any government approved
+by the Affghans themselves, which shall appear desirous and capable of
+maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring states.
+
+"Content with the limits nature appears to have assigned to its empire,
+the Government of India will devote all its efforts to the establishment
+and maintenance of general peace, to the protection of the sovereigns
+and chiefs its allies, and to the prosperity and happiness of its own
+faithful subjects.
+
+"The rivers of the Punjab and the Indus, and the mountainous passes and
+the barbarous tribes of Affghanistan, will be placed between the British
+army and an enemy from the west, if indeed such an enemy there can be,
+and no longer between the army and its supplies.
+
+"The enormous expenditure required for the support of a large force in a
+false military position, at a distance from its own frontier and its
+resources, will no longer arrest every measure for the improvement of
+the country and of the people.
+
+"The combined army of England and of India, superior in equipment, in
+discipline, in valour, and in the officers by whom it is commanded, to
+any force which can be opposed to it in Asia, will stand in unassailable
+strength upon its own soil, and for ever, under the blessing of
+Providence, preserve the glorious empire it has won, in security and in
+honour.
+
+"The Governor-General cannot fear the misconstruction of his motives in
+thus frankly announcing to surrounding states the pacific and
+conservative policy of his Government.
+
+"Affghanistan and China have seen at once the forces at his disposal,
+and the effect with which they can be applied.
+
+"Sincerely attached to peace for the sake of the benefits it confers
+upon the people, the Governor-General is resolved that peace shall be
+observed, and will put forth the whole power of the British Government
+to coerce the state by which it shall be infringed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEATH OF THOMAS HAMILTON, ESQ.
+
+
+There are few things more painful connected with the increase of years
+in an established periodical like our own, than to observe how "friend
+after friend departs," to witness the gradual thinning of the ranks of
+its contributors by death, and the departure, from the scene, of those
+whose talents or genius had contributed to its early influence and
+popularity. Many years have not elapsed since we were called on to
+record the death of the upright and intelligent publisher, to whose
+energy and just appreciation of the public taste, its origin and success
+are in a great degree to be ascribed. On the present occasion another of
+these melancholy memorials is required of us; the accomplished author of
+"Cyril Thornton," whose name and talents had been associated with the
+Magazine from its commencement, is no more. He died at Pisa on the 7th
+December last.
+
+Mr Hamilton exhibited a remarkable union of scholarship, high breeding,
+and amiability of disposition. To the habitual refinement of taste which
+an early mastery of the classics had produced, his military profession
+and intercourse with society had added the ease of the man of the world,
+while they had left unimpaired his warmth of feeling and kindliness of
+heart. Amidst the active services of the Peninsular and American
+campaigns, he preserved his literary tastes; and, when the close of the
+war restored him to his country, he seemed to feel that the peaceful
+leisure of a soldier's life could not be more appropriately filled up
+than by the cultivation of literature. The characteristic of his mind
+was rather a happy union and balance of qualities than the possession of
+any one in excess; and the result was a peculiar composure and
+gracefulness, pervading equally his outward deportment and his habits of
+thought. The only work of fiction which he has given to the public
+certainly indicates high powers both of pathetic and graphic
+delineation; but the qualities which first and most naturally attracted
+attention, were rather his excellent judgment of character, at once just
+and generous, his fine perception and command of wit and quiet humour,
+rarely, if ever, allowed to deviate into satire or sarcasm, and the
+refinement, taste, and precision with which he clothed his ideas,
+whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous or
+extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in society and in
+taste.
+
+Of his contributions to this Magazine it would be out of place here to
+speak, further than to say that they indicated a wide range and
+versatility of talent, embraced both prose and verse, and were
+universally popular. "Cyril Thornton," which appeared in 1827, instantly
+arrested public attention and curiosity, even in an age eminently
+fertile in great works of fiction. With little of plot--for it pursued
+the desultory ramblings of military life through various climes--it
+possessed a wonderful truth and reality, great skill in the observation
+and portraiture of original character, and a peculiar charm of style,
+blending freshness and vivacity of movement with classic delicacy and
+grace. The work soon became naturally and justly popular, having reached
+a second edition shortly after publication: a third edition has recently
+appeared. The "Annals of the Peninsular Campaign" had the merit of clear
+narration, united with much of the same felicity of style; but the size
+of the work excluded that full development and picturesque detail which
+were requisite to give individuality to its pictures. His last work was
+"Men and Manners in America," of which two German and one French
+translations have already appeared; a work eminently characterized by a
+tone of gentlemanly feeling, sagacious observation, just views of
+national character and institutions, and their reciprocal influence, and
+by tolerant criticism; and which, so far from having been superseded by
+recent works of the same class and on the same subject, has only risen
+in public estimation by the comparison.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No.
+CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII., by Various
+
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