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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55,
+No. 344, June, 1844, 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 - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2007 [EBook #23529]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Louise Pryor
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+{Transcriber's note: Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious
+misprints have been corrected, but in general the original spelling has
+been retained. Accents in the French and Spanish passages are
+inconsistent, and have not been standardised. Greek phrases have been
+transliterated, and are enclosed in + signs +eis Ath�nas+.}
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+NO. CCCXLIV.    JUNE, 1844.     VOL. LV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. NO. I. THE FAIRIES'
+    SABBATH,                                                     665
+
+  COLUMBUS. (A PRINT AFTER A PICTURE BY PARMEGGIANO.)
+    BY B. SIMMONS,                                               687
+
+  TO SWALLOWS ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE. BY THE SAME,              690
+
+  THE DILIGENCE. A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL,                          692
+
+  WHO WROTE GIL BLAS?                                            698
+
+  MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS,                                         725
+
+  AFRICA--SLAVE TRADE--TROPICAL COLONIES,                        731
+
+  NARRATION OF CERTAIN UNCOMMON THINGS THAT DID
+    FORMERLY HAPPEN TO ME, HERBERT WILLIS, B.D.                  749
+
+  BEAU BRUMMELL,                                                 769
+
+  THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE GREEK STATE,                       785
+
+  INDEX,                                                         797
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  EDINBURGH:
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
+  AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.
+
+_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
+
+SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
+
+PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+No CCCXLIV.     JUNE, 1844.     VOL. LV.
+
+
+
+
+TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.
+
+No. I.
+
+THE FAIRIES' SABBATH.
+
+
+WHAT is a fairy?
+
+READ!
+
+["_A Wood near Athens.--Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the
+other._{A}]
+
+      "_Puck._ How now, Spirit! whither wander you?
+
+      _Fairy._ Over hill, over dale,
+          Thorough bush, thorough brier,
+      Over park, over pale,
+          Thorough flood, thorough fire,
+      I do wander ever where,
+      Swifter than the moones sphere;
+      And I serve the Fairy Queen,
+      To dew her orbs upon the green:
+      The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
+      In their gold coats spots you see;
+      Those be rubies, fairy favours,
+      In those freckles live their savours:
+    I must go seek some dewdrops here,
+    And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
+    Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll begone;
+    Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
+
+    _Puck._ The King doth keep his revels here to-night;
+    Take heed, the queen come not within his sight.
+    For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
+    Because that she, as her attendant, hath
+    A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
+    She never had so sweet a changeling.
+    And jealous Oberon would have the child
+    Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
+    But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy:
+    Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
+    And now they never meet in grove, or green,
+    By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
+    But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
+    Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."
+
+And there, then, they are!--The blithe and lithe, bright and fine
+darlings of your early-bewitched and for ever-enamoured fancy! There
+they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy,
+gorgeous, remote, and cloud-walled Elf-land: The fairies of the vision
+once wafted, "by moon or star light," upon the "creeping murmur" of the
+Avon!--THE FAIRIES IN ENGLAND! YOUR fairies!
+
+Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust
+information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe
+of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the
+lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the
+confluent streams of primitively distinct superstitions! Or your
+suspicious inquisition rebels against this insular banishment of ours,
+which, sequestering us from the common mind of the world, may, as you
+augur, have perverted, into an excessive individuality of growth, our
+mythological beliefs: Or--Southwards then!
+
+One good stride over salt water lands you amongst a people, who, from
+the old, have kept THEMSELVES TO THEMSELVES; whose warm, bold,
+_thorough_-loyal hearts hereditarily believe, after the love and
+reverence owed from the children's children to the fathers' fathers.
+Here are--for good and for ill--and from a sure hand:--"THE FAIRIES IN
+LOWER BRITANNY; _alio nomine_--THE KORRIGANS."
+
+"Like these holy virgins, (the Gallicen� or Barrigen� of Mela,) our
+Korrigans predict the future. They know the skill of healing incurable
+maladies with particular charms; which they impart, it is affirmed, to
+magicians that are their friends. Ingenious Proteuses, they take the
+shape of any animal at their pleasure. In the twinkling of an eye they
+whisk from one end of the world to the other. Annually, with returning
+spring, they celebrate a high nocturnal festivity. A tablecloth, white
+as the driven snow, is spread upon the greensward, by the margin of a
+fountain. It is covered with the most delicious viands; in the midst
+sparkles a crystal goblet, which sheds such a splendour as serves in the
+stead of torches. At the close of the repast, this goblet goes round
+from hand to hand; it holds a miraculous beverage, one drop of which, it
+is averred, would make omniscient, like the Almighty. At any least
+breath or stir of human kind, all vanishes.
+
+"In truth, it is near fountains that the Korrigans are oftenest met
+with; especially near such as rise in the neighbourhood of _dolmens_.{B}
+For in the sequestered spots whence the Virgin Mary, who is held for
+their chief foe, has not yet driven them, they still preside over the
+fountains. Our traditions bestow upon them a strong passion for music,
+with sweet voices; but do not, like those of the Germanic nations, make
+dancers of them. The popular songs of all countries frequently depict
+them combing their fine fair hair, which they seem daintily to cherish.
+Their stature is that of the other European fairies: they are not above
+two feet in height. Their shape, exquisitely proportioned, is as airy,
+slight, and pellucid as that of the wasp. They have no other dress than
+a white veil, which they wrap around their body. Seen by night, they are
+very beautiful: in the daytime, you perceive that their hair is
+grey--that their eyes are red--that their face is wrinkled. Accordingly,
+they begin to show themselves only at the shut of eve; and they loathe
+the light. _Every thing about them denotes fallen intelligences._ The
+Breton peasants maintain that _they are high princesses, who, because
+they would not embrace Christianity when the apostles came to preach in
+Armorica, were stricken by the curse of God_. The Welsh recognise in
+them, souls of Druids doomed to penance. This coincidence is remarkable.
+
+"They are universally believed to feel a vehement hatred for the
+clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the
+spirits of darkness--a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and
+offence to them. The sight of a surplice, _the sound of bells_, scares
+them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to
+support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny;
+the blast of their breath is mortal in Wales, in Ireland, in Scotland,
+and in Prussia. They cast weirds.{C} Whosoever has muddied the waters of
+their spring, or caught them combing their hair, or counting their
+treasures beside their _dolmen_, (for they there keep, it is believed,
+concealed mines of gold and of diamonds,) almost inevitably dies;
+especially should the misencounter fall upon a Saturday, which day, holy
+to the Virgin Mother, is inauspicious for their kind,"{D} &c. &c. &c.
+
+Here, in the stead of the joyously-sociable monarchal hive, you behold a
+republic of solitarily-dwelling, and not unconditionally beautiful,
+naiads! No dancing! And a stature, prodigiously disqualifying for the
+asylum of an acorn cup! You are unsatisfied. Shakspeare has indeed
+vividly portrayed one curiously-featured species, and M. De la
+Villemarqu� another, of the air-made inscrutable beings evoked by your
+question; but your question, from the beginning, struck at the GENERIC
+notion in its purified logical shape--at the definition, then--of the
+thing, a fairy.
+
+Sir _Walter Scott_,{E} writing--the first in time of all men who have
+written--at large and scientifically upon the fairies of Western Europe,
+steps into disquisition by a description, duly loose for leaving his own
+foot unentangled. "The general idea of SPIRITS, of A LIMITED POWER AND
+SUBORDINATE NATURE, DWELLING AMONG THE WOODS AND MOUNTAINS, is perhaps
+common to all nations."
+
+A little _too_ loose, peradventure!
+
+Dr James Grimm, heroically bent upon rescuing from the throat of
+oblivion and from the tooth of scepticism, to his own TEUTONS--yet
+heathen--a faith outreaching and outsoaring the gross definite
+cognisances of this fleshly eye and hand, sets apart one--profoundly
+read and thought--chapter, to WIGHTS AND ELVES.{F}
+
+These terms, WIGHT and ELF, are presented by Dr Grimm as being, after a
+rough way, synonymous; and you have above seen another Germanic
+writer--a native of Warwickshire--take ELF for equivalent, or nearly so,
+with FAIRY.
+
+Of his many-natured Teutonic _wights and elves_, then, but with glances
+darted around, northwards and westwards, and southwards and eastwards,
+Dr Grimm begins with speaking thus:--
+
+"From the _deified_ and _half-divine_ natures [investigated by this
+author in several of his antecedent chapters] _a whole order of other
+beings_ is especially herein distinguished, that whilst the former
+either proceed of mankind, or seek human intercourse, these form a
+segregated society--one might say, a peculiar kingdom of their own--and
+are only, by accident or the pressure of circumstances, moved to
+converse with men. Something superhuman, approximating them to the gods,
+is mingled up in them: they possess power to help and to hurt man. They
+are however, at the same time, afraid of him, because they are not his
+bodily match. They appear either far below the human stature, or
+misshapen. Almost all of them enjoy the faculty of rendering themselves
+invisible."
+
+You turn away your head, exclaiming that the weighty words of our
+puissant teacher are, for your proficiency, somewhat bewildering, and
+for your exigency by much too--TEUTONIC.
+
+Have a care!
+
+However, "Westward Hoe!" Put the old Rhine between the master of living
+mythologists and yourself, and listen to Baron Walckenaer unlocking the
+fountains of the fairy belief, and showing how it streams, primarily
+through France, and secondarily through all remaining Western Europe.
+"If there is a specifically characterized superstition, it is that which
+regards _the fairies_: those _female genii_,{G} most frequently _without
+name_, without descent, without kin, who are incessantly busied
+subverting the order of nature, for the weal or the woe of mortals whom
+they love and favour _without a motive_, or, as causelessly, hate and
+persecute."{H}
+
+What, _female_ only? Where are Oberon and Puck? _Without a name?_ Where
+Titania?--Mab? _Without a motive?_ Where the godmother of the
+sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a
+distinct type in your own recollections, you guessingly pronounce the
+characterization of the perpetual secretary too----_French_. Driven
+back, disappointed on all sides, you turn round upon your difficulties,
+and manfully project beating out _a definition of your own_; to which
+end, glancing your eye back affectionately, and now, needle-like,
+northwards across the Channel, you "at one slight bound" once more find
+yourself at your own fireside, and on your table _The Midsummer Night's
+Dream_, open at the second scene of the first act.
+
+Inquirer whosoever! A problem lies large before us--complicated,
+abstruse even, yet--suitably to the subject--a delicate one! To hunt
+down an elusive word, and a more elusive notion! It is to find a set of
+determinings which, laid together, shall form a circle fitted to confine
+that inconfinable spirit--a Fairy; or, if you better like plain English,
+to find the terms needed for signifying, describing, expounding the
+Thought which, lurking as at the bottom of your mind, under a crowd of
+thoughts, rises up, in all circumstances, to meet and answer the
+name----a fairy; the Thought, which when all accidental and unessential
+attributes liable to be attracted to the fairy essence have been
+stripped away, remains; the _substrate_, absolute, essential, _generic_
+notion, therefore--a fairy; that Thought, which whencesoever acquired,
+and held howsoever, enables you to deal to your satisfaction with
+proposed fairies, acknowledging THIS one frankly;--THIS, but for a
+half-sister; shutting the door upon ANOTHER. You may distinguish these
+terms at your pleasure, by sundry denominations: for example, you may
+call them Elements of the notion--a fairy--or circumscriptive Lines of
+such a notion, or indispensable Fairy-marks, or elfin Criteria, or by
+any other name which you may happen to like as well or better; but when
+found, call them as you will, they must reveal in essence, the thing
+which we look for--the answer to the question with which we first
+started, and to which we have as yet found no satisfactory solution.
+
+As for the process of the finding. This notion is to be tracked after
+widely, and in intimate recesses; more hopefully, therefore, according
+to a planned campaign than a merely wild chance expatiation. The chase
+ranges over a material and an intellectual ground. Of either--a word.
+
+I. The _material_--is a _geographical_--region, and may be called,
+summarily--_The western half of Europe_. Let us regard it as laid out by
+languages at this day spoken. Here is a map, roughly sketched:--
+
+    A.--ABORIGINAL.
+
+  1. NORTH-WESTERN CELTS.--Ireland, Highlands of Scotland, and
+       the interjacent Isle of Man.
+
+  2. SOUTH-WESTERN CELTS.--Wales, Britanny, and the, till lately,
+       Celtic-speaking Cornwall.
+
+  3. NORTHERN GERMANS, or GERMANS BEYOND THE EIDER, or
+       SCANDINAVIANS.--Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland.
+
+  4. SOUTHERN GERMANS, or GERMANS BELOW THE EIDER, or
+       TEUTONS.--Netherlands, the German empire, Switzerland.
+
+    B.--LATIN SPEAKING.
+
+  1. ITALY.--Sicily.
+
+  2. SPAIN.
+
+  3. PORTUGAL.
+
+  4. Latin-speaking FRANCE, distinguishing Normandy.
+
+    C.--GERMAN AND LATIN MIXED.
+
+  1. ENGLAND.
+
+  2. SCOTTISH LOWLANDS.
+
+II. From all this tangible territory, we are to sweep up--what? An
+overlying _intellectual_ kingdom, _videlicet_--THE KINDS OF THE FAIRIES,
+rudely marked out, perhaps, as follows:--
+
+  1. The _community_ of the Fairies, monarchal or republican:--The
+       Fairy folk; Fairies proper.
+
+  2. The _solitary_ domestic serviceable Fairy.
+
+  3. In the mines, under the water; a Fairy folk.
+
+  4. The solitary water Fairy.
+
+  5. The Fairy-ancestress.
+
+  6. The Fairy, tutelary or persecuting, of the chivalrous metrical
+       romance.
+
+  7. The Fairy, tutelary or persecuting, now giving and now turning
+       destinies, of the fairy tale proper.
+
+We have then to ask what are the terms, marks, common traits, or by
+whatsoever name they are to be called, which are yielded by a comparison
+of such seven kinds. Something like the following eight will possibly
+arise:--
+
+  First, A FAIRY IS A SUBORDINATE SPIRIT.
+
+  Secondly, IS ATTRACTED TO THE SURFACE OF OUR PLANET.
+
+  Thirdly, AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND.
+
+  Fourthly, HAS A BODY.
+
+  Fifthly, IS ATTENUATE.
+
+  Sixthly, IS WITHOUT PROPER STATION AND FUNCTION IN THE GENERAL ECONOMY
+    OF THE UNIVERSE; OR IS MYTHOLOGICALLY DISPLACED.
+
+  Seventhly, IS ENDOWED WITH POWERS OF INTELLIGENCE AND OF AGENCY EXCELLING
+    HUMAN.
+
+  Eighthly, STANDS UNDER A DOOM.
+
+To these eight criteria, taken _in the nature of the thing enquired_,
+the reflective inquirer will perchance find himself led on to add two
+furnished from within himself, as that--
+
+First, Acknowledging, as in these latter days our more delicate
+psychologists have called upon us to do, the names FANCY and IMAGINATION
+as designating TWO faculties, the fairies belong rather to the FANCY.
+
+Secondly, Accepting for a legitimate thought, legitimately and
+cogently signified, the High Marriage which one of these finer
+Metaphysicians{I}--instructed no doubt by his personal
+experience--prophesies to his kind, between the "intellect of man" and
+"this goodly universe," we may say that, regularly, this marriage must
+have its antecedent possessing and agitating Love; that this love must,
+like all possessing agitated love, have its attendant Reverie. Now,
+might one venture to surmise that _this_ REVERIE breathes into the
+creating of a fairy?
+
+Does the jealous reader perchance miss in the above proposed eight
+several elements the UNITY OF NOTION, which he has all along seemed to
+feel in his own spirit and understanding? Let him at once conceive, as
+intensely joined, the two permanent characters of _tenuity_ and
+_mythological displacement_, and take this compound for the nucleus of
+the unity he seeks. About these two every other element will easily
+place itself. For a _soul_, he shall infuse into the whole, after in
+like manner inseparably blending them--FANCY, and that love-inspired
+REVERIE which won its way to us from Grassmere.
+
+And so take, reader, our answer to your question, "_What is a fairy?_"
+THIS IS A FAIRY. Are you still unsatisfied? Good. The field of
+investigation lies open before you, free and inviting. On, in your own
+strength, and Heaven speed you!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The eight or nine tales of sundry length, and exceedingly diversified
+matter, contained in the two little volumes of Herr Ernst Willkomm,{J}
+which have put us a-journeying to Fairy-land, have begun to produce
+before the literary world the living popular superstitions of a small
+and hidden mountainous district, by which _Cis Eidoran_ Germany leans
+upon Sclavonia: hidden, it would seem, for any thing like interesting
+knowledge, until this author began to write, from the visiting eye of
+even learned curiosity. Nor this without a sufficient reason; since the
+mountains do, of themselves, shut in their inhabitants, and, for a
+stranger, the temper of the rugged mountaineer, at once shy and mailing
+himself in defiance, is, like the soil, inaccessible. To Ernst Willkomm
+this hinderance was none. He discloses to us the heart of the country,
+and that of the people which have born him, which have bred him up; and
+he will, if he is encouraged, write on. Three of these tales, or of
+these traditions--for the titles, with this writer, appear to us
+exchangeable--regard the fairies properly so called. They are, "_The
+Priest's Well_," "_The Fairies' Sabbath_," here given, and "_The Fairy
+Tutor_," being the first, the third, and the seventh, of the entire
+present series. Upon these three tales the foregoing attempt at fixing
+the generic notion of a fairy was intended to bear. Should pretty Maud,
+the stone-mason's daughter, our heroine for to-day, find the favour in
+English eyes which her personal merit may well claim, the remaining two
+are not likely to be long withheld.
+
+The illustrations which shall now follow, drawn from distinguished
+authorities, aim at showing the consonancy of Herr Willkomm's pictures
+with authentic representations of Elfin superstition already known to
+the world. If, however, the criteria which have been proposed, have
+been rightfully deduced, the illustrations should as materially serve us
+in justifying these by proof.
+
+Amongst the numerous points of analogy which strikingly connect our tale
+with popular tales and traditions innumerable, _three_ are main to the
+structure of the tale itself. They may be very briefly described as--
+
+    I. The Heathenism of the Fairies.
+   II. Their need, thence arising.
+  III. Maud's ability to help them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. The opinion, which sets the fairies in opposition to the established
+faith of all Christendom, is widely diffused. To the _Breton_ peasant,
+as M. de la Villemarqu� has above informed us, his Korrigan is a heathen
+princess, doomed to a long sorrow for obstinately refusing the message
+of salvation.
+
+The brothers Grimm, speaking of the fairies in _Ireland_, say that "they
+are angels cast out from heaven, who have not fallen as low as hell; but
+in great fear and uncertainty about their future state, doubt,
+themselves, whether they shall obtain mercy at the last day."{K}
+
+Of the fairies in _Scotland_, it is averred by the same learned and
+exact writers, that "they were originally angels dwelling in bliss, but
+who, because they suffered themselves to be seduced by the archfiend,
+were hurled down from heaven in innumerable multitudes. They shall
+wander till the last day over mountains and lakes. They know not how
+their sentence will run--whether they shall be saved or damned; but
+dread the worst."
+
+Tales, in many parts of Europe, which represent the fairies as
+exceedingly solicitous about their salvation, and as _inquiring of
+priests_ and others concerning their own spiritual prospects, for the
+most part with an unfavourable answer, tend to fix upon them a
+reproachful affinity with the spirits of darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+II. That the powerful fairies, who have appeared to us, from childhood
+upwards, as irresistible dispensers of good and evil to our kind, should
+_need aid_ of any sort from us, is an unexpected feature of the fairy
+lore, which breaks by degrees upon the zealous and advancing inquirer.
+
+The two excellent brothers Grimm, in the most elaborate and
+comprehensive collection,{L} probably, of national traditions that
+Europe possesses, have furnished us with various instances. We select a
+very few. In the following graceful Alpine pastoral, the need of human
+help attaches to an exigency of life or death:--
+
+
+GERMAN TRADITIONS.
+
+No. CCXX. _The Queen of the Snakes._
+
+"A herd maiden found upon the fell a sick snake lying and almost
+famished. Compassionately she held down to it her pitcher of milk. The
+snake licked greedily, and was visibly revived. The girl went on her
+way; and it presently happened that her lover sued for her, but was too
+poor for the proud wealthy father, who tauntingly dismissed him till the
+day when he too should be master of as large herds as the old herdsman.
+From this time forwards had the old herdsman no luck more, but sheer
+misfortune. Report ran that a fiery dragon was seen passing o' nights
+over his grounds; and his substance decayed. The poor swain was now as
+rich, and again sued for his beloved, whom he obtained. Upon the
+wedding-day a snake came gliding into the room, upon whose coiled tail
+there sat a beautiful damsel, who said that it was she to whom formerly
+the kind herd maid had, in strait of hunger, given her milk, and, out
+of gratitude, she took her brilliant crown from her head, and cast it
+into the bride's lap. Thereupon she vanished; but the young couple
+throve in their housekeeping greatly, and were soon well at ease in the
+world."
+
+Since fairies, like ourselves, are mortal, TWO LIVES may be understood
+as at stake in the following:--
+
+
+No. LXVIII. _The Lady of Alvensleben._
+
+"Some hundred years ago, there lived at Calb, in the Werder, an aged
+lady of the house of Alvensleben, who feared God, was gracious to the
+people, and willingly disposed to render any one a service: especially
+she did assist the burgesses' wives in difficult travail of childbirth,
+and was, in such cases, of all desired and highly esteemed. Now,
+therefore, there did happen in wise following:--
+
+"In the night season there came a damsel to the castle gate, who knocked
+and distressfully called, beseeching that it should not mislike her, if
+possible, forthwith to arise, and to accompany her from the town, where
+there lay a good woman in travail of child, because the last hour and
+uttermost peril was already upon her, and her mistress wist no help for
+her life. The noblewoman said, 'It is very midnight; all the town gates
+be shut and well barred: how shall we make us forth?' The damsel
+rejoined that the gate was ready open, she should come forth only, (but
+beware, as do some add, in the place whither she should be conducted, to
+eat or to drink any thing, or to touch that should be proffered her.)
+Thereupon did the lady rise from her bed, dressed her, came down, and
+went along with the damsel which had knocked. The town gate she found
+open, and as they came further into a field was there a fair way which
+led right into a hillside. The hill stood open, and although she did
+well perceive that the thing was darksome, she resolved to go still on,
+unalarmed, until she arrived at last where was a _little wifikin_ that
+lay on the bed, in great pains of travail. But the noble lady gave her
+succour, (by the report of some, _she needed no more than lay her hand
+upon her body_,) and a little baby was born to the light of day.
+
+"When she had yielded her aid, desire took her to return from out the
+hill, home; she took leave of the sick woman, (without having any thing
+touched of the meats and liquors that were offered her,) and the former
+damsel anew joined her, and brought her back unharmed to the castle. At
+the gateway the damsel stood still, thanked her highly in her mistress's
+name, and drew off from her finger a golden ring, which she presented to
+the noblewoman with these words, 'Have this dear pledge in right heedful
+keeping, and let it not part from you and from your house. They of
+Alvensleben will flourish so long as they possess this ring. Should it
+ever leave them, the whole race must become extinct.' Herewith vanished
+the damsel.
+
+"It is said that the ring, at this day, is rightly and properly kept in
+the lineage, and for good assurance deposited at Lubeck. But others,
+that it was, at the dividing of the house into two branches, diligently
+parted in two. Others yet, that the one half has been melted, since when
+it goes ill with that branch: the other half stays with the other branch
+at Zichtow. The story moreover goes, that the benevolent lady was a
+married woman. When she upon the morrow told her husband the tale of
+that had betid her in the night, he would not believe her, until she
+said, 'Forsooth, then, an' ye will not trow me, take only the key of yon
+room from the table: there lieth, I dare warrant, the ring.' Which was
+exactly so. It is marvellous the gifts that men have received of the
+fairies."
+
+The most touching by far of the traditions at our disposal for
+illustrating at once the dependence of the fairies upon man, and their
+anxiety concerning their souls' welfare, is one in which the
+all-important hope which we have said that they sometimes solicit from
+the grave and authorized lips of priests, appears as floating on the
+lightest breath of children. Our immediate author is James Grimm,
+speaking in his German _Mythology_ of the water spirit. The tradition
+itself is from Sweden, where this mythological being, the solitary
+water fairy, bears the name of "The _Neck_."
+
+"Two lads were at play by the river side. The _Neck_ sate and touched
+his harp. The children called to him--
+
+"'Why sittest thou here, _Neck_, and playest? Thou wilt not go to
+heaven.' Then the _Neck_ began bitterly weeping, flung his harp away,
+and sank in the deep water. When the boys came home they told their
+father, who was a priest, what had happened. The father said--
+
+"'Ye have sinned towards the _Neck_. Go ye back, and give him promise of
+salvation.'
+
+"When they returned to the river, the _Neck_ sate upon the shore,
+mourning and weeping. The children said--
+
+"'Weep not so, thou _Neck_. Our father hath said, that thy Redeemer too
+liveth.'
+
+"Then the _Neck_ took joyfully his harp, and played sweetly until long
+after sundown."
+
+"I do not know," tenderly and profoundly suggests Dr Grimm, "that any
+where else in our traditions is as significantly expressed how NEEDY of
+the Christian belief the HEATHEN are, and how MILDLY it should approach
+them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+III. A few words shall here satisfy the claims of a widely-stretching
+subject. Is there _one_ order of spirits which, as the Baron Walckenaer
+has assured us, lavishes on chosen human heads love unattracted, and
+hate unprovoked? We must look well about us ere fixing the imputation.
+Spirits, upon the other hand, undoubtedly there are, and those of not a
+few orders, fairies of one or another description being amongst them,
+who exert, in the choice of their human favourites, a discrimination
+challenging no light regard.
+
+A host of traditions, liberally scattered over a field, of which,
+perhaps, Ireland is one extremity and China the other, now plainly and
+emphatically declare, and now, after a venturous interpretation, may be
+understood to point out, _simplicity of will_ and _kindness of heart_ as
+titles in the human being to the favour of the spirits. At times a
+brighter beam irradiates such titles, to which holiness, purity, and
+innocence, are seen to set their seal. We cull a few instances, warning
+the reader, that, although of our best, he will possibly find them a
+mere working upwards to the most perfect which we have it in our power
+to bring before him in the beautiful tale of Maud.
+
+Amongst the searchers who seem to have been roused into activity by the
+German traditions of the brothers Grimm, Ludwig Bechstein takes
+distinguished place for the diligence with which he has collected
+different districts of Germany. Our inquiry shall owe him the two
+following
+
+
+TRADITIONS OF THE GRABFELD.
+
+No. LVII. _The little Cherry-Tree upon Castle Raueneck._
+
+"There prevails, concerning the ruins of the old hill-castle Raueneck, a
+quite similar tradition to that which holds of the like named ruined
+strength near Baden, in Austria. There lies yet buried here a vast
+treasure, over which a spirit, debarred from repose, keeps watch,
+anxiously awaiting deliverance. But who is he that can and shall
+actually lift this treasure and free the spirit? Upon the wall there
+grows a cherry seedling that shall one day become a tree; and the tree
+shall be cut down, and out of it a cradle made. He that, being a
+Sunday's child, is rocked in this cradle, will grow up, but only
+provided that he have kept himself virginally pure and chaste, _at some
+noontide hour_ set free the spirit, lift the treasure, and become
+immeasurably rich; so as he shall be able to rebuild Castle Raueneck and
+all the demolished castles in the neighbourhood round. If the plant
+wither, or if a storm break it, then must the spirit again wait until
+once more a cherry stone, brought by a bird to the top of the lofty
+wall, shoot and put forth leaves, and haply grow to a tree."
+
+
+No. LXII. _The Hollow Stone._
+
+"In the wood near Altenstein there stands a high rock. The inhabitants
+of the neighbourhood say that this rock is hollow within, and filled
+with treasure in great store from the olden time. At certain seasons and
+hours, it is given _to Sunday children_ to find the rock doors open, or
+to open them with _the lucky flower_."
+
+The singular superstition of spiritual favour fixing itself upon the
+human child, consecrated, as it were, by the hallowed light upon which
+the eyes first open, will shortly return upon us in _The Fairies'
+Sabbath_.
+
+Lo! where, from the bountiful hand of the Brothers Grimm, fall two
+bright dewdrop of tradition upon the pure opening flower of childhood.
+
+
+GERMAN TRADITIONS.
+
+NO. CLIX. _The Treasure at Soest._
+
+"In the time of the Thirty Years' war, there was to be seen standing not
+far from the town of Soest, in Westphalia, an old ruin, of which the
+tradition ran that there was an iron trunk there, full of money, kept by
+a black dog and a bewitched maiden. The grandfathers and grandmothers
+Who are gone, used to tell that a strange nobleman shall one day arrive
+in the country, deliver the maiden, and open the chest with a fiery key.
+They said that divers itinerant scholars and exorcists had, within the
+memory of man, betaken themselves thither to dig, but been in so strange
+sort received and dismissed, that no one since further had list to the
+adventure, especially after their publishing that the treasure might be
+lifted of none who had once taken woman's milk. It was not long since a
+little girl from their village had led her few goats to feed about the
+very spot; one of which straying amongst the ruins, she had followed it.
+Within, in the castle court, was a damsel who questioned her what she
+did there: and when she was informed, pointing to a little basket of
+cherries, further said, 'It is good; therefore take of that thou see'st
+before thee, with thy goat and all, and go; and come not again, neither
+look behind, that a harm befall thee not.' Upon this the frightened
+child caught up seven cherries, and made her way in alarm out of the
+ruins. The cherries turned, in her hand, to money."
+
+
+NO. CLX. _The Welling Silver._
+
+"In February of the year 1605, in the reign of Henry Julius, Duke of
+Brunswick, at a mile's distance from Quedlinburg, where it is called _at
+the Dale_, it happened that a poor peasant sent his daughter into the
+next shaw to pick up sticks for fuel. The girl took for this use a
+larger basket upon her head, and a smaller in her hand; and when she had
+filled them both and was going home, a mannikin clad all in white came
+towards her, and asked:--
+
+"'What art carrying there?'
+
+"'Gathered sticks,' the girl made answer, 'for heating and cooking.'
+
+"'Empty the wood out,' said further the little manling, 'take thy basket
+and follow me. I shall show thee something that is better and more
+profitable than thy sticks.'
+
+"He then took her by the hand, and led her back again to a knoll, and
+showed her a place which might be of two ordinary tables' breadth of a
+fair pure silver, being smaller and larger coins of a moderate
+thickness, with a image stamped like a Virgin Mary, and all round an
+impress of exceedingly old writing. As the silver _welled up_, as it
+were, abundantly out of the ground, the little girl was terrified and
+drew back, neither would she empty out the sticks from her small
+hand-basket. Accordingly, the little man in white himself did so, filled
+the basket with the money, and gave it back to the little damsel with
+saying, 'That shall be better for thee than thy sticks.' She was
+confounded and took it; but upon the mannikin's requiring that she
+should likewise empty out her larger basket and take silver therein, she
+refused and said--'That she must carry fuel home too; for there were
+little children at home who must have a warm room, and there must be
+wood ready likewise for cooking.' This contented the manling, who said,
+'Well, then, go; take it all home,' and thereupon disappeared.
+
+"The girl carried the basket of silver home, and told what had happened
+to her. The boors now ran flocking with pickaxes and other tools, and
+would have their share of the treasure, but none of them was able to
+find the spot where the silver had welled out.
+
+"The Prince of Brunswick had a pound of the coined silver brought him,
+as did moreover a burgess of Halberstadt, N. Everkan, purchase the
+like."
+
+The quick-sighted reader will not easily have missed detecting the
+sudden effect produced upon the two spirits by THE TRUTHFUL
+RIGHT-MINDEDNESS OF THE TWO LITTLE GIRLS.
+
+Correspondingly, James Grimm, from surveying collectively the Teutonic
+traditions of bewitched or mysteriously hidden treasure, says--
+
+"To the lifting of the treasure is required _silence_ and _innocence_.
+* * * Innocent children's hands are able to lay hold upon it, as to draw
+the lot. * * * Who has viciously stained himself cannot approach it."{M}
+
+Two short instances more from the copious fraternal collection, and we
+have done. With a temper of pure childlike antiquity, they express in
+the persons of the dwarfs--_Teutonic approximative, fairies_--the
+sympathy of the spirits with unstained and innocent human manners; and
+may, if the traditions which exhibit the fairies under a cloud of sin
+and sorrow should have been felt by the reader as at all grating upon
+his old love of them, help to soothe and reconcile him by a soft gleam
+of illumination, here lingering as in a newly revealed Golden Age of his
+own.
+
+
+GERMAN TRADITIONS.
+
+No. CXLVII. _The Dwarfs upon the Tree._
+
+"In the summer, the dwarfs often came trooping from the cliffs down into
+the valley, and joined either with help, or as lookers-on at least, the
+human inhabitants at their work, especially the mowers, in hay-harvest.
+They, then and there, seated themselves at their ease and pleasantly,
+upon the long and thick arm of a maple in the embowering shade. But once
+there came certain evil-disposed persons, who, in the night, sawed the
+bough through, so that it held but weakly on to the trunk; and when the
+unsuspecting creatures, upon the morrow, settled themselves down upon
+it, the bough cracked in two, the dwarfs tumbled to the ground, were
+heartily laughed at, fell into violent anger, and cried aloud--
+
+    'O, how is the heaven high and long!
+    And falsehood waxen on earth so strong!
+    Here to-day, and for ever away!'
+
+They kept their word, and never again made their appearance in the
+country."
+
+
+No. CXLVIII. _The Dwarfs upon the Crag Stone._
+
+"It was the wont of the dwarflings to seat themselves upon a great crag
+stone, and from thence to watch the haymakers; but a few mischievous
+fellows kindled a fire upon the stone, made it red-hot, and swept away
+embers and ashes. Morning came, and with it the tiny folk, who burned
+themselves pitiably. They exclaimed in high anger--
+
+    'O wicked world! O wicked world!'
+
+cried vengeance, and vanished for evermore!"
+
+We have shown,--1. The Anti-christian character imputed by tradition to
+the fairies. 2. The occasional dependence of the more powerful spirits
+upon the less powerful human beings; and, 3. The strong affectionate
+leaning in the will of the spirits towards moral human excellence. Of
+the _ability_ which, in virtue of this excellence, the human creature
+possesses _to help_, Maud must, for the present, be permitted to stand
+for the sole, as she is beyond all comparison our best, example.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The book of Ernst Willkomm takes a position in strong contrast to the
+corresponding works due to the Brothers Grimm, and other great gatherers
+of legendary lore. He has a personal poetic interest in the tales which
+they have not. He presents himself as the expositor, not only of his
+native superstitions, but also, zealously, of the Upper Lusatian
+manners. Himself cradled amongst the mountains, he has drawn with
+infinite pains, and by slow degrees, as he best could, from the deep
+interior life of the people, their jealously withheld credences, and the
+traditions which are sacredly associated with every nook of their craggy
+district.
+
+"The tract of country," says Willkomm in his Preface, "the true
+Highlands of Upper Lusatia, called by the inhabitants themselves the
+Upper Country, to which the tales are native, is one very narrowly
+circumscribed. It amounts to scarcely ten square (German) miles. I have,
+however, selected it for my undertaking," he continues, "because it is
+intimately familiar to me; because the innermost character of the small
+population who inhabit it is confidentially known to me; because there
+is hardly a road or a path in the country which, on the darkest night, I
+could not find. Interesting, romantic, magnificent is the piece of earth
+which, at the confines of Bohemia, runs over hilly heights and lofty
+hill, tops on to the high mountain-chain. But still more interesting, I
+maintain with confidence, is the race of people."
+
+It may seem strange at first, that the wise and profound explorers whom
+we have so often had occasion to cite, the brothers Grimm, should have
+failed to present us with any traditions from a corner of ground around
+which they have so successfully laboured. We have hinted already at the
+sufficient reason of the blank. Willkomm tells us, that the rest of the
+world, which "the cabin'd cribb'd" Lusatian has himself learned to call
+"_o' th' outside_," has taken no cognisance of his beautiful hill
+country. Lusatia has a literature of her own, and no one is acquainted
+with it. "She had, and partly still has, her own, similar to the
+Imperial cities, exceeding free and energetic municipal constitution."
+But no one cares about it. Celebrated and learned historians, questioned
+by Willkomm on the subject, have acknowledged their ignorance in regard
+to the character and laws of its small people. A more cogent reason,
+however, lies nearer home, in the impenetrable reserve and
+self-insulation of the mountaineers themselves. Willkomm confesses that
+their coldness towards strangers is unparalleled; they have no
+confidence whatever in foreigners; "and let a Lusatian but suspect," he
+says, "that you come a-fishing to him, and to listen out his privacies;
+then may you," as we may render the Lusatian proverb, "'Lose yourself
+before you find his mushroom.'" He will communicate to strangers little
+of his manners and customs; of his superstitious practices, his sacredly
+guarded traditions, absolutely nothing. "He is unpliant,
+self-sequestered, coarse-grained; beyond all conception easy and
+phlegmatic."
+
+Every genuine people, however, is rough-handed; and Willkomm proceeds,
+after an ingenuous description of their defects, to vindicate the
+natural heart of his brother highlanders. "Let him amongst the gentle,"
+he proudly exclaims, "who desire to hear for once something novel,
+something right vigorous, sit down beside me. He need not fear that
+morals and decency will be cast out of doors. No, no! The people are
+thoroughly moral and chaste at heart, if they are somewhat coarse in
+expression;--ay, and tender withal. Their imagination glides as
+delighted along fragrant threads of gold, as it eagerly descends amongst
+the powers of darkness, amidst the dance of will-o'-the-wisps and
+horrible ghost-reels. They are, at once, a blunt, good-hearted,
+aboriginal stamp of men, with all the advantages and deficiencies
+appurtenant."
+
+The Lusatian traditions, brought to light in Germany by Ernst Willkomm,
+and now first made known to Englishmen in these pages, were collected by
+our author, as we have already observed, with difficulty and labour. A
+native only of the mountain district could obtain from the lips of the
+people their sacred and well-preserved lore, and even he not easily. The
+tales were narrated from time to time in the spinning-room, or in the
+so-called "_Hell_" of the boor or weaver, without any determinate
+connexion. The listener gathered mere fragments, and these not fully,
+when, thrown off his guard, he ventured to interrupt the speaker. Each
+narrator conceives his tale differently, and one individual is apt to
+garnish the experience of many, or what he has heard from others, with a
+little spice of his own invention. Further, the details of ten or twelve
+occurrences are associated with one single spot; all of which appear
+externally different, and yet internally are connected closely, "so that
+when comprehended in one whole picture, and not till then, they form
+what, in a strict and literary sense, we are accustomed to call a
+TRADITION or TALE. I, at least," adds Ernst Willkomm, "in such an
+upgathering of these disjointed tones of tradition, could only
+accomplish something that satisfied me by searching out the profound
+hidden meaning of the people's poesy: and I have at last gone no further
+than attempting to compose these detached fragments of tradition,
+Lusatianwise and popularwise, from the people's own telling, into a
+whole. Upon this scheme only could alike the poetical worth of the
+tales, and the portraiture of the race, be rescued and rightly secured."
+
+That the traditions have been rescued and maintained in their purity and
+truth; coloured, no doubt, in the telling, and that unavoidably, under
+the pencil of their educated renderer--we have every reason to believe
+from internal evidences. Maintaining their own originality, they
+correspond in the main to the traditions which come to us from almost
+every known country on the globe, concurring to attest the intimate and
+necessary relation of the human soul with what would seem to be the
+remnants of an ancient and universal mythology. They bear upon their
+front the minute impress of reality, not to be mistaken, and beyond the
+mere invention of the poet. They are a valuable addition to the common
+stock. The style of Willkomm is clear, and to the point; almost always,
+as he says, in characterizing the speech of his own Upper Lusatians,
+"hitting the nail upon the head." It breathes of his own mountain air,
+and possesses a charm, a vigour, and freshness, which we fear that we
+shall endeavour in vain to transfer to the following version:--
+
+
+THE FAIRIES' SABBATH.
+
+"Children born of a Sunday, and bastards, inherit the gift, denied to
+other human beings, of beholding spirits, of talking with them, and, if
+opportunity befriend, of right intimately communing with them. This was
+a truth experienced by pretty Maud, the stone-mason's only daughter,
+who, a hundred years ago or so, led, at the foot of the mountain-ridge
+yonder, a quiet home-loving life. Maud was born, of all days in the
+year, upon Easter Sunday, which is said to be a truly lucky day for a
+mortal not otherwise heavily burdened with earthly blessings. In this
+last respect, Maud had no reasonable cause of complaint; for her father,
+by the labour of his hands, painfully earned just as much as went to a
+frugal housekeeping, and the mother kept the little family in order; so
+that things looked always neat and clean enough in the abode of the
+stone-mason.
+
+"All Sunday's children are very wise, and, if they are maidens, always
+uncommonly beautiful. Maud was, as a child, admired by every body; nay,
+it once went so far, as that a rich and beautiful, but very
+sickly-looking, lady of quality, who was travelling over the mountain in
+a fine carriage, tried hard to coax the poor mother out of her pretty
+Maud with a large sum of gold. When the maiden had fairly stepped out of
+child's shoes, and was obliged to seek employment away from home, there
+was a mighty ado. It was for all the world as if a fairy was going
+through the place, when Maud, early in the morning, strolled along the
+banks of the murmuring stream on her road to a wealthy weaver's. The
+young fellows saluted the fair one as they greeted no other. No one
+ventured, however, to accost her with unseemly speeches--a kind of
+thing, by the way, that young men at all times are very prone to. Maud
+was treated by every one like a saint. Maidens even, her equals in
+years, prized her highly; and in no way envied her the general
+admiration. This might be founded in the behaviour itself of Maud. More
+forward to oblige, to do good offices, more sweetly behaved, was no one.
+And then she had such a grace with it all, so innocent an eye, that when
+you looked into it, heaven itself seemed to shine out upon you. In
+short, whoever spoke with Maud, or might walk a few steps with her, that
+man was for the whole day another and a happier creature, and whatever
+he undertook prospered with him.
+
+"It would have been strange indeed had such a maiden lacked suitors, or
+not very early found a sympathizing heart. Now, as for the suitors,
+there was no dearth of them, Heaven knows! for there were youngsters of
+the queerest fashion. Many without manners, though right well to look
+at; others wealthy, but without heart or soul; and others again ready to
+burst with rage, if any one but touched his hat to the beautiful
+Matilda. To all such, the innocent child had not a word to say; for she
+knew well enough, that scant blessing waits on marriages of such a make.
+There was but one young fellow who could be said to please her
+thoroughly, and he was neither rich nor singularly handsome. She had
+become acquainted with him at the weaver's, where he, like herself, went
+daily to work. Albert was industrious, well-behaved, and spoke so
+sensibly and right-heartedly, that Maud ever listened to him with
+delight. Truth to tell, he simply put her own feelings into words. A
+very little time passed, before she engaged herself secretly to Albert;
+and all would have gone on happily and well with them, had the two
+lovers but possessed just money enough to scrape a few matters together,
+and to set up housekeeping. But both were poor--poor as church mice;
+and, just for that reason, the father of Maud did not look very
+favourably upon the settled love-affair of his daughter. He would have
+been better satisfied if the silly thing, as he called her, had given
+her hand to one of the rich suitors, who would have given their ears to
+please her. Since, however, once for all, the mischief was done, he,
+like a good man, determined to cause his only child no heartache, and
+let matters get on as they might. One condition only he insisted
+upon--which was, that Maud should for the future work under her father's
+roof; Albert, meanwhile, having leave every evening to pay his visits
+there. In this arrangement the two lovers cordially acquiesced; for,
+young as they were, they could well afford a little waiting. Meantime,
+it must be their endeavour, by incessant labour and careful economy, to
+save up as much as they needed for setting themselves up in their humble
+dwelling. So they lived on from day to day in quiet content. And so, no
+doubt, many days, and many, would have glided by, had not a singular
+occurrence disturbed the profound tranquillity. This was the way of
+it:--
+
+"Maud's father, the stone-mason, found it too much for him, with his
+heavy work and all, when, at noon, he had the long journey to make
+between the stone quarry and his own home. Besides, the fine stone-dust
+had brought on an inflammation of the eyes, so that he was obliged to
+avoid the glare of the sun: no easy thing for him to do, since his road
+homeward lay over a green high hill, upon which the sun beat
+scorchingly: wherefore, also, the people have given it the name of the
+Sun's hill. It was made, in consequence, Maud's duty to take daily her
+father's homely dinner to the stone quarry--a road which, although
+toilsome, was by no means disagreeable to her; inasmuch as Albert often
+found means to get leave of absence, and then always escorted her a part
+of the way.
+
+"Over the Sun's hill nobody went willingly alone, either by day or by
+night; for the tale ran, that to many persons wondrous things had
+happened. Some had even caught, they said, their death-sickness there.
+True it is, any more definite report was not easily obtained. Only so
+much had Maud heard from her mother, that the GOOD PEOPLE were said, a
+very, very long time ago, to have vanished into the green hill; just
+when, in all the places around, so many churches had sprung up, and the
+sound of bells rang over mountain and wood. These reports
+notwithstanding, Maud, unconscious of evil, took her daily walk over the
+Sun's hill, where indeed no one ever encountered her; so that the
+splendid landscape looked often desolate and awful in the hot midday's
+glow.{N} For this reason it was always a great relief to her, when, from
+the top of the steep hill, she saw Albert ascending towards her. She
+then felt herself more secure, and went with better spirits forward. It
+was near Whitsuntide--the father sickly and more peevish than ever, and
+work bringing in no supply; for provisions had risen fearfully in price
+in consequence of the previous unusually hard winter. Now, as often as
+Maud brought the dinner to her father, he complained bitterly, and
+reproached her harshly for her folly; so that the poor child was almost
+heartbroken, pined, and led a melancholy life.
+
+"She most deeply felt her trouble, when at noon she took her lonely
+journey along the desolate path that led to the quarry. Then she often
+shed the bitterest tears, and prayed to God to show her an outlet, and
+to have pity on their poverty.
+
+"One day--it was just a week to Whitsun-eve--it happened that as she
+went upon her way, silently and in sorrow, and in vain looked for the
+beloved figure of Albert, she suddenly heard such a marvellously clear
+sound of a bell that she stood still to hearken. It was upon the mid
+summit of the Sun's hill; the air perfectly calm, and around, far and
+near, not a creature to be seen. From the distant hamlet in the valley
+clinked only the sharp tones of the whetting scythe. Maud believed that
+she had had a ringing in her ears, and walked on. The singular sound was
+repeated, resembling the tone exactly of a small silver bell.
+
+"'How strange it is!' said the maiden to herself, casting her eyes upon
+the ground; and in the soft moss, right at her feet, she perceived
+something glistening like a fragment of blue glass. She stooped and
+picked up what in colour and shape resembled a blue harebell, or, as it
+is called, _Fairy's hat_; only, where the stalk should have been, there
+was a so small and elegantly-wrought little silver bell, that Maud could
+not help laughing outright.
+
+"'Bless me!' she exclaimed, 'who can have made that comical thing?' and
+thereupon she shook the flower, and the wee little bell began to sound
+so prodigiously clear, that the poor damsel let it fall, affrighted.
+
+"'What are thy commands?' asked immediately a slender bright voice.
+Before her stood a delicate creature, not higher than her hand; but of a
+symmetry of person that was perfectly astonishing. His small expressive
+head, round which a grove of curls, like crisped sunbeams, played, was
+just of a size, that the flower with the wondrous bell served it for a
+covering. For Maud saw how he put on the sparkling hat with much
+gravity, and at the same time, very knowingly, giving himself a right
+bold and dandy appearance.
+
+"'What are you then?' asked Maud trembling.
+
+"The little fellow made a smart bow, 'Thy servant, with thy good leave,'
+replied the strange being. 'I and my people have known thee a long time.
+We have heard thy complainings; and because thou hast a kind heart, and
+lovest the flowers, and dost not wantonly pull them to pieces, am I
+charged to do thee a pleasure, provided thou wilt do the like for me and
+my people.'
+
+"'Indeed! you pretty little original!' answered Maud, 'who are thy
+people? I'----
+
+"'Hush!' interrupted the little one, with a repelling gesture of the
+hand and a very impressive contraction of the brow. 'These are questions
+which I cannot answer, and, what is more, cannot suffer. It is not civil
+to put questions of the WHENCE and the WHAT. If thou wilt trust me, and
+I should think that I have the air of a proper gentleman, then resolve
+without delay whether thou wilt do me a pleasure for a reasonable
+compensation.'
+
+"'Dear little sir!' replied Maud, overcome, 'I am not mistrustful, but
+so beset and afflicted that I really do not know how I am to understand
+this strange business. Do not make sport of me, good child; or, if thou
+art a spirit, I beseech thee have compassion on me, and let me go my way
+in peace. My father is waiting for me. His little bit of dinner is
+drying in the heat of the sun.'
+
+"'Silly prattle!' interrupted the little one. 'Thy old father lies under
+the rock side, and snores till the fern leaves waggle over him. The good
+man's dinner will not take much harm. However, that thou mayest see how
+good and honourable my intentions are, take thou my little cap. Be it
+the pledge which I shall redeem from thee with a compensation. Only
+resolve quickly now whether thou wilt trust me. My time is short.'
+
+"Maud hesitated still. She held the miraculous cap with its silver bell
+in her hand. The desire to get rid of the _uncanny_ creature the sooner
+the better, and also, perhaps, a particle of female curiosity wrung from
+her her consent.
+
+"'Good!' said the little one in great glee. 'Now, hear me! This day
+week, upon Whitsun-eve, as ye call it, do thou come here in the evening,
+as soon as the moon has mounted this green hill. Be not afraid; for only
+good will befall thee. As soon as thou hast reached this spot, ring with
+the little bell which I have given thee; and thou wilt not repent having
+been serviceable to the good people.'
+
+"Scarcely had the little man given Maud her direction, when the
+astonished maiden remarked that the ground before her feet flashed like
+molten gold, sunk deeper and deeper, and in this glowing gulf the
+extraordinary being vanished, like a silver star. The whole phenomenon
+lasted only a few seconds, then every thing was again at rest as before.
+The little bell-flower only assured Matilda that she did not dream, and
+that something unusual had really taken place.
+
+"Possessed with her feelings, she took her father his meal; and found
+him, in sooth, fast asleep under the wall of rock. Of her adventure she
+said nothing, but carried the pledge of the little man well secured in
+her bosom. And yet how was it possible for her to persevere in her
+silence? It is true, Maud knew not if the communication of the incident
+was permitted her. She put her trust, however, in the pledge; and, since
+she had not been commanded to silence, she hoped to be justified in
+making Albert acquainted with what had happened.
+
+"She did it with fear and trembling, and produced to her astonished
+lover, as witness, the flower which had withered in the warmth of her
+bosom. Singularly enough, let her shake it as often as she would, the
+little bell could not be made to ring.
+
+"'And you really mean to go?' asked Albert, when he had a little
+recovered from his surprise. 'I should like to see you! To get flirting
+with ghosts and hobgoblins, or whatever else the devils may be. No! go
+you don't. You will throw that stupid thing into the running stream.
+_There_ it won't hurt you; and upon that confounded Sun's hill you will
+please never to set foot more.'
+
+"'I have given my word, Albert; and I must keep my word let what will
+happen.'
+
+"'Very well,' said the youngster, 'that's enough! Then every thing's at
+an end between us--clean at an end!'
+
+"'How you take on now! For whom else, but for you, have I accepted this
+pledge? For whom else have I so long endured--so long borne my father's
+upbraidings? Dost thou think that, had I wished it, I could not long
+since have wedded? And is it my fault that I am a Sunday's child? Is it
+not said that all Sunday's children are born to good-luck? If you hinder
+me from keeping my word with this miraculous being--and the luck that is
+decreed me is meanwhile scattered to all the four winds--you may settle
+it with the spirit and face his anger; for I wash my hands in
+innocency.'
+
+"Maud began to cry, kissed the shrunken leaf, and hid it again in her
+bosom. Albert was not at ease. He was annoyed at the untoward encounter,
+a touch of jealousy disquieted and distressed his soul, and yet he
+could not say that the girl was in the wrong. At length he said,
+dispiritedly--
+
+"'Go through with your folly then. I will, however, be near you, and if
+the moon-spun rascal takes improper liberties, I will snap his neck,
+though mine too should crack for it.'
+
+"For the first time in his life, Albert parted with Maud in an
+ill-humour, and the poor girl herself passed a bad and restless night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Mother,' said Maud a few days afterwards, whilst she was getting the
+father's dinner ready for her, 'did you ever see a fairy?'
+
+"'God forbid, girl!' cried the worthy and somewhat timid woman, crossing
+herself. 'How came that into thy head? What hast thou to do with fairies
+and elves, dwarfs and wights? A good Christian has no business with such
+things of nothing, or worse.'
+
+"'Why, aunt Nelly was telling the other day such surprising stories of
+the people!' Matilda replied; 'but she did not drop a hint of our having
+reason to fear any harm from them. She even called them the GOOD
+PEOPLE.'
+
+"'Daughter!' the mother seriously rejoined, 'we call them so that they
+may do us no mischief. It is safer for us to leave them quite alone.'
+
+"'Can it be true, mother, that they have buried themselves under the
+Sun's hill, and keep house and home there? Aunt Nelly would have it that
+in the still of the night, by bright moonlight, you may hear them
+singing wonderful tunes.'
+
+"The mother fixed her eyes upon Maud, set the old man's morsel of food
+upon the hearth stone, and, taking her daughter by the hand, led her to
+the stove, and seated her upon the family bench.
+
+"'Listen!' she said, 'and take thou heed to my words. The good people,
+or the fairies, which is their proper name, although they do not like to
+be called so, do indeed live, though few have the gift of beholding
+them, in all the mountains and valleys round about. Very, very seldom,
+and only upon the most extraordinary occasions, do they ever show
+themselves. When they do, it betokens luck to him that sees them, and
+brings it, if he quietly fulfill their wishes. These are certainly often
+out of the way, just like the people, who are strange and
+incomprehensible enough. Thank Goodness, they never crossed my path! but
+your godmother Helen, she had many, many years ago, a curious adventure
+with the fairies.'
+
+"'Really, mother! Aunt Nelly spoken to the fairies! O pray, dear mother,
+tell me quickly and fully the whole story!'
+
+"'First run to the quarry, and take your father his dinner,' said the
+mother. 'I will try in the meanwhile to remember all about it; and if
+you will promise me to say not a word to any one--not even to your
+godmother, you shall hear what your aunt told me at that time.'
+
+"Maud very naturally promised every thing, took herself off, and was
+back again as quickly as possible. She did not loiter for a moment upon
+the road, did not even notice the signals which her Albert made as he
+came towards her from the distance. She could think only of her mother's
+story.
+
+"'Here I am again, mother!' she said breathless. 'I call that running! I
+should say that the king's trained runners could do no better. But now
+begin, dear mother. I will listen to you as if you were saying mass.'
+
+"'As well as I can remember,' proceeded the mother, 'the case of the
+fairies is a very singular one. Your godmother Helen disclosed to me, it
+is true, just the chief particulars only; but they were quite enough to
+let you understand something of the good people. They told her that,
+once in every fifty or a hundred years, they have a kind of church
+meeting, which from old time they call a Sabbath. For you must know,
+child, that the fairies are properly Jews,{O} right down old chaffering
+Jews, from _Olim's_ time.'{P}
+
+"'O bless me! Jews!' cried Maud, frightened out of her wits.
+
+"'Yes, yes, Jews and nothing else,' repeated the mother warmly; 'and
+that's the very reason why, up to this day, they are so given to
+trafficking in precious stones, pearls, gold, silver, and artful
+jewellery. And when they give themselves a holiday, they go running
+about above-ground, making presents to new-born babies if they are very
+lovely, and playing all kinds of odd pranks. According to your godmother
+Helen, the history of the fairies runs thus:--The whole people, and
+their name is LEGION, were formerly in heaven.'
+
+"'In heaven!' cried Maud, interrupting her mother, 'then why didn't the
+silly creatures stay there? Where else do they hope to be more snug and
+comfortable than in heaven! seated under the fur-cap of father Abraham!'
+
+"'How you prate!' said the mother, checking her. 'If you do not
+instantly tie up your tongue, and think more respectfully of the good
+people, I shall not tell you another syllable.'
+
+"'O pray! I will be quite quiet!'
+
+"'Very well. Then the fairies were a long while ago in heaven,'
+continued the mother. 'At that time they were part of the angelic host,
+were fine handsome people, went about in glittering robes, and sat at
+God's right hand. Now, it befell that the chief angel of all got
+dissatisfied with the old management of affairs in heaven, stirred up
+discontent, tampered with the half of all the angels, and tried, with
+their help, to thrust out the old rightful Master of heaven and earth
+from his bright throne. But it fared with him as it does with most
+rebels, and rightly should with all. Our Father, in his glory, got the
+better of Satan, took him by the hair of his head, and pitched him
+head-foremost out of heaven into the pit of darkness, and his whole
+sharkish band of retainers after him. Amongst these, however, a good
+many had given ear to his fine tales, and had followed him
+thoughtlessly, although they were not properly wicked at heart. They
+repented their hasty work, even whilst they were falling deeper and
+deeper into gloom. They put up a prayer of repentance to their Lord, and
+implored his forgiveness; and because God saw that they were not rotten
+at the core, he hearkened to their petition, and rescued them out of the
+claws of Satan. But since they were not worthy to be received into
+heaven again, the Lord banished them back to the earth, with leave given
+them to dwell either within it, or in upper air, upon the hills and
+rocks. You must know that, during their fall, a surprising change had
+gone on in the transgressors. They had kept their forms of
+light--dwindled in size, however, immensely. And since they could not
+now become men,{Q} and had fooled away their celestial bliss, the Lord
+granted them a clear field, with power, until the last day, to make
+themselves worthy by good deeds of being re-admitted into heaven. And
+thus they have their abodes all about the open hills and the meadow
+flats; and only once in every fifty or a hundred years, upon
+Whitsun-eve, are they permitted, in their own way, to keep the Sabbath.
+And then they can only do it by loading a truly good human being with
+the blessings of fortune. For thus only can they hope to expiate their
+great offence in the sight of Heaven.'
+
+"'And did godmother Helen hear this from the good people themselves?'
+asked Maud, as her mother ceased. 'Was she, then, lucky?'
+
+"'No,' said the mother, 'Nelly was not lucky, because she did not
+observe the commandment of the fairies.'
+
+"'Well, if one of the creatures came to me, and should lay a command
+upon me, I would keep a quiet tongue within my head, and do readily what
+he wished.'
+
+"'Foolish chatter!' said the mother chidingly. 'Thou dost offend the
+quiet people with thy empty babbling for they can hear every thing that
+human lips utter.'
+
+"Maud went singing to her work, and long mused upon her timid mother's
+narrative. What she had heard filled her with so eager a curiosity that
+she could scarcely wait for Whitsun-eve, although she took care to let
+no one observe it. From time to time she stole a glance at her
+bell-flower, tried to make it ring with shaking, but failed to bring, by
+any means, one sound from the delicate little bell.
+
+"With a longing dread, Maud saw the promised Whitsun-eve draw near. It
+was not easy to leave the parental roof at nightfall. The enamoured
+maiden, however, found a becoming excuse which placed a few hours at her
+disposal. She went her way with the fairy cap in her bosom, ascended the
+green summit of the Sun's hill, now glimmering in the moonlight, and
+drew from its hiding-place the pledge that had been entrusted to her. As
+if by a miracle, the little flower, touched by the moon's silvery glow,
+expanded in an instant. Almost spontaneously it began to oscillate in
+her hand, and shrill and clear the little bell rang, so that it
+resounded into the adjacent wood, whence a soft echo melodiously
+responded.
+
+"The voice of Albert, who with vigorous strides was ascending the hill
+to look close after the adventure of his beloved, reached her ear. But
+the senses of Matilda were engrossed by the fairies, and to his repeated
+calls she gave no answer. And she had good reason. For scarcely had the
+little bell rung, when a flash, like a sparkling snake, darted here and
+there upon the grass, and out of the quivering light there arose a small
+and exceedingly beautiful creature, whom Maud immediately recognised for
+the lord of the bell-flower. The little fellow was in Spanish costume.
+He wore a doublet of sky-blue butterflies' wings, over which dropped a
+magnificent lace collar woven of the gossamer. The delicate feet were
+covered with transparent shoes, made of dew-drops.
+
+"Maud stood mute with astonishment, as well at the tiny smallness of the
+fairy, as at his truly classical beauty. The little creature was, in his
+way, a perfect Adonis.
+
+"'Now, my trembler, art thou resolute to follow me?' whispered the fairy
+in a note that came to her like a note of the harmonicon. 'Restore me
+the pledge, for we have no time to lose.'
+
+"Maud gave back the bell-flower; the elf seized it in his little
+diaphanous alabaster floral hands, waved it three times round his
+dazzling head, so that the little bell sent a peal round the hills, and
+then threw it upon the ground. It dilated immediately, took the shape of
+a galley with masts and yards, although no larger than the moon's disk
+as we see it from the earth. In the same instant the elf sat in the
+little vessel, which trembled at every step, drew a rush from his
+girdle, and steered with it in the air.
+
+"'Now, come, step in!' he called to Maud.
+
+"'In that!' exclaimed the maiden astounded. 'Heaven love you, there's
+hardly room for my two feet! Besides, it will tear under me like a
+poppy-leaf, for I verily believe it is made of mere air.'
+
+"'Spare your remarks, Miss Pert!' returned the fairy, 'and step in. I
+pledge my honour, and will give up my hope of salvation, if this bark of
+our master's do not carry thee safely over half the earth ball in less
+than no time.'
+
+"It might be that Maud now stood under the mysterious power of a spell,
+or that she was urged by an invincible curiosity. Enough: she placed her
+feet in the quaking gondola, which swelled aloft like an air-balloon
+until it reached the maiden's shoulders. Now the ground sank away, and
+Matilda's senses failed her in the dizzy speed with which she was
+hurried down into the bowels of the earth. At this precise moment Albert
+reached the top of the hill. He had only the pleasure of looking after
+them, and hardly that; for it appeared to him as if every thing about
+him was immersed in a sea of azure so resplendently clear, that he was
+for several minutes robbed of his sight.
+
+"From the magical slumber into which the child had fallen during her
+descent into the kingdom of the fairies, she was awakened by a witching
+harmony of sounds. She opened her eyes, and observed, with not a little
+wonder, that she was lying upon a bed or mat, or whatsoever else it
+might be called, of costly emerald. Over her head nodded marvellous
+flowers of the most glowing colours; butterflies, of unseen splendour,
+flitted on cooling pinions around her couch, and fanned her with an air
+so sweet, so invigorating, that the maiden had never breathed before
+with such delight. But with all the magnificence, all the spirit and
+splendour, every thing was quite other than upon the sunny earth above.
+The flowers and herbs glittered indeed; but they seemed to be juiceless,
+and looked as if formed of crystal. Even the butterflies had a peculiar
+motion, like that of an involuntary sleepwalker. Only the harmonious
+strains, which now rang louder and louder, more and more ravishing, were
+so ecstatic, so inviting to joyous devotion, that Maud would fain have
+shouted aloud for joy; but she felt that she could not speak, could not
+cry out, and sight, touch, and hearing, were more alive than ever.
+
+"Thus she lay for some time motionless, pleasingly intent upon the
+nodding flowers, the swarming butterflies. At length the winged
+multitude dispersed, and two slender fairy-forms approached her bed and
+beckoned her to arise and follow them.
+
+"Maud arose; and the fairies, who hardly reached up to her knee, taking
+her between them, conducted her through a gate of mother-of-pearl into
+an illimitable space, through which throng of countless millions of
+elves confusedly moved. The converse of these semi-spirits sounded in
+the distance harmonious, like perfect music. Notwithstanding the immense
+multitude, there was nothing of tumult, nothing of uproar. They stood
+all in the finest concord, and bent, waving their flower-caps
+gracefully, towards the abashed, astonished maiden. It bewildered Maud
+to see that not only overhead arched a star-bespangled sky, but likewise
+underneath her feet the same solemn starry splendour was revealed, as if
+the slight fairy people walked, between two heavens, upon the milkwhite
+vapour which rolled on under them like clouds. Every fairy had on glass
+or crystal shoes, if that which they wore on their feet might be so
+called. It is, however, possible that the exquisitely made limbs of
+these perplexing beings only deluded the eyes of the poor girl with such
+an appearance.
+
+"Nearly in the middle of the immeasurable arena rose a temple of gold,
+silver, and precious stones, which, with its lofty pillars reaching to
+the sky, was emblazoned in so wondrous a light, that, notwithstanding
+the extreme refulgence, it did not dazzle. Within this, upon a
+ceaselessly revolving sun-orb, stood the most beautiful and tallest of
+the fairies. In her golden hair gleamed stars. Joy and ecstasy radiated
+like a glory from her lovely pale face, and vapoury raiment concealed,
+but as with a breath, her incomparable figure. Towards her pressed the
+innumerable host; for the sublime creature might be the priestess of the
+united elfin race. Maud was carried forwards with them, that she might
+be a witness of the singular worship that was here solemnized. Not a
+word was spoken, no hymn was sung; there was but a looking-up of
+supplication, of trustfulness, in which all the fairies, turning round
+upon their sparkling little feet, took part. After a few minutes a
+joyful expression in the countenance of the worshippers proclaimed the
+happy issue of the Sabbath. The stars of the upper sky shot down like
+silver spangles, and hung suspended in the luminous hair of the fairies,
+giving them the appearance of carrying dancing lights on their heads. A
+loud, melodious, strain of rejoicing thrilled through the vast room. The
+radiant structure heaved and sank. Overhead a verdurous canopy of leaves
+vaulted itself; the elves, entwining arms and legs, flew in a lightning
+whirl around the high priestess and the dazzled Maud, who, unawares, had
+come close upon the lovely fairy.
+
+"In a little while the slender body-chain of elves gave way; they
+grouped themselves into numberless rows; every one took off the star
+from his head, and, tripping up, deposited it at the feet of the
+priestess, where they at length all united in composing themselves into
+a great gold-bright sphere, exactly resembling that upon which the high,
+officiating fairy had been borne round in the temple.
+
+"The elfin now extended her hand to Maud and said--
+
+"'We thank thee for the readiness with which thou hast followed my
+messenger into this our hidden kingdom. Thou hast, by thy presence,
+prospered our Sabbath festival. Receive, for thy reward, the gratitude
+of all the fairies; and bear with thee this gift in remembrance of this
+day.'
+
+"So speaking, she plucked the coronal of stars from her hair, stretched
+it out with both her hands, and hung it upon the head and neck of
+Matilda.
+
+"'Whenever thou art in trouble,' she continued, 'think of the good
+people; pull one of these stars, throw it in the air by the light of the
+moon, and whatsoever thou wishest, provided it be lawful, shall be
+granted thee.'
+
+"Maud would have stammered forth her thanks, but she felt herself still
+powerless to speak. A kiss of the fairy upon her forehead was the signal
+for breaking up. The good people once more waved their caps. The gondola
+floated by, Maud mounted it, and, as quickly as she had descended, was
+lifted up upon the earth again.
+
+"'There!' said the little pilot fairy, tying the supple rudder about the
+wrist of Maud, 'that is my wedding gift to you and Albert. Give him the
+half of it if he pouts; and--have a care--no blabbing!'
+
+"With that the gondola dissolved like a cloud in the air. The fairy
+vanished; and Maud lay alone upon the fragrant dewy grass of the Sun's
+hill.
+
+"Still all-amazed at what had happened, and not yet come rightly to
+herself, she slowly rose, intending to go home. It was then she
+perceived Albert, who, with folded arms, was staring wildly and savagely
+into the wood below. Matilda coughed.
+
+"'Why where, in the name of all that is holy, have you been dancing to?'
+was the not very tender greeting of her lover. 'I saw you standing there
+as I came up the hill; and then lightning and streams of fire were all
+about me, and here I have been full five minutes, running about in all
+directions, without being able to find a trace of you.'
+
+"'Only five minutes!' exclaimed Maud; 'that is extraordinary!'
+
+"'Yes; and, no offence to you, not altogether right,' answered Albert.
+'Did I not beg of you to wait for me?'
+
+"'That you might wring the fairy's neck for him?' said the maiden,
+laughing. 'Set yourself at ease, Albert; it is much better as it is.'
+
+"'What is?' screamed the youngster.
+
+"'Never mind! It is all done now; and indeed, dear boy, we shall neither
+of us repent it. Come, let us go home.'
+
+"'O ho!--_dear boy!_--Mighty wise and patronizing truly!'
+
+"'Well, then, good Albert,' said Matilda coaxingly; 'only come away, and
+don't be angry. In four weeks we shall be married.'
+
+"'In fo--ur wee--eeks!' stuttered Albert.
+
+"'Yes, and in three, if you like it better,' prated the overjoyed Maud.
+'The good people,' she added, almost inaudibly, 'have enabled us to
+marry. Therefore behave pretty, be quiet, and don't quarrel--or
+else--'_every thing is at an end between us--clean at an end!_' Don't
+you know that I am a Sunday's child, and am under the especial
+protection of these kind, little, powerful creatures?'
+
+"The jealous youth followed the maiden with reluctance. Whilst he
+walked, murmuring in an under-tone at her side, he noticed by the light
+of the full moon something flickering in Matilda's hair. He examined it
+more closely, and then stood still.
+
+"'What new fashion do you call that?' he asked in a voice of chagrin.
+'The idea of hanging dried mushrooms in one's hair! If you will only
+walk with that finery by daylight down to the brook, the children will
+run after you, and point at you with their finger.'
+
+"'Mushrooms!' replied Maud. 'Why, where are your eyes again?'
+
+"'Well, I suppose you don't mean to call them silver crowns? Thank
+Heaven, my eyes are good enough yet to see the difference between dried
+funguses and coined money!'
+
+"'They are glittering stars, sir,' said Maud, short and decided.
+
+"'O indeed!' returned Albert. 'Well, then, the next time I would
+recommend you to select some that shine rather brighter.'
+
+"The lovers had, in the meanwhile, reached the hut of the stone-mason.
+Albert entered with Matilda. The father lay asleep by the stove. The
+mother turned her spinning-wheel.
+
+"'Good-evening, mother!" said Albert. 'Have the goodness to tell that
+conceited girl there, that her headgear is the most miserable that ever
+was seen.'
+
+"'What!' said the old lady wondering, and with a shake of the head.
+'Maud has no other gear that I see, but her own beautiful hair, which
+may God long preserve to her!'
+
+"Instead of giving any answer, Albert would have set the daughter before
+her mother's eyes. But Maud had already, in the doorway, pulled off the
+fairy's gift, and turned pale as she saw that she had actually worn
+dried mushrooms on a string, twisted of withered rushes. Albert observed
+her perplexity, and laughed. He bantered her, and snatched two or three
+mushrooms from the chain, to hoard up for future sport. This was the
+token of their reconciliation. Maud, although very calmly, assured her
+lover, over and over again, that within a month their nuptials should
+take place. That the tired old man might not be disturbed, Albert went
+home early; and Maud hastened to put carefully away, for a while, the
+very meagre-looking fairy gifts.
+
+"On the following morning, Albert was off betimes to his work. Putting
+on his jacket, he heard something chinking within. His surprise was
+naturally great, knowing that he had no money there. He dived at once
+into his pocket, and drew out two large old gold pieces. Then he
+suddenly remembered, that the evening before he had pocketed the
+mushrooms which he had snatched away from Maud, and the most extravagant
+joy possessed him. He forgot his work and every thing else; started off,
+and ran, as fast as his legs could carry him, to the house of the
+stone-mason.
+
+"Maud stood at the brook, before the door, washing her small white hands
+in the clear stream.
+
+"'Good-morrow, dear Maud, and a thousand blessings on thy sweet head!'
+cried Albert to her, as he came running. 'Look, look, how thy mushrooms
+have changed! If the others turn out as well, I am afraid that, after
+all, I must forgive that little shrimp that was so killingly polite to
+you!'
+
+"'Delightful! delightful!' exclaimed Matilda, gazing at the gold pieces.
+'Mine have not changed yet--but that doesn't matter; for in the night, a
+little rush band, with which the fairy steered me into his kingdom of
+wonders, has bloomed into precious pearls and brilliants, and two
+sparkling wreaths are now lying upstairs in my drawer.'
+
+"Joyful surprise choked Albert's words in his throat; but Maud drew him
+on, and displayed to him her glories from the fairy world.
+
+"'Let us leave nothing undone that may help our luck. Do you take the
+little wreath for the present. Such is the wish of the mysterious being,
+who required my attendance at the Fairies' Sabbath.'
+
+"Albert received the gift with a softened heart. He begged Maud's
+forgiveness of his fault; she granted it willingly, and before four
+weeks had passed by, the lovers were man and wife.
+
+"Of her adventure on Whitsun-eve, Maud never spoke. So much the more had
+her godmother Helen to say about it; for it was not difficult to guess
+that the fairies had had their prospering hand in the marriage of her
+godchild. The stone-mason now gave up his laborious calling. Albert
+became the master of a moderate property, which he diligently cultivated
+with his beloved Maud; and, as fair child after child was born to them,
+the happy mother laid upon the breast of each a shriveled leaf from the
+elfin chain, for so had her little guide counseled her, when she once,
+in a doubtful hour, had summoned him to her aid. Albert and Matilda
+reached a good old age; their children throve, and carefully preserved,
+like their parents, the gifts received from the subterranean folk, who
+continued their favour to them and to all their posterity."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} Midsummer Night's Dream.
+
+{B} DOLMEN; literally, _stone table_. Remarkable structures, learnedly
+ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and
+numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat
+stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a
+rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition
+which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in
+the names given to many of them by the peasantry:--_Grotte aux f�es_,
+_Roche aux f�es_, &c.
+
+{C} WEIRDS. The French has--LOTS. "_Elles jettent des SORTS._" For
+justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of KEMPION;
+or KEMP OWAYNE, at the beginning:--
+
+    "Come here, come here, ye _freely fede_, (i. e. _nobly born_,)
+    And lay your head low on my knee,
+    A heavier WEIRD I shall ye read
+    Than ever was read to gay ladye.
+
+    "I WEIRD ye to a fiery beast:
+    And released shall ye never be,
+    Till Kempion the kinges son
+    Come to the crag and thrice kiss thee!"
+
+{D} From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th.
+de la Villemarqu�, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his
+Bas Breton countrymen.
+
+{E} Essay on _The Fairies of Popular Superstition_, in "The Minstrelsy
+of the Scottish Border."
+
+{F} Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1. 1835, and
+xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.
+
+{G} "_Ces g�nies femelles._"
+
+{H} From Walckenaer's Dissertation on the Origin of the Fairy Belief;
+last printed, in an abridged form, by Jacob, in his edition of the
+_Contes des F�es, par Perrault_, (Paris, 1842.)
+
+{I}                   "Paradise and groves
+    Elysian, fortunate fields--like those of old
+    Sought in the Atlantic main, why should they be
+    A history only of departed things,
+    Or a mere fiction of what never was?
+    For the discerning _Intellect of man,
+    When wedded to this goodly Universe
+    In love and holy passion_, shall find these
+    A simple produce of the common day.
+    I long before the blissful hour arrives
+    Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
+    Of this great consummation."
+
+WORDSWORTH. _Preface to the Excursion._
+
+{J} _SAGEN UND MAHRCHEN aus der Oberlausitz_. Nacherzahlt von _Ernst
+Willkomm_, Hanover, 1843.
+
+{K} IRISCHE ELFENMARCHEN: Uebersetzt von den Br�dern Grimm. Leipzig,
+1826. _Introduction._
+
+{L} DEUTSCHE SAGEN: Herausgegeben von den Br�dern Grimm. Berlin, 1816
+and 1818.
+
+{M} Grimm's German Mythology, p. 544.
+
+{N}                               "----his look
+    Drew audience and attention, STILL AS night
+    Or SUMMER'S NOONTIDE AIR."--_Paradise Lost. Book II._
+
+{O} The fairies themselves hardly can have imparted to godmother Helen
+the two irreconcilable derivations of their order: that they were Jews,
+and that they were fallen angels. But the poet DRAMATICALLY joins, upon
+the mother's lip, the two current traditions. With her, fallen angel and
+Jew are synonymous, as being both opposed to the faith of the cross.
+
+{P} Who is this unknown OLIM? Our old friend perchance, the Latin
+adverb, "_Olim_," _of yore_--gradually slipped from the mouths of
+scholars into the people's, and risen in dignity as it descended.
+
+{Q} _Sic._
+
+
+
+
+COLUMBUS.
+
+(_A Print after a Picture by Parmeggiano._)
+
+BY B. SIMMONS.
+
+
+    I.
+
+    RISE, VICTOR, from the festive board
+        Flush'd with triumphal wine,
+    And lifting high thy beaming sword,
+    Fired by the flattering Harper's chord,
+        Who hymns thee half divine.
+    Vow at the glutted shrine of Fate
+    That dark-red brand to consecrate!
+    Long, dread, and doubtful was the fray
+    That gives the stars thy name to-day.
+    But all is over; round thee now
+    Fame shouts, spoil pours, and captives bow,
+    No stormier joy can Earth impart,
+    Than thrills in lightning through thy heart.
+
+    II.
+
+    Gay LOVER, with the soft guitar,
+    Hie to the olive-woods afar,
+    And to thy friend, the listening brook,
+    Alone reveal that raptured look;
+    The maid so long in secret loved--
+    A parent's angry will removed--
+    This morning saw betroth�d thine,
+        That Sire the pledge, consenting, blest,
+    Life bright as motes in golden wine,
+        Is dancing in thy breast.
+
+    III.
+
+    STATESMAN astute, the final hour
+    Arrives of long-contested Power;
+    Each crafty wile thine ends to aid,
+    Party and principle betray'd;
+    The subtle speech, the plan profound,
+    Pursued for years, success has crown'd;
+    To-night the Vote upon whose tongue,
+    The nicely-poised Division hung,
+    Was thine--beneath that placid brow
+    What feelings throb exulting now!
+    Thy rival falls;--on grandeur's base
+    Go shake the nations in his place!
+
+    IV.
+
+    FAME, LOVE, AMBITION! what are Ye,
+        With all your wasting passions' war,
+    To the great Strife that, like a sea,
+    O'erswept His soul tumultuously,
+        Whose face gleams on me like a star--
+    A star that gleams through murky clouds--
+    As here begirt by struggling crowds
+    A spell-bound Loiterer I stand,
+    Before a print-shop in the Strand?
+    What are your eager hopes and fears
+    Whose minutes wither men like years--
+    Your schemes defeated or fulfill'd,
+    To the emotions dread that thrill'd
+    _His_ frame on that October night,
+        When, watching by the lonely mast,
+    _He saw on shore the moving light_,
+    And felt, though darkness veil'd the sight,
+        The long-sought World was his at last?{A}
+
+    V.
+
+    How Fancy's boldest glances fail,
+        Contemplating each hurrying mood
+    Of thought that to that aspect pale
+        Sent up the heart's o'erboiling flood
+    Through that vast vigil, while his eyes
+    Watch'd till the slow reluctant skies
+    Should kindle, and the vision dread,
+    Of all his livelong years be read!
+    In youth, his faith-led spirit doom'd
+        Still to be baffled and betray'd,
+    His manhood's vigorous noon consumed
+        Ere Power bestow'd its niggard aid;
+    That morn of summer, dawning grey,{B}
+    When, from Huelva's humble bay,
+    He full of hope, before the gale
+    Turn'd on the hopeless World his sail,
+    And steer'd for seas untrack'd, unknown,
+    And westward still sail'd on--sail'd on--
+    Sail'd on till Ocean seem'd to be
+    All shoreless as Eternity,
+    Till, from its long-loved Star estranged,
+    At last the constant Needle changed,{C}
+    And fierce amid his murmuring crew
+    Prone terror into treason grew;
+    While on his tortured spirit rose,
+    More dire than portents, toils, or foes,
+    The awaiting World's loud jeers and scorn
+    Yell'd o'er his profitless Return;
+    No--none through that dark watch may trace
+        The feelings wild beneath whose swell,
+    As heaves the bark the billows' race,
+        His Being rose and fell!
+    Yet over doubt, and pride, and pain,
+    O'er all that flash'd through breast and brain,
+    As with those grand, immortal eyes
+        He stood--his heart on fire to know
+    When morning next illumed the skies,
+        What wonders in its light should glow--
+    O'er all one thought must, in that hour,
+    Have sway'd supreme--Power, conscious Power--
+    The lofty sense that Truths conceived,
+        And born of his own starry mind,
+    And foster'd into might, achieved
+        A new Creation for mankind!
+    And when from off that ocean calm
+        The Tropic's dusky curtain clear'd,
+    All those green shores and banks of balm
+        And rosy-tinted hills appear'd
+    Silent and bright as Eden, ere
+    Earth's breezes shook one blossom there--
+    Against that hour's proud tumult weigh'd,
+    LOVE, FAME, AMBITION, how ye fade!
+
+    VI.
+
+    Thou LUTHER of the darken'd Deep!
+    Nor less intrepid, too, than He
+    Whose courage broke EARTH'S bigot sleep
+    Whilst thine unbarr'd the SEA--
+    Like his, 'twas thy predestined fate
+    Against your grin benighted age,
+    With all its fiends of Fear and Hate,
+    War, single-handed war, to wage,
+    And live a conqueror, too, like him,
+    Till Time's expiring lights grow dim!
+    O, Hero of my boyish heart!
+    Ere from thy pictured looks I part,
+    My mind's maturer reverence now
+    In thoughts of thankfulness would bow
+    To the OMNISCIENT WILL that sent
+    Thee forth, its chosen instrument,
+    To teach us hope, when sin and care,
+        And the vile soilings that degrade
+    Our dust, would bid us most despair--
+        Hope, from each varied deed display'd
+    Along thy bold and wondrous story,
+        That shows how far one steadfast mind,
+    Serene in suffering as in glory,
+        May go to deify our kind.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} October 11, 1492.--"As the evening darkened, Columbus took his
+station on the top of the castle or cabin, on the high poop of his
+vessel. However he might carry a cheerful and confident countenance
+during the day, it was to him a time of the most painful anxiety; and
+now, when he was wrapped from observation by the shades of night, he
+maintained an intense and unremitting watch, ranging his eye along the
+dusky horizon in search of the most vague indications of land. Suddenly,
+about ten o'clock, _he thought he beheld a light glimmering at a
+distance_. Fearing that his eager hopes might deceive him, he called to
+Pedro Gutierrez, gentleman of the king's bedchamber, and enquired
+whether he saw a light in that direction; the latter replied in the
+affirmative. Columbus, yet doubtful whether it might not be some
+delusion of the fancy, called Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and made the
+same enquiry. By the time the latter had ascended the roundhouse, the
+light had disappeared. They saw it once or twice afterwards in sudden
+and passing gleams, as if it were a torch in the bark of a fisherman
+rising and sinking with the waves, or in the hand of some person on
+shore, borne up and down as he walked from house to house. So transient
+and uncertain were these gleams, that few attached any importance to
+them; Columbus, however, considered them as certain signs of land, and,
+moreover, that the land was inhabited."--IRVING'S _Columbus_, vol. i.
+
+{B} "It was on Friday, the 3d of August 1492, early in the morning, that
+Columbus set sail on his first voyage of discovery. He departed from the
+bar of Saltes, a small island in front of the town of Huelva, steering
+in a south-westerly direction," &c.--IRVING. He was about fifty-seven
+years old the year of the Discovery.
+
+{C} "On the 13th September, in the evening, being about two hundred
+leagues from the island of Ferro, he, for the first time, noticed the
+variation of the needle, a phenomenon which had never before been
+remarked. Struck with the circumstance, he observed it attentively for
+three days, and found that the variation increased as he advanced. It
+soon attracted the attention of the pilots, and filled them with
+consternation. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing as
+they advanced, and that they were entering another world subject to
+unknown influences."--_Ibid._
+
+
+
+
+TO SWALLOWS ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE.
+
+BY THE SAME.
+
+     "The day before V----'s departure for the last time from the
+     country--it was the 4th of August, one of the hottest days of the
+     season--as evening fell, he strolled with an old school-fellow
+     through the cool green avenues and leafy arcades of the
+     neighbouring park, where his friend amused him by pointing out to
+     his attention vast multitudes of Swallows that came swarming from
+     all directions to settle on the roofs and gables of the
+     manor-house. This they do for several days preparatory to their
+     departing, in one collected body, to more genial climates."--_MS.
+     Memoir._
+
+
+    I.
+
+        Joyous Birds! preparing
+          In the clear evening light
+        To leave our dwindled summer day
+          For latitudes more bright!
+            How gay must be your greeting,
+            By southern fountains meeting,
+    To miss no faithful wing of all that started in your flight!
+
+    II.
+
+        Every clime and season
+          Fresh gladness brings to you,
+        Howe'er remote your social throngs
+          Their varied path pursue;
+            No winds nor waves dissever--
+            No dusky veil'd FOR EVER,
+    Frowneth across your fearless way in the empyrean blue.{A}
+
+    III.
+
+        Mates and merry brothers
+          Were ye in Arctic hours,
+        Mottling the evening beam that sloped
+          Adown old Gothic towers!
+            As blythe that sunlight dancing
+            Will see your pinions' glancing
+    Scattering afar through Tropic groves the spicy bloom in showers!
+
+    IV.
+
+        Haunters of palaced wastes!{B}
+          From king-forlorn Versailles
+        To where, round gateless Thebes, the winds
+          Like monarch voices wail,
+            Your tribe capricious ranges,
+            Reckless of glory's changes;
+    Love makes for ye a merry home amid the ruins pale.
+
+    V.
+
+        Another day, and ye
+          From knosp and turret's brow
+        Shall, with your fleet of crowding wings,
+          Air's viewless billows plough,
+            With no keen-fang'd regretting
+            Our darken'd hill-sides quitting,
+    --Away in fond companionship as cheerily as now!
+
+    VI.
+
+        Woe for the Soul-endued--
+          The clay-enthrall�d Mind--
+        Leaving, unlike you, favour'd birds!
+          Its all--its all behind.
+            Woe for the exile mourning,
+            To banishment returning--
+    A mateless bird wide torn apart from country and from kind!
+
+    VII.
+
+        This moment blest as ye,
+          Beneath his own home-trees,
+        With friends and fellows girt around,
+          Up springs the western breeze,
+            Bringing the parting weather--
+            Shall all depart together?
+    Ah, no!--he goes a wretch alone upon the lonely seas.
+
+    VIII.
+
+        To him the mouldering tower--
+          The pillar'd waste, to him
+        A broken-hearted music make
+          Until his eyelids swim.
+            None heeds when he complaineth,
+            Nor where that brow he leaneth
+    A mother's lips shall bless no more sinking to slumber dim.
+
+    IX.
+
+        Winter shall wake to spring,
+          And 'mid the fragrant grass
+        The daffodil shall watch the rill
+          Like Beauty by her glass
+            But woe for him who pineth
+            Where the clear water shineth,
+    With no voice near to say--How sweet those April evenings pass!
+
+    X.
+
+        Then while through Nature's heart
+          Love freshly burns again,
+        Hither shall ye, plumed travellers,
+          Come trooping o'er the main;
+            The selfsame nook disclosing
+            Its nest for your reposing
+    That saw you revel years ago as you shall revel then.{C}
+
+    XI.
+
+        --Your human brother's lot!
+          A few short years are gone--
+        Back, back like you to early scenes--
+          Lo! at the threshold-stone,
+            Where ever in the gloaming
+            Home's angels watch'd his coming,
+    A stranger stands, and stares at him who sighing passes on.
+
+    XII.
+
+        Joy to the Travail-worn!
+          Omnific purpose lies
+        Even in his bale as in your bliss,
+          Careerers of the skies!
+            When sun and earth, that cherish'd
+            Your tribes, with you have perish'd,
+    A home is his where partings more shall never dim the eyes.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} "They all quit together; and fly for a time east or west, possibly
+in wait for stragglers not yet arrived from the interior--they then take
+directly to the south, and are soon lost sight of altogether for the
+allotted period of their absence. Their rapidity of flight is well
+known, and the 'murder-aiming eye' of the most experienced sportsman
+will seldom avail against the swallow; hence they themselves seldom fall
+a prey to the raptorial birds."--CUVIER, _edited by Griffiths_. Swallows
+are long-lived; they have been known to live a number of years in cages.
+
+{B} In the fanciful language of Chateaubriand, "This daughter of a king
+(the swallow) still seems attached to grandeur; she passes the summer
+amid the ruins of Versailles, and the winter among those of Thebes."
+
+{C} "However difficult to be credited, it seems to be ascertained beyond
+doubt, that the same pair which quitted their nest and the limited
+circle of their residence here, return to the very same nest again, and
+this for several successive years; in all probability for their whole
+lives"--_Griffiths'_ CUVIER.
+
+
+
+
+THE DILIGENCE.
+
+A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL.
+
+
+A diligence is as familiar to our countrymen as a stage-coach; and, as
+railroads flourish more amongst us than with our less commercial and
+enterprising neighbours, it is probable that, to many English
+travellers, it is even more familiar. There is no need, therefore, to
+describe the portentous vehicle. Suffice it to say, that, of the three
+compartments into which it is divided, I found myself lodged--not in the
+_coup�e_ which looks out in front, and which has the appearance of a
+narrow post-chaise that has been flattened and compressed in the effort
+to incorporate it with the rest of the machine--nor in the _rotunde_
+behind, where one rides omnibus-fashion--but in the central compartment,
+the _interieur_, which answers to the veritable old English stage-coach,
+and carries six. I was one of the central occupants of this central
+division; for I had not been so fortunate as to secure a corner seat.
+Now, for the convenience of the luckless person who occupies this
+position, there depends from the roof of the coach, and hangs just
+before his face, a broad leathern strap, with a loop through which he
+can, if so disposed, place his arms; and, when his arms are thus slung
+up, he can further rest his head upon them or upon the strap, and so
+seek repose. Whether he finds the repose he seeks, is another matter.
+One half of the traveller swings like a parrot on his perch, the other
+half jolts on stationary--jolts over the eternal stones which pave the
+roads in France. Perhaps there are who can go to roost in this fashion.
+And if it is recorded of any one that he ever slept in this state of
+demi-suspension--all swing above, all shake below--I should like very
+much to know, in the next place, what sort of dreams he had. Did he
+fancy himself a griffin, or huge dragon, beating the air with his wings,
+and at the same time trotting furiously upon the ground? Or, in order to
+picture out his sensations, was he compelled to divide himself into two
+several creatures, and be at once the captured and half-strangled goose,
+with all its feathers outstretched in the air, and the wicked fox who is
+running away with it, at full speed, upon its back? As to myself, in no
+vain expectation of slumber, but merely for the sake of change of
+position, I frequently slung my arms in this loop, and leaning my head
+against the broad leathern strap, I listened to the gossip of my
+fellow-travellers, if there was any conversation stirring; or, if all
+was still, gave myself up to meditations upon my own schemes and
+projects.
+
+And here let me observe, that I have always found that a journey in a
+stage-coach is remarkably favourable to the production of good
+resolution and sage designs for the future; which I account for partly
+on the ground that they cannot, under such circumstances, demand to be
+carried into immediate execution, and therefore may be indulged in the
+more freely; and partly on this other ground, that one who has become a
+traveller has loosened himself from his old customary moorings, and so
+gives himself, as it were, a new starting-point in life, from which he
+may, if the spirit of delusion is still happily strong within him, draw
+a mathematically straight line in the given direction A B, to be the
+faithful index of his future career.
+
+What a generous sample of humanity it is that a well filled diligence
+carries out of the gates of Paris! The mountain of luggage upon the
+roof, consisting of boxes of all shapes and sizes, does not contain in
+its numerous _strata_ of stuffs, and implements, and garments, rags and
+fine linen, a greater variety of dead material, than does the threefold
+interior, with its complement of human beings, of living character and
+sentiment. As to the observation not unfrequently made, that Frenchmen
+have less variety of character than ourselves, it is one which seems to
+me to have little or no foundation. Something there doubtless is of
+national character, which pervades all classes and all classifications
+of men; and this colouring, seen diffused over the mass, makes us
+apprehend, at first view, that there is in the several parts a radical
+similarity which, in fact, does not exist. We have only to become a
+little more intimate with the men themselves, and this national
+colouring fades away; while the strong peculiarities resulting from
+social position, or individual temperament, stand out in sharp relief.
+And, in general, I will venture to say of national character--whatever
+people may be spoken of--that one may compare it to the colour which the
+sea bears at different times, or which different seas are said to be
+distinguished by: view the great surface at a distance, it is blue, or
+green, or grey; but take up a handful of the common element, and it is
+an undistinguishable portion of brackish water. It is French, or
+Flemish, or Spanish nature in the mass, and at a distance; looked at
+closer, and in the individual, there is little else than plain human
+nature to be seen.
+
+But I did not open my journal to philosophize upon national character;
+but to record, while it is still fresh in my memory, some part of the
+conversation to which I was, as I travelled along, of necessity, and
+whether willingly or unwillingly, a listener. To the left of me the
+corner seats were occupied by two Englishmen--would it be possible to
+enter into a diligence without meeting at least two of our dear
+compatriots? They were both men in the prime of life, in the full flush
+of health, and apparently of wealth, who, from allusions which they
+dropt, could evidently boast of being of good family, and what follows
+of course--of having received an university education; and whom some one
+of our northern counties probably reckoned amongst its most famous
+fox-hunters. All which hindered not, but that they proved themselves to
+belong to that class of English travellers who scamper about the
+Continent like so many big, boisterous, presumptuous school-boys, much
+to the annoyance of every one who meets them, and to the especial
+vexation of their fellow-countrymen, who are not, in general, whatever
+may be said to the contrary, an offensive or conceited race, and are by
+no means pleased that the name of Englishmen should be made a by-word
+and a term of contempt. Opposite to me sat a Frenchman, of rather formal
+and grave demeanour, and dressed somewhat precisely. He was placed in a
+similar position in the diligence to myself; he had, however, curled up
+his leathern strap, and fastened it to the roof. Apparently he did not
+think the posture to which it invited one of sufficient dignity; for
+during the whole journey, and even when asleep, I observed that he
+maintained a certain becomingness of posture. Beside me, to the right,
+sat a little lively Frenchwoman, not very young, and opposite to her,
+and consequently in front also of myself, was another lady, a person of
+extreme interest, who at once riveted the eye, and set the imagination
+at work. She was so young, so pale, so beautiful, so sad, and withal so
+exceeding gentle in her demeanour, that an artist who wished to portray
+Our Lady in her virgin purity and celestial beauty, would have been
+ravished with the model. She had taken off her bonnet for the
+convenience of travelling, and her dark brown hair hung curled round her
+neck in the same simple fashion it must have done when she was a child.
+She was dressed in mourning, and this enhanced the pallor of her
+countenance; ill-health and sorrow were also evidently portrayed upon
+her features; but there was so much of lustre in the complexion, and so
+much of light and intelligence in the eye, that the sense of beauty
+predominated over all. You could not have wished her more cheerful than
+she was. Her face was a melody which you cannot quarrel with for being
+sad--which you could not desire to be otherwise than sad--whose very
+charm it is that it has made the tone of sorrow ineffably sweet.
+
+Much I mused and conjectured what her history might be, and frequently I
+felt tempted to address myself in conversation to her; but still there
+was a tranquillity and repose in those long eyelashes which I feared to
+disturb. It was probable that she preferred her own reflections,
+melancholy as they might be, to any intercourse with others, and out of
+respect to this wish I remained silent. Not so, however, my
+fellow-traveller of her own sex, who, far from practising this
+forbearance, felt that she acted the kind and social part by engaging
+her in conversation. And so perhaps she did. For certainly, after some
+time, the beautiful and pensive girl became communicative, and I
+overheard the brief history of her sufferings, which I had felt so
+curious to know. It was indeed brief--it is not a three-volumed novel
+that one overhears in a stage-coach--but it had the charm of truth to
+recommend it. I had been lately reading Eugene Sue's romance, _The
+Mysteries of Paris_, and it gave an additional interest to remark, that
+the simple tale I was listening to from the lips of the living sufferer
+bore a resemblance to one of its most striking episodes.
+
+The shades of evening were closing round us, and the rest of the
+passengers seemed to be preparing themselves for slumber, as, leaning
+forward on my leathern supporter, I listened to the low sweet voice of
+the young stranger.
+
+"You are surprised," she said in answer to some remark made by her
+companion, "that one of our sex, so young and of so delicate health,
+should travel alone in the diligence; but I have no relative in Paris,
+and no friend on whose protection I could make a claim. I have lived
+there alone, or in something worse than solitude."
+
+Her companion, with a woman's quickness of eye, glanced at the rich
+toilette of the speaker. It was mourning, but mourning of the most
+costly description.
+
+"You think," she continued, replying to this glance, "that one whose
+toilette is costly ought not to be without friends; but mine has been
+for some time a singular condition. Wealth and a complete isolation from
+the world have been in my fate strangely combined. They married me"----
+
+"What! are you a married woman and so young?" exclaimed the lady who was
+addressed.
+
+"I have been; I am now a widow. It is for my husband that I wear this
+mourning. They took me from the convent where I was educated, and
+married me to a man whom I was permitted to see only once before the
+alliance was concluded. As I had been brought up with the idea that my
+father was to choose a husband for me, and as the Count D---- was both
+handsome and of agreeable manners, the only qualities on which I was
+supposed to have an opinion, there was no room for objection on my part.
+The marriage was speedily celebrated. My husband was wealthy. Of that my
+father had taken care to satisfy himself; perhaps it was the only point
+on which he was very solicitous. For I should tell you that my father,
+the only parent I have surviving, is one of those restless unquiet men
+who have no permanent abode, who delight in travelling from place to
+place, and who regard their children, if they have any, in the light
+only of cares and encumbrances. There is not a capital in Europe in
+which he has not resided, and scarcely a spot of any celebrity which he
+has not visited. It was therefore at the house of a maiden aunt--to whom
+I am now about to return--that I was married.
+
+"I spent the first years of my marriage, as young brides I believe
+generally do, in a sort of trouble of felicity. I did not know how to be
+sufficiently thankful to Heaven for the treasure I found myself the
+possessor of; such a sweetness of temper and such a tenderness of
+affection did my husband continually manifest towards me. After a short
+season of festivity, spent at the house of my aunt, we travelled
+together without any other companion towards Paris, where the Count had
+a residence elegantly fitted up to receive us. The journey itself was a
+new source of delight to one who had been hitherto shut up, with her
+instructress, in a convent. Never shall I forget the hilarity, the
+almost insupportable joy, with which the first part of this journey was
+performed. The sun shone out upon a beautiful landscape, and there was
+I, travelling alone with the one individual who had suddenly awoke and
+possessed himself of all my affections--travelling, too, with gay
+anticipations to the glorious city of Paris, of which I had heard so
+much, and in which I was to appear with all the envied advantages of
+wealth.
+
+"As we approached towards Paris, I noticed that my husband became more
+quiet and reserved. I attributed it to the fatigue of travelling, to
+which my own spirits began to succumb; and as the day was drawing to a
+close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest
+there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and
+impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the least symptom before,
+he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the
+speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became
+restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. It was
+now night. Leaning back in the carriage, and fixing my eye upon the full
+moon that was shining brightly upon us, I tried to quiet my own spirit,
+somewhat ruffled by this unexpected behaviour of my husband. I observed,
+after a short time, that _his_ eye also had become riveted on the same
+bright object; but not with any tranquillizing effect, for his
+countenance grew every minute more and more sombre. On a sudden he
+called aloud to the postilion to stop--threw open the carriage-door, and
+walked in a rapid pace down towards a river that for some time had
+accompanied our course. I sprang after him. I overtook, and grasped him
+as he was in the very act of plunging into the river. O my God! how I
+prayed, and wept, and struggled to prevent him from rushing into the
+stream. At length he sat down upon the bank of the river; he turned to
+me his wild and frenzied eye--he laughed--O Heaven! he was mad!
+
+"They had married me to a madman. Cured, or presumed to be cured, of
+his disorder, he had been permitted to return to society; and now his
+malady had broken out again. He who was to be my guide and protector,
+who was my only support, who took the place of parent, friend,
+instructor--he was a lunatic!
+
+"For three dreadful hours did I sit beside him on that bank--at
+night--with none to help me--restraining him by all means I could devise
+from renewed attempts to precipitate himself into the river. At last I
+succeeded in bringing him back to the carriage. For the rest of the
+journey he was quiet; but he was imbecile--his reason had deserted him.
+
+"We arrived at his house in Paris. A domestic assisted me in conducting
+him to his chamber; and from that time I, the young wife, who the other
+morning had conceived herself the happiest of beings, was transformed
+into the keeper of a maniac--of a helpless or a raving lunatic. I wrote
+to my father. He was on the point of setting out upon one of his
+rambling expeditions, and contented himself with appealing to the
+relatives of my husband, who, he maintained, were the proper persons to
+take charge of the lunatic. They, on the other hand, left him to the
+care of the new relations he had formed by a marriage, which had
+interfered with their expectations and claims upon his property. Thus
+was I left alone--a stranger in this great city of Paris, which was to
+have welcomed me with all its splendours, and festivities, and its
+brilliant society--my sole task to soothe and control a maniac husband.
+It was frightful. Scarcely could I venture to sleep an hour
+together--night or day--lest he should commit some outrage upon himself
+or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk
+under it; but, by God's good providence, the malady of my husband took a
+new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon
+other vital parts of the constitution. He wasted away and died. I indeed
+live; but I, too, have wasted away, body and soul, for I have no health
+and no joy within me."
+
+Just at this time a low murmuring conversation between my two
+fellow-countrymen, at my left, broke out, much to my annoyance, into
+sudden exclamation.
+
+"By God! sir," cried one of them, "I thrashed him in the _Grande Place_,
+right before the hotel there--what's its name?--the first hotel in
+Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my
+britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he
+did it again I would _punish_ him; that is, I did not exactly _tell_
+him--for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, of which I
+could not speak a word--but I held out my fist in a significant manner,
+which neither man nor brute could mistake. Well, just as we turned into
+the _Grande Place_, the lubber grazed my wheel again. I jumped out of
+the carriage--I pulled him--boots and all--off his horse, and how I
+cuffed him! My friend Lord L---- was standing at the window of the
+hotel, looking out for my arrival, and was witness to this exploit. He
+was most dead with laughter when I came up to him."
+
+"I once," said his interlocutor, "thrashed an English postilion after
+the same fashion; but your Russian, with his enormous boots, must have
+afforded capital sport. When I travel I always look out for _fun_. What
+else is the use of travelling? I and young B----, whom you may remember
+at Oxford, were at a ball together at Brussels, and what do you think we
+did? We strewed cayenne pepper on the floor, and no sooner did the girls
+begin to dance than they began incontinently to sneeze. Ladies and
+gentlemen were curtsying, and bowing, and sneezing to one another in the
+most ludicrous manner conceivable."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! Excellent! By the way," rejoined the other, "talking of
+Brussels, do you know who has the glory of that famous joke practised
+there upon the statues in the park? They give the credit of it to the
+English, but on what ground, except the celebrity they have acquired in
+such feats, I could never learn."
+
+"I know nothing of it. What was it?"
+
+"Why, you see, amongst the statues in the little park at Brussels are a
+number of those busts without arms or shoulders. I cannot call to mind
+their technical name. First you have the head of a man, then a sort of
+decorated pillar instead of a body, and then again, at the bottom of the
+pillar, there protrude a couple of naked feet. They look part pillar and
+part man, with a touch of the mummy. Now, it is impossible to
+contemplate such a figure without being struck with the idea, how
+completely at the mercy of every passer-by are both its nose--which has
+no hand to defend it--and its naked toes, which cannot possibly move
+from their fixed position. One may tweak the one, and tread upon the
+other, with such manifest impunity. Some one in whom this idea, no
+doubt, wrought very powerfully, took hammer and chisel, and shied off
+the noses and the great toes of several of these mummy-statues. And
+pitiful enough they looked next morning."
+
+"Well, that was capital!"
+
+"And the best of it is, that even now, when the noses have been put on
+again, the figures look as odd as if they had none at all. The join is
+so manifest, and speaks so plainly of past mutilation, that no one can
+give to these creatures, let them exist as long as they will, the credit
+of wearing their own noses. The jest is immortal."
+
+The recital of this excellent piece of _fun_ was followed by another
+explosion of laughter. The Frenchman who sat opposite to me--a man, as I
+have said, of grave but urbane deportment, became curious to know what
+it was that our neighbours had been conversing about, and which had
+occasioned so much hilarity. He very politely expressed this wish to me.
+If it was not an indiscretion, he should like to partake, he said, in
+the wit that was flowing round him; adding, perhaps superfluously, that
+he did not understand English.
+
+"Monsieur, I am glad of it," I replied.
+
+Monsieur, who concluded from my answer that I was in a similar
+predicament with respect to the French language, bowed and remained
+silent.
+
+Here the conversation to my left ceased to flow, or subsided into its
+former murmuring channel, and I was again able to listen to my fair
+neighbours to the right. The lively dame who sat by my side had now the
+word; she was administering consolations and philosophy to the young
+widow.
+
+"At your age health," said she, "is not irretrievable, and, sweet madam,
+your good looks are left you. A touch of rouge upon your cheek, and you
+are quite an angel. And then you are free--you will one day travel back
+again to Paris with a better escort than you had before."
+
+And here she gave a sigh which prepared the hearer for the disclosure
+that was to follow.
+
+"Now I," she continued, "have been married, but, alas! am _not_ a widow.
+I have a husband standing out against me somewhere in the world. In the
+commercial language of my father, I wish I could cancel him."
+
+"What! he has deserted you?" said her fair companion, in a sympathizing
+tone.
+
+"You shall hear, my dear madam. My father, you must know, is a plain
+citizen. He did not charge himself with the task of looking out a
+husband for his girls; he followed what he called the English plan--let
+the girls look out for themselves, and contented himself with a _veto_
+upon the choice, if it should displease him. Now, Monsieur Lemaire was a
+perfect Adonis; he dressed, and danced, and talked to admiration; no man
+dressed, danced, or talked better; his mirth was inexhaustible--his
+good-humour unfailing."
+
+Well, thought I to myself, what is coming now? This lady, at all events,
+chose with her own eyes, and had her own time to choose in. Is her
+experience to prove, that the chance of securing a good husband is much
+the same, let him be chosen how he may?
+
+"No wonder, then," continued the lady, "that I accepted his proposal.
+The very thought of marrying him as paradise; and I _did_ marry him."
+
+"And so were really in paradise?" said the widow, with a gentle smile.
+
+"Yes, yes! it _was_ a paradise. It was a constant succession of
+amusements; theatre, balls, excursions--all enjoyed with the charming
+Lemaire. And he so happy, too! I thought he would have devoured me. We
+were verily in paradise for three months. At the end of which time he
+came one morning into the room swinging an empty purse in the air--'Now,
+I think,' said he with the same cheerful countenance that he usually
+wore, 'that I have proved my devotion to you in a remarkable manner.
+Another man would have thought it much if he had made some sacrifice to
+gain possession of you for life; I have spent every farthing I had in
+the world to possess you for three months. Oh, that those three months
+were to live over again! But every thing has its end.' And he tossed the
+empty purse in his hand.
+
+"I laughed at what I considered a very pleasant jest; for who did not
+know that M. Lemaire was a man of ample property? I laughed still more
+heartily as he went on to say, that a coach stood at the door to take me
+back to my father, and begged me not to keep the coachman waiting, as in
+that case the fellow would charge for time, and it had taken his last
+sou to pay his fare by distance. I clapped my hands in applause of my
+excellent comedian. But, gracious Heavens! it was all true! There stood
+the coach at the door, the fare paid to my father's house, and an empty
+purse was literally all that I now had to participate with the gay,
+wealthy, accomplished Lemaire."
+
+"What!" I exclaimed with rage and agony, as the truth broke upon me, "do
+you desert your wife?"
+
+"Desert my charming wife!" he replied. "Ask the hungry pauper, who turns
+his back upon the fragrant _restaurant_, if he deserts his dinner. You
+are as beautiful, as bright, as lovely as ever--you cannot think with
+what a sigh I quit you!"
+
+"But"----and I began a torrent of recrimination.
+
+"'But,' said he, interrupting me, 'I have not a sou. For you,' he
+continued, 'you are as charming as ever--you will win your way only the
+better in the world for this little experience. And as for me--I have
+been in Elysium for three months; and that is more than a host of your
+excellent prudent men can boast of, who plod on day after day only that
+they may continue plodding to the end of their lives. Adieu! my
+adorable--my angel that will now vanish from my sight!' And here, in
+spite of my struggles, he embraced me with the greatest ardour, and
+then, tearing himself away as if he only were the sufferer, he rushed
+out of the room. I have never seen him since."
+
+"And such men really exist!" said the young widow, moved to indignation.
+"For so short a season of pleasure he could deliberately compromise the
+whole of your future life."
+
+"Is it not horrible? His father, it seems, had left him a certain sum of
+money, and this was the scheme he had devised to draw from it the
+greatest advantage. _Mais, mon Dieu!_" added the lively Frenchwoman, "of
+what avail to afflict one's-self? Only if he would but die before I am
+an old woman! And then those three months"----
+
+Here the diligence suddenly stopped, and the conductor opening the door,
+invited us to step out and take some refreshment, and so put an end for
+the present to this medley conversation.
+
+
+
+
+WHO WROTE GIL BLAS?
+
+
+In the year 1783, Joseph Francisco De Isla, one of the most eminent of
+modern Spanish writers, published a Spanish translation of Gil Blas. In
+this work some events were suppressed, others altered, the diction was
+greatly modified, the topographical and chronological errors with which
+the French version abounded were allowed to remain, and the Spanish
+origin of that celebrated work was asserted on such slender grounds, and
+vindicated by such trifling arguments, as to throw considerable doubt on
+the fact in the opinion of all impartial judges. The French were not
+slow to seize upon so favourable an occasion to gratify their national
+vanity; and in 1818, M. le Comte Fran�ois de Neufchateau, a member of
+the French Institute and an Ex-minister of the Interior, published a
+dissertation, in which, after a modest insinuation that the
+extraordinary merit of Gil Blas was a sufficient proof of its French
+origin, the feeble arguments of Padre Isla were triumphantly refuted,
+and the claims of Le Sage to the original conception of Gil Blas were
+asserted, to the complete satisfaction of all patriotic Frenchmen. Here
+the matter rested, till, in 1820, Don Juan Antonio Llorente drew up his
+reasons for holding the opinion of which Isla had been the unsuccessful
+advocate, and, with even punctilious courtesy, transmitted them before
+publication to M. Le Montey, by whose judgment in the matter he
+expressed his determination to abide. M. Le Montey referred the matter
+to two commissioners--one being M. Raynouard, a well-known and useful
+writer, the other M. Neufchateau, the author whom Llorente's work was
+intended to refute.
+
+This literary commission seems to have produced as little benefit to the
+public as if each of the members had been chosen by a political party,
+had received a salary varying from �1500 to �2000 a-year, and been sent
+into Ireland to report upon the condition of the people, or into Canada
+to discover why French republicans dislike the institutions of a Saxon
+monarchy. To be sure, the advantage is on the side of the French
+academicians; for, instead of sending forth a mass of confused,
+contradictory, and ill-written reports, based upon imperfect evidence,
+and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as
+Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente
+attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of
+the three French _savans_, to the impossibility of finding any thing to
+say, after the lapse of a year and a half publishes his arguments, and
+appeals to literary Europe as the judge "en dernier ressort" of this
+important controversy. Llorente, however, was too precipitate; for on
+the 8th of January 1822, M. de Neufchateau presented to the French
+Academy an answer to Llorente's observations, on which we shall
+presently remark.
+
+It is maintained by the ingenious writer, Llorente--whose arguments,
+with such additions and remarks as have occurred to us upon the subject,
+we propose to lay before our readers,
+
+1st, That Gil Blas and the Bachiller de Salamanca were originally one
+and the same romance.
+
+2dly, That the author of this romance was at any rate a Spaniard.
+
+3dly, That his name was Don Antonio de Solis y Ribadeneira, author of
+_Historia de la Conquista de M�jico_.
+
+4thly, That Le Sage turned the single romance into two; repeating in
+both the same stories slightly modified, and mixing them up with other
+translations from Spanish novels.
+
+As the main argument turns upon the originality of Le Sage considered as
+the author of Gil Blas, we shall first dispose in a very few words of
+the third proposition; and for this purpose we must beg our readers to
+take for granted, during a few moments, that Gil Blas was the work of a
+Spaniard, and to enquire, supposing that truth sufficiently established,
+who that Spaniard was.
+
+Llorente enumerates thirty-six eminent writers who flourished in 1655,
+the period when, as we shall presently see, the romance in question was
+written. Of these Don Louis de Guevarra, author of the Diablo Cojuelo,
+Francisco de Santos, Jos� Pellicer, and Solis, are among the most
+distinguished. Llorente, however, puts all aside--and all, except
+Pellicer perhaps, for very sufficient reasons--determining that Solis
+alone united all the attributes and circumstances belonging to the
+writer of Gil Blas. The writer of Gil Blas was a Castilian--this may be
+inferred from his panegyric on Castilian wit, which he declares equal to
+that of Athens; he must have been a dramatic writer, from his repeated
+criticisms on the drama, and the keenness with which he sifts the merit
+of contemporary dramatic authors; he must have been a great master of
+narrative, and thoroughly acquainted with the habits and institutions of
+his age and country; he must have possessed the art of enlivening his
+story with caustic allusions, and with repartees; he must have been
+perfectly conversant with the intrigues of courtiers, and have acquired
+from his own experience, or the relation of others, an intimate
+knowledge of the private life of Olivarez, and the details of Philip
+IV.'s court. All these requisites are united in Solis:--he was born at
+Alcal� de Henares, a city of Castile; he was one of the best dramatic
+writers of his day, the day of Calderon de la Barca. That he was a great
+historical writer, is proved by his _Conquista de M�jico_; his comedies
+prove his thorough knowledge of Spanish habits; and the retorts and
+quiddities of his Graciosos flash with as much wit as any that were ever
+uttered by those brilliant and fantastic denizens of the Spanish stage.
+He was a courtier; he was secretary to Oropezo, viceroy successively of
+Navarre and of Valencia, and was afterwards promoted by Philip IV. to be
+"Oficial de la Secretaria" of the first minister Don Louis de Haro, and
+was allowed, as an especial mark of royal favour, to dispose of his
+place in favour of his relation. This happened about the year
+1654--corresponding, as we shall see, exactly with the mission of the
+Marquis de Lionne. Afterwards he was appointed Cronista Mayor de las
+Indias, and wrote his famous history. These are the arguments in favour
+of Solis, which cannot be offered in behalf of any of his thirty-six
+competitors. It is therefore the opinion of Llorente that the honour of
+being the author of Gil Blas is due to him; and in this opinion,
+supposing the fact which we now proceed to investigate, that a Spaniard,
+and not Le Sage, was the author of the work, is made out to their
+satisfaction, our readers will probably acquiesce.
+
+The steps by which the argument that Gil Blas is taken from a Spanish
+manuscript proceeds, are few and direct. It abounds in facts and
+allusions which none but a Spaniard could know: this is the first step.
+It abounds in errors that no Spaniard could make--(by the way, this is
+much insisted upon by M. de Neufchateau, who does not seem to perceive
+that, taken together with the preceding proposition, it is fatal to his
+argument:) this is the second step, and leads us to the conclusion that
+the true theory of its origin must reconcile these apparent
+contradictions.
+
+A Spanish manuscript does account for this inconsistency, as it would
+furnish the transcriber with the most intimate knowledge of local
+habits, names, and usages; while at the same time it would not guard him
+against mistakes which negligence or haste, or the difficulty of
+deciphering a manuscript in a language with which the transcriber was by
+no means critically acquainted, must occasion. Still less would it guard
+him against errors which would almost inevitably arise from the
+insertion of other Spanish novels, or the endeavour to give the work a
+false claim to originality, by alluding to topics fashionable in the
+city and age when the work was copied.
+
+The method we propose to follow, is to place before the reader each
+division of the argument. We shall show a most intimate knowledge with
+Spanish life, clearly proving that the writer, whoever he is, is
+unconscious of any merit in painting scenes with which he was habitually
+familiar. Let any reader compare the facility of these unstudied
+allusions with the descriptions of a different age or time, even by the
+best writers of a different epoch and country, however accurate and
+dramatic they may be--with _Quentin Durward_ or _Ivanhoe_, for instance;
+or with Barante's _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_, and they will see
+the force of this remark. In spite of art, and ability, and antiquarian
+knowledge, it is evident that a resemblance is industriously sought in
+one case, and is spontaneous in the other; that it is looked upon as a
+matter of course, and not as a title to praise, by the first class of
+writers, while it is elaborately wrought out, as an artist's pretension
+to eminence, in the second. If Le Sage had been the original author of
+Gil Blas, he would have avoided the multiplication of circumstances,
+names, and dates; or if he had thought it necessary to intersperse his
+composition with them, he would have contented himself with such as were
+most general and notorious; the minute, circuitous, and oblique
+allusions, which it required patient examination to detect, and vast
+local knowledge to appreciate, could not have fallen within his plan.
+
+Secondly--We shall point out the mistakes, some of them really
+surprising even in a foreign writer, with regard to names, dates, and
+circumstances, oversetting every congruity which it was manifestly Le
+Sage's object to establish. We shall show that the Spanish novels
+inserted by him do not mix with the body of the work; and moreover we
+shall show that in one instance, where Le Sage hazarded an allusion to
+Parisian gossip, he betrayed the most profound ignorance of those very
+customs which, in other parts of the work passing under his name, are
+delineated with such truth of colouring, and Dutch minuteness of
+observation.
+
+If these two propositions be clearly established, we have a right to
+infer from them the existence of a Spanish manuscript, as on any other
+hypothesis the claims of an original writer would be clashing and
+contradictory.
+
+M. Neufchateau, as we have observed, reiterates the assertion that the
+errors of Gil Blas are such as no Spaniard could commit, leaving
+altogether unguarded against the goring horn of the dilemma which can
+only be parried by an answer to the question--how came it to pass that
+Le Sage could enumerate the names of upwards of twenty inconsiderable
+towns and villages, upwards of twenty families not of the first class;
+and in every page of his work represent, with the most punctilious
+fidelity, the manners of a country he never saw? Nay, how came it to
+pass that, instead of avoiding minute details, local circumstances, and
+the mention of particular facts, as he might easily have done, he
+accumulates all these opportunities of mistake and contradiction,
+descends to the most trifling facts, and interweaves them with the web
+of his narrative (conscious of ignorance, as, according to M.
+Neufchateau, he must have been) without effort and without design.
+
+Let us begin by laying before the readers the _pi�ces du proc�s_. First,
+we insert the description of Le Sage given by two French writers.
+
+     "Voici ce que disoit Voltaire � l'article de Le Sage, dans la
+     premi�re �dition du Si�cle de Louis XIV.:--
+
+     "'Son roman de Gil Blas est demeur�, parcequ'il y a du naturel.'
+
+     "Dans les editions suivantes du Si�cle de Louis XIV., Voltaire
+     ajoute un fait qu'il se contente d'�noncer simplement, comme une
+     chose hors de doute; c'est que Gil Blas est pris enti�rement d'un
+     livre �crit en Espagnol, et dont il cite ainsi le t�tre--La vidad
+     de lo Escudero Dom Marco d'Obrego--sans indiquer aucunement la
+     date, l'auteur, ni l'objet de cette vie de l'�cuyer Dom Marco
+     d'Obrego."
+
+     "Extrait du Nouveau Porte-feuille historique, poetique, et
+     litteraire de Bruzen de La Martini�re.
+
+     "'Baillet n'entendoit pas l'Espagnol. Au sujet de Louis Vel�s de
+     Guevarra, auteur Espagnol, dans ses jugements des savants sur les
+     po�tes modernes, � 1461, il dit: On a de lui plusieurs comedies qui
+     ont �t� imprim�es en diverses villes d'Espagne, et une pi�ce
+     fac�tieuse, sous le t�tre El Diabolo Cojuelo, novella de la otra
+     vida: sur quoi M. de La Monnoye fait cette note. Comment un homme
+     qui fait tant le modeste et le reserv� a-t-il pu �crire un mot tel
+     que celui-la? Cette note n'est pas juste. Il semble que M. de La
+     Monnoye veuille taxer Baillet de n'avoir pas sontenu le caract�re
+     de modestie, qu'il affectoit. Baillet ne faisoit pas le modeste, il
+     l'�toit v�ritablement par �tat et par principe; et s'il e�t entendu
+     le mot immodeste, ce mot lui auroit �t� suspect; il eut eu recours
+     � l'original, o� il auroit trouv� Diablo, et non Diabolo, Cojuelo
+     et non Cojudo, et auroit bien v�te corrig� la faute. Mais comme il
+     n'entendoit ni l'un ni l'autre de ces derniers mots, il lui fut
+     ais�, en copiant ses extraits, de prendre un _el_ pour un _d_, et
+     de changer par cette l�g�re diff�rence Cojuelo, qui veut dire
+     boiteux, en Cojudo, qui signifie quelqu'un qui a de gros
+     testicules, et sobrino l'exprime encore plus grossi�rement en
+     Fran�ois. M. de La Monnoye devoit moins s'arr�ter � l'immodestie de
+     l'�pith�te, qu'� la corruption du vrai t�tre le Guevarra."
+
+     "Au reste, c'est le m�me ouvrage que M. La Sage nous a fait
+     conno�tre sous le t�tre du Diable Boiteux; il l'a tourn�, � sa
+     mani�re, mais avec des diff�rences si grandes que Guevarra ne se
+     reconno�troit qu'� peine dans cette pretendue traduction. Par
+     exemple, le chapitre xix de la seconde partie contient une aventure
+     de D. Pablas, qui se trouve en original dans un livre imprim� �
+     Madrid en 1729, (sic.) L'auteur des lectures amusantes, qui ne
+     s'est pas souvenu que M. Le Sage, en avoit ins�r� une partie dans
+     son Diable Boiteux, l'a traduite de nouveau avec assez de libert�,
+     mais pourtant en s'�cartant moins de l'original, et l'a ins�r�e
+     dans sa premi�re partie � peu pr�s telle qu'elle se lit dans
+     l'original Espagnol. Mais M. Le Sage l'a trait�e avec de grands
+     changements, c'est sa mani�re d'embellir extr�mement tout ce qu'il
+     emprunte des Espagnols. C'est ainsi qu'il en a us� envers Gil Blas,
+     dont il a fait un chef-d'oeuvre inimitable."--(Pages 336-339,
+     �dition de 1757, dans les _Passetemps Politiques, Historiques, et
+     Critiques_, tome 11, in 12.)
+
+As an example of the accuracy with which Le Sage has imitated his
+originals, we quote the annexed passages from Marcos de Obregon--Page 3.
+
+     "En leyendo el villete, dixo al que le traia: Dezilde a vuestro
+     amo, que di goyo, que para cosas, que me inportan mucho gusto no me
+     suelo leuantar hasta las doze del dia: que porque quiere, que pare
+     matarme me leuante tan dema�ana? y boluiendose del otro lado, se
+     torn� a dormir."
+
+         "Don Mathias prit le billet, l'ouvrit, et, apr�s l'avoir lu, dit
+         an valet de Don Lope. 'Mon enfant, je ne me leverois jamais avant
+         midi, quelque partie de plaisir qu'on me p�t proposer; juge si je
+         me leverai � six heures du matin pour me battre. Tu peux dire �
+         ton ma�tre que, s'il est encore � midi et demi dans l'endroit o�
+         il m'attend, nous nous y verons: va, lui porter cette r�ponse.' A
+         ces mots il s'enfon�a dans son lit, et ne tarda gu�re � se
+         rendormir."
+
+     "No quereys que si�ta ofensa hecha a un corderillo, como este? a
+     una paloma sin hiel, a un mocito tan humilde, y apazible que, aun
+     quexarse no sabe de una cosa tan mal hecha? cierto y quisiera ser
+     hombre en este punto para v�garle."
+
+         "'Pourquoi,' s'�cria-t-elle avec emportement--pourquoi ne
+         voulez-vous pas que je ressente vivement l'offense qu'on a fait �
+         ce petit agneau, � cette colombe sans fiel, qui ne se plaint
+         seulement pas de l'outrage qu'il a re�u? Ah! que ne suis-je homme
+         en ce moment pour le venger!"
+
+After this we think we are fairly entitled to affirm, that Le Sage was
+not considered by his contemporaries as a man of original and creative
+genius; although he possessed, in an eminent degree, the power of
+appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was
+graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any
+one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and that he is entitled to
+the credit of an inventor, let him cite any single work written by Le
+Sage, except _Gil Blas_, in proof of his assertion. Of course _Gil Blas_
+is out of the question. Nothing could be more circular than an argument
+that Le Sage, because he possessed an inventive genius, might have
+written _Gil Blas_; and that because he might have written _Gil Blas_,
+he possessed an inventive genius. This being the case, let us examine
+his biography. Le Sage was born in 1668 at Sargan, a small town near
+Vannes in Bretagne; at twenty-seven he published a translation of
+Aristoen�tus; and declining, from his love of literature, the hopes of
+advancement, which, had he taken orders, were within his reach, he came
+to Paris, where he contracted an intimate friendship with the Abb� de
+Lyonne, who settled a pension on him, taught him Spanish, and bequeathed
+to him his library--consisting, among other works, of several Spanish
+manuscripts--at his death. His generous benefactor was the third son of
+Hugo, Marquis de Lyonne, one of the most accomplished and intelligent
+men in France. In 1656 he was set on a secret mission to Madrid; the
+object of this mission was soon discovered in the peace of the Pyrenees
+1650, and the marriage of Maria Theresa of Austria, eldest daughter of
+Philip IV., with Louis XIV. During his residence in Spain the Marquis de
+Lyonne lived in great intimacy with Louis de Haro, Duke of Montoro. The
+Marquis de Lyonne was passionately fond of Spanish literature; he not
+only purchased all the printed Spanish works he could procure, but a
+vast quantity of unprinted manuscripts in the same language, all which,
+together with the rest of his library, became at his death the property
+of his son, the Abb� de Lyonne--the friend, patron, and testator of Le
+Sage. To these facts must be added another very important circumstance,
+that Le Sage never entered Spain. Of this fact, fatal as it is to Le
+Sage's claims, Padre Isla was ignorant; but it is stated with an air of
+triumph by M. Neufchateau, is proved by Llorente, and must be considered
+incontestable. The case, then, as far as external evidence is concerned,
+stands thus. Le Sage, a master of his own language, but not an inventive
+writer, and who had never visited Spain, contracts a friendship which
+gives him at first the opportunity of perusing, and afterwards the
+absolute possession of, a number of Spanish manuscripts. Having
+published several elegant paraphrases and translations of printed
+Spanish works, he published _Gil Blas_ in several volumes, at long
+intervals, as an original work; after this, he published the _Bachelier
+de Salamanque_, which he calls himself a translation from a Spanish
+manuscript, of which he never produces the original. Did the matter rest
+here, much suspicion would be thrown upon Le Sage's claims to the
+authorship of _Gil Blas_; but we come now to the evidence arising, "ex
+visceribus caus�," from the work itself, and the manner of its
+publication.
+
+The chief points of resemblance between Gil Blas and the Bachelier de
+Salamanque, are the following:--
+
+1. The Bachelier de Salamanque is remarkable for his logical
+subtilty--so is Gil Blas.
+
+2. The doctor of Salamanque, by whom the bachelor is supported after his
+father's death, is avaricious--so is Gil Blas's uncle, the canon of
+Oviedo, Gil Perez.
+
+3. The doctor recommends the bachelor of Salamanca to obtain a situation
+as tutor--the canon gives similar advice to Gil Blas.
+
+4. The bachelor is dissuaded from becoming a tutor--Fabricio dissuades
+Gil Blas from taking the same situation.
+
+5. A friar of Madrid makes it his business to find vacant places for
+tutors--a friar of Cordova, in Gil Blas, does the same.
+
+6. The bachelor is obliged to leave Madrid because he is the favoured
+lover of Donna Lucia de Padilla--Gil Blas is obliged to leave the
+Marquise de Chaves for the same reason.
+
+7. Bartolome, the comedian, encourages his wife's intrigues--Melchier
+Zapata does the same.
+
+8. The lover of Donna Francisca, in Granada, is a foreign nobleman kept
+there by important business--the situation of the Marquis de Marialva is
+the same.
+
+9. The comedian abandons an old and liberal lover, for Fonseca, who is
+young and poor--Laura prefers Louis de Alaga to his rival, for the same
+reason.
+
+10. Bartolome, to deceive Francisca, assumes the name of Don Pompeio de
+la Cueva--to deceive Laura, Gil Blas pretends to be Don Fernando de
+Ribera.
+
+11. _Le Bachelier_ contains repeated allusions to Dominican friars, and
+particularly to Cirilo Carambola--similar allusions abound in _Gil
+Blas_, where Louis de Aliaga, confessor of Philip III., is particularly
+mentioned.
+
+12. The character of Diego Cintillo, in the _Bachelier de Salamanque_,
+is identical with that of Manuel Ordo�ez in _Gil Blas_.
+
+13. An aunt of the Duke of Uzeda obtains for the bachelor the place of
+secretary in the minister's office--Gil Blas obtains the same post by
+means of an uncle of the Count of Olivarez.
+
+14. The bachelor, whilst secretary at Uzeda, assists in bringing about
+his patron's daughter's marriage--Gil Blas does the same whilst
+secretary of the Duke of Olivarez.
+
+15. Francisca, the actress, is shut up in a convent at Carthagena,
+because the corregidor's son falls in love with her--Laura, in _Gil
+Blas_, is shut up in a convent, because the corregidor's only son falls
+in love with her.
+
+16. The adventures of Francisca and Laura resemble each other.
+
+17. So do those of Toston and Scipio.
+
+18. Toston and Scipio both lose their wives; and both disbelieve in
+reality, though they think proper to accept, the excuses they make on
+their return.
+
+19. _Finally_, in _Gil Blas_ we find a vivid description of the habits
+and manners prevalent in the European dominions of Spain during the
+reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. But in no part of _Gil Blas_ do we
+find any allusion to the habits and manners of the viceroy's canons,
+nuns, and monks of America; and yet Scipio is dispatched with a
+lucrative commission to New Spain. It may fairly be inferred, therefore,
+that so vast a portion of the Spanish monarchy did not escape the notice
+of the attentive critic who wrote _Gil Blas_; and the silence can only
+be accounted for by the fact, that the principal anecdotes relating to
+America, were reserved to make out the _Bachelier de Salamanque_, from
+the remainder of which _Gil Blas_ was taken.
+
+Now, the dates of _Gil Blas_ and the Bachelier de Salamanque were
+these:--the two first volumes of _Gil Blas_ were published in 1715, the
+third volume in 1724, which, it is clear, he intended to be the last.
+First, from the Latin verses with which it closes; and secondly, from
+the remark of the anachronism of Don Pompeyo de Castro, which he
+promises to correct if his work gets to a new edition. In 1735 he
+published a fourth volume of _Gil Blas_, and, in 1738, the two volumes
+of the _Bachelier de Salamanque_ as a translation. Will it be said that
+Le Sage's other works prove him to have been capable of inventing _Gil
+Blas_? It will be still without foundation. All his critics agree, that,
+though well qualified to embellish the ideas of others, and master of a
+flowing and agreeable style, he was not an inventive or original writer.
+Such is the language of Voltaire, M. de la Martini�re, and of Chardin,
+and even of M. Neufchateau himself; and yet, it is to a person of this
+description that the authorship of _Gil Blas_, second only to _Don
+Quixote_ in prose works of fiction, has been attributed.
+
+Among the topics insisted upon by the Comte de Neufchateau as most
+clearly establishing the French origin of _Gil Blas_, an intimate
+acquaintance with the court of Louis XIV., and frequent allusions to the
+most remarkable characters in it, are very conspicuous. But to him who
+really endeavours to discover the country of an anonymous writer, such
+an argument, unless reduced to very minute details, and contracted into
+a very narrow compass, will not appear satisfactory. He will recollect
+that the extremes of society are very uniform, that courts resemble each
+other as well as prisons; and that, as was once observed, if King
+Christophe's courtiers were examined, the great features of their
+character would be found to correspond with those of their whiter
+brethren in Europe. The abuses of government, the wrong distribution of
+patronage, the effects of clandestine influence, the solicitations and
+intrigues of male and female favourites, the treachery of confidants,
+the petty jealousies and insignificant struggles of place-hunters, are
+the same, or nearly so, in every country; and it requires no great
+acuteness to detect, or courage to expose, their consequences--the name
+of Choiseul, or Uzeda, or Buckingham, or Bruhl, or Kaunitz, may be
+applied to such descriptions with equal probability and equal justice.
+But when the Tiers Etat are portrayed, when the satirist enters into
+detail, when he enumerates circumstances, when local manners, national
+habits, and individual peculiarities fall under his notice; when he
+describes the specific disease engendered in the atmosphere by which his
+characters are surrounded; when, to borrow a lawyer's phrase, he
+condescends to particulars, then it is that close and intimate
+acquaintance with the scenes and persons he describes is requisite; and
+that a superficial critic falls, at every step into errors the most
+glaring and ridiculous. There are many passages of this description in
+_Gil Blas_ to which we shall presently allude; in the mean time let us
+follow the advice of Count Hamilton, and begin with the beginning--
+
+     "Me voila donc hors d'Ovi�do, sur le chemin de Pe�aflor, au milieu
+     de la campagne, ma�tre de mes actions, d'une mauvaise mule, et de
+     quarante bons ducats, sans compter quelques r�aux que j'avois vol�s
+     � mon tr�s-honor� oncle.
+
+     "La premi�re chose que je fis, fut de laisser ma mule aller �
+     discr�tion, c'est-�-dire au petit pas. Je lui mis la bride sur le
+     cou, et, tirant mes ducats de ma poche, je commen�ai � les compter
+     et recompter dans mon chapeau. Je n'�tois pas ma�tre de ma joie; je
+     n'avois jamais vu tant d'argent; je ne pouvois me lasser de le
+     regarder et de le manier. Je la comptois peut-�tre pour la
+     vingti�me fois, quand tout-�-coup ma mule, levant la t�te et les
+     oreilles, s'arr�ta au milieu du grand chemin. Je jugeai que quelque
+     chose l'effrayoit; je regardai ce que ce pouvoit �tre. J'aper�us
+     sur la terre un chapeau renvers� sur lequel il y avoit un rosaire �
+     gros grains, et en meme temps j'entendis une voix lamentable qui
+     pronon�a ces paroles: Seigneur passant, ayez piti�, de grace, d'un
+     pauvre soldat estropi�: jetez, s'il vous plait, quelques pi�ces
+     d'argent dans ce chapeau; vous en serez recompens� dans l'autre
+     monde. Je tournai aussit�t les yeux du c�t� d'o� partoit la voix.
+     Je vis au pied d'un buisson, � vingt ou trente pas de moi, une
+     esp�ce de soldat qui, sur deux batons crois�s, appuyoit le bout
+     d'une escopette, qui me parut plus longue qu'une pique, et avec
+     laquelle il me couchoit en joue. A cette vue, qui me fit trembler
+     pour le bien de l'�glise, je m'arretai tout court; je serrai
+     promptement mes ducats; je tirai quelques reaux, et, m'approchant
+     du chapeau, dispos� � recevoir la charit� des fid�les effray�s, je
+     les jetai dedans l'un apr�s l'autre, pour montrer au soldat que
+     j'en usois noblement. Il fut satisfait de ma generosit�, et me
+     donna autant de b�n�dictions que je donnia de coups de pieds dans
+     les flancs de ma mule, pour m'eloigner promptement de lui; mais la
+     maudite b�te, trompant mon impatience, n'en alla pas plus vite; la
+     longue habitude qu'elle avoit de marcher pas � pas sous mon oncle
+     lui avoit fait perdre l'usage du galop."
+
+In France, the custom of travelling on mules was unknown, so was the
+coin ducats, so was that of begging with a rosary, and of extorting
+money in the manner in which Gil Blas describes. In fact, the "useful
+magnificence," as Mr Burke terms it, of the spacious roads in France,
+and the traffic carried on upon them, would render such a manner of
+robbing impossible. How then could Le Sage, who had never set his foot
+in Spain, hit upon so accurate a description? Again, Rolando explains to
+Gil Blas the origin of the subterraneous passages, to which an allusion
+is also made by Raphael; now such are in France utterly unknown.
+
+Rolando, giving an account of his proceedings, says, that his
+grandfather, who could only "_dire son rosaire_," "_rezar su rosario_."
+This is as foreign to the habits of a "vieux militaire Fran�ois," as any
+thing that can be imagined; and, on the other hand, exactly conformable
+to those of a Spanish veteran:--
+
+     "Nous demeur�mes dans le bois la plus grande partie de la journ�e,
+     sans apercevoir aucun voyageur qui p�t payer pour le religieux.
+     Enfin nous en sort�mes pour retourner an souterrain, bornant nos
+     exploits � ce risible �v�nement, qui faisoit encore le sujet de
+     notre entretien, lorsque nous decouvr�mes de loin un carrosse �
+     quatre mules. Il venoit � nous au grand trot, et il �toit
+     accompagn� de trois hommes � cheval qui nous parurent bien arm�s."
+
+In this statement are many circumstances irreconcilable with French
+habits. 1st, A whole day passing without meeting a traveller on the
+high-road of Leon, an event common enough in Spain, but in France almost
+impossible; 2d, the escort of the coach, a common precaution of the
+Spanish ladies against violence--the fact that the coach is drawn by
+mules, not horses, of which national trait six other instances may be
+found in the same story:--
+
+     "Plusieurs personnes me voulurent voir par curiosit�. Ils venoient
+     l'un apr�s l'autre se pr�senter � une petite fen�tre par o� le jour
+     entroit dans ma prison; et lorsqu'ils m'avoient consid�r� quelque
+     temps, ils s'en alloient. Je fus surpris de cette nouveaut�: depuis
+     que j'�tois prisonnier, je n'avois pas vu un seul homme se montrer
+     � cette fen�tre, qui donnoit sur une cour o� regnoient le silence
+     et l'horreur. Je compris par l� que je faisois du bruit dans la
+     ville, mais je ne savois si j'en devois concevoir un bon ou mauvais
+     presage." ... "L� dessus le juge se retira, en disant qu'il alloit
+     ordonner au concierge de m'ouvrir les portes. En effet, un moment
+     apr�s, le geolier vint dans mon cachot avec un de ses guichetiers
+     qui portoit un paquet de toile. Ils m'ot�rent tous deux, d'un air
+     grave et sans me dire un seul mot, mon pourpoint et mon
+     haut-de-chausses, qui �toit d'un drap fin et presque neuf; puis,
+     m'ayant rev�tu d'une vieille souquenille, ils me mirent dehors par
+     les �paules."
+
+This is an exact description of the manner in which prisoners were
+treated in Spain, but bears not the slightest resemblance to any abuse
+that prevailed at that time in France:--
+
+     "Une fille de dix ans, que la gouvernante faisoit passer pour sa
+     ni�ce, en depit de la m�disance, vint ouvrir; et comme nous lui
+     demandions si l'on pouvoit parler au chanoine, la dame Jacinte
+     parut. C'�toit une personne deja parvenue � l'�ge de discretion,
+     mais belle encore; et j'admirai particuli�rement la fra�cheur de
+     son teint. Elle portoit une longue robe d'un �toffe de laine la
+     plus commune, avec une large ceinture de cuir, d'o� pendoit d un
+     c�t� un trousseau de clefs, et de l'autre un chapelet � gros
+     grains"--"Rosario de cuentas gordas."--_Lib. II._ _c._ 1.
+
+This is an exact description of a class of women well known in Spain by
+the name Beata, but utterly unknown in France till the Soeurs de
+Charit� were instituted:--
+
+     "Pendant qu'ils �toient ensemble j'entendis sonner midi. Comme je
+     savois que les secretaires et les commis quittoient � cette heure
+     la leurs bureaux, pour aller diner o� il leur plaisoit, je laissai
+     l� mon chef-d'oeuvre, et sortis pour me rendre, non chez
+     Monteser, parcequ'il m'avoit pay� mes appointemens, et que j'avois
+     pris cong� de lui, mais chez le plus fameux traiteur du quartier de
+     la cour."-_Lib. III._
+
+During the reign of Philip III. and Philip IV., and even till the time
+of Charles IV., twelve was the common hour of dinner, and all the public
+offices were closed: this is very unlike the state of things in Paris
+during the reign of Louis XV., when this romance was published.
+
+In Spain, owing in part to the hospitality natural to unsettled times
+and a simple people, in part to the few strangers who visited the
+Peninsula, inns were for a long time almost unknown, and the occupation
+of an innkeeper, who sold what his countrymen were delighted to give,
+was considered degrading: so dishonourable indeed was it looked upon,
+that where an executioner could not be found to carry the sentence of
+the law into effect upon a criminal, the innkeeper was compelled to
+perform his functions: therefore the innkeepers, like usurers and other
+persons, who follow a pursuit hostile to public opinion, were profligate
+and rapacious. Don Quixote teems with instances to this effect; and
+there are other allusions to the same circumstance in _Gil Blas_. It
+must be observed that if M. Le Sage stumbled by accident upon so great a
+peculiarity, he was fortunate; and if it was suggested to him by his own
+enquiries, they were more profound in this than in most other instances.
+The Barber, describing his visit to his uncle's, (1, 2, 7,) mentions the
+narrow staircase by which he ascended to his relation's abode. Here,
+again, is a proof of an intimate acquaintance with the structure of the
+hotels of the Spanish grandees: in all of them are to be found a large
+and spacious staircase leading to the apartments of the master, and a
+small one leading to those of his dependents. So the hotel in which
+Fabricio lives, (3, 7, 13,) and that inhabited by Count Olivarez, are
+severally described as possessing this appurtenance. It is singular that
+Le Sage, who seems to have been almost as fond of Paris as Socrates was
+of Athens, should have picked up this intimate knowledge of the hotels
+of Madrid. The knowledge of music and habit of playing upon the guitar
+in the front of their houses, is another stroke of Spanish manners which
+no Frenchman is likely to have thought of adding to his work (1, 2, 7.)
+Marcelina puts on her mantle to go to mass. This custom prevailed in
+Spain till the sceptre passed to the Bourbons--in many towns till the
+time of Charles III., and in small villages till the reign of Charles
+IV. Gil Blas joins a muleteer, (1, 3, 1,) with four mules which had
+transported merchandise to Valladolid--this method of carrying goods is
+not known in France. The same observation applies to 3, 3, 7. Rolando
+informs Gil Blas, (1, 3, 2,) "Lorsqu'il eut parl� de cette sorte, il
+nous fit enfermer dans un cachot, o� il ne laissa pas languir mes
+compagnons; ils en sortirent au bout de trois jours pour aller jouer un
+r�le tragique dans la grande place."
+
+This exactly corresponds with the Spanish custom, which was to allow
+prisoners, capitally convicted, three days to prepare for a Christian
+death. Rolando continues, "Oh! je regrette mon premier metier, j'avoue
+qu'il y a plus de s�ret� dans le nouveau; mais il y a plus d'agr�ment
+dans l'autre, et j'aime la libert�. J'ai bien la mine de me defaire de
+ma charge, et de partir un beau matin pour aller gagner les montagnes
+qui sont aux sources du Tage. Je sais qu'il y a dans cet endroit une
+retraite habit�e par une troupe nombreuse, et remplie de sujets
+Catalans: c'est faire son �loge en un mot. Si tu veux m'accompagner,
+nous irons grosser le nombre de ces grands hommes. Je serai dans leur
+compagnie capitaine en second; et pour t'y faire recevoir avec agr�ment,
+j'assurerai que je t'ai vu dix fois combattre � mes c�t�s."
+
+The chain of mountains of Cuen�a Requena Aragon y Abaracin, in which the
+Tagus rises, does contain such excavations as Rolando employed for such
+purposes as Rolando mentions, (1, 3, 11.) The grace of Carlos Alfonso de
+la Ventolera in managing his cloak, was an Andalusian accomplishment,
+and an accomplishment which ceased to prevail when the Bourbons entered
+Spain. It could not have been applied to describe a Castilian, as it was
+confined to the inhabitants of Murcia, Andalusia, Valencia, and la
+Mancha. How could Le Sage have known this? When the Count Azumar dines
+with Don Gonzalo Pacheco, the conversation turns on bull-fights, (2, 4,
+7.)
+
+     "Leur conversation roula d'abord sur une course de taureaux qui
+     s'�toit faite depuis peu de jours. Ils parl�rent des cavaliers qui
+     y avoient montr� le plus d'adresse et de vigueur; et la-dessus le
+     vieux comte, tel que Nestor, � qui toutes les choses presentes
+     donnoient occasion de louer les choses pass�es, dit en
+     soupirant--H�las! je ne vois point aujourd'hui d'hommes comparables
+     � ceux que j'ai vus autrefois, ni les tournois ne se font pas avec
+     autant de magnificence qu'on les faisoit dans ma jeunesse."
+
+This alludes to the "Caballeros de Plaza," as they were called,
+gentlemen by birth animated by the love of glory, very different from
+the hired Picadors. This custom of the Spanish gentlemen, which many of
+our fox-hunting and pheasant-shooting squires will condemn for its
+cruelty, was very common during the reigns of Philip III. and IV., but
+gradually declined, and was at last only prevalent at the _Fiestas
+Reales_. The last example was known in 1789, to celebrate the _jura_ of
+the Prince of Asturia, afterwards the pious and exemplary Ferdinand VII.
+This must have been before his attempted parricide. Ambrosio de Lamela,
+in order to accomplish his designs on Simon, (2, 6, 1,) purchases
+articles at Chelva in Valencia, among others--
+
+     "Il nous fit voir un manteau et une robe noire fort longue, deux
+     pourpoints avec leurs hauts-de-chausses, une de ces �critoires
+     compos�es de deux pi�ces li�es par un cordon, et dont le cornet est
+     s�par� de l'etui o� l'on met les plumes; une main de beau papier
+     blanc un cadenas avec un gros cachet, et de la cire verte; et
+     lorsqu'il nous eut enfin exhib� toutes ses emplettes, Don Raphael
+     lui dit en plaisantant: Vive Dieu! Monsieur Ambroise, il faut
+     avouer que vous avez fait l� un bon achat."
+
+Now this is a faithful portrait of the inkstand, called Tintero de
+Escribano, which the Spanish scriveners always carry about with them,
+and which it is most improbable that M. Le Sage should ever have seen in
+his life, or indeed have heard of but through the medium of a Spanish
+manuscript. The account proceeds; and the distinction, which the reader
+will find taken with so much accuracy, between the inquisitor and
+familiar of the holy office, is one which, however familiar to every
+Spaniard, it is not likely a Frenchman should be acquainted with. In
+France the inquisitor was confounded with the commissary, and all were
+supposed to be Dominican friars.
+
+     "L�, mon gar�on barbier �tala ses vivres, qui consistoient das cinq
+     ou six oignons, avec quelques morceaux de pain et de fromage: mais
+     ce qu'il produisit comme la meilleure pi�ce du sac, fut une petite
+     outre, remplie, disoit-il, d'un vin delicat et friand," (2, 6.)
+
+This custom of carrying wine in a leathern bag, is a peculiar trait of
+Spanish manners.
+
+Catalena, the chambermaid of Guevarra, nurse of Philip IV., obtains from
+her mistress, for Ignatio, the archdeaconry of Granada, which, as "pais
+de conquista," was subject to the crown's disposal:--
+
+     "Cette soubrette, qui est la m�me dont je me suis servi depuis pour
+     tirer de la tour de Segovie le seigneur de Santillane, ayant envie
+     de rendre service � Don Ignacio, engagea sa ma�tresse � demander
+     pour lui un b�n�fice an Duc de Lerme. Ce ministre le fit nommer �
+     l'archidiaconat de Granade, lequel �tant en pays conquis; est � la
+     nomination du roi."
+
+Now, that Le Sage should have been acquainted with this fact, for fact
+it unquestionably is, does appear astonishing. Till the concordat of
+1753, the kings of Spain could only present to dignities in churches
+subject to the royal privilege, among which was this of Granada, by
+virtue of particular bulls issued at the time of its conquest. This is a
+fact, however, with which very few Spaniards were acquainted. Antonio de
+Pulgar, in his _Cronica de Los Reyes Catholicos_, c. 22, tells us that
+Isabella, "En el proueer de las yglesias que vacaron en su tiempo, ouo
+respecto tan recto, que pospuesta toda afficion siempre supplico al Papa
+por hombres generosos, y grandes letrados, y de vida honesta; lo que no
+se lee que con tanta diligencia ouiesse guardado ningun rey de los
+passados." Another remarkable passage, and to us almost conclusive, is
+the following--
+
+     "Je le menai au comte-duc, qui le re�ut tr�s poliment, et lui dit
+     qu'il s'�toit si bien conduit dans son gouvernement de la ville de
+     Valence, que le roi, le jugeant propre � remplir une plus grande
+     place, l'avoit nomm� � la viceroyaut� d'Aragon. D'ailleurs,
+     ajouta-t-il, cette dignit� n'est point au-dessus de votre
+     naissance, et la noblesse Aragonoise ne sauroit murmurer contre le
+     choix de la cour."
+
+This alludes to a dispute between the Spanish government and the
+Aragonese, which had continued from the days of Charles V. The Aragonese
+claimed either that the king himself should reside among them, or be
+represented by some person of the royal blood. Charles V. appointed, as
+viceroy of Aragon, his uncle, the Archbishop of Zaragoza, and then Don
+Fernando de Aragon, his cousin. Philip II. appointed a Castilian to that
+dignity. This produced great disturbances in Aragon, and the dispute
+lasted till 1692, when the Aragonese settled the matter by putting the
+Castilian viceroy, Inigo de Mendoza, to death. His successor was an
+Aragonese, Don Miguel de Luna, Conde de Morata, and he was succeeded by
+Don John of Austria, his brother. It is most improbable that M. Le Sage,
+whose knowledge of Spanish literature was very superficial, and whose
+ignorance of Spanish history was complete, should have understood this
+allusion. This, therefore, leads to the conclusion that it must have
+been taken from a Spanish manuscript.
+
+In conformity with this we find Mariana saying, in the days of Ferdinand
+and Isabella--"Los Aragoneses no querian recebir por Virrey a D. Ramon
+Folch, Conde de Cardona, que el rey tenia se�alado para este cargo;
+decian era contra sus fueros poner en el gobierno de su reyno hombre
+extrangero. Hobo demandas y respuestas, mas al fin el rey temporizo con
+ellos, y nombro por Virrey a su hijo D. Alonso de Aragon, Arzobispo de
+Zaragoza."
+
+Can any one doubt that the writer of the following passage had seen the
+spot he describes?
+
+     "Il me fit traverser une cour, et monter par un escalier fort
+     �troit � une petite chambre qui �toit tout an haut de la tour. Je
+     ne fus pas peu surpris, en entrant dans cette chambre, de voir sur
+     une table deux chandelles, qui bruloient dans des flambeaux de
+     cuivre, et deux couverts assez propres. Dans un moment, me dit
+     Tordesillas, on va nous apporter � manger: nous allons souper ici
+     tous deux. C'est ce reduit que je vous ai destin� pour logement.
+     Vous y serez mieux que dans votre cachot; vous verrez de votre
+     fen�tre les bords fleuris de l'Er�ma, et la vall�e delicieuse qui,
+     du pied des montagnes qui separent les deux Castilles, s'�tend
+     jusqu'� Coca. Je suis bien que vous serez d'abord peu sensible �
+     une si belle vue, mais quand le temps aura fait succeder une douce
+     m�lancolie � la vivacit� de votre douleur, vous prendrez plaisir �
+     promener vos regards sur des objets si agr�ables."
+
+These notices of reference, taken at random, are all adapted to the
+places at which they are found--the narrative leads to them by regular
+approximation, or they are suggested by the subject and occasion which
+it draws forth. To introduce a given story into the body of a writing
+without abruptness, or marks of unnatural transition,
+
+        "Ut per l�ve moventes,
+    Effundat junctura ungues."
+
+is, as Paley observes, one of the most difficult artifices of
+composition; and here are upwards of a hundred Spanish names,
+circumstances, and allusions, incorporated with the story written, as M.
+Neufchateau assures us, by a Frenchman concerning the court of Louis
+XIV. A line touching on truth in so many points, could never have been
+drawn accidentally; it is the pencil thrown luckily full upon the
+horse's mouth, and expressing the foam which the painter, with all his
+skill, could not represent without it. Let the reader observe how
+difficult Le Sage has found the task of connecting the anecdotes taken
+from Marcos de Obregon, and put into the mouth of Diego, with the main
+story. How awkward is this transition? "Le _seigneur_ Diego de La Fuente
+me raconta d'autres aventures encore, qui lui �toient arriv�es depuis;
+mais elles me semblent si peu dignes d'�tre rapport�es, que je les
+passerai sous silence."
+
+The next branch of the argument which we are called upon to consider,
+relates to the Spanish words in _Gil Blas_, which imply the existence of
+a Spanish manuscript. The names Juan, Pedro, often occur in Le Sage's
+work, and Pierre, Jean, are sometimes used in their stead. The word
+_Don_ is prefixed by the Spaniards to the Christian, and never to the
+surname, as Don Juan, Don Antonio, not Don Mariana, Don Cervantes. In
+France, _Dom_, its synonyme, is, on the contrary, prefixed to the
+surname--as Dom Mabillon, Don Calmet. Le Sage always adheres to the
+Spanish custom. The robber who introduces Gil Blas to the cavern, says,
+"Tenez, Dame Leonarde, voici un jeune gar�on," &c. Again, "On dressa
+dans le salon une grande table, et l'on me renvoya dans la cuisine, o�
+la _Dame_ Leonarde m'instruisit de ce que j'avais a faire.... Et comme
+depuis sa mort c'�toit la _Senora Leonarda_ qui avoit l'honneur de
+pr�senter le nectar � ces dieux infernaux," &c. This expression "Se�ora
+Leonarda," is much in favour of a Spanish original; why should not Le
+Sage have repeated the expression "Dame Leonarde," on which we have a
+few observations to offer, had it not been that he thought the word
+under his eyes at the moment would lend grace and vivacity to the
+narrative. A French writer would have said, "Tenez, Leonarde," or
+perhaps, "Tenez, Madame Leonarde;" but such a phrase as "Tenez, Dame
+Leonarde," in a French writer, can be accounted for only by the
+translation of "se�ora." So we have "la Se�ora Catalena," (7, 12)--"la
+Se�ora Sirena," (9, 7)--and "la Se�ora Mencia," (8, 10) of the French
+version, and instead of "une demoiselle," "une jeune dame," which is a
+translation of "se�orita." In giving an account of his projected
+marriage with the daughter of Gabriel Salero, Gil Blas says, (9,
+1)--"C'�toit un bon bourgeois qui �toit comme nous disons poli hasta
+porfiar. Il me pr�senta la Se�ora Eugenia, sa femme, et la jeune
+Gabriela, sa fille." Here are three Spanish idioms--"hasta porfiar,"
+which Le Sage thinks it necessary to explain, "la Se�ora Eugenia,"
+"Gabriela." Diego de la Fuente tells his friend, "J'avois pour ma�tre de
+cet instrument un vieux 'se�or escudero,' � qui je faisois la barbe. Il
+se nommoit Marcos D�bregon." A French author, instead of "se�or
+escudero," would have said, "vieux ecuyer;" a Spanish transcriber would
+have written "Marcos de Obregon." We have (x. 3, 11) "Se�or Caballero
+des plus lestes," "romances" instead of "romans," (1, 5,) "prado"
+instead of "pr�," twice, (4, 10; 7, 13.)
+
+Laura says--"Un jour il nous vint en fantaisie � Doroth�e et � moi
+d'aller voir joner les com�diens de Seville. Ils avaient affich� qu'ils
+representaient _la famosa comedia_, et Embajador de si mismo, de Lope de
+Vega Carpio.... En fin le moment que j'attendais �tant arriv�,
+c'est-�-dire, la fin de _la famosa comedia_, nous nous en all�mes." We
+have "hidalgo" instead of "gentilhomme" three times; "contador mayor"
+twice, once used by Chinchillo, again by the innkeeper at Suescas,
+"oidor" instead of "juge" or "membre de la cour royale," "escribano"
+instead of "notaire," (8, 9.) "Hospital de ni�os" instead of "hospice
+des enfans orphelins," "olla podrida" three times "marmalada de
+berengaria," (9, 4,) and "picaro" instead of "fripon," (4, 10, 12.)
+Scipio says, "un jour comme je passois aupr�s de l'�glise de los reyes."
+There is at Toledo a church named "San Juan de los Reyes." How could Le
+Sage, who never had been in Spain, know this fact? Gil Blas thus relates
+an event at Valencia--"Je m'en approchai pour apprendre pourquoi je
+voyois l� un si grand concours d'hommes et de femmes, et bient�t je fus
+au fait, en lisant ces paroles �crites en lettres d'or sur une table de
+marbre noir, qu'il-y avait audessus de la porte, '_La posada de los
+representantes_,' et les com�diens marquaient dans leur affiche qu'ils
+joueraient ce jour-l� pour la premi�re fois une trag�die nouvelle de Don
+Gabriel Triaguero." This passage is an attestation of the fact, that
+during the reign of Philip IV. the buildings of the Spanish provinces in
+which dramatic performances were represented were at the same time the
+residence, "posada," of the actors--a custom even now not altogether
+extinguished; but which Le Sage could only know through the medium of a
+Spanish manuscript. Gil Blas, imprisoned in the tower of Segovia, hears
+Don Gaston de Cavallos sing the following verses--
+
+    "Ayde nie un a�o _felice_
+    Parece un soplo ligero
+    Pero sin duda un instante
+    Es un siglo de tormento."
+
+Where did Le Sage find these verses, sweet, gracious, and idiomatic as
+they are? The use of the word "felice" for "feliz" is a poetical
+license, and displays more than a stranger's knowledge of Spanish
+composition. It has been said that Smollett has left many French words
+in his translation of Gil Blas, and that too strong an inference ought
+not to be drawn from the employment of Spanish phrases by Le Sage. But
+what are the words? Are they words in the mouth of every one, and such
+as a superficial dilettante might easily pick up; or do they, either of
+themselves or from the conjunctures in which they are employed, exhibit
+a consummate acquaintance with the dialect and habits of the people to
+which they refer? Besides, it should be remembered that French is a
+language far more familiar to well-educated people in England, than
+Spanish ever was to the French, and that Smollett had lived much in
+France; whereas Le Sage knew from books alone the language which he has
+employed with so much colloquial elegance and facility. We now turn to
+the phrases and expressions in French which Le Sage has manifestly
+translated.
+
+The first word which occurs in dealing with this part of the subject is
+"seigneur" as a translation for "se�or;" "seigneur" in France was not a
+substitute for "monsieur," which is the proper meaning of "se�or." On
+the use of the word "dame" we have already commented. Instead of Dame
+Leonarde and Dame Lorenzo Sephora, a French writer would have put
+"Madame" or "la cuisini�re," or "la femme de chambre," as the case might
+be. So the exclamation of the highwayman, "Seigneur passant," &c., must
+be a translation of "Se�or passagero." Describing the parasite at
+Pe�aflor, Gil Blas says, "le cavalier portait une longue rapi�re, et il
+s'approcha de moi d'un air empress�, _Seigneur_ �colier, me dit-il, je
+viens d'apprendre que vous �tes le _seigneur_ Gil Blas de Santillane.
+Je lui dis, _seigneur_ cavalier, je ne croyois pas que mon nom f�t connu
+� Pen�flor." "Le cavalier" means a man on horseback, which is not a
+description applicable to the parasite; "chevalier" is the French word
+for the member of a military order. "Cet homme," or "ce monsieur," would
+have been the expression of Le Sage if "este caballero" had not been in
+the manuscript to be copied. "Carillo" for "Camillo," "betancos" for
+"betangos," "rodillas" for "revilla;" and yet M. Le Sage is not
+satisfied with making his hero walk towards the Prado of Madrid, but
+goes further, and describes it as the "pr� de Saint Jerome"--Prado de
+Ste Geronimo, which is certainly more accurate. Again he speaks of "la
+Rue des Infantes" at Madrid, (8, 1)--"De los Infantos is the name of a
+street in that city--and in the same sentence names "une vieille dame
+Inesile Cantarille." Inesilla is the Spanish diminutive of Ines, and
+Cantarilla of Cantaro. The last word alludes to the expression "mozas de
+Cantaro," for women of inferior degree. Philip III. shuts up Sirena
+"dans la maison des repenties." This is also the name of a convent at
+Madrid, called "casa de las arrepentidas." But a still stronger argument
+in favour of the existence of a Spanish manuscript, is to be found in
+the passage which says that Lucretia, the repentant mistress of Philip
+IV., "quitte tout � coup le monde, et se ferme dans le monast�re de la
+_Incarnacion_;" that having been founded by Philip III. in compliance
+with the will of Do�a Margarita, his wife, it was reserved expressly for
+nuns connected in some way with the royal family of Spain; and that
+therefore Lucretia, having been the mistress of Philip IV., was entitled
+to become a member of it.
+
+"Nous aper�umes _un r�ligieux de l'ordre de Saint Domingue_, mont�,
+_contre l'ordinaire de ces bons p�res, sur une mauvaise mule_.{A} _Dieu
+soit lou�_, s'�cria le capitaine." In this sentence all the passages in
+Italics are of Spanish origin. "_Seigneur cavalier_, vous �tes bien
+heureux qu'on se soit adress� � moi plut�t qu'� un autre: je ne veux
+point d�crier mes confr�res: � _Dieu ne plaise_ que je fasse le moindre
+tort � leur r�putation: mais, entre nous, il n'y en a pas un qui ait de
+la conscience--_ils sont tous plus durs que des Juifs_. Je suis le seul
+fripier qui ait de la morale: je ne borne � un prix raisonable; je me
+contente de la livre pour sou--je veux dire du sou pour livre. _Gr�ces
+au ciel_, j'exerce rondement ma profession." Here we find "Seigneur
+cavalier," "� Dieu ne plaise," which is the common Spanish phrase, "no
+permita Dios," "Gr�ces an ciel," instead of "Dieu merci," from "Gracias
+a Dios." A little further we find the phrase "_Seigneur gentilhomme_,"
+which can only be accounted for as a translation of "Se�or hidalgo;"
+"gar�on de famille," (1, 17,) "b�n�fice simple," (11, 17) are neither of
+them French expressions. "The virtuous Jacintha," says Fabricio, "m�rite
+d'�tre la gouvernante du patriarche des Indes." Now, it is impossible
+that the existence of such a dignity as this should have been known at
+Paris. It was of recent creation, and had been the subject of much
+conversation at Madrid. "Gar�on de bien et d'honneur," (1, 2, 1,) "un
+mozo, hombre de bien y de honor." "Je servis un potage qu'on auroit pu
+pr�senter _au plus fameux directeur de Madrid_, et deux entr�es qui
+auroient eu de quoi piquer la sensualit� _d'un viceroi_." It is
+impossible not to see that the first of the phrases in italics is a
+translation "del director mas famoso de Madrid;" first, because a
+Frenchman would have used "c�l�bre," and secondly, because the word
+"director" in a different sense from that of confessor was unknown at
+Madrid. The allusion to the Viceroy, a functionary unknown to the French
+government, also deserves notice. The notaire, hastening to Cedillo,
+takes up hastily "son manteau et son chapeau." This infers a knowledge
+on the part of the writer that the Spanish scrivener never appeared,
+however urgent the occasion, without his "capa." We have the word
+"laboureurs" applied to substantial farmers, (1, 2, 7.) This is a
+translation of "labradores," to which the French word does not
+correspond, as it means properly, men dependent on daily labour for
+their daily bread. "J'ai fait �l�ver," says the schoolmaster of Olmedo,
+"un th�atre, sur lequel, Dieu aidant, je ferai r�pr�senter par mes
+_disciples_ une pi�ce que j'ai compos�e. Elle a pour titre les jeunes
+amours de Muley Bergentuf Roi de Moroi." "_Disciples_" is a translation
+of "discipulos." A French writer would have said "�l�ves." Again, the
+title of the Pedant's play is thoroughly Spanish. It was intended to
+ridicule the habit which prevailed in Spain, after the expulsion of the
+Moriscoes in 1610, of adapting for the stage Moorish habits and
+amusements, by making a stupid pedant in an obscure village, select them
+as the subject of his tragedy.
+
+Describing the insolence of the actors, Gil Blas says, "Bien loin de
+traiter d'excellence les seigneurs, elles ne leur donnoient pas m�me _de
+la seigneurie_." This would hardly be applicable to the manners of the
+French. The principal of Lucinde's creditors, "se nommoit Bernard
+Astuto, qui meritoit bien son nom." The signification of the name is
+clear in Spanish; but in French the allusion is totally without meaning.
+This probably escaped Le Sage in the hurry of composition, or it would
+have been easy to have removed so clear a mark of translation. The
+following mark is still stronger. Speaking of Simon, the bourgeois of
+Chelva, he says--"Certain Juif, qui s'est fait Catholique, mais dans le
+fond de l'�me il est encore _Juif comme Pilate_." Now, the lower classes
+of Spain perpetually fall into this error of calling Pilate a Jew; and
+this is a trait which could hardly have occurred to a foreign writer,
+however well acquainted with Spain, much less to a writer who had never
+set his foot in that country. Here we cannot help observing, that the
+whole scene from which this passage is taken is eminently Spanish. In
+Spain only was such a proceeding possible as the scheme for deprecating
+Simon, executed by Lucinda and Raphael. The character of the victim, the
+nature of the fraud, the absence of all suspicion which such proceedings
+would necessarily provoke in any other country, are as conclusive proofs
+of Spanish origin as moral evidence can supply. Count Guliano is found
+playing with an ape, "pour dormir _la siesta_." Lucretia says to Gil
+Blas, "Je vous rends de tr�s humbles gr�ces," "doy a usted muy umildes
+gracias." A French writer would have said, "Je vous remercie
+infiniment." Melendez is described as living "� la Porte du Soleil du
+coin de la Rue des Balustr�es," "esquina de la Calle de Cofreros." There
+is such an alley as this, but it is unknown to ninety-nine Spaniards in
+a hundred. Beltran Moscada tells Gil Blas, "Je vous reconnois bien,
+moi--nous avons jou� mille fois tous deux _� la Gallina ciega_." This Le
+Sage thinks it necessary to explain by a note, to inform his readers
+that it is the same as "Colin Maillard." From all these various phrases
+and expressions, scattered about in different passages of Gil Blas, and
+taken almost at random from different parts of the work, the conclusion
+that it was copied from a Spanish manuscript appears inevitable.
+
+Le Sage has named Sacedon, Buendia, Fuencarrat, Madrid, Campillo,
+Aragon, Penaflor, Castropot, Asturias; Salcedo, Alava; Villaflor,
+Cebreros, Avila; Tardajos, Kevilla, Puentedura, Burgos; Villar-de-saz;
+Almodovar, Cuen�a; Almoharin, Monroy, Estremadura; Adria, Gavia, Vera,
+Granada; Mondejar, Gualalajara; Vierzo, Ponferrada, Cacabelos, Leon;
+Calatrava, Castilblanco, Mancha; Chinchilla, Lorque, Murcia; Duenas,
+Palencia; Colmenar, Coca, Segovia; Carmona, Mairena, Sevilla; Cobisa,
+Galvez, Illescas, Loeches, Maqueda, Kodillas, Villarejo, Villarrubia,
+Toledo; Bunol, Chelva, Chiva; Gerica, Liria Paterna, Valencia;
+Ataquines, Benavente, Mansilla, Mojados, Olmedo, Penafiel, Puente de
+Duero, Valdestillas, Valladolid.
+
+The story of _Gil Blas_ contains the names of no less than one hundred
+and three Spanish villages and towns of inferior importance, many of
+them are unknown out of Spain--such as Albarracin, Antequera, Betanzos,
+Ciudad Real, Coria, Lucena, Molina, Mondonedo, Monzon, Solsona,
+Trujillo, Ubeda.
+
+There are also cited the names of thirteen dukes--Alba, Almeida,
+Braganza, Frias (condestable de Castilia,) Lerma, Medina-celi, Medina de
+Rioseco, (almirante de Castilia,) Medina-Sidonia, Medina de las Tarres
+(Marques de Toral,) Mantua, Osuna, Sanlucar la Mayor y Uceda. Eleven
+marquises--De Almenara, Carpia, Chaves, Laguardia, Leganes, Priego,
+Santacruz, Toral, Velez, Villa-real y Zenete. Eight condes--De Azumar,
+Galiano, Lemos, Montanos, Niebla, Olivares, Pedrosa y Polan. Of these
+four only are fictitious. It is remarkable also, that one title cited in
+_Gil Blas_, that of Admirante de Castilia, did not exist when Le Sage
+published his romance--Felipe V. having abolished it, to punish the
+holder of that dignity for having embraced the cause of the house of
+Austria. Nor are there wanting the names of persons celebrated in their
+day among the inhabitants of the Peninsula. Such are Fray Luis Aliago,
+confessor of Philip III., Archimandrite of Sicily, and inquisitor-general,
+Don Rodrigo Calderon, secretary of the king, Calderon de la Barca,
+Antonio Carnero, secretary of the king, Philip IV., Cervantes, Geronimo
+de Florencia, Jesuit preacher of Philip IV., Fernando de Gamboa, one of
+the gentlemen of his bedchamber, Luis de Gongora, A�a de Guevarra, his
+nurse, Maria de Guzman, only daughter of Olivarez, Henry Philip de
+Guzman, his adopted son, Baltasar de Zuniga, uncle of Olivarez, Lope de
+Vega Carpio, Luis Velez de Guevarra, Juana de Velasco, making in all
+nineteen persons. There are the names of not only thirty-one families of
+the highest class in Spain, as Guzman, Herrera, Mendoza, Acuna, Avila,
+Silva, &c., but twenty-five names belonging to less illustrious, but
+still distinguished families; and twenty-nine names really Spanish, but
+applied to imaginary characters. This makes a list of eighty-five names,
+which it seems impossible for any writer acquainted only with the lighter
+parts of Spanish literature to have accumulated. Nor should it be
+forgotten that there are forty-five names, intended to explain the
+character of those to whom they are given, like Mrs Slipslop and Parson
+Trulliber, retained by Gil Blas, notwithstanding the loss of their
+original signification. Doctor Andros don A�ibal de Chinchilla, Alcacer,
+Apuntador, Astuto, Azarini, Padre Alejos y Don Abel, Buenagarra,
+Brutandof, Campanario Chilindron, Chinchilla, Clarin, Colifichini, Cordel,
+Coscolina, Padre Crisostomo, Doctor Cuchillo, Descomulgado, Deslenguado,
+Escipion, Forero, Guyomar, Ligero, Majuelo, Mascarini, Melancia, Mogicon,
+Montalban, Muscada, Nisana, Doctor Oloroso, Doctor Oquetos, Penafiel,
+Pinares, Doctor Sangrado, Stheimbach, Samuel Simon, Salero, Talego, Touto,
+Toribio, Triaquero, Ventolera, Villaviciosa, are all names of this sort.
+Who but a Spaniard, then, was likely to invent them? Were there no other
+argument, the case for Spain might almost safely be rested on this issue.
+But this is not all, since the mistakes, orthographical and geographical,
+which abound in the French edition of _Gil Blas_, carry the argument
+still further, and place it beyond the reach of reasonable contradiction.
+The reader will observe, that much of the question depends upon the fact,
+admitted on all sides, that Le Sage did not transcribe his version from
+any printed work, but from a manuscript. Had Le Sage merely inserted
+stories here and there taken from Spanish romances, his claims as an
+original writer would hardly be much shaken by their discovery, supposing
+the plot, with which they were skilfully interwoven, and the main bulk
+and stamina of the story, to be his own. But where the errors are such as
+can only be accounted for by mistakes, not of the press, but of the
+copies of a manuscript, and are fully accounted for in that manner--where
+they are so thickly sown, as to show that they were not errors made by a
+person with a printed volume before his eyes, but by a person deciphering
+a manuscript written in a language of which he had only a superficial
+acquaintance, no candid enquirer will hesitate as to the inference to
+which such facts lead, and by which alone they can be reconciled with the
+profound and intimate knowledge of Spanish literature, habits, and
+manners, to which we have before adverted. The innkeeper of Pe�aflor is
+named _Corcuelo_ in the French version, an appellation utterly without
+meaning. The real word was _Corzuelo_, a diminutive from _corzo_, which
+carries a very pointed allusion to the character of the person. It was
+usual to write instead of the _z_--_c_ with a cedilla, and this was
+probably the origin of the mistake. The innkeeper of Burgos is called in
+the French text _Manjuelo_, which is not Spanish, and is equally
+unmeaning. The original undoubtedly was _Majuelo_, the diminutive of
+_Majo_, which is very significant of the class to which the person
+bearing the name belonged. The person to whom Gil Blas applies for a
+situation at Valladolid, is called in the French text _Londona_. The real
+word is Londo�o, the name of a village near Ordu�a, in Biscay. _Inesile_
+is the name given to the niece of Jacinta. This is instead of _Inesilla_,
+and corresponds with the French Agn�s. Castel Blargo is used for Castel
+Blanco. Rodriguez says to his master, "Je ne touche pas un marav�_dis_ de
+vos finances." The word in the manuscript was _marivedi_. Le Sage has
+used the plural for the singular. "Seguier," a proper name, is used for
+"Seguiar." "De la Ventileria" is the unmeaning name given to a frivolous
+coxcomb, instead of "De la Ventilera." Le Sage, speaking of the same
+person, sometimes calls her "Do�a _K_imena de Guzman," and sometimes
+"Do�a _Ch_imena," a manifest proof that "Do�a _X_imena" was written in
+the work from which he transcribed; as the French substitute sometimes
+_k_ and sometimes _ch_, for the Spanish _x_.
+
+  Pedros is used for Pedroga, (the name of a noble family.)
+  Moyades for Miagades, (a village.)
+  Zendero for Zenzano, (do.)
+  Salceda for Salcedo, (do.)
+  Calderone for Calderon.
+  Oliguera for Lahiguera.
+  Niebles for Niebla.
+  Jutella for Antella.
+  Leiva for Chiva.
+
+After Gil Blas's promotion, he says that his haughty colleague treated
+him with more respect; and this is expressed in such a way as to show
+that Le Sage was ignorant of Spanish etiquette, and did not understand
+thoroughly the meaning of what he transcribed. "Il Don Rodrigo de
+Calderone ne m'appela plus que Seigneur de Santillane, lui qui
+jusqu'alors ne m'avoit trait� que de _vous_, sans jamais se servir du
+terme de seigneurie," supposing the meaning equivalent--whereas, in
+fact, though Gil Blas might complain of not being addressed in the third
+person, which would draw with it the use of se�or, and was a common form
+of civility--it would have been ridiculous to represent him as addressed
+by a name, se�oria, to which none but people of high station and
+illustrious rank were entitled. But Le Sage supposed that every one
+addressed as se�or, might also be spoken of by the term se�oria; a
+mistake against which a very moderate knowledge of Spanish usages would
+have guarded him. We may illustrate this by a quotation from Navarete:--
+
+     "En este estado enviaron a decir a Magallanes.... Que si se queria
+     avenir a lo que cumpliese, al servicio de S. M. estarian a lo que
+     les mandase, y que si hasta entonces le dieron tratamiento de
+     merced, _en adelante se lo darian de senoria_, y le besarian pies y
+     manos."
+
+This was intended as a proof of the greatest reverence by the mutineers,
+whom, notwithstanding this submission, Magallanes took an early
+opportunity to destroy.
+
+Gil Blas relates the absurd resolution of the Conde Duque D'Olivarez, to
+adopt the son of a person with whom he, among others, had intrigued as
+his own. This anecdote was well known in Spain. The supposed father of
+this youth was an alcalde de corte, called Valcancel; and _he_ had been
+rivaled by an alguazil. The son was called in the early part of his life
+Julian Valcancel. When adopted by Olivarez, he took the name of Eurique
+Felipe de Guzman, which the people said ought to be exchanged for that
+of Del Alguazil del Alcalde de Corte. Olivarez divorced him from the
+woman to whom he was certainly married, and obliged him to marry the
+daughter of the Duca de Frias. He was called by the people of Madrid a
+man with two names, the son of three fathers, and the husband of two
+wives. Le Sage, by substituting the name of Valdeasar for that of
+Valcancel, proves that he was ignorant of the whole transaction. In the
+_auto da f�_ which Gil Blas sees at Toledo, and in which his old friends
+terminate their adventures in so tragical a manner--some of the guilty
+are represented as wearing _carochas_ on their heads. This is a word
+altogether without meaning; the real word was _corozas_, a cap worn by
+criminals as a badge of degradation.
+
+Another mistake deserves attention, as supplying the strongest proof of
+an inaccurate transcriber. "J'esp�re," says Ma�tre Joachim to his
+master, "que je vous servirai tant�t un ragout digne d'un _can_tador
+mayor." The word was not "_can_tador," but "_con_tador mayor," the
+"ministro de hacienda," or chancellor of the exchequer; a situation
+under a despotic government of the highest dignity and opulence. So Don
+Annibal de Chinchilla exclaims--"Me croit-elle un contador mayor," when
+repelling a demand of a rapacious prostitute. But Le Sage mistook the
+_o_ of his manuscript for an _a_, and turned a phrase very intelligible
+into nonsense. We now come to the passage which M. Neufchateau quotes as
+decisive in favour of Le Sage's claims. It certainly was to be found in
+no Spanish manuscript.
+
+     "Don Louis nous mena chez un jeune gentilhomme de ses amis, qu'on
+     appeloit don Gabriel de Pedros. Nous y pass�mes le reste de la
+     journ�e; nous y soup�mes m�me, et nous n'en sort�mes que sur les
+     deux heures apr�s minuit pour nous en retourner au logis. Nous
+     avions peut-�tre fait la moiti� du chemin, lorsque nous
+     rencontr�mes sous nos pieds dans la rue deux hommes �tendus par
+     terre. Nous juge�mes que c'�toient des malheureux qu'on venoit
+     d'assassiner, et nous nous arret�mes pour les secourir, s'il en
+     �toit encore temps. Comme nous cherchions � nous instruire, autant
+     que l'obscurit� de la nuit nous le pouvoit permettre, de l'�tat o�
+     ils se trouvoient, la patrouille arriva. Le commandant nous prit
+     d'abord pour des assassins, et nous fit environner par ses gens;
+     mais il eut meilleure opinion de nous lorsqu'il nous eut entendus
+     parler, et qu'� la faveur d'une lanterne sourde, il vit les traits
+     de Mendoce et de Pacheco. Ses archers, par son ordre, examin�rent
+     les deux hommes que nous nous imaginions avoir �t� tu�s; et il se
+     trouva que c'�toit un gros licencie avec son valet, tous deux pris
+     de vin, ou plut�t ivres-morts. 'Messieurs,' s'�cria un des archers,
+     'je reconnois ce gros vivant. Eh! c'est le seigneur licencie
+     Guyomar, recteur de notre universit�. Tel que vous le voyez, c'est
+     un grand personnage, un g�nie superieur. Il n'y a point de
+     philosophe qu'il ne terrasse dans une dispute; il a un flux de
+     bouche sans pareil. C'est dommage qu'il aime un peu trop de vin, le
+     proc�s, et la grisette. Il revient de souper de chez son Isabella,
+     o�, par malheur, son guide s'est enivre comme lui. Ils sont tombes
+     l'un et l'autre dans le ruisseau. Avant que le bon licencie fut
+     recteur, cela lui arrivoit assez souvent. Les honneurs, comme vous
+     voyez, ne changent pas toujours les moeurs.' Nous laiss�mes ces
+     ivrognes entre les mains de la patrouille, qui eut soin de les
+     porter chez eux. Nous regagn�mes notre h�tel, et chacun ne songea
+     qu'� se reposer."
+
+Now this story pierces to the heart the theory which M. Neufchateau
+cites it in order to establish. It is an anecdote incorporated by Le
+Sage with the rest of the work; and how well it tallies with a Spanish
+story, and the delineation of Spanish manners, let the reader judge. The
+rector of the university of Salamanca was required to unite a great
+variety of qualifications. In the first place, his birth must have been
+noble for several generations; not perhaps as many as a canon of
+Strasburg was required to trace, but more than it was possible for the
+great majority even of well born gentlemen to produce. The situation,
+indeed, was generally conferred upon the members of the second class of
+nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with
+royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop
+in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His
+morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified
+ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the
+streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but
+from habitual indulgence in a vice which, throughout Spain, is
+considered infamous, and which none but those who are below the
+influence of public opinion, and even those but in rare instances, are
+ever known to practise. To call a man a drunkard in Spain, is considered
+a worse insult than to call him a thief; and the effect of the story is
+the same as if a person, pretending to describe English manners, were to
+represent the Lord Chancellor as often in custody on a charge of
+shoplifting, and permitted, in consideration of his abilities, still to
+remain in office and exercise the duties of his station.
+
+The principal topographical errors are the following:--Do�a Mencia names
+to Gil Blas two places on the road near Burgos--these she calls Gofal
+and Rodillas; the real names are Tardagal and Revilla, (1, 11;) Ponte de
+Mula is put for Puenta Duro, (1, 13;) Luceno for Luyego; Villardera for
+Villar del Sa, (5, 1;) Almerim for Almoharia, (5, 1;) Sliva for Chiva,
+(7, 1;) Obisa for Cobisa, (10, 10;) Sinas for Linas; Mililla for
+Melilla; Arragon for Aragon. Describing his journey from Madrid to
+Oviedo, Gil Blas says they slept the first night at Alcala of Henares,
+and the second at Segovia. Now Alcala is not on the road from Madrid to
+Segovia, nor is it possible to travel in one day from one of these
+cities to the other--probably Galapagar was the word mistaken. Penafiel
+is mentioned as lying on the road from Segovia to Valladolid, (10, 1;)
+this is for Portillo. Now, if Le Sage had invented the story, and
+clothed it with names of Spanish cities and villages, taken from
+_printed_ books, can any one suppose that he could have fallen into all
+these errors?
+
+A thread of Spanish history winds through the whole story of _Gil Blas_,
+and keeps every circumstance in its place; therefore the date of the
+hero's birth may be fixed with the greatest precision. He tells us he
+was fifty-eight at the death of the Count Duke of Olivarez, that is,
+1646; Gil Blas was therefore born 1588, and this corresponds altogether
+with different allusions, which show that when the romance was written
+the war between Spain and Portugal was present to the author's mind, and
+the subject of his constant animadversion. Portugal, as our readers may
+recollect, became subject to the Spanish yoke in 1580, the Duke of
+Braganza was raised to the throne of that kingdom in 1640; and the war
+to which that event gave rise was not terminated till 1668; when Charles
+II. acknowledged Alphonso VI. as the legitimate ruler of Portugal. That
+when the work was written the war between Spain and Portugal continued,
+may be inferred from the fact, that the mention of Portugal is
+perpetually accompanied with some allusion to hostilities which were
+then carried on between the two countries. The romance must therefore
+have been written between the disgrace of the Count Duke, 1646, and the
+recognition of Portuguese independence, 1668. But we may contract the
+date of the work within still narrower limits. It could not have been
+written before 1654, as the works of Don Augustini Moreto, none of which
+were published before 1654, are cited in it--it is not of later date,
+because there is no allusion in any part of the work to the death of
+Philip IV., to the peace of the Pyrenees, or to any other ministers but
+Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez. Don Louis de Haro, Marquis of Carpio, and
+Duke of Montora, is not mentioned moreover. Gil Blas, describing himself
+to Laura, says that he is the only son of Fernando de Ribera, who fell
+in a battle on the frontiers of Portugal fifteen years before. This is a
+prolepsis; for the battle was fought in 1640. But this manifest
+anachronism, which entirely escaped Le Sage, was intended by the author
+as an autograph, a sort of "chien de Bassano," to point out the real
+date of the work. Bearing in mind, then, that Gil Blas was born in 1588;
+that Portugal was annexed to Spain in 1580 without a struggle; and
+remained subject to its dominion till 1640; let us consider the
+anachronisms in which Le Sage has plunged himself, partly through his
+ignorance of Spanish history, partly from the attempt to interpolate
+other Spanish novels with the main body of the work he has translated.
+One of these is confessed by Le Sage himself, and occurs in the story of
+Don Pompeio de Castro, inserted in the first volume. Don Pompeio is
+supposed to relate this story at Madrid in 1607; in it a king of
+Portugal is spoken of at that time as being an independent sovereign.
+Now in the third volume of the seventh book, in the year 1608, Pedro
+Zamora tells Laura, with whom he has eloped, that they were in security
+in Portugal, a foreign kingdom, though actually subject to the crown of
+Spain. Now this is quite correct, and here Le Sage's attention was
+called to the anachronism above cited in his preceding volume, which he
+undertakes to correct in another edition--a promise which he fulfilled
+by the clumsy expedient of transferring the scene from Portugal to
+Poland. But how comes it to pass that Le Sage, who singles out with such
+painful anxiety the error to which we have adverted, suffers others of
+equal importance to pass altogether unnoticed? For instance, in the
+twelfth book, eighth chapter, Olivarez speaks of a journey of Philip IV.
+to Zaragoza; which took place indeed, but not until two years after the
+disgrace of Olivarez. Cogollos, speaking in 1616, alludes to a
+circumstance connected with the revolt of Portugal in 1640; Olivarez,
+sixteen months afterwards, mentions the same circumstance, saying to
+Cogollos--"Your patron, though related to the Duke of Braganza, had, I
+am well assured, no share in his revolt." In 1607, Gil Blas, being the
+servant of Don Bernardo de Castel Blanco, says, that some suppose his
+master to be a spy of the king of Portugal, a personage who at that time
+did not exist. Now, if Le Sage intended to leave to posterity a lasting
+and unequivocal proof of his plagiarism, how could he do so more
+effectually than by dwelling on one anachronism as an error which he
+intended to correct, in a work swarming in every part with others
+equally flagrant, of which he takes no notice? We have mentioned these
+mistakes, particularly as being mistakes into which the original author
+had fallen, and which, as his object was not to give an exact relation
+of facts, he probably disregarded altogether. And here again we must
+repeat our remark, that these perpetual allusions indicate a writer not
+afraid of exposing himself by irretrievable blunders, and certain of
+being understood by those whom he addressed. A Spaniard writing for
+Spaniards, would of course take it for granted that his countrymen were
+acquainted with those very facts and allusions which Le Sage sometimes
+formally endeavours to explain, and sometimes is unable to detect; while
+a writer conscious, as the French author was, of a very imperfect
+acquaintance with the language and usages of Spain, would never indulge
+in those little circumstantial touches which a Spaniard could not help
+inserting.
+
+We now come to errors of Le Sage himself. Do�a Mencia speaks of her
+first husband dying in the service of the king of Portugal, five or six
+years after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Events are
+described as taking place in the time of Philip II., under the title of
+Le Mariage de Vengeance, which happened three hundred years before, at
+the time of the Sicilian Vespers, 1283. Gil Blas, after his release from
+the tower of Segovia, tells his patron, Alonzo de Leyva, that four
+months before he held an important office under the Spanish crown; while
+he tells Philip IV. that he was six months in prison at Segovia. But the
+following very remarkable error almost determines the question, as it
+discovers demonstrably the mistake of a transcriber. Scipio, returning
+to his master in April 1621, informs Gil Blas that Philip III. is dead;
+and proceeds to say that it is rumoured that the Cardinal Duke of Lerma
+has lost his office, is forbidden to appear at court, and that Gaspar de
+Guzman, Count of Olivarez, is prime minister. Now, the Cardinal Duke of
+Lerma had lost his office since the 4th October 1618, three years before
+the death of Philip III. How is this mistake explained? By the
+transcriber's omission of the words "Duke of Uzeda, son of," which
+should precede the cardinal duke, &c., and which makes the sentence
+historically correct; for the Duke of Uzeda was the son of the Cardinal
+Duke of Lerma, did succeed his father, and was turned out of office at
+the death of Philip III., when he was succeeded by Olivarez. If there
+was no other argument but this, it would serve materially to invalidate
+Le Sage's claims to originality; as the omission of these words makes
+nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes
+the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in
+Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in
+other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of
+the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism
+can ever be said "digito monstrari et dicier hic est," it is here.
+
+If we consider the effect of all these accumulated circumstances--the
+travelling on mules, the mode of extorting money, the plunder of the
+prisoners by the jailer, the rosary with its large beads carried by the
+Spanish Tartuffe, instead of the "haire and the discipline" mentioned by
+Moli�re, the description of the hotels of Madrid, the inferior condition
+of surgeons, the graceful bearing of the cloak, the notary's inkstand,
+the posada in which the actors slept as well as acted, the convent in
+which Philip's mistress is placed with such minute propriety, the
+Gallina Ciega, the lane in Madrid, the dinner hour of the clerks in the
+minister's office, the knowledge of the ecclesiastical rights of the
+crown over Granada, and of the Aragonese resistance to a foreign
+viceroy, the number of words left in the original Spanish, and of others
+which betray a Spanish origin, the names of cities, villages, and
+families, that rise spontaneously to the hand of the writer, and the
+perpetual mistakes which their enumeration occasions, among which we
+will only here specify that of C_a_ntador for C_o_ntador, and the
+omission of the words "Duc d'Uzeda," which can alone set right a
+flagrant anachronism--if we consider the effect of all these
+circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result
+which such a complication of probabilities conspires to fortify.
+
+The objections stated by M. Neufchateau to this overwhelming mass of
+evidence, utterly destructive as it is to the hypothesis of which he was
+the advocate, are so feeble and captious, that they hardly deserve the
+examination which Llorente, in the anxiety of his patriotism, has
+condescended to bestow on then. M. Neufchateau objects to the minute
+references on which many of Llorente's arguments are built; but he
+should remember that, in an examination of this sort, it is "one thing
+to be minute, and another to be precarious;" one thing to be oblique,
+and another to be fantastical. On such occasions the more powerful the
+microscope is that the critic can employ, the better; not only because
+all suspicion of contrivance or design is thereby further removed, but
+because proofs, separately trifling, are, when united, irresistible; and
+the circumstantial evidence to which courts of justice are compelled, by
+the necessity of human affairs, to recur, in matters where the lives and
+fortunes of individuals are at stake, is not only legitimate, but
+indispensable, before tribunals which have not the same means of
+investigation at their command. In this, however, the evidence is as
+full, positive, and satisfactory as any evidence not appealing to the
+senses or mathematical demonstration for its truth, can possibly be; and
+any one in active life who was to forbear from acting upon it, would
+deserve to be treated as a lunatic. Let us, however, consider the
+admissions of M. Neufchateau. He admits, 1st, That Le Sage was never in
+Spain. 2dly, Le Sage, in 1735, acknowledged the chronological error into
+which he had fallen, from inserting the story of Don Pompeyo de Castro,
+and announced his intention to correct it. 3dly, He allows, in 1724,
+when the third volume of _Gil Blas_ was published, Le Sage annexed to it
+the Latin distich, implying that the work was at an end--
+
+    "Inveni portum, spes et fortuna, valete;
+    Sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios."
+
+He allows, therefore, that the publication of the fourth volume, eleven
+years after the third volume of _Gil Blas_ was published, was as far
+from the original intention of the author as it was on the expectation
+of the public. 4thly, That, from the introduction of the Duke of Lerma
+on the stage at the close of the work, the history of Spain is adhered
+to with exact fidelity. 5thly, He allows that the description of Spanish
+inns, (10, 12,) is taken from the "Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon."
+6thly, He allows that the novel of "Le Mariage de Vengeance," related
+by Do�a Elvira, is inconsistent with all the rest of the story of _Gil
+Blas_. The anachronisms in which Le Sage is entangled, by applying a
+story to the seventeenth century that relates to the thirteenth, prove
+his ignorance of Spanish history. On this M. Neufchateau remarks as
+usual, that no Spaniard would have fallen into such an error. True; but
+how does it happen that the person making it is so intimately acquainted
+with the topography and habits of Spain? and how can this contradiction
+be solved, but by supposing that Le Sage incorporated a Spanish story
+which caught his fancy with the manuscript before him? 7thly, He allows
+that the story of Do�a Laura de Guzman is taken from a Spanish comedy
+entitled, "Todo es enredos amor y el diablo son las mugeres." 8thly, He
+allows that the expression, "et je promets de vous faire tirer pied ou
+aile du premier ministre,"{B} is not French; it is in fact the
+translation of a Spanish proverb, "Agarrar pata o alon." 9thly, He
+admits that the intimate acquaintance with the personal history of the
+Count Duke, displayed by Le Sage, is astonishing. 10thly, He admits that
+the stories of--
+
+Do�a Mencia de Mosquera, contained in 1st book, 11th, 12th, 13th, and
+14th chapters,
+
+  Of the story of Diego de la Fuente, contained in the 2d book,
+                    7th chapter,
+     --           Don Bernardo de Castelblanco, contained in the 2d book,
+                    1st chapter,
+     --           Don Pompeyo de Castro, contained in the 2d book, 7th
+                    chapter,
+     --           Do�a Aurora de Guzman, contained in the 4th book, 2d, 3d,
+                    5th, and 6th chapters,
+     --           Matrimonio por Venganza, contained in the 4th book, 4th
+                    chapter,
+     --           Do�a Serafina de Polan and Don Alfonso de Leiva,
+                    contained in 10th book,
+     --           Rafael and Lucinda, contained in 5th book, 1st chapter,
+     --           Samuel Simon en Chelva, contained in 6th book, 1st
+                    chapter,
+     --           Laura, contained in 7th book, 7th chapter,
+     --           Don A�ibal de Chinchilla, contained in 7th book, 12th
+                    chapter,
+     --           Valerio de Luna and Inesilla Cantarilla, contained in
+                    8th book, 1st chapter,
+     --           Andres de Tordesillas, Gaston de Cogollos, and Elena de
+                    Galisteo, contained in 9th book, 4th, 11th, and 13th
+                    chapters,
+     --           Scipio, contained in 10th book, 10th, 11th, and 12th
+                    chapters,
+     --           Laura and Lucrecia, contained in 12th book, 1st chapter,
+     --           And the Histories of Lerma and Olivarez, contained in
+                    11th book, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th, 13th; and
+                    2d book, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th,
+                    12th, and 13th chapters.
+
+Composing more than two-thirds of _Gil Blas_--are taken from the
+Spanish. Such are the admissions of Le Sage's advocates.
+
+Even after these important deductions, there remains enough to found a
+brilliant reputation. To this remainder, however, Le Sage is not
+entitled. It is, we trust, proved to every candid reader, that, with the
+exception of one anecdote, entertaining in itself, but betraying the
+greatest ignorance of Spanish manners, two or three allusions to the
+current scandal and topics of the day, and the insertion of several
+novels avowedly translated from other Spanish writers; all the merit of
+Le Sage consists in dividing a manuscript placed by his friend, the Abb�
+de Lyonne, in his possession, into two stories--one of which was _Gil
+Blas_, and the other, confessed by himself to be a translation and
+published long after the former, was the _Bachelier de Salamanque_. To
+the argument of chronological error, the sole answer which M.
+Neufchateau condescends to give is, that they are incomprehensible; and
+on his hypothesis he is right. As to the Spanish words and phrases
+employed in _Gil Blas_, the names of villages, towns, and families which
+occur in it, he observes that these are petty circumstances--so they
+are, and for that very reason the argument they imply is irresistible.
+The story of the examination of Gaspar, the servant of Simon, in the
+Inquisition scene, is gravely urged by M. Neufchateau as a proof that
+the writer was a Frenchman, as no Spaniard would dare to attack the
+Inquisition. This is strange confusion. Not a word is uttered against
+the Inquisition in the scene. Some impostors disguise themselves in the
+dress of inquisitors to perpetrate a fraud. If a French novel describe
+two or three swindlers, assuming the garb of members of the old
+Parliament of Paris in execution of their design, is this an attack on
+the Parliament of Paris? Is the "Beaux' Stratagem" an attack on our army
+and peerage? The argument, however, may be retorted; for had a Frenchman
+been the author of the story, it is more than probable that he would
+have introduced some attack upon the Inquisition, and quite certain that
+the characters brought forward would have deviated from the strict
+propriety they now preserve. Some confusion would have been made among
+them--an error which M. Neufchateau, in the few lines he has written
+upon the subject, has not been able to avoid. We may add that this whole
+scene was printed in Spanish, under the eye of the Inquisition, without
+any interference on the part of that venerable body, who, though
+tolerably quick-sighted in such matters, were not, it should seem, aware
+of the attack upon them which M. Neufchateau has been sagacious enough
+to discover. To the argument drawn from the geographical blunders, M.
+Neufchateau mutters that they are excusable in a writer who had never
+been in Spain. The question, how such a writer came wantonly to incur
+them, he leaves unanswered. M. Neufchateau asserts, that there is in
+Spanish no proverb that corresponds to the French saying, "A quelque
+chose le malheur est bon." But a comedy was written in the time of
+Philip IV., entitled, "No hay man que por bien no venga." He argues that
+_Gil Blas_ is not the work of a Spaniard, because it does not, like _Don
+Quixote_, abound with proverbs; by a parity of reasoning, he might infer
+_The Silent Lady_ was not written by an Englishman; as there is no
+allusion to Falstaff in it.
+
+But it may be said, if Le Sage was so unscrupulous as to appropriate to
+himself the works of another writer in _Gil Blas_, how came he to
+acknowledge the _Bachelier de Salamanque_ as a translation?
+
+This is a fair question, but the answer we can give is satisfactory. The
+originals of all his translations, except _Gil Blas_ and the _Bachelier
+de Salamanque_, were printed; and therefore any attempt at wholesale
+plagiarism must have been immediately detected. The _Bachelier de
+Salamanque_, it is true, was in manuscript; but it had been long in the
+possession of the Marquis de Lerma and his son, before it became the
+property of Le Sage; and although tolerably certain that it had never
+been diligently perused, Le Sage could not be sure that it had not
+attracted superficial notice, and that the name was not known to many
+people. Now, by eviscerating the _Bachelier de Salamanque_ of its most
+entertaining anecdotes, and giving them a different title, and then
+publishing the mutilated copy of a work, the name of which, with the
+outline of its story, was known to many people as an acknowledged
+translation, he took the most obvious means of disarming all suspicion
+of plagiarism, and setting, as it seems he did, on a wrong track the
+curiosity of enquirers. How came the original manuscript not to be
+printed by its author? Because it could not be printed with impunity
+within the jurisdiction of the Spanish monarchy: the allusions to the
+abuses of the court and the favourites of the day are so obvious--the
+satire upon the imbecility of the Spanish government so keen and
+biting--the personal descriptions of Philip III. and Philip IV. so
+exact--the corruption of its ministers of justice, and the abuses
+practised in its prisons, branded in terms so lively and vehement--the
+attacks upon the influence of the clergy, their hypocrisy, their
+ambition, and their avarice, so frequent and severe--that while Philip
+IV. and Don John of Austria, the fruit of his intrigue with the actress
+Marie Calderon, so carefully pointed out, were still alive, and before
+the generation to which it alludes had passed away, its publication, in
+Spain at least, was impossible. The _Bachelier de Salamanque_ was not
+published for the same reason; and for the same reason, even in a
+country with perhaps more pretensions to freedom than Spain possessed,
+no one has yet acknowledged himself the writer of _Junius_. But why do
+you not produce the Spanish manuscript, and set the question at rest?
+exclaims with much _na�vet�_ M. Neufchateau. Does such an argument
+deserve serious refutation? That is, why do not you Spaniards produce a
+manuscript given to one Frenchman by another at Paris, in the 18th
+century, which of course, if our theory be true, he had the strongest
+temptation to destroy? Rather may the Spaniards ask, why do not _you_
+produce the original manuscript of the _Bachelier de Salamanque_, which
+would overthrow at least one portion of our hypothesis?
+
+The object of _Gil Blas_ is to exhibit a vivid representation of the
+follies and vices of the successive administrations of Lerma, Uzeda, and
+Olivarez; to point out the actual state of the drama in Spain under the
+reign of Philip IV., who, indolent as he was, possessed the taste of a
+true Spaniard for dramatic representation; to criticise the absurd
+system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of
+justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders
+and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and
+inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the
+towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found
+shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages
+of their violence--in short, to hold up every species of national error,
+and every weakness of national folly, to public obloquy and derision. In
+dwelling upon such topics the writer will, of course, describe scenes
+and characters common to every state of civilized society. The broad and
+general features of the time-serving courtier, of the servile coxcomb,
+of the rapacious mistress, of the expecting legatee, the frivolous man
+of fashion, and the still more frivolous pedant, will be the same,
+whatever be the country in which the scene is laid, and by whatever
+names they happen to be distinguished. France had, no doubt, her
+Sangrados and Ochetos, her Matthias de Silva and Rodrigo, her Lauras and
+her Archbishops of Granada.
+
+    "Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,
+    Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;
+    Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
+    Some flying stroke, alone can hit 'em right."
+
+Where the touches are more exact and delicate, where the strokes are
+laid on with the painful labour of a Flemish pencil, where the business
+and the bosoms of men are addressed more directly, there it is we shall
+find proofs of the view and purpose of the author; such traits are the
+key with the leather strap that verified the judgment of Sancho's
+kinsmen. To what purpose should a Frenchman, writing in the time of
+Louis XIV., censure the rapacity of innkeepers, and the wretchedness of
+their extorted accommodation, when France, from the time of Chaucer to
+the present hour, has been famous for the civility of the one and the
+convenience of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were
+to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns
+unexplored by a negligent administration, in which bandits found a
+refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature
+of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and
+fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the
+severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is
+perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste
+began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious,
+inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to
+ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less
+ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point
+of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing
+could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be
+attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of
+genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When _Gil Blas_
+was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the
+fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste
+of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the
+master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the
+vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, F�n�lon, and
+Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of
+European literature.
+
+Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national
+prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one
+were to affirm that the _Adelphi_ of Terence was not a translation from
+Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater
+authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for
+proselytes. Let us see what he might allege--he might urge that Terence
+had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on
+this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus
+as his original--he might insist that Syrus could only have been the
+slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our
+notions of a Roman pander, that �schinus was the picture of a dissolute
+young patrician--in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian
+drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and
+society; nay more, he might insist on the marriage of Micio at the close
+of the drama, as Neufchateau does upon the drunkenness of Guyomar, as
+alluding to some anecdote of the day, and at any rate as the admitted
+invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of
+Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed;
+he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the
+Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the
+names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of
+Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the
+administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. All this
+such a reasoner might do, and all this M. Neufchateau has done. But
+would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man
+of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the
+whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent
+translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy, that his language
+in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not
+Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he
+would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a
+fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish
+servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome,
+at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of
+what value were such broad and general features common to a species,
+when the fidelity of an individual likeness was in question? He would
+say, that the incident quoted as a proof of originality, served only, by
+its repugnance to Grecian manners, and its inferiority to the work in
+which it was inserted, to prove that the rest was the production of
+another writer. He would quote the translations from fragments still
+extant, which the work, exquisite as it is, contains, as proofs of a
+still more beautiful original. Lastly, he would cite the "Dimidiate
+Menander" of C�sar, as a proof of the opinion entertained of his genius
+by the great writers of his own country; and when he had done this, he
+might enquire with confidence whether any one existed capable of forming
+a judgment upon style, or of distinguishing one author from another, who
+would dispute the position for which he contended.
+
+The sum and substance of all M. Neufchateau's argument is the slight
+assumption, that every allusion to a man eminent for wit and genius,
+must be intended for a Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that
+Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid
+declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not
+as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are
+shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to
+Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic
+writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such
+trifling difficulties are as dust when placed in the balance with the
+inveterate opinion to which we have already alluded.
+
+According to the principles adopted by M. Neufchateau, _Gil Blas_ might
+be adapted to any court, or age, or country. For instance, if Triaquero,
+meaning a charlatan, (which, by the way, it does not,) refers of
+necessity to Voltaire, might not any Englishman, if the work had been
+published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an
+Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who,
+having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without
+Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an
+historian without research?
+
+The difference between Dr Sangrado and our hydropathists is merely that
+between hot and cold water, by no means excluding an allusion to the
+latter, under the veil, as M. Neufchateau has it, of Spanish manners.
+Would it be quite impossible to find in St James's Street, or in certain
+buildings at no great distance from the Thames, the exact counterparts
+of Don Matthias de Silva and his companions? Gongora, indeed, in spite
+of his detestable taste, was a man of genius; and therefore to find his
+type among us would be difficult, if not impossible, unless an excess of
+the former quality, for which he was conspicuous, might counterbalance a
+deficiency in the latter. Are our _employ�s_ less pompous and empty than
+Gil Blas and his companions? our squires less absurd and ignorant than
+the hidalgoes of Valencia? Let any one read some of the pamphlets on
+Archbishop Whately's Logic, or attend an examination in the schools at
+Oxford, and then say if the race of those who plume themselves on the
+discovery, that Greek children cried when they were whipped is extinct?
+To be sure, as the purseproud insolence of a _nouveau riche_, and indeed
+of _parvenus_ generally, is quite unknown among us, nobody could rely on
+those points of resemblance. But with regard to the other topics, would
+it not be fair to say, in answer to such an argument--All this is mere
+commonplace generality; such are the characters of every country where
+European institutions exist, or European habits are to be found?
+Something more tangible and specific is requisite to support your claim.
+You are to prove that the picture is a portrait of a particular
+person--and you say it has eyes and a nose; so have all portraits. But
+where are the strokes that constitute identity, and determine the
+original?--There is no mention of Crockford's or of the Missionary
+Society, of the Old Bailey or the Foundling Hospital; and if Ordonez is
+named, who gets rich by managing the affairs of the poor, this can never
+be meant for a satire on the blundering pedantry of your Somerset-house
+commissioners.--Here is no hint that can be tortured into a glance at
+fox-hunters, or game-preservers, of the society for promoting rural
+deans, at your double system of contradictory law, at special pleading
+at quarter-sessions,{C} at the technical rigour of your institutions,
+at the delay, chicanery, and expense of your judicial proceedings, at
+the refinement, ease, wit, gayety, and disinterested respect for merit,
+which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing
+is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and
+mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by
+making a turn for tumid metaphor and the love of display necessary
+ingredients in the character of its votaries, extirpating from among
+them that simplicity which was so fatal an obstacle to the progress of
+Newton,--and turning the newly discovered joint of an antediluvian
+reptile into a theme of perennial and ambitious declamation; nothing is
+said about those discussions on baptismal fonts, those discoveries of
+trochees for iambics, or the invention of new potatoe boilers, which in
+the days of Hegel, Berryer, Schlosser, Savigny, and Cousin, are the
+glory and delight of England; in short, there is nothing to fix the
+allusions on which you rely on to distinguish them from those which
+might be applicable to Paris, Vienna, or Madrid.
+
+There are no people less disposed than ourselves to detract from the
+merit of eminent French writers; they are always clear, elegant, and
+judicious; often acute, eloquent, and profound. There is no department
+of prose literature in which they do not equal us; there are many in
+which they are unquestionably our superiors. Unlike our authors, who, on
+those subjects which address the heart and reason jointly, adopt the
+style of a treatise on the differential calculus; and when pure science
+is their topic, lead us to suppose (if it were not for their disgusting
+pomposity) they had chosen for their model the florid confusion of a
+tenth-rate novel;--the French write on scientific subjects with
+simplicity and precision, and on moral, �sthetic, and theoretical
+questions with spirit, earnestness, and sensibility. Having said so
+much, we must however add, that a liberal and ingenious acknowledgment
+of error is not among the shining qualities of our neighbours. When a
+question is at issue in which they imagine the literary reputation of
+their country to be at stake, it is the dexterity of the advocate,
+rather than the candour of the judge, that we must look for in their
+dissertations. He who has argued on the guilt of Mary with a Scotchman,
+or the authenticity of the three witnesses with a newly made archdeacon,
+and with a squire smarting under an increasing poor-rate or the
+corn-laws, may form a just conception of the task he will undertake in
+endeavouring to persuade a French critic that his countrymen are in the
+wrong. The patient, if he does not, as it has sometimes happened in the
+cases to which we have referred, become "pugil et medicum urget," is
+sure, as in those instances, to triumph over all the proofs which reason
+can suggest, or that the hellebore of nine Anticyras could furnish him
+with capacity to understand. Of this the work of M. Neufchateau is a
+striking proof. Truth is on one side, Le Sage's claim to originality on
+the other; and he supports the latter: we do not say that he is willing,
+rather than abandon his client, to assert a falsehood; but we are sure
+that, in order to defend him, he is ready to believe absurdities.
+
+The degree of moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we
+attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected
+with our subject, and upon which we enter with regret.
+
+Lessing accused Wieland of having destroyed a palace, that he might
+build a cottage with its materials. However highly we may think of the
+original, we can hardly suppose such an expression applicable to _Gil
+Blas_. Of the name of the author whose toil Le Sage thus appropriated,
+charity obliges us to suppose that he was ignorant; but we should not
+forget that the case of Le Sage is not precisely that of a person who
+publishes, as an original, a translation from a printed work, as Wieland
+did with his copy of Rowe's Lady Jane Grey, and Lord Byron with his copy
+of the most musical lines in Goethe. The offence of Le Sage more
+resembles that imputed (we sincerely believe without foundation) to
+Raphael; namely, that after the diligent study of some ancient frescoes,
+he suffered them to perish, in order to conceal his imitation. But we
+hasten to close these reflections, which tenderness to the friend and
+companion of our boyhood, and gratitude to him who has enlivened many an
+hour, and added so much to our stock of intellectual happiness, forbid
+us to prolong. Let those who feel that they could spurn the temptation,
+in comparison with which every other that besets our miserable nature is
+as dross--the praise yielded by a polished and fastidious nation to rare
+and acknowledged genius--denounce as they will the infirmity of Le Sage.
+But let them be quite sure, that instead of being above a motive to
+which none but minds of some refinement are accessible, they are not
+below it. Let them be sure that they do not take dulness for integrity,
+and that the virtue, proof to intellectual triumphs, and disdaining "the
+last infirmity of noble minds," would not sink if exposed to the ordeal
+of a service of plate, or admission in some frivolous coterie. For
+ourselves we will only say, "Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas."
+
+For these reasons, then, which depend on the nature of the thing, and
+which no testimony can alter--reasons which we cannot reject without
+abandoning all those principles which carry with them the most certain
+instruction, and are the surest guides of human life--we think the main
+fact contended for by M. Llorente, that is, the Spanish origin of _Gil
+Blas_, undeniable; and the subordinate and collateral points of his
+system invested with a high degree of probability; the falsehood of a
+conclusion fairly drawn from such premises as we have pointed out would
+be nearer akin to a metaphysical impossibility; and so long as the light
+of every other gem that glitters in a nation's diadem is faint and
+feeble when compared with the splendour of intellectual glory, Spain
+will owe a debt of gratitude to him among her sons who has placed upon
+her brow the jewel which France (as if aggression for more material
+objects could not fill up the measure of her injustice towards that
+unhappy land) has kept so long, and worn so ostentatiously.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} So in Don Quixote the friars are described "Estando en estas
+razones, aslomaron por el camino dos Frayles de la Orden de san Benito,
+Cavalleros _sobre dos Dromedarios, que no eran mas pequneas dos mulas en
+que venian_."
+
+{B} It occurs, however, in Madame de Sevign�'s letters. But that most
+charming of letter-writers understood Spanish, which Anne of Austria had
+probably made a fashionable accomplishment at the court of France. The
+intrigue for which Vardes was exiled, shows, that to write in Spanish
+was an attainment common among the courtiers of Louis XIV.
+
+{C} We call ourselves a _practical_ people! A man incurred, a _few
+months_ ago, an expense of �70, for saying that he was "ready," instead
+of saying that he was "ready and _willing_" to do a certain act. The
+man's name was Granger. Another unfortunate creature incurred costs to
+the amount of �3000, by one of the most ordinary proceedings in our
+courts, called a motion, of course, and usually settled for a guinea. A
+clergyman libelled two of his parishioners in a Bishop's Court. The
+matter never came to be heard, and the expense of the _written_
+proceedings was upwards of �800! Can any system be more abominable than
+one which leads to such results?
+
+
+
+
+MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS.
+
+
+Few of the events of our life afford us greater pride than revisiting a
+well-known and celebrated city after many years' absence. The pleasure
+derived from the hope of enjoyment, the self-satisfaction flowing from
+the presumption of our profound knowledge of the place, and the feeling
+of mental superiority attached to our discernment in returning to the
+spot, which, at the moment, appears to us the particular region of the
+earth peculiarly worthy of a second visit--or a third, as the case may
+be--all combine to stuff the lining of the diligence, the packsaddle of
+the Turkish post-horse, or the encumbrance on the back of the camel
+which may happen to convey us, with something softer than swandown. Time
+soon brings the demon of discontent to our society. The city and its
+inhabitants appear changed--rarely for the better, always less to our
+taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh
+for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous
+odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece,
+and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of
+Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our youth every where.
+
+I enjoyed all the delights and regrets which mere local associations can
+call up, a few months ago, on revisiting Athens after many years'
+absence. On the 6th of May 1827, I had witnessed the complete defeat of
+the Greek army. I had beheld the delhis of Kutayia sabring the flying
+troops of Lord Cochrane and General Church, and seen 1500 men slain by
+the sword in less than half an hour, amidst the roll of an ill-sustained
+and scattered fire of musketry. The sight was heartbreaking, but grand.
+The Turkish cavalry came sweeping down to the beach, until arrested by
+the fire of the ships. Lord Cochrane and his aide-de-camp, Dr Goss,
+themselves had been compelled to plunge more than knee-deep in the �gean
+ere they could gain their boat. On the hill of the Phalerum I had heard
+General Gueheneuc criticise the manoeuvres of the commander-in-chief,
+and General Heideck disparage the quality of his coffee. As the Austrian
+steamer which conveyed me entered the Pir�us, my mind reverted to the
+innumerable events which had been crowded into my life in Greece. A new
+town rose out of the water before my eyes as if by enchantment; but I
+felt indignant that the lines of Colonel Gordon, and the tambouria of
+Karaiskaki, should be effaced by modern houses and a dusty road. As soon
+as I landed, I resolved to climb the Phalerum, and brood over visions of
+the past. But I had not proceeded many steps from the quay, lost in my
+sentimental reverie, ere I found that reflection ought not to begin too
+soon at the Pir�us. I was suddenly surrounded by about a dozen
+individuals who seemed determined to prevent me from continuing my walk.
+On surveying them, they appeared dressed for a costume ball of
+ragamuffins. Europe, Asia, and Africa had furnished their wardrobe. The
+most prominent figure among them was a tall Arab, in the nizam of
+Mehemet Ali, terminated with a Maltese straw hat. His companions
+exhibited as singular a taste in dress as himself. Some wore sallow
+Albanian petticoats, carelessly tied over the wide and dusky nether
+garments of Hydriots, their upper man adorned by sailors' jackets and
+glazed hats; others were tightly buttoned up in European garments, with
+their heads lost in the enormous fez of Constantinople. This antiquarian
+society of garments, fit representatives to a stranger of the
+Bavaro-Hellenic kingdom of Otho the gleaner, and the three donative
+powers, informed me that it consisted of charioteers. Each member of the
+society speaking on his own account, and all at the same time--a
+circumstance I afterwards found not uncommon in other antiquarian and
+literary societies at Athens--asked me if I was going to Athens:
++eis Ath�nas+ was the phrase. The Arab and a couple of Maltese alone said
+"Ees teen Atheena." Entrapped into a reply by the classic sound, I
+unwittingly exclaimed "Malista--Verily I am."
+
+The shouts my new friends uttered on hearing me speak Greek cannot be
+described. Their volubility was suddenly increased a hundredfold; and
+had all the various owners of the multitudinous garments before me
+arisen to reclaim their respective habiliments, it could hardly have
+been greater. I could not have believed it possible that nine Greeks,
+aided by two Maltese and a single Arab, could have created such a din.
+The speakers soon perceived that it was utterly impossible for me to
+hear their eloquent addresses, as they could no longer distinguish the
+sounds of their own voices; so with one accord they disappeared, and ere
+I had proceeded many steps again surrounded me, rushing forward with
+their respective vehicles, into which they eagerly invited me to mount.
+If their habiliments consisted of costumes run mad, their chariots were
+not less varied, and afforded an historical study in locomotion. Distant
+capitals and a portion of the last century must have contributed their
+representatives to the motley assemblage. The tall Arab drove a superb
+fiacre of the days of hoops, a vehicle for six insides; phaetons,
+chariots, droschkies, and britskas, Strong's omnibus, and Rudhart's
+stuhlwagen, gigs, cars, tilburies, cabriolets, and dogcarts, were all
+there, and each pushing to get exactly before me. Lord Palmerston's
+kingdom is doubtless a Whig satire on monarchy; the scene before me
+appeared a Romaic satire on the Olympic games. I forgot my melancholy
+sentiment, and resolved to join the fun, by attempting to dodge my
+persecutors round the corners of the isolated houses and deep lime-pits
+which King Otho courteously terms streets. I forgot that barbarians were
+excluded from the Olympic games, not on account of the jealousy of the
+Greeks, but because no barbarian could display the requisite skill. The
+charioteers and their horses knew the ground so much better than I did,
+that they blockaded me at every turn; so, in order to gain the rocky
+ground, I started off towards the hill of the Phalerum pursued by the
+_pancosmium_ of vehicles. On the first precipitous elevation I turned to
+laugh at my pursuers, when, to my horror, I saw Strong's omnibus
+lumbering along in the distance, surrounded by a considerable crowd, and
+I distinguished the loud shouts of the mob:--+Pou einai ho trelos
+ho Anglos+; "Where is the mad Englishman?" So my melancholy was
+conducting me to madness.
+
+My alarm dispelled all my reminiscences of Lord Cochrane, and my visions
+of the Olympic games. I sprang into the droschky of a Greek sailor, who
+drove over the rocks as if he only expected his new profession to endure
+for a single day. We were soon on the Pir�us road, which I well knew
+runs along the foundations of one of the long walls; but I was too glad
+to escape, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, unscathed from the
+imbroglio I had created, to honour even Themistocles with a single
+thought. My charioteer was a far better specimen of the present, than
+foundations of long walls, ruined temples, and statues without noses,
+can possibly be of the past. He informed me he was a sailor: by so
+doing, he did not prove to me that he estimated my discernment very
+highly, for that fact required no announcement. He added, however, what
+was more instructive; _to wit_, that he had received the droschky with
+the horses, that morning, from a Russian captain, in payment of a bad
+debt. He had resolved to improviso the coachman, though he had never
+driven a horse before in his life--+eukolon einai+--"it is an
+easy matter;" and he drove like Jehu, shouted like Stentor, and laughed
+like the Afrite of Caliph Vathek. He ran over nobody, in spite of his
+vehemence. Perhaps his horses were wiser than himself: indeed I have
+remarked, that the populace of Greece is universally more sagacious than
+its rulers. In taking leave of this worthy tar at the Hotel de Londres,
+I asked him gravely if he thought that, in case Russia, England, or
+France should one day take Greece in payment of a bad debt, they would
+act wisely to drive her as hard as he drove his horses? He opened his
+eyes at me as if he was about to unskin his head, and began to reflect
+in silence; so, perceiving that he entertained a very high opinion of my
+wisdom, I availed myself of the opportunity to advise him to moderate
+his pace a little in future, if he wished his horses to survive the
+week.
+
+During my stay at Athens, King Otho was absent from his capital; so
+that, though I lost the pleasure of beholding the beautiful and graceful
+queen, I escaped the misfortune of being dishonoured by receiving the
+cross of an officer of the order of the Redeemer. His Hellenic majesty
+takes a peculiar satisfaction in hanging this decoration at the
+buttonholes of those who served Greece during the revolutionary war;
+while he suspends the cross of Commander round the necks, or ornaments
+with the star of the order the breasts, of all the Bavarians who have
+assisted him in relieving Greece of the Palmerstonian plethora of cash
+gleaned from the three powers. For my own part, I am not sure but that I
+should have made up my mind to return the cross, with a letter full of
+polite expressions of contempt for the supposed honour, and a few hints
+of pity for the donor; as a very able and distinguished friend of
+Greece, whose services authorized him so to act, did a few days before
+my arrival.
+
+On attempting to find my way through Bavarian Athens, I was as much at a
+loss as Lady Francis Egerton, and could not help exclaiming, "Voila des
+rues qui ont bien peu de logique!" After returning two or three times to
+the church Kamkarea, against whose walls half the leading streets of the
+new city appear to run bolt up, I was compelled to seek the assistance
+of a guide. At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my
+friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian
+blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the
+picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I
+enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to
+his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for
+information to the patriotic and enterprising Demarch, or mayor, who
+bears the same name.
+
+In the end my enquiries were successful, and their result seemed
+miraculous. To my utter astonishment I learned that Michael had become a
+monk, and dwelt in the monastery of Pentelicus; but I could obtain no
+explanation of the mystery. His relations referred me to the monk
+himself--strangers had never heard of his existence. How often does a
+revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is
+shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There
+remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution
+of the singular enigma from my friend's own mouth; so, joining a party
+of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus,
+and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such
+a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure sky of Attica.
+
+The scenery of our ride is now familiar to tourists. Parnes or Parnethus
+with its double top,{A} Brilessus or Pentelicus with its numerous rills
+and fountains, and Hymettus with its balmy odours, have been "hymned by
+loftier harps than mine." My companions proved gay and agreeable young
+men. They knew every body at Athens, and every thing, and willingly
+communicated their stores of knowledge. I cannot resist recounting some
+of the anecdotes I heard, as they do no discredit to the noble princes
+to whom they relate.
+
+When an English prince visited Athens, King Otho, who it seems is his
+own minister, and conducts business quite in a royal way, learned that
+he was no Whig, and instantly conceived the sublime idea of making use
+of his royal highness's services to obtain Lord Palmerston's dismissal
+from office. The monarch himself arranged the plan of his campaign. The
+prince was invited to a _f�te champ�tre_ at Phyle, and when the party
+was distributed in the various carriages, he found himself planted in a
+large barouche opposite the king and queen. King Otho then opened his
+intrigue; he told the prince of the notes in favour of constitutional
+government and economical administration which Lord Palmerston had
+written, and Sir Edmund Lyons had presented; and he exclaimed, "I assure
+you, my dear prince, all this is done merely to vex me, because I would
+not keep that speculating charlatan Armansperg! Lord Palmerston cares no
+more about a constitution, nor about economy, than Queen Victoria, or
+you and I. When the Duc de Broglie, who has really more conscience than
+our friend the Viscount, proposed that Greece should be pestered with a
+constitution and such stuff, Palmerston answered very judiciously,
+'Greece--bah!--Greece is not fit for a constitution, nor indeed for any
+other government but that of my nabob!' Now, my dear prince, Queen
+Victoria can never mean to offend me, the sovereign of Greece, when the
+Ottoman empire is so evidently on the eve of dismemberment; and," quoth
+Otho the gleaner, "I am deeply offended, at which her British majesty
+must feel grievously distressed." The prince doubtless thought her
+majesty's distress was not inconsolable; but he only assured his
+Hellenic majesty that he could be of no possible use to him in his
+delicate intrigue at the court of St James's. He tried to get a view of
+the scenery, and to turn the conversation on the state of the country;
+but Otho was not so easily repulsed. He insisted that the prince should
+communicate his sentiments to Queen Victoria; and, in spite of all the
+assurances he received of the impossibility of meddling with diplomatic
+business in such a way, his Hellenic majesty, to this very day, feels
+satisfied that Lord Palmerston was sent to the right-about for offending
+him; and he is firmly persuaded that, unless Lord Aberdeen furnish him
+with as many millions as he demands to secure his opposition to Russia,
+the noble earl will not have a long tenor of office.
+
+A young Austrian of our party shouted, "Ah, it requires to be truly _bon
+gar�on_, like the English prince, to submit to be so bored, even by a
+king! But," added he, "our gallant Fritz managed matters much better.
+The Archduke Frederick, who behaved so bravely at Acre, and so amiably
+lately in London, heard, it seems, of the treatment the prince had met
+with, and resolved to cure his majesty of using his guests in such
+style. Being invited to a party at Pentelicus, he was aware that he
+would be placed alone on the seat, with his back to the horses, and
+deprived of every chance of seeing the country, if it were only that the
+diplomatic intrigue at the court of Queen Victoria might remain
+concealed from the lynx-eyed suspicion of the _corps diplomatique_ of
+Athens; for King Otho fancies his intrigues always remain the
+profoundest secrets. When the archduke handed the lovely queen into the
+carriage, politeness compelled King Otho to make a cold offer to the
+young sailor to follow; the archduke bowed profoundly, sprang into the
+carriage, and seated himself beside her majesty. The successor of
+Agamemnon followed, looking more grim than Hercules Furens: he stood for
+a moment bolt upright in the carriage, hoping his guest would rise and
+vacate his seat; but the young man was already actively engaged in
+conversation. The Emperor of the East--in expectancy--was compelled to
+sit down with his back to the horses, and study the landscape in that
+engaging manner of viewing scenery. Never was a f�te given by a sulkier
+host than King Otho that day proved to be. In returning, the archduke
+had a carriage to himself. When questioned on the subject of his ride,
+he only remarked that he always suffered dreadfully from sickness when
+he rode with his back to the horses. He was sure, therefore, that King
+Otho had placed him beside the queen to avoid that horrible
+inconvenience."
+
+Other anecdotes were recounted during our ride, and our opinion of his
+Hellenic majesty's tact and taste did not become more favourable, when
+it was discovered that his proceedings had utterly ruined the immense
+quarries of Pentelicus--
+
+    "Still in its beam Pentele's marbles glow,"
+
+can now only be said of the ruins, not of the quarries. In order to
+obtain the few thousand blocks required for the royal palace at Athens,
+millions of square feet of the purest statuary marble have been shivered
+to atoms by the random process of springing mines with gunpowder. If
+King Otho had done nothing worse in Greece than converting the marble
+quarries of Pentelicus into a chaos of rubbish, when he found them
+capable of supplying all Europe for ages with the most beautiful
+material for the sculptor, he would have merited the reputation he so
+justly bears, of caring as little about the real welfare of Greece as
+Lord Palmerston himself. My companions quitted me at the quarries,
+making pasquinades on the royal palace and its royal master; while I put
+up my horse and walked slowly on to the ancient monastery of Pentele,
+not Mendele, as Lord Byron has it.
+
+I was soon sitting alone in the cell of Michael, and shall now recount
+his history as I had it from his own mouth. Michael Kalliphournas was
+left an orphan the year the Greek revolution broke out. He was hardly
+fourteen years old, and yet he had to act as the guardian and protector
+of a sister four years younger than himself. The storm of war soon
+compelled him to fly to �gina with the little Euphrosyne. The trinkets
+and gold which his relations had taught him to conceal, enabled him to
+place his sister in a Catholic monastery at Naxos, where she received
+the education of a European lady. Michael himself served under Colonel
+Gordon and General Fabvier with great distinction. In 1831, when the
+Turks were about to cede Attica to Greece, Michael and Euphrosyne
+returned to Athens, to take possession of their family property, which
+promised to become of very great value. At that time I had very often
+seen Phr�ssa, as she was generally called; indeed, from my intimacy with
+her brother, I was a constant visitor in the house. Her appearance is
+deeply impressed on my memory. I have rarely beheld greater beauty,
+never a more elegant figure, nor a more graceful and dignified manner.
+She was regarded as a fortune, and began to be sought in marriage by all
+the young aristocracy of Greece. It was at last conjectured that a young
+Athenian, named Nerio, the last descendant of the Frank dukes of Athens,
+had made some impression on her heart. He was a gay and spirited young
+man, who had behaved very bravely when shut up with the troops in the
+Acropolis during the last siege of Athens, and he was an intimate friend
+of her brother. I had left Athens about this time, and my travels in the
+East had prevented my hearing any thing of my friends in Greece for
+years.
+
+There is a good deal of society among the Greek families at Athens for a
+few weeks before the Carnival. They meet together in the evenings, and
+amuse themselves in a very agreeable way. At one of these parties the
+discourse fell on the existence of ghosts and spirits; Michael, who was
+present, declared that he had no faith in their existence. With what
+groans did he assure me his opinion was changed, and conjured me never
+to express a doubt on the subject. All the party present exclaimed
+against what they called his free-masonry; and even his sister, who was
+not given to superstition, begged him to be silent lest he should offend
+the _nerai�dhes_, who might punish him when he least expected it. He
+laughed and ridiculed Phr�ssa, offering to do any thing to dare those
+redoubted spirits which the company could suggest. Nerio, a far greater
+sceptic than Michael, suddenly affected great respect for the invisible
+world, and by exciting Michael, gradually engaged him, amidst the
+laughing of his companions, to undertake to fry a dozen of eggs on the
+tomb of a Turkish _santon_, a short distance beyond the Patissia
+gate--to leave a pot of charcoal, to be seen next morning, as a proof of
+his valour, and return to the party with the dish of eggs.
+
+The expedition was arranged, in spite of the opposition of the ladies;
+four or five of the young men promised to follow at a little distance,
+unknown to Michael, to be ready lest any thing should happen. Michael
+himself, with a _zembil_ containing a pot of charcoal, a few eggs and a
+flask of oil in one hand, and a frying-pan and small lantern in the
+other, closely enveloped in his dusky capote, proceeded smiling to his
+task. The tomb of the Turk consisted of a marble cover taken from some
+ancient sarcophagus, and sustained at the corners by four small pillars
+of masonry--the top was not higher than an ordinary table, and below the
+marble slab there was an empty space between the columns. It has long
+since disappeared; but that is not wonderful, since King Otho and his
+subjects have contrived to destroy almost every picturesque monument of
+the past in the new kingdom. The thousands of Turkish tombs which not
+many years ago gave a historic character to the desert environs of
+Negrepont, and the splendid _s�rail_ of Zeitouni, with its magnificent
+marble fountains and baths, have almost disappeared--the storks have bid
+adieu to Greece--nightly bonfires, caused by absurd laws, destroy the
+few trees that remain; and in short, unless travellers make haste and
+visit Greece quickly, they will see nothing but the ruins which King
+Otho cannot destroy nor Pittaki deface, and the curiosities which Ross
+cannot give to Prince P�ckler, added to the pleasure they will derive
+from beholding King Otho's own face and the fa�ade of his new palace.
+
+The night was extremely dark and cold, so that the friends of Michael,
+familiar as they were with their native city, found some difficulty in
+following him without a lantern through the mass of ruins Athens then
+presented. As they approached the tomb, they perceived that he had
+already lighted his charcoal, and was engaged in blowing it vigorously,
+as much to warm his hands as to prepare for his cooking operations.
+Creeping as near to him as possible without risking a discovery, they
+heard, to their amazement, a deep voice apparently proceeding from the
+tomb, which exclaimed, "Bou gedje kek sohuk der adamlera.--It must be a
+cold night for mankind." "To pisevo effendi," said Michael in a careless
+tone, but nervously proceeded to pour a whole bottle of oil into the
+frying-pan. As soon as the oil was boiling and bubbling, the voice from
+the tomb again exclaimed, "Gaiour ne apayorsun, mangama
+pisheriorsun--yuckle buradam--aiyer yiklemassun ben seni kibab
+ederem, tahamun yerine seni yerim," signifying pretty nearly,
+"Infidel, what are you doing here? You appear to be cooking; fly hence,
+or I will eat my supper of thy carrion." And at the instant a head
+covered by an enormous white turban protruded itself from under the
+tombstone with open mouth. Michael, either alarmed at the words and the
+apparition, or angry at the suspicion of a premeditated trick on the
+part of his companions, seized the panful of boiling oil, and poured the
+whole contents into the gaping mouth of the spectre, exclaiming, "An
+echeis toson orexin, na to ladhi, Scheitan oglou!--If you are so hungry,
+take the oil, son of Satan!" A shriek which might have awakened the dead
+proceeded from the figure, followed by a succession of hideous groans.
+The friends of Michael rushed forward, but the lamp had fallen to the
+ground and was extinguished in the confusion. Some time elapsed ere it
+was found and lighted. The unfortunate figure was dragged from the tomb,
+suffocated by the oil, and evidently in a dying state, if indeed life
+was not already extinct. Slowly the horrible truth became apparent.
+Nerio had separated himself from the rest of the party unperceived,
+disguised himself, and gained the tomb before the arrival of Michael,
+who thus became the murderer of his sister's lover. I shall not attempt
+to describe the feelings of Michael in recounting this dreadful scene.
+
+The affair never made much noise. The Turks did not consider themselves
+authorized to meddle in the affairs of the Greeks. Indeed, the infamous
+murder of the Greek _bakalbashi_, a short time before by Jussuf-bey,
+with his own hand, had so compromised their authority, that they were in
+fear of a revolution. The truth was slowly communicated to Euphrosyne by
+Michael himself--she bore it better than he had anticipated. She
+consoled her brother and herself by devoting her life to religious and
+charitable exercises; but she never entered a monastery nor publicly
+took the veil. She still lives at Athens, where her charity is
+experienced by many, though few ever see her. When I left Greece on a
+visit to Mount Athos, my friend Michael insisted on accompanying me;
+and, after our arrival on the holy mountain, he exacted from me a
+promise that I would never discover to any one the monastery into which
+he had retired, nor even should we by chance meet again, address him as
+an acquaintance, unless he should speak to me. His sister alone is
+entrusted with his secret.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} The _par_, which indicates the double or equal summit, is only found
+in Latin, though unquestionably �olic; the other two derivations are
+classic Greek. Parnes, Parnettus, Parnassus. The name of the two
+mountains is precisely the same.
+
+
+
+
+AFRICA--SLAVE TRADE--TROPICAL COLONIES.
+
+
+The readers of this magazine will readily remember the part which it
+took, at an early period, in discussing and in delineating the
+geographical features of Africa. In the number for June 1826 there is an
+article, accompanied by a map, showing from undoubted authorities the
+course and termination of the great river Niger in the sea in the Bight
+of Benin, where, from similar authorities, it was placed by me in 1820
+and 1821, and where actual observation by Englishmen has lately clearly
+established the fact that it does terminate. In the upper and middle
+parts of its course the longitudes were erroneous, having adopted Major
+Rennell's delineation of Western Africa as a guide; but in 1839 the
+whole of that quarter of Africa was narrowly examined, and the courses
+of the western rivers reduced to their proper positions, as delineated
+in my large map of Africa constructed in that year, to which, with the
+"Geographical Survey of Africa," for which it was made, the reader is
+referred for further and particular information on all these subjects.
+
+With these observations, I proceed to bring before the reader
+geographical information concerning eastern and central Africa of the
+highest and most gratifying importance, and obtained by the researches
+of different voyagers and travellers within the last four years.
+Foremost amongst these ranks, the expedition sent by the present Viceroy
+of Egypt to explore the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White River, above its
+junction with the Blue River, from Khartoum upwards and southwards;
+after it, the interesting travels of Messrs Krapf and Isenberg, two
+missionaries from the Church Missionary Society, from Tajura to Ankobar,
+from Ankobar south-west to the neighbourhood of the sources of the
+Hawash; and after that, Mr Krapf's journey from Ankobar north by Lake
+Haik, through Lasta to Antalow, and thence to Massouah on the Red Sea.
+Next, the interesting accounts collected by M. Lefebvre and M.
+D'Abbadie, concerning the countries in some parts of the more eastern
+horn of Africa; and last, and the most specific and important of the
+whole, the accounts received of the country of Adel, and the countries
+and rivers in and south of Shoa, and those from the Blue Nile in Gojam
+and Damot to the sea at the mouth of the Jub, under the equator, by
+Major Harris, late British ambassador to the King of Shoa.
+
+As the present article is accompanied by a map, constructed after great
+labour, and engraved most carefully by Mr Arrowsmith, the general
+outline of the whole may here be deemed sufficient, without lengthened
+discussion and observation.
+
+The Egyptian expedition alluded to started from Khartoum (now become a
+fine town) at the close of the wet season in 1839. It consisted of four
+or five small sailing vessels, some passage boats, and four hundred men
+from the garrison of Senaar, the whole commanded by an able officer,
+CAPTAIN SELIM. They completed their undertaking, and returned to
+Khartoum at the end of 135 days, during which time, in obedience to the
+commands of their master, they explored the Bahr-el-Abiad to the
+distance southwards of 1300 miles, (turnings and windings included,) to
+three degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and thirty-one east
+longitude, from Greenwich, where it divided into two streams; the
+smaller, and it is very small, coming from the south-west, and the
+larger, still even at the close of the dry season a very considerable
+river, which came from the south-east, upwards from the east, and still
+more upwards from the north-east. A subsequent voyage in 1841 gained the
+information that the stream descended past Barry, and there can be no
+doubt that another, if not the chief branch, comes from the south-east,
+in the bearing which Ptolemy gave it, and, as he states, from amongst
+mountains covered with perpetual snow, of which Bruce also heard, and
+which we now learn from Major Harris really stand in that quarter of
+Africa.
+
+The longitude of the river at the bifurcation is exactly the same as
+Ptolemy has given it, which is very remarkable. The sources of the
+White River will therefore be found where Ptolemy and Bruce have placed
+them. The latter, in his notes, states expressly that the Bahr-el-Abiad
+rose to the south of Enarea, not far from the equator, and that it had
+no great western branch, nor was any necessary to give the river its
+magnitude. (Vol. vii. App. p. 92.)
+
+The expedition in question found no very large affluents from the west
+side; but they found two of very considerable magnitude on the east
+side--one the Blue River, and the other the Red River, or Bahr-Seboth,
+which latter they navigated upwards of 150 miles in a direct line, and
+left it a considerable stream, nearly as large as the eastern branch of
+the White River, where they had left it. The banks of the Bahr-Seboth
+were precipitous and high, whereas those of the Bahr-el-Abiad were low,
+and on both sides covered with lakes, the remains probably of the
+preceding inundation. Scarcely a hill or mountain was in sight from the
+river till approaching the bifurcation, when the country became
+mountainous, the climate more cool, and the vegetation and trees around
+those of the temperate zone. The country on both sides is a high
+table-land, the scenery every where very beautiful, well peopled by
+different tribes, copper-coloured, and some of them even fair. Every
+where the banks are covered and ornamented with beautiful trees, and
+cattle, sheep, goats, elephants, &c., are numerous and abundant. Amongst
+the Bhours, they found Indian goods brought from the shores of the
+Indian ocean. Day by day, the breadth, depth, and current of the river
+were observed and marked. For a considerable distance above Khartoum,
+the breadth was from one and a half to one and a quarter mile, the depth
+three or four fathoms, and the current about one and a half mile per
+hour. Above the parallel of nine degrees, the river takes a remarkable
+bend due west for about 90 miles, when it passes through a large lake,
+the waters of which emitted an offensive smell, which might proceed from
+marshy shores.{A} Above the lake, the breadth decreases to one-third or
+one-fourth of a mile, the depth to twelve or thirteen feet, with a
+current of one and a half mile per hour, the bottom every where sand,
+with numerous islands interspersed in the stream. The mountainous
+country around the upper part abounds with iron mines.
+
+Going eastward, we come to the elevated mountainous ranges which give
+birth to the Bahr-el-Abiad to the south, the Gochob, the Kibbee, and
+their numerous tributary streams to the east and south-east, and the
+Toumat, the Yabous, the Maleg, and other rivers which flow north into
+the Abay. This vast chain is very elevated, and in many places very
+cold, especially to the west of Enarea, and to the west and south of
+Kaffa. From the sources of the Kibbee and the Yabous, it stretches
+eastwards to Gurague, and thence, still eastward, by the Aroosi, Galla,
+and Hurrur or Harrar, to Cape Guardafui, approaching in some places to
+within sixty miles or less of the sea of Babel-Mandeb; the elevation to
+the east of Berbera decreases to about 5000 feet, and from which
+numerous streams flow both to the north and to the south. Eastward of
+the meridian of Gurague, a branch from the chain strikes off due north
+through Shoa, by Ankobar and Lake Haik, to the northward of which it
+separates, and runs one branch N.N.W. to Samen, and another by Angot,
+N.E. by east, to the Red Sea, at Assab, and the entrance of the straits
+of Babel-mandeb. The whole of this chain is very elevated; near Ankobar
+some peaks being 14,000 feet high, and constantly white with snow or
+hail; and round the sources of the Tacazz� and the Bashilo, near the
+territory of the Edjow Galla, the mountains are covered with snow. Mr
+Krapf, in his journey more to the east, found the cold exceedingly keen,
+the elevation exceeding 10,000 feet; and still more eastward, near the
+little Assanghe lake, Pearce found hoar frost in the mornings in the
+month of October. From the ranges mentioned, numerous other ranges
+branch off in different directions, forming the divisions between tribes
+and rivers, the latter of which are very rapid, and their borders or
+banks very high and precipitous, and rugged.
+
+From the province of Bulga or Fattygar, this chain, running
+northwards, rises to a great height, springing like the walls of a
+fortification from the western bank of the Hawash, from whence numerous
+small streams descend to increase that river. All to the eastward of
+that river is comparatively low, (called K�lla, or the low hot country,)
+and to the sea-shore is one continued sheet of volcanic strata and
+extinct volcanoes, dry and poor, especially during the dry season, when
+travelling is difficult and dangerous owing to the want of water. It is
+inhabited chiefly by wild beasts and by fierce tribes of the wandering
+Dancali, and, more to the south-east, by the Mohammedan Somauli. In
+early times this country, however, was rich and powerful, from being the
+channel of commerce between Abyssinia when powerful, and the countries
+to the east, Arabia, Persia, and India. From Zeila and Erur southward,
+the country improves, and becomes fertile and well watered.
+
+Before turning our attention to the interesting countries round the
+sources of the Gochob and its tributary streams, and those through which
+it subsequently flows, so clearly brought to our knowledge by Major
+Harris, (he is certainly the first who has done so,) and the survey of
+the coast near its mouth by Lieutenant Christopher of the Indian navy,
+and by him given to the gallant major--it is necessary, for the better
+understanding of our subject, to turn our attention to the explanation
+of the names of some countries and places given so differently by
+different informants, and which, thus given and not sufficiently
+attended to, create great confusion and great errors in African
+geography.
+
+By the aid of Mr Bruce, Mr Krapf, Major Harris, and information
+collected from native travellers, (see _Geographical Bulletins of
+Paris_, Nos. 78 and 98,) we are enabled to rectify these points, and
+clear away heaps of inaccuracies and confusion.
+
+First, then, Enarea and Limmu are the same. The country is called Enarea
+by the Abyssinians, and Limmu by the Gallas, having been conquered by a
+Galla tribe of that name, which tribe came originally from the
+south-west. There is another Limmu, probably so named from another
+portion of the same tribe. It is near or the same as Sibou, which,
+according to Bruce, is ten days' journey from the capital of Enarea,
+and, according to the French Geographical Bulletin, (No. 114,) not far
+from Horro and Fazoglo. But the first Limmu is the Limmu of Jomard's
+Galla Oware, because he states distinctly that Sobitche was its capital;
+that, in marching northwards from it, he crossed the Wouelmae river; and
+that Gingiro, to which he had been, lay to the right, or east, of his
+early route; and further, that the river which passed near Sobitche ran
+to the south. Enarea is not very extensive, but a high table-land, on
+every side surrounded by high mountain ranges, and is situated (see
+_Geographical Bulletin_, 1839) at the confluence of two rivers, the Gibe
+and the Dibe.
+
+Kaffa, in its restricted sense, is a state on the upper Gochob; but, in
+its ancient and extended meaning, it is a large country, extending from
+north to south a journey of one month, and includes in it several states
+known by separate names, although the whole of these are often referred
+to in the name Kaffa by native travellers. It is known also by the names
+of Sidama and Susa, and the people of Dauro call it Gomara; but the
+Christians in Southern Abyssinia call it Kaffa, and Sidama or Susa,
+which latter, properly speaking, forms its southern parts.
+
+Dawro, Dauro, or Woreta, are the same; it is a large country, and
+divided into three states--namely, Metzo or Metcho, Kulloo, and Goba;
+and is a low and hot, but fertile country, situated to the east of
+Kaffa, and to the west of the Gochob.
+
+Major Harris is the only individual who has given us the bearings and
+distances connected with this portion of Africa, and without which the
+geographical features of the country could not have been fixed with any
+precision; but which, having been obtained, act as pivots from which the
+correct positions of other places are ascertained and fixed with
+considerable accuracy.
+
+Let us now attend to the sources and the courses of the principal
+rivers. The Kibbee, or Gibe, has three sources. The chief branch springs
+to the west of Ligamara, and southwards of that place it runs east,
+(_Geographical Bulletin_, No. 105, _and also_ No. 78,) when suddenly
+turning upon itself; as it were, it bends its course westward to Limmu,
+having below Leka received the Gwadab, coming from the west and passing
+to the south of Lofe. The Kibbee waters the small but elevated country
+of Nono, and passes very near Sakka. Westward of Sakka it is joined by
+two other branches coming from the north-west and west, one called
+Wouelmae, the Wouelmae of Oware, and the other Dibe. From thence it
+flows eastward, and bounds Gingiro on the north. The early Portuguese
+travellers expressly state, that six days' journey due east from Sakka,
+and at one day's journey from the capital of Gingiro, having first
+crossed a very high mountain, they crossed the Kibbee, a rapid rocky
+stream, and as large as the Blue River where they had crossed it in the
+country of the Gongas. On the third day after leaving the capital of
+Gingiro, pursuing their course due east to the capital of Cambat, they
+again crossed the Zebee, or Kibbee, _larger_ than it was to the westward
+of Gingiro, but less rapid and rocky; its waters resembling _melted
+butter_, (hence its name,) owing, no doubt, to the calcareous ridges
+through which it flowed. From thence it bends its course to the
+southward, and is soon after joined by the Gochob, which bounds the
+empire of Gingiro to the south. Bruce particularly and emphatically
+mentions the extraordinary angle which the Kibbee here makes.
+
+To the north of Gingiro the Kibbee is joined by the Dedhasa, (pronounced
+Nassal,) and which is considered to be the same as Daneza or Danesa,
+which, according to Lieutenant Christopher, is a Galla name for the Jub
+or Gochob. This river is passed (see _Geographical Bulletin of 1839_)
+before coming to Ligamara and Chelea, and one and a half day's journey
+from Gouma, in the route from Gooderoo to Enarea. In its lower course it
+abounds with crocodiles. Below the junction with the Dedhasa, the Kibbee
+receives the Gala river, coming from the north-east, and from the
+confines of Gurague and Kortshassie.
+
+The separation of the waters in these parts takes place to the north of
+Gonea and Djimma, or Gouma. The rivers that flow to the Blue Nile or
+Abay, with the exception of the Yabous, which is, according to Bruce, a
+considerable stream descending from the south and south-east, are all
+small streams. Shat, the province where the tea-plant is produced, is
+situated to the north of Enarea, and is watered by the river called
+Giba, the fish of which are said to be poisonous, (_Bruce_, vol. iii. p.
+254.) Bruce states most pointedly that the capital of Enarea is fifty
+leagues distant from the passage of the Abay at Mine, "due south, a
+little inclining to the west," (Vol. iii. page 324;) and which bearing
+and distance corresponds very correctly with several very clear and
+satisfactory itineraries lately obtained. Without any high peaks or
+mountains, the country round the sources of these rivers is very
+elevated, and from the grain and fruits which they produce, cannot be
+less than 7500 feet above the level of the sea.
+
+The Toumat is a small stream. Above Cassan, says the _Geographical
+Bulletin_, No. 110, it has water all the year, thus indicating that
+below that place the water fails in the dry season. It runs between two
+high chains of mountains; the east Bank, that chain being known as the
+country called Bertat. The rains, according to Bruce, (the _Geographical
+Bulletin_ agrees in this,) commence in April; but they do not fall heavy
+at that time, and but little affect the rivers. Beyond the chain, on the
+western bank of the Toumat, the country is level to Denka and the banks
+of the White River, which is stated to be eleven days' journey due west
+from Fazoglo. Iron is very abundant in the countries round the Toumat
+and the Yabous, and caravans of Arabian merchants regularly traverse the
+country from Ganjar near Kuara, and two days' journey south of
+Kas-el-Fael, by Fazoglo and Fadessi, to Kaffa and Bany; the road, as the
+latter places are approached, being described as hilly and very woody,
+with numerous small streams.
+
+The Gochob rises in Gamvou, a high, wild, and woody country, part of
+Limmu; and bending its course south-east, next east, and then
+south-east, it forms the lake Tchocha, and afterwards rolls over the
+great cataract Dumbaro, soon after which it joins the Kibbee, when the
+united stream tales the name of the Gochob, or Jub, by which it is known
+till it enters the sea. Where crossed in the road from Sakka to Bonga,
+it is described as larger than any other stream which flows to join it
+from the country more to the south; much larger, indeed, than either the
+Gitche or Omo, its subsequent tributaries. These are the principal
+rivers of Kaffa, which is described as a high, cold country, as cold as
+Samen, or Simien, as Major Harris writes it, in Abyssinia. Bonga, the
+capital of Kaffa, or Susa, is one of the largest cities in these parts,
+and coffee of superior quality is produced every where, both in Kaffa
+and Enarea, in the greatest abundance. So also is civet and ivory.
+
+The Omo, where crossed in the road to Tuftee, is passed by a bridge of
+wood sixty yards in length, which shows that it is not a very large
+river, nor can it be, this place being so near the district where its
+sources must lie. In the dry season it is described as a very small
+stream. The mountains in the south of Kaffa or Susa, are covered with
+snow, and to the south of this place they are said to rise to a
+stupendous height, "to reach the skies," and are clothed with eternal
+snow!
+
+Malo, or Malee, (as Major Harris spells it,) is westward from Koocha,
+and not far from Jajo, (certainly the Jedo of Salt,) and which is at a
+considerable distance from the sea, (_Geographical Bulletin_, No. 114.)
+Malee touches upon both Goba and Doko, and the latter again touches upon
+Kulloo. It is in Malee that the Omo, now a considerable stream, joins
+the Gochob, after having received from the mountains of Souro and
+valleys of Sasa the Toreesh or Gotze, a considerable stream. Doko and
+Malee, like Dauro or Woreta, are very hot low countries, abounding in
+cotton. In Doko, bamboo forests are frequent and extensive. The
+population are represented to be of a diminutive stature, exceedingly
+rude and ignorant, and are a prey to all their surrounding neighbours,
+who invade their country at pleasure, and carry off the wretched people
+into slavery. In this portion of Africa, or very near it, the early Arab
+writers and Portuguese navigators placed a nation of pigmies; and in
+this it would appear that they were correct. After the junction of the
+Omo, the Gochob pursues its way by Ganana to the sea at Juba, a few
+miles to the south of the equator. The western bank is inhabited by
+Galla tribes, and the eastern by Somauli. In this part of its course it
+is called Jub by the Arabians, Gowend or Govend by the Somauli, Yumbu by
+the Souahilis, and Danesa by the Gallas.
+
+The Gochob below Wolama is joined on the east side by a considerable
+stream called the Una, which rises to the south of Gurague; and in
+Koocha and on the same side by a still larger stream, which comes from
+the country of the Ara or Ala Galla to the east of Gurague, and near the
+western sources of the Wabbe or Webbe. Koocha is thirty days' navigation
+upwards and fifteen downwards from the sea, with which it has a
+considerable trade; white or fair people coming up the river to that
+place; but these are not allowed to proceed further inland. The
+inhabitants of Koocha carry on a great trade by means of the Gochob with
+Dauro in slaves, ivory, coffee, &c.; the Galla of Dauro bringing these
+down the Gochob in rafts with high gunwales, which indicates that the
+Gochob is a river of considerable magnitude, and may become of great
+importance in the future communications with Africa; the soil and
+climate around it being very fine, particularly in the lower parts near
+the sea, where the land is level, and the soil a fine deep red mould.
+
+After Bruce, Salt had delineated with considerable accuracy the source
+of the Webbe and the countries around it; but, except his map, we had no
+further particulars. These are, however, supplied by Major Harris and Mr
+Krapf in the countries south-east of Shoa, about Harrar and its sources;
+and further by accounts collected by D'Abbadie at Berbera from
+intelligent natives, travellers regarding the countries more to the
+south, and over the remainder of the north-eastern coast of Africa.
+
+The principal source of the Webbe is to the east of the Aroosi
+mountains, and in the country of the Ala Galla; whence, running
+eastward, it passes Imi and Karanle, (the Karain of Krapf;) it runs
+south-east and afterwards south in a winding course towards the Indian
+ocean. To the north of six degrees of latitude, it is joined by several
+streams from the neighbourhood of Harrar and places more to the east;
+and in about six degrees of latitude, by a large stream which rises near
+Lake Souaie, and runs through the country of Bergama or Bahr Gama. The
+various countries through which the Webbe and his tributaries flow, are
+distinctly marked on the map. The country around its sources is very
+hilly and cold, the mountains resembling in height and appearance the
+boldest in Abyssinia; and to the eastward of its middle course, the
+mountains in Howea are very high and cold. In these springs the river
+Doaro, which flows into the sea, a considerable river during the rains;
+but at other times its mouth is nearly blocked up with sand, which is
+the case with some streams more to the northward.
+
+North of Mount Anot the country is fine and well watered, and during the
+rains a very large river, according to Christopher, flows through it,
+descending from the range to the south-east of Berbera, and entering the
+sea in about eight degrees thirty minutes north latitude. Around Capes
+Halfoon and Guardafui the country is fine and well watered with small
+streams, and the climate delicious, as is the coast from Cape Guardafui
+westward to Berbera.
+
+Harrar stands in a beautiful, fertile, and well-watered valley,
+surrounded with hills, the soil rich, and producing fine coffee
+abundantly. It is strictly Mahommedan, and, comparatively speaking, a
+considerable place, though much shorn of its dominion and power from
+those days when it had become the capital of that portion of eastern
+Africa ruled by the Mahommedans; and when under Mahommed _Gragne_,
+(left-handed,) it overran and desolated the whole Abyssinian empire,
+then under that unfortunate sovereign King David. In the county south of
+Berbera there is abundance of fine wells of excellent water. Waggadeyn
+is a very beautiful country, and produces abundance of myrrh and
+frankincense, as in fact every portion of the eastern horn, from Enarea
+inclusive, also does. It is the great myrrh and frankincense country,
+from which Arabia, Egypt, Judea, Syria, and Tyre were supplied in early
+days of Scripture history. The Webbe is only six fathoms broad and five
+feet deep in the dry season in Waggadeyn; but in the rainy season the
+depth is increased to five fathoms. It is navigated by rafts lower down.
+Incense, gum, and coffee, are every where abundant around the Webbe and
+its tributary streams. Harrar contains about 14,000 inhabitants, and
+Berbera 10,000; Sakka about 12,000.
+
+All the early Arabian writers pointedly state, and so also do the
+Portuguese discoverers, that the Webbe entered the sea _near Mukdishu_
+or Magadoxo. This was no doubt the fact; but from what cause we know
+not, the river, after approaching within a short distance of Magadoxo to
+the north, turns south-west, and approaching in several places very near
+the sea, from which it is only separated by sandhills, it terminates in
+a lake about halfway between Brava and the Jub. This is Christopher's
+account; but my opinion is, that this lake communicates with the sea
+during the rainy season, and even in a small stream in the dry season
+also. Christopher pointedly states, that besides filtrating through the
+sandhills, it communicates with the sea in two places, between Merka and
+Brava; and that this is correct, is proved from the fact, that while the
+river near Merka is 175 feet broad, it is reduced to seventy-five feet
+near Brava; while the _Geographical Bull._, No. 98, p. 96, states, that
+a small river enters the sea to the south of Brava, a branch
+unquestionably from the Webbe.
+
+The country between Magadoxo and the Jub is called Ber-el-Banader, and
+north of Magadoxo, and situated between the Webbe and the Doaro, is the
+considerable province called Hamer. Christopher describes the Somauli
+inhabiting the lower Webbe as civil and obliging, the soil fine and
+fruitful, and the climate the most delicious he had ever visited. The
+inhabitants offered to conduct him in safety to Abyssinia, and into very
+remote districts in the interior. The name of England is beginning to be
+well known, respected, and feared in this fine portion of Africa; and it
+is not a little to be regretted and lamented that this has not been the
+case at a much earlier period.
+
+The early Arabian writers, such as Batouta, write Magadoxo, Mukdishu;
+Christopher states that it is now divided into two parts, in a state of
+hostilities with each other, and that the southern part is called
+Mukutshu, and the northern Mukkudeesha.
+
+According to the _Geographical Bulletin_, No. 98, p. 98, the word
+_ganana_ signifies _queue_, or tail, which explains at once the river
+which Christopher makes enter the Webbe near Galwen, coming from the
+north-westward, to be in reality a branch flowing off from the Jub at
+that place. It is a thing unknown to find a river rising in a low
+alluvial country.
+
+To the east of the Webbe the country is inhabited by Somauli tribes, who
+are Mahommedans and considerable traders. The country seems every where
+to have a considerable population; and instead of being a blank and a
+waste, as hitherto supposed and represented on maps, it is found to be
+one of the finest portions of Africa, or of the world. Grain of every
+kind known in the temperate zones, especially wheat of superior
+qualities, is most abundant, and so cheap that the value of a dollar can
+purchase as much as will maintain a man for a whole year!
+
+The sources of the Hawash approach within about thirty miles of the
+Abay. The lake Souaie in Gurague is about thirty miles in circumference,
+and contains numerous islands. In these are lodged some ancient and
+valuable Abyssinian records. It is fed by five small rivers, and empties
+itself into the Hawash, (see _Ludolf_.) Gurague is a Christian state,
+but reduced to great misery and poverty by the Galla tribes which
+surround it on every side. The elevation of Ankobar above the sea is
+8200 feet, and of Augollalla about 200 more; so that the climate is very
+moderate. The country is every where very mountainous; but at the same
+time is in many places well cultivated. The rivers run in deep valleys
+or dells, and are very rocky and rapid. The present kingdom of Shoa
+contains about 2,500,000 of inhabitants, chiefly Christians of the
+Alexandrian Church.
+
+In March 1842, Mr Krapf set out from Ankobar, to proceed to Egypt, by
+way of Gondar and Massuah; but, after traversing the mountainous parts
+of Northern Shoa, and the countries of the Woollo-Galla, and reaching a
+short distance beyond the Bashilo, (then only five days' journey from
+Gondar,) he was compelled, from hostilities prevailing among the chiefs
+in that quarter, to retrace his steps to Gatera. In the journey which he
+had so far accomplished, Mr Krapf traversed the country near the sources
+of the numerous rivers which flow to form the Jimma and the Bashilo. The
+mountains were high and cold, (especially in the province of Mans,) and
+exceedingly precipitous, ascending and descending 3000 feet in the
+course of a few hours. The soil in the valleys was good, and tolerably
+well cultivated. Sheep, with long black wool, were numerous; the
+population in general rude and ignorant. From Gatera he took his course
+to Lake Haik, and from thence, pursuing his route north-eastward, he
+crossed the numerous streams which rise in the mountainous range to the
+westward, and pursue their course to the country of Adel, north of
+Aussa. Crossing the very elevated range on the western frontier of
+modern Angot, he pursued his journey to Antalon, leaving at Lat the
+Tacazz� four days' journey to the west, and crossing in his course the
+numerous streams, such as the Tarir, the Ghebia, Sumshato, and the
+Tyana, (this last a considerable river,) which flow northward from the
+mountains of Angot and Woggerat to form the Areequa, a large tributary
+to the Tacazz�. Mr Krapf's route lay a little to the westward of Lake
+Assanghe, and considerably in this portion thereof to the west of the
+route of Alvaraez, who passed on the south side of Mount Ginnamora, from
+whence the streams descended to the south-east.
+
+Lake Haik is a fine sheet of water about forty-five miles in
+circumference, with an island near the north-west corner, and an outlet
+in the west, which runs to the Berkona. On the east and the south sides
+it is surrounded with high mountains. Mount Ambassel or Amba Israel, the
+celebrated mountain in Geshen where the younger branches of the royal
+family of Abyssinia were imprisoned in early times, is a little to the
+north of Lake Haik, and beyond the Mille. It runs north and south, in
+length about twelve or thirteen miles, and is exceedingly high and
+steep, the sides thereof being almost perpendicular. Mr Krapf, amongst
+the most considerable rivers which he passed in this quarter, mentions
+the Ala, which he states runs to, and is lost in, the deserts of the
+country of Adel. This is important, and this river is no doubt the Wali
+of Bruce, which he mentions (vol. iii. p. 248) as the scene of a
+remarkable engagement between the sovereigns of Abyssinia and Adel in
+1576, during the reign of the Abyssinian king Sertza Denghel. The
+Abyssinian army descended from Angot, and crossing the Wali, a
+considerable river, cut off the army of Adel from Aussa, drove a portion
+thereof into the stream, where they were drowned, while the remainder
+flying crossed the stream lower down, and thus effected their escape to
+Aussa. This confirms in a remarkable manner the position of this river,
+and would almost go to establish the fact that it cannot unite with Lake
+Aussa, the termination of the Hawash.
+
+At the Ala Mr Krapf states that he was then seven days' journey from
+Aussa. Aussa, according to Bruce, or rather the capital of Aussa, was in
+former times situated on a rock on the bank of the river Hawash. It is
+called Aussa Gurel in the old Portuguese maps, and is no doubt the Aussa
+Guraiel of Major Harris, laid down on the Arabic map which he obtained
+from a native of that place. When low, the termination of the Hawash may
+be said to form three lakes; but during the rainy season the land is
+flooded round to a great extent, the circumference of the lake then
+extending to 120 geographical miles. When the waters retire they leave,
+like the Nile in Egypt, a quantity of fine mud or slime, which,
+cultivated as it immediately is, produces abundant crops, and on this
+account the valley of Aussa is, and always has been, the granary of
+Adel. From the southern boundary of the lake to the place where the
+Hawash finally extricates itself from the mountainous ranges, the
+distance is about five days' journey, or from sixty to seventy miles.
+The length of the fine valley of Aussa is about one hundred miles.
+
+From the summit of the chain which separates the waters which flow
+south-east to Adel, and north-west to the Tacazz�, Mr Krapf says, that
+looking over Lasta to the towering snow-clad peaks of Samen or Simien,
+the whole country had the appearance of the raging waves of the sea in a
+terrible tempest. The soil around the upper branches of the Tacazz� is
+very good, especially in Wofila, Boora, and Enderta, adjoining the fine
+river Tyana; but it is only indifferently cultivated, owing to the
+perpetual wars and feuds amongst the chieftains and tribes in these
+parts, and the bad and unsettled governments which now exist in Tigre,
+and, in fact, in all Abyssinia. Travelling in these parts is difficult
+and insecure, owing to the plundering dispositions of the people, and
+the rapacity of the chiefs, who live beyond the control of any
+commanding or great sovereign power. At Gatera Mr Krapf was robbed of
+every thing that he had by the ferocious Woollo-Galla chief, _Adara
+Bille_, from whose clutches he escaped with some difficulty.
+
+But time and space forbids me going more at length into the interesting
+journeys of these late eastern travellers, amongst which those of Major
+Harris is certainly the most important. He has accurately determined,
+and been the first to determine, the longitude and latitude of Tajoura,
+Lake Assal or the Salt Lake, and Ankobar, &c., and thus given correct
+starting points from which to regulate the bearings and distances of the
+other very interesting places in the interior. The bay of Tajoura
+affords good anchorage; but the best point to start for the interior is
+Zeila, the route thence to Shoa running along the edges of the watered
+and more cultivated districts.
+
+Amongst the travellers who visited this quarter of Africa lately is Dr
+T. C. Beke. He, however, went over the same ground as the others in his
+journey from Tajoura to Ankobar, (Messrs Krapf and Isenberg had preceded
+him a considerable time;) therefore his letters and communications, so
+far as yet known, contain little that is new. The only portion connected
+with Shoa which the others had not visited, is about thirty-five miles
+of the lower course of the Jimma, near its junction with the Abay, where
+the latter stream is about 600 feet broad, and from three to five feet
+deep. His subsequent travels in this part of Africa were confined to
+Gojam, Damot, and part of Agow Medre, and to the source of the Nile; but
+except being more minute in minor details regarding these provinces and
+their numerous small streams and rivers, they add little to the
+information given by Bruce. Still his journey, when given to the world,
+may supply us with some interesting particulars regarding what he
+actually saw.
+
+Dr Beke travelled individually for information; but, in aid of his
+laudable enterprise, received some pecuniary assistance from the African
+Civilization Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Being a member
+of the former society, and while engaged in constructing the maps for
+the journals of the Church Missionary Society in the summer of last
+year--not for personal gain, but solely to benefit Africa--the
+communications and maps which from time to time came from Dr Beke to
+that society, were readily put into my hands to use, where they could be
+used, to advance the cause of Africa. Amongst the maps there was one of
+the countries to the south of the Abay, including Enarea, Kaffa, and
+Gingiro, constructed at and sent from Yaush in Gojam, September 6, 1842,
+together with some of the authorities on which it had been made. In that
+map the whole of the rivers, even to the south of Enarea and Kaffa, the
+Gojob, (as the Doctor writes it,) the Omo, the Kibbee or Gibe, the
+Dedhasa, and Baro, are all made, though rising beyond, that is, to the
+south of Gingiro and to the south and south-east of Kaffa and Woreta,
+(Woreta is placed to the south of Kaffa,) to run north-westward into the
+Abay. In fact, the Gojob is represented on that map to be the parent
+stream of the Bahr-el-Azreek or Blue River, and quite a distinct stream
+from the Abay, which it is made to join by the Toumat, having from the
+south-east received in its middle course the Geba, the Gibe, the
+Dedhasa, and the Baro, and from the south-west the Omo or Abo. The whole
+delineation, a copy of which I preserved, presented a mass so contrary
+to all other authorities, ancient and modern, that to rectify or reduce
+it to order was found impracticable, or where attempted only tended to
+lead into error.
+
+The error of bringing such an influx of water as the rivers mentioned,
+and so delineated, would bring to the Blue Nile, is evident from the
+fact, that this river at Senaar in the dry season is, according to
+Bruce, only about the size of the Thames at Richmond. His words are
+specific and emphatic, (Vol. vii. App. p. 89)--"The Nile at Babosch is
+like, or greater than the Thames at Richmond"--"has fine white sand on
+its banks"--"the water is clear, and in some places not more than two
+feet deep." Dumbaro (or Tzamburo, as the Doctor calls it in the map
+alluded to) is laid down between eight degrees and nine degrees north
+latitude, and west of Wallega; Tuftee is placed more to the north on the
+river designated the Blue River, and Gobo still further north upon it,
+in fact adjoining to its junction with the Abay. Doko is not noticed on
+the map.
+
+The intelligent native Abyssinian Gregorius, without referring to
+numerous other credible, early, and also modern authorities, determines
+this important point quite differently and accurately; for he assured
+Ludolf, (A. D. 1650, see _Ludolf_, p. 38,) that all those rivers that
+are upon the borders of Ethiopia, in the countries of "Cambat, Gurague,
+Enarea, Zandera, Wed, Waci, Gaci, and some others," do not flow into the
+Nile or any of his tributaries, but "enter the sea, every one in his
+distinct region," that is, the Indian ocean.
+
+Since his return to England Dr Beke has, I have reason to believe, found
+out his great error; and will alter the course of all these rivers in
+Enarea and Kaffa, and bend their courses to the south-east and south.{B}
+
+With these observations I proceed to a more important portion of my
+subject; namely, the position and capabilities of Africa, as these
+connect themselves with the present position and prospects of the
+British Tropical possessions, and the position and prospects of the
+Tropical possessions of other powers.
+
+The support of the power and the maintenance of the political
+preponderance of Great Britain in the scale of nations, depend upon
+colonial possessions. To render colonies most efficient, and most
+advantageous for her general interests, it is indispensably necessary
+that these should be planted in the Tropical world, the productions of
+which ever have been, are, and ever will be, eagerly sought after by the
+civilized nations of the temperate zones.
+
+One of the greatest modern French statesmen, Talleyrand, understood and
+recommended this fact to his master. In his celebrated memorial
+addressed to Bonaparte in 1801, speaking specially of England and her
+colonies, he says:--
+
+     "Her navy and her commerce are at present all her trust. France may
+     add Italy and Germany to her dominions with less detriment to Great
+     Britain then will follow the acquisition of a navy and the
+     extension of her trade. Whatever gives colonies to France supplies
+     her with ships, sailors, manufactures, and husbandmen. Victories by
+     land can only give her mutinous subjects, who, instead of
+     augmenting the national force by their riches or numbers,
+     contribute only to disperse and enfeeble that force; but the growth
+     of colonies supplies her with zealous citizens, and the increase of
+     real wealth; and increase of effective numbers is the certain
+     consequence."
+
+     "What could Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, combining their
+     strength, do against England? They might assemble in millions on
+     the shores of the Channel, but THERE would be the limits of their
+     enmity. Without ships to carry them over, and without experienced
+     mariners to navigate these ships, Britain would only deride the
+     pompous preparation. The moment we leave the shore her fleets are
+     ready to pounce upon us, to disperse and to destroy our ineffectual
+     armaments. There lies her security; in her insular situation and
+     her navy consists her impregnable defence. Her navy is in every
+     respect the offspring of her trade. To rob her of that, therefore,
+     is to BEAT DOWN her LAST WALL, AND TO FILL UP HER LAST
+     MOAT. To gain it to ourselves is to enable us to take advantage of
+     her deserted and defenceless borders, and to complete the
+     humiliation of our only remaining competitor."
+
+These are correct opinions, and merit the constant and most serious
+attention of every British statesman. The increased cultivation and
+prosperity of foreign Tropical possessions is become so great, and is
+advancing so rapidly the power and the resources of other nations, that
+these are embarrassing this country in all her commercial relations, in
+her pecuniary resources, and in all her political relations and
+negotiations.
+
+During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence
+as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the
+most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the
+command of the productions of the torrid zone, and the advantageous
+commerce which that afforded, gave to Great Britain the power and the
+resources which enabled her to meet, to combat, and to overcome, her
+numerous and reckless enemies in every battle-field, whether by sea or
+by land, throughout the world. In her the world saw realized the fabled
+giant of antiquity. With her hundred hands she grasped her foes in every
+region under heaven, and crushed them with resistless energy.
+
+Who, it may be asked, manned those fleets which bore the flag, and the
+fame, and the power, of England over every sea and into every land--who
+swept fleets from the sea, as at Aboukir, and navies from the ocean, as
+at Trafalgar?
+
+It may pointedly and safely be stated--the seamen supplied by the
+colonial trade, and chiefly by the West Indian colonial trade of Great
+Britain. About 2000 seamen, for example, were every year drawn into the
+West Indian trade of the Clyde from the herring fisheries on the west
+coast of Scotland, and just as regularly transferred from that colonial
+trade into British men-of-war, such men being the best seamen that they
+had, because they were men accustomed to every climate from the arctic
+circle to the equator.
+
+In the event of any future war, men of this description will more than
+ever be wanted; because the torrid regions are become more populous and
+more powerful, either in themselves or as connected with great nations
+in the temperate zones, and consequently the sphere of European
+conflicts will be more extended in them.
+
+The world, especially Europe and America, is vastly improved since 1815.
+Great Britain must look at and attend to this. She must march and act
+accordingly. The world will not wait for her if she chooses to stand
+still; on the contrary, other nations will "go ahead," and leave her
+behind to repent of her folly.
+
+"England," said her greatest warrior, "cannot have a little war;"
+neither can she exist as a little nation.
+
+The natives of the torrid zone can only labour in the cultivation of the
+soil of that zone. In no other zone can the special productions of the
+torrid zone be produced in perfection.
+
+There now remains no portion of the tropical world where _labour can be
+had on the spot_, and whereon Great Britain can so conveniently and
+safely plant her foot, in order to accomplish the desirable
+object--extensive Tropical cultivation--but Tropical Africa. Every other
+part is occupied by independent nations, or by people that may and will
+soon become independent.
+
+British capital and knowledge will abundantly furnish the means to
+cultivate her rich fields. This is the only rational and lasting way to
+instruct and to enlighten her people, and to keep them enlightened,
+civilized, and industrious. By adopting this course also, that British
+capital, both commercial and manufacturing, which in one way or other
+finds its way, and which will continue to find its way, especially while
+money is so cheap in this country, into foreign possessions to assist
+the slave trade and to support slavery--will be turned to support the
+cause of freedom in Africa, and at the same time to increase instead of
+tending to diminish the trade and the power of this country.
+
+The principle which Great Britain has adopted in her future agricultural
+relations with the Tropical world is, that colonial produce must be
+produced, and that it can be produced in that region cheaper by free
+African and East Indian labour than by slave labour. This great
+principle she cannot deviate from, nor attempt to revoke.
+
+If the foreign slave trade be not extinguished, and the cultivation of
+the Tropical territories of other powers opposed and checked by British
+Tropical cultivation, then the interests and the power of such states
+will rise into a preponderance over those of Great Britain; and the
+power and influence of the latter will cease to be felt, feared, and
+respected, amongst the civilized and powerful nations of this world.
+
+Civilization and peace can only be brought round in Africa by the
+extension of cultivation, accompanied by the introduction of true
+religion. Commerce will doubtless prove a powerful auxiliary; but to
+render it so, and to raise commerce to any permanent or beneficial
+extent, cultivation upon an extensive scale must precede commerce in
+Africa.
+
+It is, therefore, _within_ Africa, and by African hands and African
+exertions chiefly, that the slave trade can be destroyed. It is IN
+Africa, not OUT of Africa, that Africans, generally speaking, can and
+must be enlightened and civilized. Teach and show her rulers and her
+people, that they can obtain, and that white men will give them, more
+for the productions of their soil than for the hands which can produce
+these--and the work is done. All other steps are futile, can only be
+mischievous and delusive, and terminate in disappointment and defeat. To
+eradicate the slave trade will not eradicate the passions which gave it
+birth.
+
+In attempting to extinguish the African slave trade and to benefit
+Africa, Great Britain has, in one shape or other, expended during the
+last thirty-six years above �20,000,000; yet, instead of that traffic
+being destroyed, it has, as regards the possessions of foreign powers,
+been trebled, and is now as great as ever, while Africa has received no
+advantage whatever. Since 1808, about 3,500,000 slaves have been
+transported from Africa to the Brazils and Cuba. The productions of what
+is technically denominated colonial Tropical produce has, in
+consequence, been increased from �15,000,000 to �60,000,000 annually,
+augmented in part, it is true, from the natural increase of nearly one
+million slaves more in the United States of America.
+
+In abolishing slavery in the West Indies, Great Britain has besides
+expended above �20,000,000; still that measure has hitherto been so
+little successful, that �100,000,000 of fixed capital additional,
+invested in these colonies, stand on the brink of destruction; while, in
+addition to the former sums, the people of Great Britain have, from the
+enhanced price of produce, paid during the last six or seven years
+�10,000,00 more, and which has gone chiefly, if not wholly, into the
+pockets of the negro labourers in excessive high wages, the giant evil
+which afflicts the West Indies.
+
+When the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies was carried
+amidst feeling without judgment, the nation was so ready to pay
+�20,000,000, and the West Indians, especially those in England, so
+anxious to receive it, each considering that act all that was requisite
+to be done, that neither party ever thought for a moment of what foreign
+nations had done, were doing, and would do, in consequence. The warnings
+and advice of local knowledge were scouted in England, till these evils,
+which prudence might and ought to have prevented, now stare all parties
+in the face with a strength that puzzles the wisest and appals the
+boldest.
+
+Instead of supplying her own wants with Tropical produce, and next
+nearly all Europe, as she formerly did, it is the fact that, in some of
+the most important articles, she has barely sufficient to supply her own
+wants; while the whole of her colonial possessions, east, west, north,
+and south, are at this moment supplied with--and, as regards the article
+of sugar, are consuming--foreign slave produce, brought direct, or,
+refined in bond, exported and sold in the colonies at a rate as cheap,
+if not really cheaper, than British muscovado, the produce of these
+colonies.
+
+Such a state of things cannot continue, nor ought it any longer to be
+permitted to continue, without adopting an effectual remedy.
+
+The extent of the power and the interests which are arrayed against each
+other, in this serious conflict, must be minutely considered to be
+properly understood in a commercial and in a political point of view.
+Unless this is done the magnitude of the danger, and the assistance
+which is necessary to be given, and the exertions which are requisite in
+order to bring the contest to a successful issue, cannot be properly
+appreciated or correctly understood.
+
+The value of what is technically called colonial produce at present
+produced in the British colonial possessions, the East Indies included,
+is about �10,000,000 yearly, from a capital invested to the extent of
+�150,000,000. The trade thus created employs 800 ships, 300,000 tons,
+and 17,000 seamen yearly. This is the yearly value of the property and
+produce of the British Tropical agricultural trade, now dependent upon
+free labour.
+
+Against this we have opposed, in the western world alone, nearly
+�60,000,000 of agricultural produce, exportable and exported yearly,
+requiring a trade in returns equal to �56,000,000, and a proportionate
+number of ships' tonnage and seamen. In the trade with Cuba and Port
+Rico alone, the United States have 1600 vessels employed yearly,
+(230,000 tons of shipping,) making numerous and speedy voyages, and from
+which trade only, these states, in case of emergency, could man and
+maintain from twenty to thirty sail of the line.
+
+On the part of foreign nations there has, since 1808, been �800,000,000
+of fixed capital created in slaves, and in cultivation wholly dependent
+upon the labour of slaves. On the other hand, there stands on the part
+of Great Britain, altogether and only, about �130,000,000 (deducting the
+value paid for the slaves) vested in Tropical cultivation, and formerly
+dependent upon slave labour, and which has in part been swept away,
+while the remainder is in danger of being so.
+
+Let us have recourse to a few returns and figures, in order to show what
+is going on, especially by slave-labour in other countries, as compared
+with British possessions, in three articles of colonial produce, namely,
+sugar, (reducing the foreign clayed sugar into muscovado to make the
+comparison just,) coffee, and cotton; and as regards a few foreign
+countries only, nearly three-fourths of which produce, be it observed,
+has been created within the last thirty years.
+
+
+SUGAR--1842.
+
+    _British possessions._              _Foreign possessions._
+
+                          cwts.                          cwts.
+  West Indies,          2,508,552     Cuba,            5,800,000
+  East Indies,            940,452     Brazils,         2,400,000
+  Mauritius, (1841,)      544,767     Java,            1,105,757
+                        ---------     Louisiana,       1,400,000
+               Total,   3,993,771                     ----------
+                                             Total,   10,705,757
+
+
+COFFEE--1842.
+
+                           lbs.                            lbs.
+  West Indies,          9,186,555     Java,           134,842,715
+  East Indies,         18,206,448     Brazils,        135,000,800
+                       ----------     Cuba,            33,589,325
+               Total,  27,393,003     Venezuela,       34,000,000
+                                                      -----------
+                                             Total,   337,432,840
+
+
+COTTON--1840.
+
+                           lbs.                            lbs.
+  West Indies,            427,529     United States,  790,479,275
+  East Indies,         77,015,917     Java,           165,504,800
+  To China from do.,   60,000,000     Brazils,         25,222,828
+                      -----------                     -----------
+               Total, 137,443,446            Total,   981,206,903
+
+The above figures require only to be glanced at, to learn the increased
+wealth and productions of foreign nations, in comparison with the
+portion which England has in the trade and value of such articles, now
+become absolutely necessary for the manufactures, the luxuries, and the
+necessaries of life amongst the civilized nations of the world.
+
+In the enormous property and traffic thus created in foreign
+possessions, by the continuance and extension of the slave trade,
+British merchants and manufacturers are interested in the cause of their
+lawful trade to a great extent. The remainder is divided amongst the
+great civilized nations of the world, maintaining in each very
+extensive, very wealthy, very powerful, and, as opposed to Great
+Britain, very formidable commercial and political rival interests.
+
+Further, it is the very extensive and profitable markets which the
+above-mentioned yearly creation of property gives to the manufacturers
+of foreign countries, that have raised foreign manufactures to their
+present importance, and which enables these, in numerous instances, to
+oppose and to rival our own.
+
+The odds, therefore, in agricultural and commercial capital and
+interest, and consequently in political power and influence, arrayed
+against the British Tropical possessions are very fearful--SIX TO ONE.
+
+This is a most serious but correct state of things. Alarming as it is to
+contemplate, still it must be looked at, and looked at with firmness;
+for even yet it may be considered without terror or alarm.
+
+The struggle, both national and colonial, is clearly therefore most
+important, and the stake at issue incalculably great.
+
+It is by the assistance of African free labour, and by the judicious and
+just application thereof, both in Africa and in the West Indian
+colonies, that the victory of free labour over slave labour, freedom
+over slavery, can be achieved and maintained.
+
+The abundant population of Africa, properly directed, and a small
+portion gradually taken from judiciously selected districts of that
+continent, and under proper regulations, will be found sufficient to
+cultivate, not only her own fertile fields, but also to supply in
+adequate numbers free labourers to maintain the cultivation of the
+British West Indian colonies. It must always be borne in mind, that in
+the maintenance of cultivation, civilization, and industry, in those
+possessions, the cultivation, industry, and civilization of Africa
+depend. _The cause of both is henceforth the same, and cannot, and ought
+not, and must not be separated._ Whatever sources the West Indian
+colonies may and must look to for immediate relief, it is in civilized
+and enlightened Africa that they can only depend for a future and
+permanent support. Abandon this principle and this course, and the error
+committed will, at an early day, be fatal and final.
+
+Yet if the labour of Africa is continued to be abstracted to any
+considerable extent by Europeans, and from any points except from free
+European settlements in Africa, in order to cultivate other quarters of
+the world, all hope of improving the condition of Africa is at an end;
+because the abstraction of such labour can only be obtained by the
+continuation of internal slavery and a slave trade within Africa;
+because labour, if generally abstracted from Africa as heretofore,
+whether in freemen or slaves, will tend to enhance the cost of that
+which remains to such an extent, as will render it all but impossible
+for any industrious capitalist, whether European or native, to extend
+and maintain successfully cultivation in Africa.
+
+Had the 9,000,000 of slaves which, from first to last, have been torn
+from Africa to cultivate America, been employed in their native land,
+supported by European (British) capital, and guided by British
+intelligence, how much more beneficial and secure than it is, would
+every thing have been to Africa, to England, and to the world?
+
+Europe has been acting wrong: let her not continue in error; and, at the
+same time, let England meet and grapple with the question with enlarged
+and liberal views--views that look to future times and future
+circumstances--views such as England ought to entertain, and such as
+Great Britain only can yet see carried into effect.
+
+We first established cultivation in the West Indies by a population not
+natives of the soil, but which required to be imported from another and
+distant quarter of the globe. This, politically and commercially
+speaking, was a great error; but it has been committed, and it would be
+a greater error to leave those people, now free British subjects, and
+the large British capital there vested, to decay, misery, and general
+deterioration. They must be supported, and it is fortunate that they can
+be supported, through their present difficulties, without inflicting a
+grievous wrong on Africa, by taking her children from her by wholesale
+to cultivate distant and foreign lands.
+
+If European nations generally adopt the system of transporting labourers
+as freemen from Africa, then Africa would continue to be as much
+distressed, tortured, and oppressed, as ever she has been; while with
+the great strength of slave labour which those vast and fertile
+countries, Brazils, Cuba, &c., possess, they would, by the unlimited
+introduction of people called free from Africa, but which, once got
+into their power, they could coerce to labour for stated hire, overwhelm
+by increased production all the British colonies both in the west and in
+the east.
+
+Such abstraction of the African population from their country, would
+give a fearful impulse to an internal slave trade in Africa. The
+unfeeling chiefs on the coast, the most profligate, debased, and
+ferocious of mankind, would by fraud, force, or purchase, in the
+character of emigration agents, drag as many to the coast as they
+pleased and might be wanted; and while they did not actually sell, nor
+the European, technically speaking, buy, the people so brought from
+interior parts, these chiefs, by simply fixing high port charges and
+fiscal regulations for revenue purposes, would obtain from the transfer
+of the people--a transfer which these people could not resist or
+oppose--a much higher income than they before received from the _bona
+fide_ sale of slaves; and with which income they could, and they would,
+purchase European articles from European traders, to enable them to
+furnish additional and future supplies.
+
+In this way, millions after millions of Africans--for millions after
+millions would most unquestionably be demanded--would certainly be
+carried away. The poor creatures, unable to pay their own passage, would
+no more be their own masters from the moment they got on board the
+foreign ship, than if they were really slaves.
+
+Such a traffic as this on the part of foreign nations, Great Britain
+could neither denounce nor oppose while she herself resorted to a
+similar course. In one way only she could reasonably resist and oppose
+it; namely, by urging that she only took people from her own African
+settlements, which are free, to her West Indian settlements, which are
+free also; while foreign nations, such as Brazils, had no possessions of
+any kind on the coast of Africa, and at the same time retained slavery
+in their dominions. Great Britain could only urge this plea in
+opposition to such proceedings on the part of other powers; but would
+such reasoning, however proper and just, be admitted or listened to? I
+do not think that it would. The consequences of the adoption of such a
+course by the nation alluded to, or by any other European power which
+has Tropical colonies, (France, Spain, Denmark, and Holland have,) will
+prove fatal to the best interests of Great Britain.
+
+Already the people in the Brazils have begun to moot the question--that
+they ought in sincerity to put an end to the African slave trade, and in
+lieu thereof to bring labourers from Africa as free people. The supply
+of such that will be required, both to maintain the present numbers of
+the black population and to extend cultivation in that country, will
+certainly be great and lasting. The disparity of the sexes in Brazils is
+undoubtedly great. In Cuba it is in the proportion of 275,000 males to
+150,000 females, and, amongst the whole, the number of young persons is
+small. To keep up the population only in these countries will probably
+require 130,000 people from Africa yearly; while interest will lead the
+agricultural capitalist in those countries to bring only effective
+labourers, and these as a matter of course chiefly males; which will
+tend to perpetuate the evils arising from the inequality of the sexes,
+and thus continue, to a period the most remote, the demand from Africa,
+and consequently a continued expense, equal perhaps to �30 each, for
+every effective free labourer brought from that continent.
+
+It is thus obvious that African immigration in any shape, and to any
+nation, is a most serious matter. Unless the subject is considered in
+all its bearings, with reference not only to the present but to future
+times, and above all with reference to the steps which France, Portugal,
+or any other European power, may take in Africa, and also with reference
+to the steps which Great Britain may or may not take with regard to that
+great continent--most embarrassing results must follow; while, on the
+steps which may be taken by other nations, the British colonial
+interests henceforward depend.
+
+There remains but one certain and efficient way to prevent fatal evils
+and destructive results, and that is the simple, and ready, and rational
+course; namely, to oppose free labour _within_ Africa, and the West
+Indies and the East Indies, to African labour, whether free or bond,
+abstracted from her soil and carried by foreign nations to distant parts
+of the globe. In Africa, where the soil, the climate, the productions
+are equal and the same, _one-sixth_ part of the capital in labour would
+obtain labour equally efficient, nay more efficient, because removing
+Africans from their own country, either as slaves or freemen, even to
+other Tropical climates, must be attended with considerable risk and
+loss.
+
+Produce, supplied cheaper from Africa than it can be obtained from the
+places above alluded to, would speedily and completely terminate, not
+only the foreign African slave trade, but the slave trade and slavery in
+Africa itself. This is the only safe, secure, and certain way to
+accomplish the great object. It is safe because it is just; it is secure
+because it is profitable to all concerned, the giver as well as the
+receiver of the boon.
+
+It is neither prudent, patriotic, nor safe, to attempt to confine the
+productions of colonial commodities to the present British Tropical
+possessions; while the production of these in other countries and places
+will be increased by the capital and industry of other nations, and even
+by British capital and skill, more especially while capital cannot find
+room for profitable employment in England. During the war, Great Britain
+exported to the continent of Europe colonial produce to the extent of
+five millions yearly; and which in every case, but especially in bad
+seasons, when large supplies of continental grain were necessary for the
+food of her population, always secured a large balance of trade in her
+favour, and which would again be the case if she adopts the course here
+pointed out.
+
+Adopting the course recommended, Great Britain at an early day would be
+able to supply, not only her own extensive markets, both home and
+colonial, with sugar, coffee, cotton, and dye-stuffs, &c. &c., but, in
+every other market of the world, she would come in for a large share of
+the external traffic. Her ships and her seamen would carry, both to her
+own and to foreign markets, the productions raised by British subjects
+and British capital, instead of carrying from foreign port to foreign
+port, as her ships and her seamen do at this moment, the productions
+raised by foreign people, capital, and industry. Great additional wealth
+would thus be drawn to this country; Tropical produce of every
+description would be obtained at a reasonable, yet remunerating rate;
+now, extensive, and profitable markets would be opened up to our
+manufactures. They would become and remain prosperous; and all classes
+of the community would be benefited and relieved. Prosperity would
+increase the power of the people to consume; increased consumption would
+produce increased revenue; and the government would be relieved from
+unceasing applications for relief, which, under existing circumstances,
+they have it not in their power to give.
+
+The point under consideration also, important as it is, becomes still
+more important when the fact is considered, that if Great Britain does
+not set about the work to raise that produce in Africa, and command the
+trade proceeding from it, other nations most assuredly will; when she
+will lose, not only the advantages which that cultivation and trade
+would give her, but that trade also which she at present holds with her
+own colonies; for it is plain that the proceedings of foreign countries,
+such as have been adverted to, both in Africa, America, and other
+places, would cover the British colonies with poverty and ruin.
+
+The geographical position of Africa is peculiarly favourable for
+commerce with all other countries, and especially with Great Britain and
+her vast and varied possessions. Africa, or rather Tropical Africa, is
+equally distant from America, and Europe, and the most civilized parts
+of Asia, besides her proximity to Arabia, and, by means of the Red Sea,
+with Egypt and the Mediterranean. Africa, whether we look to the Cape of
+Good Hope or the Red Sea, is the impregnable halfway house to India--the
+quarter to make good the loss of an Indian empire. She has numerous good
+harbours, many navigable rivers, a most fruitful soil, valuable
+productions of every kind, known in every other quarter of the Tropical
+world, besides some peculiarly her own; and a climate and a country,
+take it all in all, equal, if not superior, to any other Tropical
+quarter of the world in point of salubrity. Her population are indeed
+ignorant and debased; but generally speaking, and especially over large
+portions of her surface, they are even more active, and intelligent, and
+industrious, than the Indians of America, or the people in some parts of
+Asia are, or than the population of Europe was, before the arms of Rome
+coerced and civilized them. Why, then, is Africa overlooked and
+neglected?
+
+Let us attend to the following facts. They are, both in a political and
+commercial point of view, of great importance, as showing the progress
+of the opinions and efforts of foreign nations as directed towards
+Africa.
+
+The great energies of France are, it is well known, at present strongly
+directed to the more important points of Tropical Africa, for the
+purpose of extending colonization, cultivation, and commerce therein, in
+order that she may thereby obtain supplies of colonial produce from the
+application of her own capital, and at the same time, and by this
+measure, to raise up a more extensive commercial marine, and
+consequently a more powerful and commanding navy.
+
+Under such circumstances, the real question to be solved is--Shall Great
+Britain secure and keep, as she may do, the superiority in Tropical
+cultivation, commerce, and influence? or, Shall foreign countries be
+suffered to acquire this supremacy, not only as regards themselves
+specifically, but even to the extent of supplying British markets with
+the produce of their fields, their labour, and their capital, to the
+abandonment and destruction of her own?
+
+This is the true state of the case; and the result is a vital question
+as regards the future power and resources of Great Britain.
+
+France is already securely placed at the mouth of the Senegal, and at
+Goree, extending her influence eastward and north-eastward from both
+places. She has a settlement at Albreda, on the Gambia, a short distance
+above St Mary's, and which commands that river. She has just formed a
+settlement close by Cape Palmas, and another at the mouth of the Gaboon,
+and a third by this time near the chief mouth of the Niger, in the Bight
+of Benin. She has fixed herself at Massuah and Buro, on the west shore
+of the Red Sea, commanding the inlets into Abyssinia. She is
+endeavouring to fix her flag at Brava and the mouth of the Jub; and she
+has just taken permanent possession of the important island of Johanna,
+situated in the centre of the northern outlet of the Mozambique channel,
+by which she acquires the command of that important channel. Her active
+agents are placed in Southern Abyssinia, and are traversing the borders
+of the Great Bahr-el-Abiad; while the northern shores of Africa will
+speedily be her own.
+
+Spain has planted herself in the island of Fernando Po, which commands
+all the outlets of the Niger, and the rivers from Cameroons to the
+equator; and from which she can readily obtain at any time any number of
+people from the adjacent coasts for her West Indian possessions, either
+as slaves or freemen.
+
+About six years ago, the government of Portugal appointed a commission
+to enquire into the state and condition of her once fine and still
+important colonies in Tropical Africa, and to report upon the best
+course to adopt to render them beneficial to the mother country. They
+have reported and wisely recommended, that Portuguese knowledge and
+capital should, as far as possible, be again sent to Africa, in order to
+instruct, enlighten, and cultivate these valuable possessions; and
+instead of allowing, as heretofore, labour in slaves to be abstracted
+from Africa, that native labourers should be retained and employed in
+Africa itself; and further, that it should to the utmost be aided and
+directed by European skill, capital, and labour. Thus, fourteen degrees
+of latitude on the east coast, and twenty degrees of latitude on the
+west coast, will, at an early day, be set free from the slave trade.
+From these points the Brazil markets were chiefly supplied with slaves;
+but Brazils being now separated from Portugal, the latter has and can
+have no interest in allowing the former to carry on the slave trade from
+her African dominions, but quite the reverse.
+
+The discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope changed the
+course of eastern commerce. The exertions of Portugal in the manner
+proposed, will now, and most certainly and severely, affect Tropical
+productions and commerce in every market. In this case, England ought to
+encourage and support Portugal, and, by following her footsteps in other
+eligible parts of Africa, share in the advantages which such a state of
+things, and the cultivation and improvement of Africa, is certain to
+produce.
+
+The Iman of Muscat, the sovereign of Zanzibar, has lately put an end to
+the slave trade in his dominions in Africa, extending northwards from
+the Portuguese boundary eight degrees of latitude on the eastern coast.
+His envoy, who was lately in England, was so delighted with the
+treatment which he received, and with all that he heard and saw here,
+that he has influenced his master to carry out sincerely the views and
+objects recommended by England. I have in my possession a most
+interesting account of the country, extending into the interior of
+Africa, from the coast opposite Zanzibar all the way to the great lake
+Maravi. The country is intersected with noble rivers, one especially
+which issues out of the lake; is generally healthy and well cultivated,
+especially as the lake is approached. The population are generally of
+Arabian descent, industrious, and clothed. A wide field, therefore, for
+commercial operations is open in this quarter.
+
+The powerful sovereign of Dahomey has agreed to abolish the slave trade.
+Independent of his considerable dominions, his fine country was one of
+the greatest high-roads for the slave caravans from the interior. He has
+received, welcomed, and encouraged the Wesleyan missionaries lately sent
+to that quarter. The missionaries from this society, and also one from
+the Church Missionary Society, have penetrated to Abekuta, a town
+containing 40,000 inhabitants, and about 106 miles north-east of Lagos,
+and north of Benin. The country, immediately after quitting the coast,
+becomes most fertile, pleasant, and healthy, as all that country to the
+north of the Formosa is well known to be. The population are eager for
+instruction; they are comparatively industrious and civilized; they
+manufacture all their necessary agricultural implements, bits for
+bridles, hoes, &c., from their own iron; they tan their own leather, and
+manufacture therefrom saddles, bridles, shoes, &c.
+
+The great sovereign of Ashantee has also received with royal honours,
+and welcomed, the ministers of the gospel, encouraged them, and listened
+to them in the most gratifying manner. The Almamy of Teembo--a state
+which commands the fine districts around the Niger in its early course,
+and the roads from populous interior parts on the east to the western
+coast--has lately evinced the strongest desire to extend cultivation and
+commerce in lieu of the slave trade, and to have a ready communication
+with Europeans, and especially with the English. In other portions of
+Africa important movements are also going on, most gratifying to the
+friends of humanity and religion.
+
+The United States of America, as a nation, is about to incorporate with
+her dominions the whole coast of Africa on Cape Palmas to the borders of
+the Gallinas--a fertile and healthy part of that continent, and wherein
+several settlements have of late years been made by the free people of
+colour from those states. This effected, there will hardly remain a spot
+of any consequence in Tropical Africa worth looking after for Great
+Britain to plant her foot, either for the purpose of obtaining labourers
+for her West Indian colonies, or to extend agriculture and commerce with
+Africa. The present British Tropical African possessions have been, and
+are, very badly selected for any one of the purposes alluded to, or for
+extending political power and influence in Africa. Still much more may
+be made of them than has ever hitherto been done.
+
+But there is a still higher and more important consideration as regards
+Africa alone--the eternal salvation of her people. This consideration is
+addressed to the rulers of a Christian nation. The appeal cannot fall on
+deaf ears. The debt which Great Britain owes to Africa, it is
+undeniable, is incalculably great. The sooner it is put in course of
+liquidation the better. To spread Christianity throughout Africa can
+only atone for the past. Our duty as Christians, and our interests as
+men, call on us to undertake the work. It is the cause, the safety, the
+improvement, and the salvation of a large portion of the human race; it
+is the cause of our country, the cause of our colonies, the cause of
+truth, the cause of justice, the cause of Christianity, the cause and
+the pleading of a Christian nation--and a cause like this cannot plead
+in vain.
+
+To secure these important objects no great or immediate expenditure is
+necessary; nay, if properly gone about, a saving in the present African
+expenditure may be effected.
+
+  JAMES MACQUEEN.
+  LONDON, _3d May 1844_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} This bend is represented in a map constructed in Paris, and said to
+be from information obtained in a second voyage; but no such bend is
+indicated in the journal of the original voyage by Captain Selim.
+
+{B} Under date Yaush, September 21, 1842, Dr Beke states the curious and
+important fact, that the people of Enarea and Kaffa communicate with the
+west coast of Africa, and that one of the articles of merchandise
+brought from that coast to these places was salt.
+
+
+
+
+NARRATION OF CERTAIN UNCOMMON THINGS THAT DID FORMERLY HAPPEN TO ME,
+HERBERT WILLIS, B.D.
+
+
+It had pleased Heaven in the year 1672, when I had finished my studies
+in Magdalen College, Oxford, whereof I was a Demy, and had taken my
+degree of bachelor of arts in the preceding term, to visit me with so
+severe an affliction of fever, which many took at first for the
+commencement of the small-pox, that I was recommended by the physicians,
+when the malady had abated, to return to my father's house and recover
+my strength by diet and exercise. This I was fain to do; and having
+hired a small horse of Master John Nayler in the corn market, to take me
+as far as to the mansion of a gentleman, an ancient friend of my
+father's, who had a house near unto Reading in Berkshire, and in those
+troubled times, when no man knew whereunto things might turn from day to
+day, did keep himself much retired. I bade adieu to the university with
+a light heart but a weakened habit of body, and turned my horse's head
+to the south. I performed the journey without accident in one day; but
+the exertion thereof had so exhausted my strength, that Mr Waller,
+(which was the name of my father's friend, and of kin to the famous poet
+Edmund Waller, Esquire, who hath been ever in such favour with our
+governors and kings,) perceiving I was nigh discomfited, did press me to
+go to my chamber without delay. He was otherwise very gracious in his
+reception of me, and professed great amity to me, as being the son of
+his fast friend and companion; but yet I marked, as it were, a cloud
+that lay obscure behind his external professions, as if he was uneasy in
+his mind, and was not altogether pleased with having a stranger within
+his gates. Howbeit I thanked him very heartily for his hospitality, and
+betook myself to the chamber that was assigned for my repose. It was a
+pretty, small room, whereof I greatly admired the fashion; and the
+furnishing thereof was extreme gay, for the bed hangings were of bright
+crimson silk, and on a table was placed a mirror of true Venetian glass.
+Also, there were chests of mahogany wood, and other luxurious devices,
+which my weariness did not hinder me from observing; but finally I was
+overcome by my weakness, and I threw myself on the bed without removing
+my apparel, and sustained as I believe, though I have no certain
+warranty thereof, an access of deliquium or fainting. When I did recover
+my senses after this interval of suspended faculty, (whether proceeding
+from sleep or the other cause above designated,) I lay for many minutes
+revolving various circumstances in my mind. I resolved, if by any means
+my bodily powers were thereunto sufficient, to depart on the morrow, and
+borrow one of Mr Waller's horses to convey me on my way, for I was
+uneasy to be thought an intruder; but when I had settled upon this in my
+mind, a new incident occurred which altered the current of my thoughts,
+for I perceived a slight noise at the door of my chamber as of one
+stealthily turning the handle, and I lay, without making any motion, to
+watch whereunto this proceeding would tend. The door was put gently
+open, and a figure did enter the room, so disguised with fantastical
+apparel, that I was much put to it to guess what the issue would be. It
+was of a woman, tall and majestical, with a red turbaund round her head,
+and over her shoulders a shawl much bedizened with needlework. Her gown
+was of green cloth, and I was made aware by the sound, as she passed
+along the floor, that the heels of her shoes were more than commonly
+high. With this apparition, of which I took only a very rapid
+observation through my half-closed eyelids, I was greatly astonished;
+for she was an exact resemblance to those bold Egyptian queans who were
+at first called Bohemians, but are nothing better than thieves and
+vagabonds, if indeed they be not the chosen people of the prince of
+darkness himself. She looked carefully all round the room, and after
+opening one of the drawers of mahogany wood, and taking something
+therefrom which I could not discern, she approached to the side of my
+bed, and looked earnestly upon me as I lay. I could not keep up the
+delusion any longer, and opened my eyes. She continued gazing
+steadfastly upon me without alteration of her countenance or uttering
+any word, whether of apology or explanation; and I was so held in by the
+lustre of her large eyes, and the fixed rigidity of her features, that
+for some time I was unable to give utterance to my thoughts.
+
+"Woman," I said at last, "what want you with me?"
+
+"Your help, if you will be gracious to poor mourners such as we."
+
+I interrogated her much and curiously as to what service she required at
+my hands; for I had a scrupulosity to promise any thing to one whose
+external made me think her a disciple of Mahomet, as those gipsies are
+said to be. After much hesitating, she could not conceal from me that
+she was in this disguise for some special and extraordinary purpose;
+nevertheless, she condescended on no particulars of her state or
+condition; but when I finally promised to satisfy her demand, if it
+might be done by a Christian gentleman, and a poor candidate for the
+holy ministry, she cautioned me not to be startled by whatever I should
+see, and beckoned me to follow her--the which I did in no easy frame of
+mind. Opening a little door which I had not seen when I took observation
+of the apartment, she disappeared down two or three steps, where I
+pursued the slight sound of her footfall; for there was great darkness,
+so that I could see nothing. We went, as I conjectured, through several
+passages of some length, till finally she paused; and knocked very
+gently three times at a door. The door was speedily opened; and in
+answer to a question of my guide, whether godly Mr Lees was yet arrived,
+a voice answered that he was there, and expecting us with impatience.
+When I passed through the door, I found myself in a small chamber, dimly
+lighted by one small lamp, which was placed upon a table by the side of
+a bed; and when I looked more fixedly I thought I perceived the figure
+of a person stretched on the bed, but lying so fixed and still, that I
+marvelled whether it was alive or dead. At the foot of the bed stood a
+venerable old man, in the dress of a clergyman of our holy church, with
+a book open in his hand, and my strange guide led me up to where he was
+standing, and whispered to him, but so that I could hear her words,
+"This gentleman hath promised to assist us in this matter."
+
+But hereupon I interposed with a few words to the same revered divine.
+"Sir," I said, "I would be informed wherefore I am summoned hither, and
+in what my assistance is needful?"
+
+"He hath not then been previously informed?" he said to the Egyptian;
+and receiving some sign of negation from her, he closed the book, and
+leading me apart into a corner of the apartment, discovered the matter
+in a very pious and edifying manner.
+
+"It is to be godfather in the holy rite of baptism, to one whom it is
+our duty, as Christian men, to rescue from the dangerous condition of
+worse than unregenerate heathenism."
+
+"The child of that Egyptian woman?" I asked; but he said, "No. She who
+is now disguised in that attire is no Egyptian, but a true Samaritan,
+who hath been the means of working much good in the evil times past, and
+is likely to be a useful instrument in the troubled times yet to come.
+If this dissolute court, and Popish heir-presumptive, do proceed in
+their attempts to overthrow our pure Reformed church, depend on it,
+young man, that that woman will not be found wanting in the hour of
+trial. But for the matter in hand, will you be godfather to the person
+now to be received into the ark?"
+
+I told him I could not burden my conscience with so great and important
+duties, without some assurance that I should be able to fulfil them.
+Whereto he replied, that such scrupulosities, however praiseworthy in
+calmer tines, ought now to yield to the paramount consideration of
+saving a soul alive.
+
+A faint voice, proceeding from the bed, was here heard mournfully asking
+if the ceremony was now to begin, for death was near at hand.
+
+I went up to the bed and saw the face of a pale dying woman, whose
+eyes, albeit they encountered mine, had no sense of sight in them, for
+the shadows of the Great King were already settled upon her countenance.
+"Begin then," I said to the clergyman; and on a motion from him, the
+woman who had conducted me went out, and shortly returned, leading by
+the hand a child of two, or haply three years of age, exceeding
+beautiful to look on, and dressed in the same style of outlandish
+apparel as her conductor. I had little time to look attentively at her,
+for her hand was put into mine, while the other was held by the
+Egyptian, (as I still call her, notwithstanding I knew she was a devout
+woman,) and another person, whom I guessed to be an attendant on the
+sick lady, stationed herself near; whereupon the clergyman commenced
+from our book of common prayer the form of baptism. The lady seemed to
+acquire strength at the sound of his low solemn voice, and half raised
+herself in the bed, and looked anxiously towards where we were; when the
+name was given, which was Lucy Hesseltine, she stretched herself back on
+her pillow with a faint smile. The ceremony was soon over, and the
+Egyptian took the new Christian to the side of the bed, and whispered in
+the lady's ear, "Jessica, the child is now one of the Christian flock;
+she prays your blessing." She waited for an answer, during which time
+the clergyman took me apart, and had again entered into discourse. But
+the Egyptian came to us. "Hush!" she said, "the ways of God are
+inscrutable; our friend is gone to her account." Hereupon she hurried me
+through the same passages by which we had come, and bidding me God-speed
+at the hidden door of my chamber, told me to keep what I had seen a
+secret from all men, yea, if possible, to forget it myself, as there
+might be danger in having it spread abroad.
+
+Tormented with many thoughts, and uneasy at the great risk I ran of
+bringing guilt on my own soul by having made sponsorial promises which I
+could not execute, I rested but indifferently that night. The next day I
+pursued my journey home in the manner I had proposed, and was glad to
+avoid the chance of being interrogated by Mr Waller as to what had
+occurred. In a short time my good constitution and home restored me to
+my former strength, and the memory of that strange incident grew more
+faint as other things came to pass which made deeper impressions on my
+heart and mind. Among these is not to be forgotten the death of my
+father, which happened on the 14th of June in the following year,
+_videlicet_ 1673; and the goodness of the lord bishop of Oxford in
+giving me priests' orders on my college Demyship, whereby I was enabled
+to present myself to this living, and hold it, having at that time
+attained the canonical age. My courtship also and marriage, which befell
+in the year 1674, had great effect in obliterating past transactions. I
+was married on Thursday, the 24th day of June.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Here several pages are omitted as irrelevant, containing family
+incidents for some years.)
+
+Howbeit things did not prosper with us so much as we did expect; for the
+payers of tithes were a stiff-necked generation, as were the Jews of
+old, and withheld their offerings from the priest at the very time when
+Providence sent a plentiful supply of mouths to which the offerings
+would have been of use. Charles was our only son, and was now in his
+third year--the two girls, Henrietta and Sophia, were six and seven--my
+eldest girl was nine years past, and I had named her, in commemoration
+of my father's ancient friend, by the prenomen of Waller. It hath been
+remarked by many wise men of old, and also by our present good bishop,
+that industry and honesty are the two Herculeses that will push the
+heaviest waggon through the mire; and more particularly so, if the
+waggoner aids also by putting his shoulder to the wheel. And easy was it
+to see, that the wheel of the domestic plaustrum--wherein, after the
+manner of that ancient Parthians, I included all my family, from the
+full beauty of my excellent wife to the sun-lighted hair of my prattling
+little Charles, (the which reminds me of those beautiful lines which are
+contained in a translation of the _Iliad_ of Homer by Mr Hobbes,
+descriptive of the young Astyanax in his mother Andromache's arm--
+
+    "And like a star upon her bosom lay
+      His beautiful and shining golden head")--
+
+It was easy, I say, to see, that with such an additional number of
+passengers, the domestic plaustrum would sink deeper and deeper in the
+miry ways of the world. And consultations many and long did my excellent
+wife and I hold over the darkening prospect of our future life. At last
+she bethought her of going to take counsel of her near friend and most
+kind godfather, Mr William Snowton of Wilts, which was a managing man
+for many of the nobility, and much renowned for probity and skilful
+discernment. He was steward on many great estates, and gave plentiful
+satisfaction to his employers, without neglecting his own interest,
+which is a thing that does always go with the other, namely, a care for
+your master's affairs; for how shall a man pretend to devote his time
+and services to another man's estate, and take no heed for himself? The
+thing is contra the nature of man, and the assertion thereof is fit only
+for false patriots and other evil men. It was with much weariness of
+heart and anxious tribulation that I parted from that excellent woman,
+even for so short a period of time; but Master George Sprowles of this
+parish having it in mind to travel into the village where the said Mr
+William Snowton kept his abode, I availed myself of his friendly offer
+to conduct my wife thither upon a pillion; and thereupon having sent
+forward her luggage two days before by a heavy waggon which journeyeth
+through Sarum, I took leave of the excellent woman, commending her
+heartily unto the care of Providence and Master George, which
+(Providence I mean) will not let a sparrow fall to the ground, much less
+the mother of a family, which moreover was riding on a strong
+sure-footed horse, which also was bred in our parish, and did sometimes
+pasture on the glebe. It was the first time we had been separated since
+our wedding-day. I took little Charles into my room that night, and did
+carefully survey the other children before I went to rest. They did all
+sleep soundly, and some indeed did wear a smile upon their innocent
+faces as I looked upon them, and I thought it was, perhaps, the
+reflection of the prayers which their mother, I well knew, was pouring
+out for them at that hour. That was on a Tuesday, and as the distance
+was nearly sixty miles, I could not hear of her safe arrival till the
+return of Master George, which could not be till the following Monday;
+not being minded, (for he was a devout man, and had imbibed his father's
+likings in his youth, which was a champion for the late Man,) and would
+rather have done a murder on a Thursday than have travelled on the
+Sabbath-day. "Better break heads," he was used to say, "than break the
+Sabbath." I did always find him, the father I mean, a sour hand at a
+bargain; and when he was used to drive me hard upon his tithes and
+agistments, I could fancy he took me for one of the Amalekites, or one
+of the Egyptians, whom he thought it a meritorious Christian deed to
+spoil. The Monday came at last, and Master George Sprowles, before he
+rode to his own home, trotted his horse up our church avenue, and
+delivered into my hands a packet of writing carefully sealed with a
+seal, whereof the device was a true-love knot. Great was my delight and
+great my anxiety to read what was written therein, and all that evening
+I pored over the manuscript, on which she had bestowed great pains, and
+crossed all the t's without missing one. But it is never an easy task to
+decipher a woman's meaning, particularly when not addicted to
+penmanship; and although my excellent wife had attended a penman's
+instructions, and had acquired the reputation, in her native place, of
+being an accomplished clerk, still, since her marriage, she had applied
+her genius to the making of tarts and other confections, rather than to
+the parts of scholarship, and it was difficult for me to make out the
+significance of her epistle in its whole extent. Howbeit, it was a
+wonderful effort of calligraphy, considering she had only had two days
+wherein to compose and write it, and she had been so little used to this
+manner of communication, and it consisted of three whole sides of a
+large sheet of paper. She said therein that Mr Snowton was a father unto
+her in his affection and urbanity, and that he highly approved the
+motion for us to make provision of the meat that perishes, seeing it is
+indispensable for young children and also for adults; and that he had
+already bethought him of a way wherein he might be serviceable to
+us--viz. in procuring for me certain youth of the upper kinds, to be by
+me instructed in the learned tongues, and such other branches as I had
+proficiency in; and, in addition thereto, he said, that peradventure he
+might obtain a similar charge for my excellent wife in superintending
+the perfectionment of certain young ladies of his acquaintance in
+samplers, and millinery, and cookery, and such other of the fine and
+useful arts as she was known to excel in; and he subjoined thereto, that
+the charges for each pupil would be so large, being only those of
+consideration which he recommended unto me, that a few years would be
+sufficient wherein to consolidate portions for all my children. Such,
+with some misgivings touching my own interpretation, did I make out to
+be the substance of my excellent wife's letter; and I rejoiced greatly
+that such an opening was made for me, by the which I might attain to
+such eminence of estate that I might place my Charles in the first ranks
+of the law, yea, might live to see him raised to the fulness of temporal
+grandeur, and sitting, as Lord High Keeper, among the peers and princes
+of the land, with a crown of pure gold upon his head. But there was no
+crown but a heavenly one, that fadeth not nor groweth dim, that could
+have added a fresh beauty to the fair head of my Charles. But the
+sweetest part of her missive was contained in the _post scriptum_.
+Therein she said, and in this I could not be wrong, that Mr Snowton had
+undertaken to forward her in his light wheeled cart, by reason of the
+conveniency it would be of to her in the transportation of herself and
+luggage, and also of Miss Alice Snowton, of Mr Snowton's kindred, a
+young lady which he had adopted, (being the only child of his only
+brother, Mr Richard Snowton, deceased,) and advised my wife to accept
+the care of her as a beginning, and for the charges of the same he would
+be answerable for fifty golden Caroluses at Ladyday and Michaelmas. A
+hundred Caroluses each year! My heart bounded with joy. Great were my
+preparations for the reception of my new inmate, and busy were we all
+from my busy Waller down to Charles. He with much riotousness did
+superintend all, and rejoiced greatly at the noise caused by the
+hammering, and taking down and putting up of bed-hangings, and did in no
+slight measure add thereto by strange outbreaks of riotous mirth, such
+as whooping and screaming; causing confusion, at the same time, by
+various demonstrations of his enjoyments, such as throwing nails against
+the windows, beating on the floor with the poker, and occasionally
+interrupting our operations by tumbling down stairs, and causing us for
+a moment to believe him killed outright, or at least maimed for life.
+But there is a special providence over happy children; and save that he
+fell on one occasion into the bucket of soap and water, wherewith a
+domestic was scowering the chintz room floor, and suffered some
+inconvenience from the hotness thereof, he escaped in a manner truly
+miraculous from any accident affecting life or limb. When the time drew
+near in the which I expected the return of my excellent wife, I took all
+the children to the upper part of the church field which faces the
+high-road, upon which the large stones have recently been laid down, in
+the manner of a causeway, but which, at that period, was left to the
+natural hardness, or rather softness, of the soil, and was, in
+consequence thereof, dangerous to travel on by reason of the ruts and
+hollows; to that portion, I say, of the church field I conveyed all my
+little ones, to give the gratulations necessary on such an occasion to
+their excellent mother. The spot whereon we were stationed commanded a
+view of the hill which superimpends our village, and we were therefore
+gratified to think that we should have an early view of the expected
+travellers; and many quarrels and soft reconcilements did take place
+between my younger ones, upon the point of who would be the first to
+see their approach. In the midst of these sweet contentions, whilst I
+was in the undignified and scarcely clerical act of carrying little
+Charles upon my shoulder, having decorated his head with my
+broad-brimmed hat, in order to enable him--vain imagination, which
+pleased the boy's heart--to see over and beyond the hill, there did
+pass, in all her wonted state and dignity, with two outriders in the
+Mallerden livery, two palfreniers at her side, and four mounted
+serving-men behind, the ancient Lady Mallerden, which was so famous an
+upholder of our venerated church in the evil days through which it so
+happily passed; and with no little perturbation of mind, and great
+confusion of face, did I see the look of astonishment, not to say
+disdain, with which she regarded my position; more particularly as
+little Charles, elevated, as I have said, upon my shoulders, with his
+legs on each side of my neck, did lift up the professional hat, which
+did entirely absorb his countenance, with great courtesy, and made a
+most grave and ceremonious obeisance unto the lofty lady. She pursued
+her path, returning the salutation with a kind of smile, and at the same
+easy ambling pace as was her wont, proceeded up the hill. Just as she
+reached the summit thereof our eyes were gladdened with the sight, so
+long desired, of the light equipage on two wheels of the kind Mr
+Snowton, containing my excellent wife and her young charge, and also
+various boxes of uncommon size, in which were laid great store of bodily
+adornment for both the ladies; as was more fully seen thereafter, on the
+opening of the boxes, by reason of Mr Snowton having privily conveyed
+into them various changes of apparel for the use of my excellent wife,
+as also for each of the three girls. To Charles he also sent the image
+of an ass, which, by touching a certain string, did open its mouth and
+wave its ears in a manner most curious to behold, wherewith the infant
+was infinitely delighted, as was I, without enquiring at that time into
+the exquisite mechanism whereby the extraordinary demonstrations were
+produced. But in the course of little more than a month he was led, by
+his enquiring turn of mind, to pry into the mystery; and in the pursuit
+of knowledge--laudable surely in a person of his years, and
+demonstrative of astonishing sagacity and research--he did take the
+animal entirely to pieces, and saw the inward parts thereof. The great
+lady, with all the retinue, stopped short as she encountered with my
+excellent wife at the top of the hill, and did most courteously make
+tender enquiries of her state of health, and also of her plans--whereof
+she seemed some little instructed--and expressed her satisfaction
+therein, and did make many sweet speeches to her, and also to the pupil,
+and trusted that she would be good and dutiful, and an earnest and
+affectionate daughter of the Church of England. To all which my
+excellent wife replied in fitting terms, and Alice Snowton--so was she
+named--made promise so to do, God being her helper and I her teacher;
+and thereupon the great lady bended her head with smiles, and rode on.
+When they got down to where we stood in the church field, the flush of
+modesty, and perhaps of pride, at being spoken to in such friendly guise
+by the haughty Lady Mallerden, had not yet left the cheek of my
+excellent wife, upon which I impressed a kiss of true love, and held up
+little Charles as high as I could, to enable him to do likewise, which
+he did, with a pretty set speech which I had taught him, in gratulation
+of her return. Alice Snowton also did blush, and held out her cheek,
+whereon I pressed my lip, with fervent prayers for her advance in
+holiness and virtue, and also in useful learning, under my excellent
+wife's instructions. She was a short girl, not much taller than my
+Waller, though she seemed to be three or even four years more advanced
+in age. She was a sweet engaging child of thirteen, and I loved her as
+one of my flock from the moment I saw her, as in duty bound. My children
+were divided between joy at seeing their excellent mother, and wonder at
+the stranger. But a short period wore off both these sentiments of the
+human mind, or rather the outward manifestation of them; and I will
+venture to assert that the quietude of night, and the clearness of the
+starry heavens, fell on no happier household on that evening than the
+parsonage of Welding. And next day it was the same; and next, and next,
+and a great succession of happy, useful days. Alice was a dear girl, and
+we loved her as our own; and she loved Charles above all, and was his
+friend, his nurse, his playfellow. Their gambols were beautiful to
+behold; and, to complete the good work which was so well begun, good Mr
+Snowton did send to my care, at the same remuneration, two young
+gentlemen of tender years, Master Walter Mannering and Master John
+Carey--the elder of them being eight and the other seven; and, as if
+fortune never tired of raining down on us her golden favours, the great
+Lady Mallerden herself did use her interest on my behalf, and obtained
+for me the charge of a relative of her noble house--the honourable
+Master Fitzoswald, of illustrious lineage in the north, of the age of
+nine years. But doubtless, as the philosopher has remarked, there is no
+sweet without its bitter, or, as the poet has said, "no rose without its
+thorn," or, better perhaps, as another great poet of antiquity has
+clothed the sentiment--
+
+    ----"Medio de fonte leporum
+    Surgit amari aliquid;"
+
+for it was made an express stipulation of the latter office--namely, the
+charge of the honourable young gentleman, being the second son of the
+noble Earl Fitzoswald, in Yorkshire--that the great Lady Mallerden
+should have joint superintendence of his studies with me, and the
+direction of his conduct, and also his religious education. And this was
+a sore drawback to the pleasure I experienced, for I knew her to be
+proud and haughty beyond most women, or even men; and also that she was
+of so active and inquisitive a turn of mind, that she would endeavour to
+obtain all power and authority unto herself, whereto I determined by no
+means to submit. Two hundred golden guineas was the _honorarium_ per
+annum for his education; and my excellent wife, who was addicted, like
+the most of her sex, to dreams and omens, did very often have a vision
+in the night, of the Right Hon. the Earl Fitzoswald presenting me to a
+great office in the church--yea, even a seat among the right reverend
+the lord bishops of the Upper House of Parliament. Nor were portents and
+auguries wanting, such as this--which made an uncommon impression on my
+excellent wife's mind--_videlicet_, it chanced that Alice Snowton did
+make a hat of paper, to be placed on Charles's head when he was more
+than usually naughty, to be called the fool's-cap out of derision; but
+this same paper hat, which was of a fantastic shape, being conical and
+high, the boy with scissors did dexterously mutilate and nearly destroy,
+and, coming quietly behind me when I was meditating the future with my
+excellent wife, he placed it on my head; and, to all our eyes, there was
+no mistaking the shape into which, fortuitously, and with no view or
+knowledge of such emblems, he had cut the paper-cap. It was evidently a
+mitre, and nothing else! But this, and various other concurring
+incidents, I pass over, having frequently rebuked my excellent wife for
+thinking more highly of such matters than she ought to think.
+
+The course pursued in our studies was the following, which I
+particularly write down, having had great experience in that sort, and
+considering it may be useful, if perchance this account should fall into
+the hands of any who follow the honourable and noble calling of
+educating the rising generation. The _Colloquies_ of Corderius, as also
+the _Fables_ of �sopus, with those also of Ph�drus his Roman
+continuator....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Many pages are here omitted as irrelevant.)
+
+... And my excellent wife, after much entreaty, consented thereto.
+Accordingly, on the very next Sunday, the great Lady Mallerden attended
+at my house after church, and did closely question, not only the young
+gentlemen on the principles of their faith, but also Alice Snowton, and
+did, above all, clearly and emphatically point out to them the
+iniquities of the great Popish delusion; and exhorted them, whatever
+might be their future fate or condition, to hold fast by the pure
+Reformed church. And so much did my eldest daughter, who was now a great
+tall girl of twelve years of age, win upon the heart of the great lady,
+that she invited her to come up for several days and reside with her at
+Mallerden Court, which was a great honour to my daughter, invitations
+not being extended to any to enter that noble mansion under the degree
+of nobility. Nor did her beneficence end here; for she did ask Alice
+Snowton, who was now a fine young woman of fifteen or thereby, to be her
+guest at the same time. Alice was not so stout in proportion to her
+years as my Waller; but there was a certain gracefulness about her when
+she moved, and a sweet smile when she spoke, which was very gainful on
+the affections, as Charles could testify; for he loved her, and made no
+secret thereof, better than any of his sisters, and also, I really and
+unfeignedly believe, better than that excellent woman his mother. And so
+great was the impression made on the great lady by my Waller's
+cleverness and excellent manner of conducting herself, that, on her
+return at the end of three days, a letter, in the noble lady's own land,
+bore testimony to her satisfaction, and a request, or rather a command,
+was laid on me, to send her, under charge as she expressed it, of Alice
+Snowton, to the Court for a longer period the following week. And such
+was the mutual happiness of the noble lady, and of that young girl, (my
+Waller, I mean,) who could now write a beautiful flowing hand, and spell
+with uncommon accuracy and expedition, that erelong it was an arranged
+thing, that three days in each week were spent by the two children at
+Mallerden Court; and a horse at last, on every Wednesday, was in waiting
+to convey them, on a double pillion, to the stately mansion.
+
+I have not alluded to the state of public affairs, of which I was far
+from cognizant, saving that the writhings and strugglings which this
+tortured realm did make, shook also the little parsonage of Welding. We
+heard, at remote intervals of time, rumours of dangers and difficulties
+hanging over this church and nation; but were little alarmed thereat,
+putting faith in the bill of exclusion, and the honour of our most
+gracious and religious lord the king. Nor did I anticipate great harm
+even if the Duke of York, in the absence of lawful posterity of his
+brother, should get upon the throne, trusting in the truth of his royal
+word, and the manifold declarations of favour and amicableness to the
+church, which he from time to time put forth. But �sopus hath it, when
+bulls fight in a marsh the frogs are crushed to death. It was on the
+tenth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1685, I was busy with my
+dear friends, the youths under my charge, in the Campus Martius, (which
+was a level space of ground in one of the glebe fields by the side of
+the river, whereon we performed our exercises of running, jumping,
+wrestling, and other athletic exercitations,) when we were startled by
+the hearing the sound of many horses galloping up the hill above the
+village; and looking over the hedge on to the road, we saw a cavalier
+going very fast on a fine black horse, which had fire in its eyes and
+nostrils, as the poet says, followed by a goodly train of serving-men,
+all well mounted, and proceeding at the same rate. We went on with our
+games for an hour or two, when all at once I was peremptorily sent for
+to go to my house without delay; and accordingly I hurried homewards,
+much marvelling what the summons could portend. I went into my study,
+and sitting in my arm-chair I saw the great Lady Mallerden; but she was
+so deep in thought, that for some minutes she kept me standing, and
+waiting her commands. At last she started to herself, and ordered me to
+be seated, and in her rapid glancing manner began to speak--
+
+"I have been visited by my son, who rode post haste from London to tell
+me the king was dead. He has been dead four days."
+
+I was astonished and much saddened at the news.
+
+"Sorry--yes--but there is no time for sorrow," said the noble lady; "we
+must be up and doing. We are betrayed."
+
+"Did your son, the noble Viscount Mallerden, tell you this?"
+
+"He is one of the betrayers--know you not what manner of man he
+is?--Then I will tell you." And here a strange light flashed from her
+eyes, and her lips became compressed till all the colour
+disappeared--"He is a viper that stung me once--and would sting me
+again if I took him to my bosom, and laid it open for his poisonous
+tooth. I tell you the Lord Mallerden is a godless, hopeless, faithless,
+man--bound hand and foot to the footstool of the despotic, cruel
+monster--the Jesuit who has now his foot upon the English throne. He is
+a Papist, fiercer, bitterer, crueller, because he has no belief neither
+in priest nor pope--but he is ambitious, reckless, base, a courtier. He
+prideth himself in his shame, and says he has openly professed. It is to
+please the hypocritical master he serves. And he boasts that our late
+king--defender of the faith--was shrived on his deathbed by a Popish
+friar."
+
+"I cannot believe it, my lady."
+
+"You are a good man--a good simple man, Master Willis," she said; and
+although the words of her designation were above my deserts, seeing that
+simplicity and goodness are the great ornaments of the Christian
+character, still the tone in which she spoke did not pertake of the
+nature of a compliment, and I bowed, but made no observation in reply.
+
+"But it needs men of other minds in these awful times which I see
+approaching--men of firmness, men of boldness--yea, who can shed blood
+and shudder not; for great things are at stake."
+
+"I trust not, my lady--albeit the shedding of blood"----
+
+"I know, is generally condemned; yet be there texts which make it
+imperative, and I think I foresee that the occasion for giving them
+forth is at hand. All means in their power they will try; yes, though
+James of York has been but four days a king, he had already made
+perquisition for such as may be useful to him, not in settling the crown
+upon his head, but in carrying off this people and kingdom, a bound
+sacrifice to the blind idol which he worshippeth at Rome. You know not
+the history of that man; no, nor of my son. Alas! that a mother's lips
+should utter such words about her own flesh and blood! The one of them I
+tell you is a bigot, a pursuer, a persecutor--the other a sensualist, a
+Gallio, a tool. For many years he has never beheld his mother's face; he
+married in his youth; he injured, deserted, yea, he killed his wife--not
+with his own hand or with the dagger, but by the surer weapons of
+hatred, neglect, unkindness. And she died. He has but one child; that
+child was left in charge of my honoured and loving daughter, the Lady
+Pevensey of Notts, and hath been brought up in a Christian manner; but
+now, he--this man of Belial--wishes to get this infant in his own hands;
+nay, he boldly has made a demand of her custody both on me and Pevensey,
+my daughter. We will not surrender her; he is now great and powerful.
+The king will back his efforts with all the weight of the crown; and we
+have considered, if we could confide the persecuted dove to the hands of
+some assured friend--some true son of our holy church--some steady,
+firm-hearted, strong-nerved man, who in such cause would set lord and
+king at defiance"----
+
+Here she paused, and looked upon me with her eyes dilated, and her
+nostrils panting with some great thought which was within her; and I
+availed myself of the pause to say--
+
+"Oh, my lady! if you did mean me for such charge, I confess my
+deficiency for such a lofty office; for I do feel in me no stirrings of
+an ambitious spirit. Sufficient is it for me to take care of the
+innocent flock committed to my care, in the performance of which charge
+I have the approbation of my own heart, and also, I make bold to hope
+it, of your ladyship, seeing that I have instructed them in the true
+principles both of faith and practice; and although there are
+shortcomings in them all, by reason the answers in the Catechism are not
+adapted to the capacities of the younger ones, especially of Charles,
+(who, notwithstanding, has abilities and apprehensions above his years,)
+yet are they all embued with faithful doctrine, from Alice Snowton,
+which is the most advanced in stature, to the honourable Master
+Fitzoswald, which is somewhat deficient in growth, being only three
+inches taller than my little Charles."
+
+The great lady looked at me while I spoke, and made no answer for long
+time. At last she said with a sort of smile, which at the same time was
+not hilarious or jocular in its nature--
+
+"Perhaps 'tis better as it is. There is a providence in all things, and
+our plans and proposals are all overruled for the best--for which may
+God be praised! Therefore I will press you no more on the subject of the
+guardianship of my grandchild. But Mallerden will move heaven and earth
+to get her into his power--yes, though he has neglected her so long,
+never caring to see her since her childhood; yet now, when he sees
+'twill gain him the treasurership of the royal household to sell the
+greatest heiress and noblest blood in England to the Papists, he will
+make traffic of his own child, and marry her to some prayer-mumbler to a
+wooden doll. Let us save her, good sir--but I forgot. No--I will save
+her myself. I, that have steered her through so many quicksands, will
+not let her make shipwreck at last. I will guard her like the apple of
+my eye, and possess my soul in patience until this tyranny be overpast."
+And so ended the interview, during which my heart was tossed to and fro
+with the utmost agitation, and my whole frame so troubled that I various
+times lost all mastery of myself, and only saw before me a great black
+gulf of ruin, into which some invisible power was pushing me and all my
+little ones. Great, therefore, was my delight, and sweet the relief to
+my soul, when the great lady left me unconnected with her quarrels. For,
+in the crash of such contending powers, there was no chance of escape
+for such a weak instrument as I was; and fervent were my hopes, and deep
+my prayers, that the perils and evils prognosticated by the religious
+fears of my great protectress might be turned aside, and all good
+subject and sincere churchmen left each under his own vine and his own
+fig-tree, with nobody to make them afraid. But vain are the hopes of
+men. We read in no long time in all men's looks the fate we were
+condemned to; for it seemed as if a great cloud, filled with God's
+wrath, was spread out over this realm of England, and the faces of all
+men grew dark. We heard the name of Jeffreys whispered in corners, and
+trembled as if it had been a witch's spell to make our blood into water.
+The great lady kept herself much in solitude in the ancient Court, and
+saw not even her favourite companion, my daughter Waller, for many
+months; but did ever write affectionate letters to her, and sent
+presents of rich fruits, and other delectations in which the young take
+pleasure. There was much riding to and fro of couriers, but whither, or
+whence, she did never tell, and it was not my province to enquire; but
+at last an order came for me to send up my Waller and her friend to the
+mansion. And at evening they were conveyed on horseback as before; but
+on this occasion their escort was not Master Wilkinson the under butler,
+but no less a person than my lady's kinsman, the senior brother of my
+honourable pupil, the honourable Master Fitzoswald of Yorkshire, a
+stately young cavalier as could be seen, strong and tall, and his style
+and title was the Lord Viscount Lessingholm--being the eldest son and
+heir to that ancient earldom. He was an amiable and pleasant gentleman,
+full of courtesies and kindness, and particularly pleased with the
+newfangled fashion of a handsome cap which formed the headpiece of my
+excellent wife. He said also many handsome things about the brightness
+of my Waller's eyes, and assured my excellent wife that he saw so
+promising an outsprout of talent in my Charles, that he doubted not to
+see him one of the judges of the realm, if so be he applied his
+intellectuals to the bar. He was also extreme civil to Alice Snowton,
+which answered his civilities in like manner; and seldom in so short a
+space as half an hour has any person made so favourable an impression as
+he did, particularly on his brother, by reason of his bestowing on him a
+large Spanish doubloon, and promising him a delicate coloured maneged
+horse immediately on his return to Yorkshire. It is a pleasant sight to
+see (and reflected some credit on my ministration of the moralities in
+this particular instance) the disinterested love of brethren, one
+towards another, and I failed not to ascertain that the Lord Lessingholm
+had been boarded in the house of an exemplary divine, to wit, Mr Savage
+of Corpus Christi College, Oxford--a fact which I think it proper to
+mention to the honour of that eloquent member of our church--inasmuch
+as any man might be proud of having had the training up in the way he
+should go, of so excellent and praiseworthy a youth.
+
+It was many days before my young ones came back, (I would be understood
+to include in this Alice Snowton, whom I looked upon with the tenderness
+of a father and the pride of a teacher all in one;) and when they
+returned to me, I thought I perceived that they were both more sorrowful
+than of wont. Alice (and my Waller also) looked oppressed with some
+secret that weight upon their hearts, and I was fearful the great lady
+had made them partakers of her cares in the matter of her son and her
+grandchild. Yet did I not think such a thing possible as that either of
+them should have been taken into her confidence on so high and momentous
+a concernment, by reason of my Waller being so young, though thoughtful
+and considerate, and also fuller grown than persons much more advanced
+in life; and Alice Snowton was of so playful and gentle a disposition,
+that she seemed unfitted for the depository of any secret, unless those
+more strictly appertaining to her youth and sex, and moreover was a
+stranger to this part of the country, being of a respectable family, as
+I have observed, in Wilts--namely, a brother of Mr Snowton, my kind
+patron and friend. I called them into my study, after my labours were
+over with the other pupils, and I said to them--
+
+"Dear children, ill would it become me to pry into the secrets of my
+honoured lady, the Lady Mallerden; yet may there arise occasions wherein
+it is needful for one in my situation, (parent to the one of you, and
+_in loco parentis_ to the other,) to make perquisition into matters of
+weight and importance to your well-being, even at the risk of appearing
+inquisitive into other peoples' affairs. Answer me, therefore, Alice, my
+dear child, has the Lady Mallerden instructed you in any portion of her
+family story?"
+
+"She has in some degree, Sir," said Alice Snowton, "but not deeply."
+
+"You know of her disagreement on certain weighty points with her son,
+the Lord Viscount, and how that he is a wicked man, seeking to break
+into the pasture of the Lord, and tear down the hedges and destroy the
+boundaries thereof; and that in this view he is minded to get his
+daughter into his power, to use her as an instrument towards his
+temporal elevation?"
+
+"Something of all this we have heard, but not much," said Alice Snowton.
+
+"And furthermore, I must tell you that overtures were made to me to aid
+and assist in the resistance to be offered to this man of sin, and I
+did, for deep and wholesome reasons, refuse my assent thereto, and in
+this refusal I meant you, my children, to be included; therefore,
+whatever propositions may be made to you, to hear, or know, or receive,
+or in any manner aid, in the concealment of the Lord Viscount's
+daughter--which is at present in charge of an honourable lady in the
+north--I charge you, refuse them; they may bring ruin on an unambitious
+and humble household, and in no case can do good. We must fear God ever,
+and honour the king while he is entrusted with the sword of power; and
+family arrangements we must leave to the strong hands and able head of
+the great Lady Mallerden herself. In this caution I know I fulfil the
+intentions of my honoured friend, your esteemed uncle, Mr William
+Snowton, which is concerned with too many noble families to desire to
+get into enmity with any--and therefore be grateful for all the kindness
+you experience from my honoured lady; but if perchance she brings her
+grandchild to the Court, and wishes to make you of her intimates, inform
+me thereof; and greatly as it would be to be regretted, I would break
+off the custom of your visits to the noble house, for even that honour
+may be too dearly purchased by the enmity of powerful and unscrupulous
+men--if with sceptres in their hands, so much the more to be held in
+awe." And I ended with �sopus his fable of the frogs and bulls. This
+discourse (whereof I had prepared the heads in the course of the
+morning) I delivered with the full force of my elocution, and afterwards
+I dismissed them, leaving to my excellent wife the duty of enlarging on
+the same topic, and also of giving such advice to Alice, which was now
+a full grown young woman, and very fair to look on, in respect of the
+young cavaliers she might see at the great house, particularly the noble
+lord, the Lord Lessingholm. Such advice I considered useless in regard
+to my Waller, she being only about fourteen years of age, but in other
+respects a fair and womanly creature to see; for her waist was nearly
+twice as large as Alice Snowton's, and her shoulders also, and in weight
+she would have been greatly an overmatch; and certes, putting aside all
+parental fondness, which we know to be such a beautifier of one's own
+kindred as to make the crow a more lovely animal than the dove, (in the
+eyes of the parent crow,) I will confess that in my estimation, and also
+in that of my excellent wife, there was no comparison between the two
+fair maidens, either in respect of fulness of growth or redness of
+complexion, the advantage being, in both these respects, on the side of
+the junior. Some sentiment of this sort I saw at the time must have
+possessed the honourable breast of the Viscount Lessingholm; for
+although he made much profession of visiting at the parsonage for the
+sake of seeing his juvenile brother, still there were certain looks and
+tokens whereby I was clearly persuaded that the magnet was of a
+different kind; and whereas it would have been vain and ambitious in me
+to lift my eyes so high, in view of matrimonial proposals, as to nearly
+the topmost branch in the peerage of England, (the Earls Fitzoswald
+being known to have been barons of renown at the period of the Norman
+Conquest;) still it would ill have become me to prevent my daughter from
+gathering golden apples if they fell at her feet, because they had grown
+on such a lofty bough of the tree; and I will therefore confess, that it
+was with no little gratification I saw the unfoldings of a pure and
+virtuous disposition in the honourable young nobleman. And I will
+further state, that it seemed as if his presence when he came, (and that
+was often, nay, sometimes twice in one day,) did make holiday in the
+whole house; and Charles was by no means backward in his
+friendship--receiving the fishing-rods presented unto him by the right
+honourable with so winning an eagerness, and pressing Alice (his
+constant friend) to go with him and the noble donor with so much zeal to
+the brook, therein to try the virtues of the gift, that I found it
+impossible to refuse permission; and therefore did those three often
+consume valuable hours, (yet also I hope not altogether
+wasted)--_videlicet_, Alice and Charles, and the honourable Viscount--in
+endeavouring to catch the finny tribe, yet seldom with much success. But
+whatever was the result of their industry--yea, though it was but a
+minnow--it was brought and presented to my Waller by the honourable
+hands of the young man, with so loving an air, that it was easy to
+behold how gladly he would have consented, if she had been the companion
+of their sports, if by any means Charles could have been persuaded to
+have exchanged Alice Snowton for her. But the very mention of such an
+idea did throw the child into such wrathful indignation, that the right
+honourable was fain to bestow on him whole handfuls of sugar-plums, and
+promise that Alice should not be left behind. So fared the time away;
+and at last I began to hope that the fears of the great lady were
+unfounded, and that nothing would occur to trouble her repose. The
+manner of living had been resumed again, with the difference that, on
+the days the young maidens did not visit the noble mansion, the
+honourable viscount was, as it were, domiciled in the parsonage; and I
+perceived that, by this arrangement, the great lady was highly pleased;
+perhaps because the presence of a kinsman, a courageous gentleman, gave
+her some security against the rudenesses she seemed to be afraid of on
+the part of her own son--a grievous state of human affairs when the
+fifth commandment is not held in honour, and reducing us below the level
+of puppy-dogs and kittens, to whom that commandment, along with the rest
+of the decalogue, is totally unknown. Sundry times I did observe
+symptoms of alarm; and care did write a sad story of mental suffering on
+the brow of the great lady, which was a person of the magnanimity of an
+ancient matron, and bore up in a manner surprising to behold in one who
+stood, as it were, with one hand upon her coffin, while her other
+stretched backward through the shadow of fourscore years to touch her
+cradle. And ever, from time to time, couriers came to the noble mansion,
+while others flew in various directions on swift horses at utmost speed;
+and looking up into that lofty atmosphere, we saw clouds and ominous
+signs of coming storms, before we could hear the voice of the thunder.
+And once a royal messenger (called a pursuivant-at-arms) came down in
+person, and carried the great lady to London, and there she stayed many
+days, and was threatened with many things and great punishments, yea,
+even to be tried by the Lord Jeffreys for high treason, in resisting the
+king's order to deliver up her grandchild to its natural guardian--which
+was its father, the Viscount Mallerden, now created by royal favour
+Marquis of Danfield. But even this last danger she scorned; and after
+months of confinement near the royal court, her enemies gave up
+persecuting her for that season, and at last she came back to Mallerden
+Court. In the meanwhile, we went on in a quiet and comfortable manner in
+the parsonage--the Viscount Lessingholm frequently with us, (almost as
+if he were a pupil of the house;) and on one or two occasions we had a
+visit for an evening from my honoured friend, Mr William Snowton of
+Wilts. He was pleased to use great commendations, both of my excellent
+wife and me, for the mode in which we attended to the mind and manners
+of his niece, the culinary and other accomplishments, and the rational
+education wherein he saw her advanced. He never stayed later than
+day-dawn on the following morning, and kept himself reserved, as one
+used to the intimacy of the great, and not liking to make his news
+patent to humble people such as we; and he would on no account open his
+mouth on the quarrels of our great lady and her son, the new Marquis of
+Danfield, but kept the conversation in equable channels of everyday
+matters, and expounded how my glebe lands might be made to yield a
+greater store of provision by newer modes of cultivation--the which I
+considered, however, a tampering with Providence, which gives to every
+field its increase, and no more. But by this time my glebe was not the
+only land on which I could plant my foot and say, Lo, thou art mine! for
+I had so prospered in the five years during which I had held a ladder
+for my pupils to the tree of knowledge, that much golden fruit had
+fallen to my share, (being kicked down, as it were, by their climbing
+among the branches;) so that I had purchased the fee simple of the
+estate of my friend, Master George Sprowles, who had taken some alarm at
+the state of public affairs, and gone away over the seas to the
+plantation called, I think, Massachusets, in the great American
+continent.
+
+It was in the beginning of October 1688, that another call was made on
+the great lady to make her appearance within a month from that time in
+the city of London, to give a final answer for her contumacy in refusing
+obedience to the King and the lord high Treasurer. I felt in hopes the
+object of their search (namely, the young maiden his daughter, for it
+was bruited they rummaged to find her out in all directions) was safe
+with some foreign friends which the great lady possessed in the republic
+of Holland, where the Prince of Orange was then the chief magistrate;
+but of this I had no certain assurance. For some days no preparations
+were made at the noble mansion for so momentous a journey; but at length
+there were great signs of something being in prospect. First of all, the
+Viscount Lessingholm rode up from Yorkshire, whither he had been gone
+three weeks, attended by near a score of fine dressed serving-men, and
+took up his abode at Mallerden Court; then came sundry others of the
+great lady's kinsfolk, attended also by their servants in stately
+liveries; and we did expect that the proud imperial-minded lady was to
+go up with such great escort as should impress the king with a just
+estimate of her power and dignity. With this expectation we kept to
+ourselves ready to see the noble procession when it should start on its
+way; but far other things were in store for me, and an instrument called
+a pea-spitter, wherewith Charles had provided himself for the purpose
+of saluting various of the serving-men as they passed, was rendered
+useless. It was on the first day of November that the Lord Viscount
+Lessingholm, (who had conveyed the young maidens, _videlicet_ Alice
+Snowton and my Waller, to the Court on the previous day,) did ride post
+haste up to my door, making his large grey horse jump over the gate at
+the end of the walk, as if he had been Perseus flying on his winged
+steed to the rescue of Andromede, (as the same is so elegantly described
+in the ancient poet,) and did summon me to go that moment to the noble
+mansion on matter of the highest import. Much marvelling, and greatly
+out of breath, I followed the noble gentleman's motions as rapidly as
+was beseeming one of my responsible situation, in regard to the
+spiritual ministrations in the parish, while in sight of any of my
+flock; for nothing detracts more from the dignity of the apostolical
+character than rapid motions--such as running, or jumping, or an
+unordered style of apparel, without hatband or cassock. When out of the
+village street, I put (as the vulgar phrase expresses it) my best foot
+foremost, and enacted the part of a running serving-man in the track of
+my noble conductor; and finally I arrived, in such state as may be
+conceived, at the entrance-hall of the noble mansion. In the court-yard
+were numerous serving-men mounted in silent gravity, and ranged around
+the wall. Each man was wrapped up in a dark-coloured cloak; and
+underneath it I saw, depending from each, the clear polished extremity
+of a steel sword-sheath. They did bear their reins tightened, and their
+heels ornamented with spurs, as if ready to spring forth at a word, and
+great tribulation came over my soul. Howbeit I mounted the grand
+staircase, and, following the western corridor, I opened the door of the
+green-damask withdrawing-room, and found myself in the middle of a large
+and silent company. There were, perhaps, a dozen persons there
+assembled--motionless in their chairs; and at the further end of the
+apartment sat the great lady in whispered conversation with a tall dark
+gentleman of mature years, say fifty or thereabouts, and with a wave of
+her hand, having instructed me to be seated, she pursued her colloquies
+in the same under tones as before. When I had placed myself in a chair,
+and was in somewhat recovering my breath, which much hurrying and the
+surprising scene I saw had greatly impaired, a hand was laid upon my
+shoulder, and I turned round, and, sitting in the next chair to me, I
+beheld my honoured friend Mr William Snowton of Wilts.
+
+"Good Master Willis," he said, "you little expected to see me here, I do
+well believe; but it was but lately I was summoned."
+
+"And know you wherefore we are here assembled?" I enquired.
+
+"Somewhat I know, but not all. The persons here be men of great power,
+some of them being those by whom I am employed in managing their worldly
+affairs, and shortly we shall hear what is determined on."
+
+"On what subject do they mean to consult us? I shall be ready," said I,
+"to give what advice may be needed, if peradventure it suits with my
+sacred calling."
+
+"I fear they will hardly consult a person of your holy profession," said
+Mr Snowton with a sober kind of smile. "It is of life or death we are
+now to take our choice."
+
+A great fear fell upon me, as a great shadow falls upon the earth before
+a thunder storm. "What mean ye?" I whispered. "There is no shedding of
+blood."
+
+"There will be _much_ shedding of blood, good Master Willis; yea, the
+rivers in England will run red with the same, unless some higher power
+interferes to deliver us."
+
+"And wherefore am I summoned to such fearful conference? I am no man of
+blood. I meddle not with lofty matters. I"----
+
+But here I was interrupted by Mr Snowton in a low grave tone. "Then you
+have not heard that the wicked man of sin, the false Papist, the Marquis
+of Danfield, hath discovered his child?"
+
+"No, I have not been informed thereof. And hath he gained possession of
+her?"
+
+"No, nor shall not!" and hereupon he frowned a great frown, and let his
+sword-sheath strike heavily upon the floor. All the company looked
+sharply round; but seeing it was by hazard, they took no notice of what
+occurred.
+
+"And where, then, is the maiden bestowed?" I demanded.
+
+"In this house; you shall see her soon."
+
+"And what have I to do with these matters? They are above my
+concernment!" I exclaimed, in great anguish of mind.
+
+"You have to unite her in the holy bands of wedlock."
+
+"Nay, that is clearly impossible! Where, I pray thee, is the license?"
+
+"All that has been cared for by means of a true bishop of our church.
+There can be no scruple on canonical grounds; and if there be hesitation
+in obeying the Lady Mallerden's orders, (provided she finally takes up
+her mind to deliver the same,) I would not answer for the recusant's
+life, no, not for an hour."
+
+"But wherefore in such secrecy, with such haste?" I said, in dreadful
+sort.
+
+"Because we know that the father slept at Oxford last night with store
+of troops, and that he will be here this night with a royal warrant to
+enforce his right to the bestowal of his child; and he hath already
+promised her to the leader of the malignant Papists."
+
+"And are we here to resist the king's soldiers and the mandate of the
+king?"
+
+"Yea, to the death!" he said, and sank into gloomy thoughts and said no
+more.
+
+I looked around among the assembly, and recognized no other faces that I
+knew, and in a short space the great lady, having finished her colloquy
+with her next neighbour, rose up and said--"My lords, I believe ye be
+all of kin to this house, and the other gentlemen be its friends--a
+falling house, as represented by a feeble woman of fourscore years and
+five. Yet in the greatness of the cause, may we securely expect a gift
+of strength even to so frail an instrument as I am. I have consulted
+with you all, and finally have taken counsel with my kind cousin and
+sweet friend, the Earl of Fitzoswald, now at my side, and he hath agreed
+to what I have proposed. It now, then, but remains to carry our project
+into effect; and for that purpose I have summoned hither a good man and
+excellent divine, Master Willis of this neighbourhood, to be efficacious
+in that behalf."
+
+I started up, and said in great agitation--"Oh, my lady!"--but had not
+proceeded further when I was broken in upon by a voice of thunder--
+
+"Silence, I say! What, is it for the frailness of a reed like you that
+such noble enterprise must perish? Make no remonstrance, sir, but do
+what is needed, or"----
+
+Although the great lady did not finish her words, I felt an assurance
+steal like ice over my soul that my hours were numbered if I hesitated,
+and I bowed low, while Mr William Snowton did privily pull me down into
+my seat by the hinder parts of my cassock.
+
+"You--you, Master Willis, of all men, should least oppose this godly
+step. For the noise thereof will sound unto the ends of the earth, and
+make the old Antichrist on his seven hills quake and tremble, and shake
+the pitiful spirit of the apostate of Whitehall. Say I not well, my
+lords?"
+
+"You say well," ran round the room in a murmur of consent.
+
+"And you--you, Master Willis," she went on, "least of all, should object
+to keep a lamb within the true fold--yea, a lamb which you did see with
+your own eyes introduced into the same. Remember you nought of godly
+Master Waller's in Berkshire, or of the scene you saw in a certain
+chamber, where the baptismal waters were poured forth, and murmured like
+a pleasant fountain in the dying ears of a devout Christian woman?"
+
+I was so held back with awe that I said not a word, and she went on--
+
+"Oh, if good Master Lees had yet been spared, we should not have asked
+for the ministry of trembling and unwilling hands like yours! And now,
+my lords--and you, kind gentlemen, my plan as arranged with good Lord
+Fitzoswald is this:--I give my grandchild's hand where her heart has
+long been bestowed; I then go with her through lanes and byways; under
+good escort, to the city of Exeter, where erelong we shall cast in our
+lot with certain friends. The bridegroom shall see nought of his bride
+till happier days arrive, except at this altar; and you shall go
+directly to your respective stations, and be ready at the first blowing
+of the horns before which the walls of this Jericho are to fall. In the
+next chamber I have made preparation for the ceremony, and in a few
+minutes, when I have arranged me for the journey, I will summon you."
+
+Something of this I heard--the sense namely forced its way into my
+brain; but I was confused and panic-stricken. The whole sad scene
+enacted so many years before, at the house of good Master Waller, on my
+way home from Oxford, came back upon my heart, and I marvelled at the
+method whereby the great lady had acquired a knowledge of the secret. I
+was deep sunk in these cogitations when the door of the inner library
+was at last thrown open, and such light flashed upon us from the
+multitude of candles, which were illuminated in all parts of the
+chamber, that my eyes were for some time dazzled. When I came to myself
+I looked, and at a table under the eastern window, on which was spread
+out a golden-clasped prayer-book, opened at the form of solemnization of
+matrimony, I saw, along with two young men of about his own age, (all
+girt with swords, and booted and spurred,) the right honourable the
+Viscount Lessingholm, which I at once concluded was acting as
+bridegroom's man to one of the other youths. The company, which had been
+assembled in the withdrawing-room, placed themselves gravely, as if some
+solemn matter was in hand, at the side of the table; and I took my place
+by a motion from the Earl Fitzoswald, and laid my hand upon the
+prayer-book, as ready to begin. The door at the other end of the room,
+which leadeth to the outer staircase, was opened, and there came
+noiselessly in a tall woman, dressed in the same fantastical apparel,
+like the apparel of the Bohemians or gipsies, which I remembered so well
+on the fatal night of the christening; and, when she cast her eyes on
+me, I could not have thought an hour had passed since that time, and I
+recognised in her, with awe and wonderment, the features of the great
+lady, the Lady Mallerden herself. In each hand she led a young person,
+in her left my daughter Waller, and I will not deny that at the sight my
+heart leapt up with strange but not unpleasing emotion, as, remembering
+the habitudes of the noble Viscount Lessingholm, I thought there was a
+possibility of a double wedding; and in her other hand, dressed as for a
+journey, with close fitting riding-coat, and a round hat with sable
+feathers upon her head, she conducted Alice Snowton, the which looked
+uncommon lovely, though by no means so healthy or stout-looking as her
+other companion--_videlicet_, my Waller. They walked up to the place
+whereat we stood, and the Lord Viscount springing forward, did give his
+hand to Alice Snowton, and did not let it go for some time; but looked
+upon her with such soft endearing looks that she held down her head, and
+a red blush appeared upon her cheek, as if thereupon there had been
+reflected the shadow of a rose. For it was not of the deep tinge which
+formed the ornament of the complexion of my Waller.
+
+"This is no time for useless dalliance," said the great lady; "let us to
+work. By no other means can we root out for ever the hopes of our
+enemies."
+
+"Where then, madam," I said, "is the bride?--and who, I pray you, is the
+bridegroom?"
+
+"The bridegroom is the Viscount Lessingholm. This maiden is the bride."
+
+"But Alice Snowton, my lady. I did think it was your honourable
+grandchild who was to be united to this noble gentleman."
+
+"And so it is--and so it is! She is Alice Snowton no longer. Our good
+friend, Master Snowton, the steward on my daughter Pevensey's Wiltshire
+manor, was good enough to adopt her as his niece; and for her better
+concealment we placed her in the charge of a person whose character for
+meekness and simplicity was too notorious to raise suspicion of his
+being concerned in such a plot. Even to herself, till lately, her
+parentage was unknown, as Master Snowton kept well the secret."
+
+"And one other question," I said; "the child to whom I became bound as
+godfather?"
+
+"'Tis the same. This is the poor Lucy Hesseltine, whose orphanship you
+witnessed in that lone and yet comfortable death."
+
+The lady Lucy Hesseltine, or rather Alice Snowton, for by that name I
+loved her best, did throw her arms about my neck, and kissed my cheek,
+and said I had been a kind godfather to her, yea, had been a father to
+her, and my excellent wife a mother. At this my heart was much moved,
+and I saw tears come to the eyes of several of the bystanders, but no
+tear came to the eyes of the great lady herself.
+
+"Let this be enough," she said. "Let us finish what we have yet to do."
+
+And thereupon, all being ready and in their due places, I began; but
+when I came to the question--"Lucy Hesseltine, wilt thou have this man
+to be thy lawful husband?"--a sudden noise in the court-yard under the
+window made me pause; but the great lady commanded me with a frown to go
+on, and I concluded the question, and received in reply a sweet but
+audible "yes." But the noise was again repeated, and the assistants
+sprang to their feet, for it was the sound of the sharp shooting off of
+pistols.
+
+"Stir not for your lives till the ceremony is over!" cried the great
+lady; and I hurried with trembling lips over the remainder of the
+service. A loud voice in the yard was heard amid the trampling of much
+horse. "In the king's name, surrender!" the voice said. "We have a
+warrant here, and soldiers!"
+
+"For as much as Frederick and Lucy Hesseltine," (I said as calmly as I
+could, though with my heart quaking within me) "have consented together
+in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this
+company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other,
+and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by
+joining of hands--I pronounce that they be man and wife together!"
+
+"Now then, my lords and gentlemen," cried the great lady, springing to
+her feet, "to the defence! We are witnesses of this marriage, and
+clashing swords must play the wedding peel. If need be, fear not in such
+quarrel to do your best; yea, to the shedding of blood! Though the blood
+were my son's, it were well shed in such a holy cause. Now then, Lucy,
+come! Guard the front entrance but an hour, and we shall be beyond
+pursuit."
+
+And so saying she glided rapidly, with the nearly fainting bride,
+towards the hidden stairs, while Viscount Lessingholm rushed rapidly
+with drawn sword down the grand flight, and sprang on his grey horse. In
+the confusion my Waller had disappeared, and in great agonies of fear I
+slipped into the court-yard. Oh, what a sight met my eyes! There were
+several men lying dead, which had been shot or otherwise killed, and
+their horses were galloping hither and thither with loose reins and
+stirrups flapping; other men were groaning, and writhing in great pains,
+tearing the ground with bleeding hands, and dragging themselves, if such
+were possible, away from the _m�l�e_. Meanwhile, horsemen drawn up on
+either side were doing battle with sword and pistol; and the trampling
+and noise of the shouting, the groans and deep execrations, all
+resounding at once in that atmosphere of smoke and approaching night,
+were fearful to listen to, and I bethought me of some way of escape. I
+slipped within the piazza of the servants' court, and made my way
+towards the gate; but here the battle raged the fiercest, the noble
+Viscount Lessingholm being determined to keep it closed, and the furious
+Marquis resolute to force it open, whereby an accession of men might
+come to him which were shut out on the other side--the warder of the
+door having only admitted the marquis himself, and about fifty of the
+king's dragoons. The retainers which I had seen on my entrance amounted
+to seventy or more; and seeing they had most of them been soldiers, yea,
+some which had grizzled locks, having been among the shouters at Dunbar,
+and on many fields besides, under the cruel eye of the ferocious Oliver
+himself, they did cry "Ha, ha! at the spear of the rider, and smelt the
+battle afar off." The Marquis of Danfield did spur his black war-horse,
+with his sword poised high in air towards the noble Viscount of
+Lessingholm, and with fierce cries the noble viscount raised also his
+sword, and was in act to strike the undefended head of his assailant.
+"Stop, Frederick!" cried a voice, which proceeded from the Earl
+Fitzoswald; "it is Danfield himself!" whereupon the young gentleman did
+ward off the blow aimed at him by the marquis, and passed on. All this I
+saw ere I gave up hopes of getting out by the gate; but seeing this was
+hopeless, I pursued my way back again, with intent to get out by one of
+the postern windows, and hurry homeward across the fields; and having
+opened a window near unto the buttery, I hung by my hands, and then
+shutting my eyes and commending my soul to Heaven, I let go, and dropt
+safely down upon the greensward. But ere I could recover myself
+sufficiently, I was set upon as if I had been an armed enemy, by a large
+number of mounted men, which were of the company of the marquis, whereby
+I saw that the house was surrounded, and feared the great lady and Alice
+(I would say the Viscountess Lessingholm) were intercepted in their
+retreat. Howbeit, I gave myself up prisoner, by reason of various blows
+with the flats of sabres, and sundry monitions to surrender or die. I
+was led in great fear to the front of the court, and brought before a
+proud, fierce-browed commander, which interrogated me "of all that was
+going on, and whether the Lady Lucy Mallerden was in the Court?" Whereto
+I answered, that I was so overcome with terror that I knew little of
+what I had seen, and, with regard to the noble lady, I was persuaded she
+was not within the walls. "If you answer me," he said, "truly, and tell
+me what road she has taken, I will send you away in safety, and secure
+you his majesty's pardon for any thing you may have done against his
+crown and dignity; but if you refuse, I will assuredly hang you on the
+court-yard gate the moment we gain possession thereof. Now, say which
+way went they?" I was sore put to it, for it was like betraying innocent
+blood to tell these savage men the course my godchild pursued in her
+escape; and yet to tell an untruth was repugnant to my nature, and I
+said to the captain, "It is a hard matter for me to point out where my
+friends are fleeing unto."
+
+"Then you'll be hung as high as Haman at daybreak; so you can take your
+choice," said he.
+
+"If I direct you unto the place whereunto she is gone," I said, "it will
+be a hard matter to find her."
+
+"That's our business, not yours. Tell us where it is."
+
+"For, suppose she were in hiding in a city, a large busy place like
+Bristol, and waited for a conveyance to a foreign land"----
+
+"In Bristol! Oho, say no more! Ensign Morley, take ten of the best
+mounted of the troop and scour the northern roads towards Bristol. You
+will overtake them ere they are far advanced."
+
+"I pray you, captain," I said, "to observe--I have not told you she is
+gone towards Bristol."
+
+"I know you haven't," he said smiling, "I will bear witness you have
+kept her secret well; but here we are about to enter the Court, for the
+firing is finished. The rebels will be on gibbets within twenty-four
+hours, every one."
+
+But there was no sign of the gate being opened. Contrariwise there did
+appear, in the dimness of the evening-sky, certain dark caps above the
+outside wall, which I did recognize as being worn by the serving-men of
+the great lady's friends; and while we were yet talking a flight of
+bullets passed close over our heads, and three or four of the troopers
+fell off dead men, leaving their saddles empty and their horses
+masterless.
+
+"Draw close my men," cried the captain, "right wheel;" and setting his
+men an example, he did gallop with what speed he might from the
+propinquity of the wall. As for myself, I was in some sort relieved by
+the knowledge that the noble mansion still continued in possession of
+the Viscount Lessingholm; and comforting myself with the assurance that
+no evil could befall my daughter Waller while under his protection, I
+did contrive to seize by the bridle one of the dragoons' horses, (a
+stout black horse, which, being never claimed, did do my farming work
+for fifteen years,) and, climbing up into the saddle, betook me home to
+inform my excellent wife of all these dreadful events. All next day, and
+all the next--yea, for three whole days--I stayed in my quiet home,
+receiving information quietly by means of a note brought to me by my
+servants, that the mansion still held out, that Waller was quite safe,
+and that, provided no artillery was brought to bear against them, that
+they could hold out _till the time came_. What was the meaning of the
+latter phraseology, I did not know; but considering it desirable at that
+period to cut down certain trees on my recently purchased estate, I
+proceeded with Thomas Hodge the carpenter, and various other artificers
+of my parishioners, (all being friends and dependents of the great
+lady,) and with saws and other instruments did level the whole row of
+very large oaks and elm trees which bordered the only high-road from
+Oxford; and, by some strange accident, all the trees did fall exactly
+across the same, and made it utterly impossible to move thereupon with
+cart or waggon; so that it was much to be suspected that the guns, which
+we heard were ordered to come up from Wallingford, could by no means get
+over the obstruction. It is also to be observed that Master George
+Railsworth, the mason, who had contracted to repair the strong bridge
+over our stream, did take this opportunity of taking down two of the
+arches of the same, and could find no sufficient assistance to enable
+him to restore them, which made the road impassable for horse or man. On
+the following day, namely, the fifth day of November, we heard that all
+the king's soldiers were suddenly ordered from all parts up to London,
+and that the Marquis of Danfield had been left to his imprisonment in
+Mallerden Court. Whereupon I bethought me it would be safe to venture up
+once more, and bring my daughter Waller to the securer custody of my
+excellent wife. Next morning, at early dawn, I accordingly did go up,
+and was admitted, after a short parley, by the gate-keeper, which had a
+helmet on his head and a sword in his hand. Speedily I was in the arms
+of my daughter Waller, who looked as happy as if none of these scenes
+had been transacted before her eyes; and moreover did refuse, in very
+positive terms, to leave the Court till her dear friend Alice--I would
+say the Lady Lucy--returned. I reasoned with her, and reprimanded her,
+and showed her in what a fearful state of danger we all were, by reason
+of the rebellion we had been guilty of against his majesty the king.
+Whereupon the child did only laugh, and told me, "Here she would abide
+until the time came." And with this enigmatical expression I was fain to
+be content; for she would vouchsafe me no other. And, corroborative of
+all which, she said, she relied on the assurances made unto her to that
+effect by Sir Walter Ouseley, one of the young gentlemen which had acted
+as bridegroom's man to the noble Viscount Lessingholm, and was now in
+the Court as his lieutenant in the defence of the same. A goodly young
+gentleman he was, and fair to look upon, and extraordinary kind to me,
+soothing my fears, and encouraging me to hope for better things than
+those my terrors made me anticipate. I enquired of the behavings of the
+Marquis of Danfield, and learned to my surprise that it was expected
+that before this day was over, if he did receive a courier, as was
+thought, from the Lord Churchill, one of the king's favourite officers,
+he would withdraw all his objections to the marriage, and rather be an
+encourager and advocate of the same. In these discourses the time passed
+away, and about three of the clock, after we had dined in the great
+hall, we were looking out from the battlements and saw a dust on the
+western road.
+
+"It is Churchill's letter," said the noble Viscount Lessingholm, "and he
+has kept his promise for once."
+
+"There is too much dust for only one courier's heels--there be twenty in
+company at least," replied Sir Walter Ouseley, which had the arm of my
+Waller closely locked in his.
+
+"There may be a surprise intended," cried the noble viscount. "Hoist the
+flag, man the walls, treble the watchers, and sound for the men into the
+yard."
+
+We of the peaceful professions--_videlicet_, my daughter Waller and
+I--did descend from the bartizan, and betook ourselves to the great
+withdrawing room, to wait for the result of the approach. We had not
+waited long when the door opened, and no other than the great lady
+herself, and my loved and lovely godchild, the Viscountess Lessingholm,
+came into the apartment. The great lady was now appareled as became her
+rank, having discarded those Bohemian habiliments which were her
+disguise in times of danger. Oh! it was a great sight to behold, the
+meeting between the Lady Lucy and my daughter Waller; but when hurried
+steps sounded on the stairs, and the door opened, and the noble viscount
+rushed into her arms, it was impossible to keep from tears. My feeble
+pen can venture on no such lofty flights of description, and therefore I
+will not attempt it. Meanwhile, in the outer court, great shouting was
+heard. Sir Walter Ouseley came up to us, and announced that the Marquis
+of Danfield "presented his respects to his noble mother, and
+congratulated her on the glorious news."
+
+"I knew how it would be," she said, "with base natures such as his and
+Churchill's. We accept their assistance, but despise the instrument. He
+will now be fierce against his benefactor, (who, though a bad king, was
+tender to his friends,) and bitterer against his faith than if he had
+never been either a courtier or a bigot. I receive his congratulations,
+Sir Walter Ouseley, but I decline an interview for some time to come."
+
+"He desired me also, my lady," said Sir Walter, "to convey his blessing
+to the bride, and his tender love to his new son, the Viscount
+Lessingholm."
+
+"Well, let them not reject it. The blessing even of such a father has
+its value. But we must now make preparation, for the celebration of the
+happy nuptials, in a style fitting the rank of the parties. The prince
+is pleased with what we have done"----
+
+The young man, Sir Walter Ouseley, who had been whispering in my ear,
+here broke in on the great lady's speech.
+
+"If it would please you, madam, at the same time, to permit two others
+to be happy, I have obtained Master Willis's consent thereto, and also
+the consent of this fair maiden."
+
+The viscountess took Waller in her arms, and kissed her cheek, and the
+great lady smiled.
+
+"I knew not, Sir Walter Ouseley, that you were so perfect a soldier as
+to sustain an attack and lay siege at the same time; but since in both
+you have been successful, I give you my hearty good wishes. And so, dear
+friends and true supporters, let us be thankful for the great
+deliverance wrought for this land and nation, as well as for ourselves.
+Our defender, the noble William, landed three days ago at Torbay, and is
+now in Hampton Court. The king has taken flight, never to be restored.
+Therefore, God save the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the props
+and ornaments of a true Protestant throne!"
+
+
+
+
+BEAU BRUMMELL.{A}
+
+
+All things change; ours is the age of masses and classes, the last was
+the age of individuals. Half a dozen remarkable men then represented the
+London world, in politics, poetry, bon-mots, dining out, and gaming.
+Pitt and Fox, the Dukes of Queensberry and Norfolk, Sheridan and General
+Scott, were the substitutes for mankind in the great metropolis. George
+Brummell was the last of the beaus. The flame of beauism was expiring;
+but it flamed in its socket brighter than ever, and Beau Brummell made a
+more conspicuous figure in the supreme _bon-ton_ of elegant absurdity,
+than any or all his predecessors. The only permanent beau on earth is
+the American savage. The Indians, who have been lately exhibiting their
+back-wood deformities in our island at shilling a-head, were prodigious
+dressers; Greek taste might probably have dissented from their
+principles of costume, but there could be no doubt of the study of their
+decoration. Their _coiffeur_ might not altogether supersede either the
+Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been
+twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron
+Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious
+tailoring, as the most _recherch�_ suit that ever turned a "middling
+man" into a figure for Bond Street.
+
+But the charm which is the very soul of European fashion, is scorned by
+the Indian. Change--the "Cynthia of the minute," the morning thought and
+midnight dream of the dilettanti in human drapery--has no captivation
+for the red man. He may like variety in his scalps or his squaws; but
+not a feather, not a stripe of yellow on one cheek, or of green on
+another, exhibits a sign of the common mutabilities of man. He struts in
+the plumes which his fathers wore, is attired in the same nether
+garments, exhibits the same head-gear, and decorates his physiognomy
+with the sane proportion of white-wash, red-lead, bear's-grease, and
+Prussian blue.
+
+Beauism, in England, scarcely goes farther back than the days of Charles
+II. It may be said that Elizabeth had her beaux; but the true beau being
+an existence of which no man living can discover the use, and which is,
+in fact, wholly useless except to his tailor and the caricaturists, the
+chevaliers of the time of Queen Bess are not entitled to the honour of
+the name. Raleigh, no doubt, was a good dresser; but then he could write
+and fight, and was good for something. Leicester is recorded as a superb
+dresser; but then he dabbled in statesmanship, war, and love-making, and
+of course had not much time on his hands. The Sedleys, Rochesters, and
+their compeers, had too much actual occupation, good and bad, to be
+fairly ranked among those gossamery ornaments of mankind; they were idle
+enough in their hearts for the purpose, but their lives were _not_
+shadows, their sole object was _not_ self. They were more nice about
+swords than snuff-boxes and, if they were spendthrifts, their profusion
+was not limited to a diamond ring or a Perigord pie. They loved, hated,
+read, wrote, frolicked and fought; they could frown as well as smile,
+and see the eccentricity of their own follies as well as enjoy them. But
+the true beau is a _beau-ideal_, an abstraction substantialized only by
+the scissors, a concentrated essence of frivolity, infinitely sensitive
+to his own indulgence, chill as the poles to the indulgence of all
+others; prodigal to his own appetites, never suffering a shilling to
+escape for the behoof of others; magnanimously mean, ridiculously wise,
+and contemptibly clever; selfishness is the secret, the spring, and the
+principle of, _par excellence_, the beau.
+
+In the brief introduction prefixed to the "Life," some of those
+individuals who approached closest to perfection of old times are
+mentioned. One of those was Sir George Hewitt, on whom Etheridge, the
+comic writer, sketched his Sir Fopling Flutter. This beau found a place
+in poetry as well as in prose,
+
+    "Had it not better been than thus to roam,
+    To stay, and tie the cravat-string at home?
+    To strut, look big, strike pantaloon, and swear
+    With Hewitt--D----me, There's no action here?"
+
+Wilson followed. He was a personage who first established the fashion of
+living by one's wits. Returning from the army in Flanders with forty
+shillings in his pocket, he suddenly started into high life in the most
+dashing style, eclipsed every body by his equipage, stud, table, and
+dress. As he was not known at the gaming-table, conjecture was busy on
+the subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have
+commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds.
+Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the
+latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier
+through his body.
+
+The next on the list is Beau Fielding. He was intended for the bar, but
+intending himself for nothing, his pursuit was fashion. He set up a
+showy equipage, went to court, and led the life of "a man about town."
+He was remarkably handsome, attracted the notice of Charles II., and
+reigned as the monarch of beauism. He was rapidly ruined, but repaired
+his fortune by marrying an heiress. She died; and the beau was duped by
+an Englishwoman, whom he married under the idea that she was a Madame
+Delaune, a widow of great wealth. Finding out the deception, he cast her
+off, and married the Duchess of Cleveland, though in her sixty-first
+year. For this marriage he was prosecuted, and found guilty of bigamy.
+He then became reconciled to his former wife, and died, in 1712, at the
+age of sixty-one. He was the Orlando of the _Tatler_.
+
+Beau Edgeworth lives only in the record of Steele, in the 246th number
+of the _Tatler_, as a "very handsome youth who frequented the
+coffeehouses about Charing-Cross, and wore a very pretty ribbon with a
+cross of jewels on his breast." Beau Nash completes the list of the
+ancient heroes, dying in 1761, at the age of eighty-eight--a man of
+singular success in his frivolous style; made for a master of the
+ceremonies, the model of all sovereigns of water-drinking places; absurd
+and ingenious, silly and shrewd, avaricious and extravagant. He
+_created_ Bath; he taught decency to "bucks," civility to card-players,
+care to prodigals, and caution to Irishmen! Bath has never seen his like
+again. In English high life, birth is every thing or nothing. Men of the
+lowest extraction generally start up, and range the streets arm-in-arm
+with the highest. Middle life alone is prohibited to make its approach;
+the line of demarcation there is like the gulf of Curtius, not to be
+filled up, and is growing wider and wider every day. The line of George
+Brummell is like that of the Gothic kings--without a pedigree; like that
+of the Indian rajahs--is lost in the clouds of antiquity; and like that
+of Romulus--puzzles the sagacious with rumours of original irregularity
+of descent. But the most probable existing conjecture is, that his
+grandfather was a confectioner in Bury Street, St James's. We care not a
+straw about the matter, though the biographer is evidently uneasy on the
+subject, doubts the trade, and seems to think that he has thrown a shade
+of suspicion, a sort of exculpatory veil over this fatal rumour, by
+proving that this grandfather and his wife were both buried, as is shown
+by a stone, still to be seen by the curious, in St James's church-yard.
+We were not before aware that Christian burial was forbidden to
+confectioners. The biographer further adds the convincing evidence of
+gentility, that this grandfather was buried within a few feet of the
+well-known ribald, Tom Durfey. Scepticism must now hang down its head,
+and fly the field.
+
+We come to a less misty and remote period. In the house of this
+ancestor, who (_proh dedecus!_) let lodgings, lived Charles Jenkinson,
+then holding some nondescript office under government. We still want a
+history of that singularly dexterous, shy, silent, and successful man;
+who, like Jupiter in Homer, did more by a nod than others by a
+harangue--made more as a scene-shifter than any actor on the stage of
+Westminster--continually crept on, while whole generations of highfliers
+dropped and died; and at length, like a worm at the bottom of a pool,
+started up to the surface, put on wings, and fluttered in the sunshine,
+Earl of Liverpool! The loss of such a biography is a positive injury to
+all students of the art of rising. Jenkinson was struck by the neatness
+of the autograph in which "Apartments to be Let" was displayed on the
+door; and probably, conscious that the "art of letting" was the true
+test of talents, made the young writer his amanuensis, and finally
+obtained for him a clerkship in the treasury. He was next in connexion
+with Lord North for the twelve years of that witty and blundering
+nobleman's unhappy administration, and enjoyed no less than _three
+offices_, by which he netted L.2500 a-year. He was abused a good deal by
+the party-ink of his time; but the salary enabled him to bear spattering
+to any amount, and probably only increased Lord North's sympathy for his
+fellow-sufferer, until that noble lord was suffocated in the public
+mire.
+
+But after the crush of the minister, the man felt that his day was done;
+and he retired to "domestic virtue" as it is termed, took a good house
+in the country, enjoyed himself, and in 1794 died, leaving two sons and
+a daughter, and L.65,000 among them.
+
+George Bryan Brummell, the second son, was born in June 1778. The
+biographer observes characteristically, that the beau avoided the topic
+of his genealogical tree with a sacred mystery. It appears that he
+avoided with equal caution all mention of the startling fact, that one
+of his Christian names was _Bryan_. It never escaped his lips; it never
+slipped into his signature; it was never suffered to "come between the
+wind and his nobility." If it had by any unhappy chance transpired, he
+must have fainted on the spot, have fled from society, and hid his
+discomfiture in
+
+    "Deserts where no men abide."
+
+Brummell was a dandy by instinct, a good dresser by the force of
+original genius; a first-rate tyer of cravats on the _in_voluntary
+principle. When a boy at Eton, in 1790, he acquired his first
+distinction not by "longs and shorts," but by the singular nicety of his
+stock with a gold buckle, the smart cut of his coat, and his finished
+study of manners. Others might see glory only through hexameters and
+pentameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket;
+with him the colour of his coat and the cut of his waistcoat were the
+materials of fame. Fellows and provosts of Eton might seem to others the
+"magnificoes" of mankind--the colossal figures which overtopped the age
+by their elevation, or eclipsed it by their splendour--the "dii majorum
+gentium," who sat on the pinnacle of the modern Olympus; but Brummell
+saw nothing great but his tailor--nothing worthy of respect among the
+human arts but the art of cutting out a coat--and nothing fit to ensure
+human fame with posterity but the power to create and to bequeath a new
+fashion.
+
+But the name of dandy was of later date; the age had not attained
+sufficient elegance for so polished a title; it was still buck or
+macaroni; the latter having been the legacy of the semi-barbarian age
+which preceded the eighteenth century. Brummell was called Buck Brummell
+when an urchin at Eton--a preliminary evidence of the honours which
+awaited him in a generation fitter to reward his skill and acknowledge
+his superiority. Dandy was a thing yet to come, but which, in his
+instance, was sure to come.
+
+    "The force of title could no further go--
+    The 'dandy was the heirloom of the beau.'"
+
+Yet even in boyhood the sly and subtle style, the Brummellism of his
+after years, began to exhibit itself. A party of the boys having
+quarreled with the boatmen of the Thames, had fallen on one who had
+rendered himself obnoxious, and were about to throw him into the river.
+Brummell, who never took part in those affrays, but happened to pass by
+at the time, said, "My good fellows, don't throw him into the river;
+for, as the man is in a high state of perspiration, it amounts to a
+certainty that he will catch cold." The boys burst into laughter, and
+let their enemy run for his life.
+
+At Eton, however, he was a general favourite for his pleasantry, the
+gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had
+attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year
+in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment
+which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to
+Oriel, and there commenced that cutting system of which he so soon
+became the acknowledged master. He cut an old Eton acquaintance simply
+because he had entered at an inferior college, and discontinued visiting
+another because he had invited him to meet two students of a hall which
+he was pleased to consider obnoxious. In his studies he affected to
+despise college distinctions, but yet wrote for the Newdigate prize, and
+produced the second best poem. But his violation of college rules was
+systematic and contemptuous. He always ordered his horse at hall time,
+was the author of half the squibs, turned a tame jack-daw with a band on
+into the quadrangle to burlesque the master, and treated all proctors'
+and other penalties with contempt. Such, at least, is the character
+given him by Mr Lister in Granby.
+
+But he was now to commence a new career. In 1794 he was gazetted to a
+cornetcy in the Tenth Hussars, the gift of its colonel the Prince of
+Wales. Brummell's own account of this origin of his court connexions is,
+that when a boy at Eton he had been presented to the Prince, and that
+his subsequent intimacy grew out of the Prince's notice on that
+occasion. But a friend of his told the biographer that the Prince,
+hearing of the young Etonian as a second Selwyn, had asked him to his
+table, and given him the commission to attach him to his service. This
+was a remarkable distinction, and in any other hands would have been a
+card of fortune. He was then but sixteen; he was introduced at once into
+the highest society of fashion; and he was the favourite companion of a
+prince who required to be amused, delighted in originality, and was fond
+of having the handsomest and pleasantest men of the age in his regiment.
+
+Brummell, though an elegant appendage to the corps, was too much about
+the person of the Prince to be a diligent officer. The result was, that
+he was often late on parade, and did not always know his own troop.
+However, he evaded the latter difficulty in general, by a contrivance
+peculiarly his own. One of his men had a large blue-tinged nose.
+Whenever Brummell arrived late, he galloped between the squadrons till
+he saw the blue nose. There he reined up, and felt secure. Once,
+however, it happened unfortunately that during his absence there was
+some change made in the squadrons, and the place of the blue nose was
+shifted. Brummel, on coming up late as usual, galloped in search of his
+beacon, and having found his old friend he reined up. "Mr Brummell,"
+cried the colonel, "you are with the wrong troop." "No, no," said
+Brummell, confirming himself by the sight of the blue nose, and adding
+in a lower tone--"I know better than that; a pretty thing, indeed, if I
+did not know my own troop!"
+
+His promotion was rapid; for he obtained a troop within three years,
+being captain in 1796. Yet within two years he threw up his commission.
+The ground of this singular absurdity is scarcely worth enquiring into.
+He was evidently too idle for any thing which required any degree of
+regularity. The command of a troop requires some degree of attention
+from the idlest. He had the prospect of competence from his father's
+wealth; and his absolute abhorrence of all exertion was probably his
+chief prompter in throwing away the remarkable advantages of his
+position--a position from which the exertion of a moderate degree of
+intellectual vigour, or even of physical activity, might have raised him
+to high rank in either the state or the army.
+
+Of course, various readings of his resignation have been given; some
+referred it to his being obliged to wear hair-powder, which was then
+ceasing to be fashionable; others, more probably, to an original love
+for doing nothing. The reason which he himself assigned, was comic and
+characteristic. It was his disgust at the idea of being quartered, for
+however short a time, in a manufacturing town. An order arrived one
+evening for the hussars to move to Manchester. Next morning early he
+waited on the Prince, who, expressing surprise at a visit at such an
+hour from him, was answered--"The fact is, your royal highness, I have
+heard that we are ordered to Manchester. Now, you must be aware how
+disagreeable this would be to _me_; I really could not go. _Think!
+Manchester!_ Besides, you would not be there. I have therefore, with
+your permission, determined to sell out."--"Oh, by all means, Brummell!"
+said the Prince; "do as you please." And thus he stripped himself of the
+highest opportunity in the most showy of all professions before he was
+twenty-one.
+
+He now commenced what is called the bachelor life of England; he took a
+house in Chesterfield Street, May Fair; gave small but exquisite
+dinners; invited men of rank, and even the Prince, to his table; and
+avoiding extravagance--for he seldom played, and kept only a pair of
+horses--established himself as a refined voluptuary.
+
+Yet for this condition his means, though considerable, if aided by a
+profession, were obviously inadequate. His fortune amounted only to
+L.30,000, though to this something must be added for the sale of his
+troop. His only resources thenceforth must be play, or an opulent
+marriage.
+
+Nature and art had been favourable to him; his exterior, though not
+distinguished, was graceful, and his countenance, though not handsome,
+was intelligent. He possessed in a certain degree the general
+accomplishments, and exactly in the degree, which produce a flattering
+reception in society. He was a tolerable musician, he used his pencil
+with tolerable skill, and he wrote tolerable verses; more would have
+been worse than useless. He dressed admirably, and, as his _cheval de
+battaile_, he talked with a keenness of observation and a dexterity of
+language, scarcely less rare than wit, and still more exciting among the
+exhausted minds, and in the vapid phraseology, of fashion.
+
+His person was well formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study.
+But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to
+suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting
+display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly
+strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing
+himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter;
+while to the more knowing in the affairs of costume, it betrays
+instantly the secret that the exhibitor is simply a walking placard for
+a tailor struggling for employment, and supplying the performer on the
+occasion with a wardrobe for the purpose. Brummell's dress was finished
+with perfect skill, but without the slightest attempt at exaggeration.
+Plain Hessian boots and pantaloons, or top boots and buckskins, which
+were then more the fashion than they are now; a blue coat, and a buff
+coloured waistcoat--for he somewhat leaned to Foxite politics for
+form's-sake, however he despised all politics as unworthy of a man born
+to give the tone to fashion--was his morning dress. In the evening, he
+appeared in a blue coat and white waistcoat, black pantaloons closely
+fitting, and buttoning tight to the ankle, striped silk stockings, and
+opera hat. We may thus observe how much Brummell went _before_ his age;
+for while he thus originated a dress which no modern refinement has yet
+exceeded, and which contained all that is _de bon ton_ in modern
+equipment, he was living in the midst of a generation almost studiously
+barbarian--the Foxite imitators of the French republicans--where every
+man's principle was measured by the closeness of his approach to
+savagery; and nothing but the War interposed to prevent the
+_sans-culottism_ alike of the body and the mind.
+
+Brummell, though not possessing the patronage of a secretary of state,
+had the power of making men's fortunes. His principal tailors were
+Schweitzer and Davidson of Cork street, Weston, and Meyer of Conduit
+street. Those names have since disappeared, but their memory is dear to
+dandyism; and many a superannuated man of elegance will give "the
+passing tribute of a sigh" to the incomparable neatness of their "fit,"
+and the unrivaled taste of their scissors. Schweitzer and Meyer worked
+for the Prince, and the latter was in some degree a royal favourite, and
+one of the household. He was a man of genius at his needle; an inventor,
+who even occasionally disputed the palm of originality with Brummell
+himself. The point is not yet settled to whom was due the happy
+conception of the trouser opening at the ankle and closed by buttons.
+Brummell laid his claim openly, at least to its improvement; while
+Meyer, admitting the elegance given to it by the tact of Brummell,
+persisted in asserting his right to the invention. Yet if, as was said
+of gunpowder and printing, the true inventor is the man who first brings
+the discovery into renown, the honour is here Brummell's, for he was the
+first who _established_ the trouser in the Bond street world.
+
+The Prince, at this period, cultivated dress with an ardour which
+threatened to dethrone Brummell himself, and his wardrobe was calculated
+to have cost L.100,000. But his royal highness had one obstacle to
+encounter which ultimately drove him from the field, and restricted all
+his future chances of distinction to wigs; he began to grow corpulent. A
+scarcely less formidable evil arose in his quarreling with Brummell. In
+the course of hostilities, the Prince pronounced the beau a tailor's
+block, fit for nothing but to hang clothes on; while the retaliation
+came in the shape of a caricature, in which a pair of leather breeches
+is exhibited lashed up between the bed-posts, and an enormously fat man,
+lifted up to them, is making a desperate struggle to get his limbs
+properly seated in their capacity: another operation of a still more
+difficult nature, the making the waistband meet, still threatening to
+defy all exertion.
+
+Brummell's style was in fact simplicity, but simplicity of the most
+studied kind. Lord Byron defined it, "a certain exquisite propriety of
+dress." "_No_ perfumes," the Beau used to say, "but fine linen, plenty
+of it, and _country_ washing." His opinion on this subject, however,
+changed considerably in after time; for he used perfumes, and attributed
+a characteristic importance to their use. Meeting a gentleman at a ball
+with whom he conversed for a while, some of the party enquired the
+stranger's name. "Can't possibly tell," was the Beau's answer. "But he
+is evidently a gentleman--his perfumes are good." He objected to country
+gentlemen being introduced into Watier's, on the ground "that their
+boots always smelt of horse-dung and bad blacking."
+
+His taste in matters of _virtu_ was one of the sources of his profusion;
+but it always had a reference to himself. He evidently preferred a
+snuff-box which he could display in his hand, to a Raphael which he
+could exhibit only on his wall. His snuff-boxes were numerous and
+costly. But even in taking snuff he had his style: he always opened the
+box with _one_ hand, the left. The Prince imitated him in this _tour de
+grace_.
+
+A fashion always becomes more fashionable as it becomes more ridiculous.
+People cling to it as they pet a monkey, for its deformity. The high
+head-dresses of France, which must have been a burden, made the tour of
+Europe, and endured through a century. The high heels, which almost
+wholly precluded safe walking, lasted their century. The use of powder
+was universal until it was driven out of France by republicanism, and
+out of England by famine. The flour used by the British army alone for
+whitening their heads was calculated to amount to the annual provision
+for 50,000 people. Snuff had been universally in use from the middle of
+the seventeenth century; and the sums spent on this filthy and foolish
+indulgence, the time wasted on it, and the injury done to health, if
+they could all have been thrown into the common form of money, would
+have paid the national debt of England. The common people have their
+full share in this general absurdity. The gin drunk in England and Wales
+annually amounts to nearly twenty millions of pounds sterling; a sum
+which would pay all the poor rates three times over, and, turned to any
+public purpose, might cover the land with great institutions--the
+principal result of this enormous expenditure now being to fill the
+population with vice, misery, and madness.
+
+In the matter of coats Brummell had but one rival, the Prince, whose
+rank of course gave him a general advantage, yet whose taste was clearly
+held as inferior by the royal _artistes_ themselves. A baronet, who went
+to Schweitzer's to get himself equipped in the first style, asked him
+what cloth he recommended. "Why, sir," was the answer, "the Prince wears
+superfine, and Mr Brummell the Bath coating. Suppose, sir, we say Bath
+coating; I think Mr Brummell has a trifle the preference." Brummell's
+connexion with the Prince, his former rank in the hussars, and his own
+agreeable manners, introduced him to the intercourse of the principal
+nobility. In the intervals of his visits to the Prince at Brighton, he
+visited Belvoir, Chatsworth, Woburn, &c. But he was absolutely _once_ in
+town in the month of November, as is proved by the following note from
+Woburn:--
+
+     MY DEAR BRUMMELL,--By some accident, which I am unable to account
+     for, your letter of Wednesday did not reach me till Wednesday. I
+     make it a rule never to lend my box; but you have the _entr�e
+     libre_ whenever you wish to go there, as I informed the boxkeeper
+     last year. I hope Beauvais and you will do great execution at
+     Up-Park. I shall probably be there shortly after you.--Ever yours
+     sincerely,
+
+       "BEDFORD."
+
+At Belvoir he was _l'ami de la famille_, and at Cheveley, another seat
+of the Duke of Rutland's, his rooms were as sacred as the Duke of
+York's, who was a frequent visitor there. On the Duke of Rutland's
+coming of age, in 1799, great rejoicings took place at Belvoir, and
+Brummell was one of the distinguished party there, among whom were the
+Prince of Wales, the late Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Lorn, and the
+other chief fashionable people of the day. This _f�te_ was memorable,
+for it was said to have cost L.60,000. Brummell was not altogether
+effeminate; he could both shoot and ride, but he liked neither: he was
+never a Melton man. He said that he could not bear to have his tops and
+leathers splashed by the greasy galloping farmers. The Duke of Rutland
+raised a corps of volunteers on the renewal of the war in 1803; and as
+Brummell had been a soldier the duke gave him a majority. In the course
+of the general inspections of the volunteer corps, an officer was sent
+from the Horse Guards to review the duke's regiment, the major being in
+command. On the day of the inspection every one was on parade except the
+major-commandant. Where is Major Brummell, was the indignant enquiry? He
+was not to be found. The inspection went on. When it was near its close,
+Brummell was soon coming full gallop across the country in the uniform
+of the Belvoir Hunt, terribly splashed. He apologized for himself by
+saying, that having left Belvoir quite early, he had expected to be on
+the parade in time, the meet being close at hand. However, his favourite
+hunter had landed him in a ditch, where, having been dreadfully shaken
+by the fall, he had been lying for an hour. But the general was
+inexorable, and Brummell used to give the worthy officer's speech in the
+following style--"Sir, this conduct is wholly inexcusable. If I remember
+right, sir, you once had the honour of holding a captain's commission
+under his royal highness the Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent himself,
+sir! Now, sir, I tell you; I tell you sir, that I should be wanting in a
+proper zeal for the honour of the service; I should be wanting, sir, if
+I did not this very evening report this disgraceful neglect of orders to
+the commander-in-chief, as well as the state in which you present
+yourself in front of your regiment; and this shall be done, sir. You may
+retire, sir."
+
+All this was very solemn and astounding; but Brummell's presence of mind
+was not often astounded. He had scarcely walked his horse a few paces
+from the spot, when he returned, and said in a subdued tone--"Excuse me,
+general; but, in my anxiety to explain this most unfortunate business, I
+forgot to deliver a message from the Duke of Rutland. It was to request
+the honour of your company at dinner." The culprit and the
+disciplinarian grinned together; the general coughed, and cleared his
+throat sufficiently to express his thanks in these words--"Ah! why,
+really I feel and am very much obliged to his grace. Pray, Major
+Brummell, tell the duke I shall be most happy;" and melodiously raising
+his voice, (for the Beau had turned his horse once more towards
+Belvoir,) "Major Brummell, as to this little affair, I am sure no man
+can regret it more than you do. Assure his grace that I shall have great
+pleasure in accepting his very kind invitation;" and they parted amid a
+shower of smiles. But Brummell had yet but half completed his
+performance; for the invitation was extempore, and he must gallop to
+Belvoir to acquaint the duke of the guest he was to receive on that day.
+
+Brummell always appeared at the cover side, admirably dressed in a white
+cravat and white tops, which latter either he, or Robinson his valet,
+introduced, and which eventually superseded the brown ones. The subtlety
+of Brummell's sneers, which made him so highly amusing to the first rank
+of society, made him an object of alarm if not of respect to others. "Do
+you see that gentleman near the door?" said a woman of rank to her
+daughter, who had been brought for the first time to Almack's. "Yes! Who
+is he?" replied the young lady. "A person, my dear, who will probably
+come and speak to us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to
+give him a favourable impression of you, for he is the celebrated Mr
+Brummell." The _debutante_ was the daughter of a duke. It has been said
+that Madame de Stael considered herself as having failed to attract his
+approval, and that she spoke of it as the greatest _malheur_ which had
+occurred to her during her stay in London, the next in point of calamity
+being that the Prince had not called on her in person. The Beau
+perfectly knew his own value. In reply to a nobleman who charged him
+with involving his son in a gaming transaction, he said--"Really I did
+my best for the young man; I gave him my arm all the way from White's to
+Watier's." However, there can be no doubt that he was very often
+intolerably impudent; and, as impudence is always vulgar, he was guilty
+of vulgarity. Dining at a gentleman's house in Hampshire, where the
+champagne did not happen to suit his taste, he refused his glass when
+the servant came to help him a second time, with--"No, thank you, I
+don't drink cider!" The following anecdote is rather better known.
+"Where were you yesterday, Brummell?" said one of his club friends. "I
+think," said he, "I dined in the city." "What! you dined in the city?"
+said his friend. "Yes, the man wished me to bring him into notice, and I
+desired him to give a dinner, to which I invited Alvanley, Mills,
+Pierrepoint, and some others." "All went off well, of course?" said the
+friend. "Oh yes! perfectly, except one _mal-�-apropos_: the fellow who
+gave the dinner had actually the assurance to seat himself at the
+table."
+
+Dining at a large party at the house of an opulent but young member of
+London society, he asked the loan of his carriage to take him to Lady
+Jersey's that evening. "I am going there," said his entertainer, "and
+will be happy to take you." "Still, there is a difficulty," said
+Brummell in his most delicate tone. "You do not mean to get up behind,
+that would not be quite right in your own carriage; and yet, how would
+it do for me to be seen in the same carriage with you?" Brummell's
+manner probably laughed off impertinences of this order; for, given
+without their colouring from nature, they would have justified an angry
+reply. But he seems never to have involved himself in personal quarrel.
+He was intact and intangible. Yet he, too, had his mortifications. One
+night, in going to Lady Dungannon's, he was actually obliged to make use
+of a hackney coach. He got out of it at an unobserved distance from the
+door, and made his way up her ladyship's crowded staircase, conceiving
+that he had escaped all evidence of his humiliation; however, this was
+not to be. As he was entering the drawing-room a servant touched his
+arm, and to his amazement and horror whispered--"Beg pardon, sir,
+perhaps you are not aware of it, that there is a straw sticking to your
+shoe." His style found imitations in the public prints, and one
+sufficiently characteristic thus set forth the merits of a new patent
+carriage step:--"There is an art in every thing; and whatever is worthy
+of being learned, cannot be unworthy of a teacher." Such was the logical
+argument of the professor of the art of stepping in and out of a
+carriage, who represented himself as much patronised by the sublime
+Beau Brummell, whose deprecation of those horrid coach steps he would
+repeat with great delight:--
+
+     "Mr Brummell," he used to say, "considered the sedan was the only
+     vehicle for a gentleman, it having no steps; and he invariably had
+     his own chair, which was lined with white satin quilted, had down
+     squabs, and a white sheepskin rug at the bottom, brought to the
+     door of his dressing-room, on that account always on the
+     ground-floor, from whence it was transferred with its owner to the
+     foot of the staircase of the house that he condescended to visit.
+     Mr Brummell has told me," continued the professor, "that to enter a
+     coach was torture to him. 'Conceive,' said he, 'the horror of
+     sitting in a carriage with an iron apparatus, afflicted with the
+     dreadful thought, the cruel apprehension, of having one's leg
+     crushed by the machinery. Why are not the steps made to fold
+     _outside_? The only detraction from the luxury of a _vis � vis_, is
+     the double distress! for _both_ legs--excruciating idea!'"
+
+Brummell's first reform was the neckcloth. Even his reform has passed
+away; such is the transitory nature of all human achievements. But the
+art of neckcloths was once more than a dubious title to renown in the
+world of Bond Street. The politics of the time were disorderly; and the
+dress of politicians had become as disorderly as their principles. The
+fortunes of Whiggism, too, had run low; and the velvet coat and
+embroidered waistcoat, the costly buckles and gold buttons of better
+days, were heavier drains on the decreasing revenues of the party than
+could be long sustained with impunity. Fox had already assumed the
+sloven--the whole faction followed; and the ghosts of the old
+oppositionists, in their tie wigs and silver-laced coats, would have
+been horrified by the sight of the shock-headed, leather-breeched, and
+booted generation who howled and harangued on the left side of the
+Speaker's chair from 1789 to 1806. All was _canaille_. Fox could
+scarcely have been more shabby, had he been the representative of a
+population of bankrupts. The remainder of the party might have been
+supposed, without any remarkable stretch of imagination, to have emerged
+from the workhouse. All was sincere squalidness, patriotic
+pauperism--the _un_washing principle. One of the cleverest caricatures
+of that cleverest of caricaturists, the Scotchman Gilray, was his sketch
+of the Whigs preparing for their first levee after the Foxite accession
+on the death of Pitt. The title was, "_Making decent!_" The whole of the
+new ministry were exhibited in all the confusion of throwing off their
+rags, and putting on their new clothing. There stood Sheridan,
+half-smothered in the novel attempt to put on a clean shirt. In another
+corner Fox, Grey, and Lord Moira, straining to peep into the same
+shaving-glass, were all three making awkward efforts to use the
+long-forgotten razor. Others were gazing at themselves in a sort of
+savage wonder at the strangeness of new washed faces. Some _sans
+culottes_ were struggling to get into breeches; and others, whose feet
+were accustomed to the ventilation of shoes which let their toes
+through, were pondering over the embarrassment of shoes impervious to
+the air. The minor apparatus of court costume scattered round on the
+chairs, the bags and swords, the buckles and gloves, were stared at by
+the groups with the wonder and perplexity of an American Indian.
+
+Into this irregular state of things Brummell made his first stride in
+the spirit of a renovator. The prevailing cravat of the time was
+certainly deplorable. Let us give it in the words of history:--"It was
+without stiffening of any kind, and bagged out in front, _rucking_ up to
+the front in a roll." (We do not precisely comprehend this expression,
+whose _precision_, however, we by no means venture to doubt.) Brummell
+boldly met this calamity, by slightly starching the too flexible
+material--a change in which, as his biographer with due seriousness and
+truth observes--"a reasoning mind must acknowledge there is not much
+objectionable."
+
+Imitators, of course, always exceed their model, and the cravat adopted
+by the dandies soon became _excessively_ starched; the test being that
+of raising three parts of their length by one corner without bending.
+Yet Brummell, though he adhered to the happy medium, and was moderate in
+his starch, was rigorous in his tie. If his cravat did not correspond to
+his wishes in its first arrangement, it was instantly cast aside. His
+valet was seen one morning leaving his chamber with an armful of tumbled
+cravats, and on being asked the cause, solemnly replied, "These are our
+_failures_."
+
+Perfection is slow in all instances; but talent and diligence are sure
+to advance. Brummell's "tie" became speedily the admiration of the _beau
+monde_. The manner in which this dexterous operation was accomplished
+was perfectly his own, and deserves to be recorded for the benefit of
+posterity.
+
+The collar, which was always fixed to his shirt, was so large, that,
+before being folded down, it completely hid his head and face, and the
+neckcloth was at least a foot in height. The first _coup d'archet_ was
+made with the shirt-collar, which he folded down to its proper size; but
+the delicate part of the performance was still to come. Brummell
+"standing before the glass, with his chin raised towards the ceiling,
+now, by the gentle and gradual declension of his lower jaw, creased the
+cravat to reasonable dimensions; the form of each succeeding crease
+being perfected with the shirt which he had just discarded." We were not
+aware of the nicety which was demanded to complete the folds of this
+superior swathing; but, after this development, who shall pronounce a
+dandy idle?
+
+Brummell was as critical on the dress of others as he was _recherch�_ in
+his own, and this care he extended to all ranks. He was once walking up
+St James's Street, arm-in-arm with a young nobleman whom he condescended
+to patronize. The Beau suddenly asked him, "what he called _those
+things_ on his feet."--"Why, shoes."--"Shoes are they?" said Brummell
+doubtfully, and stooping to look at them; "I thought they were
+slippers?"
+
+The late Duke of Bedford asked him his opinion of a new coat. "Turn
+round," said Mr Beau. When the examination was concluded in front and
+rear, the Beau, feeling the lapel delicately with his finger and thumb,
+asked in a most pathetic manner, "Bedford, do you call this _thing_ a
+coat?"
+
+Somebody told him, among a knot of loungers at White's, "Brummell, your
+brother William is in town. Is he not coming here?"--"Yes," was the
+reply, "in a day or two; but I have recommended him to walk the _back
+streets_ till his new clothes come home."
+
+Practical jokes are essentially vulgar, and apt to be hazardous besides;
+two reasons which should have prevented their performance by an
+individual whose object was to be the standard of elegance, and whose
+object at no time was to expose himself to the rougher remonstrances of
+mankind; but the following piece of sportiveness was at least amusing.
+
+Meeting an old _emigr�_ marquis at the seat of some noble friend, and
+probably finding the Frenchman a bore, he revenged himself by mixing
+some finely powdered sugar in his hair-powder. On the old Frenchman's
+coming into the breakfast-room next morning, highly powdered as usual,
+the flies, attracted by the scent of the sugar, instantly gathered round
+him. He had scarcely begun his breakfast, when every fly in the room was
+busy on his head. The unfortunate marquis was forced to lay down his
+knife and fork, and take out his pocket-handkerchief to repel these
+troublesome assailants, but they came thicker and thicker. The victim
+now rose from his seat and changed his position; but all was in
+vain--the flies followed in fresh clusters. In despair he hurried to the
+window; but every fly lingering there was instantly buzzing and
+tickling. The marquis, feverish with vexation and surprise, threw up the
+window. This unlucky measure produced only a general invasion by all the
+host of flies sunning themselves on the lawn. The astonishment and
+amusement of the guests were excessive. Brummell alone never smiled. At
+last M. le Marquis gave way in agony, and, clapping his hands on his
+head, and followed by a cloud of flies, rushed out of the room. The
+secret was then divulged, and all was laughter.
+
+"Poodle B--g," so well known in the world of fashion, owed his
+_soubriquet_ to Brummell. B--g was fond of letting his hair, which was
+light-coloured, curl round his forehead. He was one day driving in his
+curricle, with a poodle by his side. The Beau hailed him with--"Ah,
+B--g, how do you do?--A _family_ vehicle, I see."
+
+Some of those oddities of expression are almost too well known now for
+effect; but they must have sparkled prodigiously among the exhausted
+circles of his West-end day.
+
+"You seem to have caught cold, Brummell," said a lounging visitor on
+hearing him cough. "Yes--I got out of my carriage yesterday, coming from
+the Pavilion, and the wretch of an innkeeper put me into the coffee-room
+with a damp stranger."
+
+In a stormy August--"Brummell, did any one ever see such a summer
+day?"--"Yes, _I_ did, last winter."
+
+On returning from a country mansion, of which he happened to disapprove,
+he defined it "An exceedingly good house for stopping a _single_ night
+in."
+
+On the whole, the biographer has given a tolerable selection of
+Brummell's _hits_, some of which, however, were so intolerably
+impertinent, that he must have either thoroughly "known his man," or he
+must have smoothed down their severity by some remarkable tone of voice
+or pleasantry of visage. Without those palliations, it is not easy to
+comprehend his occasional rudeness even to friends. One day, standing
+and speaking at the carriage-door of a lady, she expressed her surprise
+at his throwing away his time on so quiet and unfashionable a
+person.--"My dear friend, don't mention it: there is _no one to see
+us_."
+
+But his admiration for the sex must have often brought him close on the
+edge of serious inconvenience. Once, at the house of a nobleman, he
+requested a moment's interview in the library, and then and there
+communicated the formidable intelligence, "that he must immediately
+leave the house--on that day."
+
+"Why, you intended to stay a month," said his hospitable entertainer.
+
+"True--but I must be gone--I feel I am in love with your countess."
+
+"Well, my dear sir, I can't help that. I was in love with her myself
+twenty years ago," said the good-humoured husband. "But is she in love
+with you?"
+
+The Beau cast down his eyes, and, in all the modesty of impudence, said
+faintly, "I believe she is."
+
+"Oh! that alters the case. I shall send for your post-horses. Good
+morning."
+
+His life was flirtation, a matter which could not be indulged in
+matrimony, and he therefore never married. Yet once he went so far as to
+elope with a young person of rank from a ball: the pair were, however,
+immediately overtaken. The affair was, of course, the talk of the clubs.
+But Brummell had his own way of wearing the willow. "On the whole," said
+he, "I consider I have reason to congratulate myself. I lately heard
+from her favourite maid that her ladyship had been seen--_to drink
+beer_!"
+
+Some of the Beau's letters at this period are given; but they are not
+fortunate specimens of his taste: even in writing to women they are
+quaint, affected, and approaching to that unpardonable crime, dulness.
+His letters written in his wane of life, and under the realities of
+suffering, are much more striking, contain some pathetic and even some
+powerful language, and show that fashion and his own follies had
+obscured a mind of natural talent, if not of original tenderness.
+
+The following letter we look upon as quite sufficient to have excluded
+him from the recollections of any Lady Jane on earth, if she happened to
+know the difference between coxcombry and common feeling:--
+
+     "MY DEAR LADY JANE,--With the miniature, it seems, I am not to be
+     trusted even for two _pitiful_ hours. My own memory must be then my
+     only _disconsolate_ expedient to obtain a resemblance.
+
+     "As I am unwilling to merit the imputation of committing myself by
+     too flagrant a liberty in retaining your glove, which you
+     charitably sent at my head yesterday, as you would have extended an
+     _eleemosynary sixpence_ to the _supplicating hat_ of a mendicant, I
+     restore it to you. And, allow me to assure you, that I have too
+     much regard and respect for you, and too little practical vanity
+     myself, (whatever appearances may be against me,) to have
+     entertained, for one _treacherous_ instant, the impertinent
+     intention to defraud you of it. You are angry, perhaps irreparably
+     incensed against me for this _petty larceny_. I have no defence to
+     offer in mitigation but that of _frenzy_. But you know that you are
+     an _angel_ visiting these sublunary spheres, and therefore your
+     first quality should be that of mercy. Yet you are sometimes
+     wayward and volatile in your _seraphic_ disposition. Though you
+     have no wings yet you have weapons, and those are resentment and
+     estrangement from me.--With sentiments of the deepest
+     _compunction_, I am always your _miserable slave_,
+
+       "GEORGE BRUMMELL."
+
+We have not a doubt that he perused this toilsome performance a dozen
+times before he folded it up, advanced to his mirror to see how so
+brilliant a correspondent must look after so astonishing a production,
+moved round the room in a minuet step; and, when he sent it away at
+last, followed it with a sigh at the burial of so much renown in a
+woman's escritoire, and a regret that it could not be stereotyped to
+make its progress round the world. And yet, as it appeared that the lady
+had thrown the glove at him, and even lent him her miniature, it would
+be difficult to discover any ground for her wrath or his compunction.
+Both were evidently equally imaginary.
+
+The Beau always regarded the city as a _terra incognita_. A merchant
+once asked him to dine there. Brummell gave him a look of intense
+enquiry. The merchant pressed him. "Well," said the Beau, (who probably
+had excellent reasons for non-resistance to the man of money;) "well, if
+it _must_ be--but you must first promise faithfully _never_ to say a
+word on the subject."
+
+A visitor, full of the importance of a tour in the north of England,
+asked him which of the lakes he preferred. "I can't possibly remember,"
+was the reply; "they are a great way from St James's Street, and I don't
+think they are spoken of in the clubs." The visitor urged the question.
+"Robinson," said the Beau, turning in obvious distress to his valet,
+"Robinson, pray tell this gentleman which of the lakes I
+preferred."--"Windermere, sir, I think it was," said the valet. "Well,"
+added Brummell, "probably you are in the right, Robinson. It may have
+been. Pray, sir, will Windermere do?"
+
+"I wonder, Brummell, you take the trouble of driving to the barracks of
+the 10th with four horses. It certainly looks rather superb," said one
+of the officers. "Why, I dare say it does; but that is not _the_ point.
+What could I do, when my French valet, the best dresser of hair in the
+universe, gave me warning that he must leave me to myself, unless I gave
+up the vulgarity of posting with _two_?"
+
+We come, in the course of this goodly history, to the second great event
+of the Beau's life--the first being his introduction to Carlton House.
+The second was his being turned out of it. Brummell always denied, and
+with some indignation, the story of "Wales, ring the bell!"--a version
+which he justly declared to be "positively vulgar," and therefore, with
+due respect for his own sense of elegance, absolutely impossible for
+_him_. He gave the more rational explanation, that he had taken the part
+of lady who was presumed to be the rival of Mrs Fitzherbert, and had
+been rash enough even to make some remarks on Mrs Fitzherbert's _en bon
+point_, a matter of course never to be forgiven by a belle. This
+extended to a "declining love" between him and the Prince, whose foible
+was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore
+denominated "Big Ben," the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton
+House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one
+of his satires on the Prince's letter of February the 13th, 1812, to the
+Duke of York, in which he _cut_ the Whigs, thus parodies that celebrated
+"sentence of banishment:"--
+
+    "Neither have I resentments, nor wish there should come ill
+    To mortal, except, now I think on't, Beau Brummell,
+    Who threaten'd, last year, in a super-fine passion,
+    To cut _me_, and bring the old king into fashion."
+
+Brummell now, since the sword was drawn, resolved to throw away the
+sheath, and his hits were keen and "damaging," as those things are now
+termed. In this style he said to little Colonel M'Mahon, the Prince's
+secretary--"I made him, and I shall unmake him."
+
+The "fat friend" hit was more pungent in reality than in its usual form.
+The Prince, walking down St James's Street with Lord Moira, and seeing
+Brummell approaching arm-in-arm with a man of rank, determined to show
+the openness of the quarrel, stopped and spoke to the noble lord with an
+apparent unconsciousness of ever having seen the Beau before. The
+moment he was turning away, Brummell asked, in his most distinct voice,
+"Pray, _who_ is your _fat_ friend?" Nothing could be more dexterously
+impudent; for it repaid the Prince's pretended want of recognition
+precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where
+he was known to be most thin-skinned.
+
+It is sufficiently remarkable, that the alienation of the Prince from
+Brummell scarcely affected his popularity with the patrician world, or
+his reception by the Duke and Duchess of York. He was a frequent guest
+at Oatlands, and seems to have amused the duke by his pleasantry, and
+cultivated the taste of the duchess by writing her epigrams, and making
+her presents of little dogs. The Duke of York, though not much gifted
+with the faculty of making jests, greatly enjoyed them in others. He was
+a good-humoured, easy-mannered man, wholly without affectation of any
+kind; well-intentioned, with some sagacity--mingled, however, with a
+good deal of that abruptness which belonged to all the Brunswicks; and
+though unfortunate in his domestic conduct, a matter on which it would
+do no service to the reader to enlarge, yet a brave soldier, and a
+zealous and most useful commander-in-chief at the Horse Guards. He, too,
+could say good things now and then. One day at Oatlands, as he was
+mounting his horse to ride to town, seeing a poor woman driven from the
+door, he asked the servant what she was. "A beggar, your royal highness:
+nothing but a soldier's wife."--"Nothing but a soldier's wife! And pray,
+sir, what is your mistress?" Of course, the poor woman was called back
+and relieved.
+
+Still Brummell continued in high life, and was one of the four who gave
+the memorable _f�te_ at the Argyll Rooms in July 1813, in consequence of
+having won a considerable sum at hazard. The other three were, Sir Henry
+Mildmay, Pierrepoint, and Lord Alvanley. The difficulty was, whether or
+not to invite the Prince, who had quarrelled with Mildmay as well as
+with Brummell. In this solemn affair Pierrepoint sounded the Prince, and
+ascertained that he would accept the invitation if it were proposed to
+him. When the Prince arrived, and was of course received by the four
+givers of the _f�te_, he shook hands with Alvanley and Pierrepoint, but
+took no notice whatever of the others. Brummell was indignant, and, at
+the close of the night, would not attend the Prince to his carriage.
+This was observed, and the Prince's remark on it next day was--"Had
+Brummell taken the cut I gave him last night good-humouredly, I should
+have renewed my intimacy with him." How that was to be done, however,
+without lying down to be kicked, it would be difficult to discover.
+Brummell however, on this occasion, was undoubtedly as much in the right
+as the Prince was in the wrong.
+
+Brummell, in conformity to the habits of the time, and the proprieties
+of his caste, was of course a gambler, and of course was rapidly ruined;
+but we have no knowledge that he went through the whole career, and
+turned swindler. One night he was playing with Combe, who united the
+three characters of a lover of play, a brewer, and an alderman. It was
+at Brookes's, and in the year of his mayoralty. "Come, Mash Tub, what do
+you set?" said the Beau. "Twenty-five guineas," was the answer. The Beau
+won, and won the same sum twelve times running. Then, putting the cash
+in his pocket, said with a low bow, "Thank you, alderman; for this, I'll
+always patronize your porter."--"Very well, sir," said Combe dryly, "I
+only wish every other blackguard in London would do the same."
+
+At this time play ran high at the clubs. A baronet now living was said
+to have lost at Watier's L.10,000 at one sitting, at _ecart�_. In 1814,
+Brummell lost not only all his winnings, but "an unfortunate L.10,000,"
+as he expressed it, the last that he had at his bankers. Brummell was
+now ruined; and, to prevent the possibility of his recovery at any
+future period, he raised money at ruinous interest, and finally made his
+escape to Calais. Still, when every thing else forsook him, his odd way
+of telling his own story remained. "He said," observed one of his
+friends at Caen, when talking about his altered circumstances, "that, up
+to a particular period of his life, every thing prospered with him, and
+that he attributed this good luck to the possession of a silver sixpence
+with a hole in it, which somebody had given him some years before, with
+an injunction to take good care of it, as every thing would go well with
+him so long as he kept it, and everything the contrary if he happened to
+lose it." And so it turned out; for having at length, in an evil hour,
+given it by mistake to a hackney coachman, a complete reverse of his
+affairs took place, and one misfortune followed another until he was
+obliged to fly. On his being asked why he did not advertise a reward for
+it, he answered--"I did; and twenty people came with sixpences with
+holes in them for the reward, but not _my_ sixpence." "And you never
+heard any more of it?" "No," he replied; "no doubt that rascal
+Rothschild, or some of that set, have got hold of it." But the Beau's
+retreat from London was still to be characteristic. As it had become
+expedient that he must make his escape without _eclat_, on the day of
+his intended retreat he dined coolly at his club, and finished his
+London performances by sending from the table a note to his friend
+Scrope Davies, couched in the following prompt and expressive form:--
+
+     "MY DEAR SCROPE,--Lend me two hundred pounds: the banks are shut,
+     and all my money is in the 3 per cents. It shall be repaid
+     to-morrow morning.--Yours, GEORGE BRUMMELL."
+
+The answer was equally prompt and expressive--
+
+     "MY DEAR GEORGE,--It is very unfortunate, but all _my_ money is in
+     the 3 per cents.--Yours, S. DAVIES."
+
+Such is the story;
+
+    "I cannot tell how the truth may be,
+    I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."
+
+Nothing daunted, the Beau went to the opera, allowed himself to be seen
+about the house, then quickly retiring, stepped into a friend's chaise
+and met his own carriage, which waited for him a short distance from
+town. Travelling all night with four horses, he reached Dover by
+morning, hired a vessel to carry him over, and soon left England and his
+creditors behind. He was instantly pursued; but the chase stopped on
+reaching the sea. Debtors could not then be followed to France, and
+Brummell was secure.
+
+The little, rude, and thoroughly comfortless town of Calais was now to
+be the place of residence, for nearly the rest of his life, to a man
+accustomed to the highest luxuries of London life, trained to the
+keenest sensibility of London enjoyment, and utterly absorbed in London
+objects of every kind. Ovid's banishment among the Thracians could
+scarcely be a more formidable change of position. Yet Brummell's
+pleasantry did not desert him even in Calais. On some passing friend's
+remark on the annoyance of living in such a place--"Pray," said the
+Beau, "is it not a general opinion that a gentleman might manage to
+spend his time pleasantly enough _between_ London and Paris?"
+
+At Calais he took apartments at the house of one Leleux, an old
+bookseller, which he fitted up to his own taste; and on which, as if
+adversity had no power to teach him common prudence, he expended the
+greater part of the 25,000 francs which, by some still problematical
+means, he had contrived to carry away with him. This was little short of
+madness; but it was a madness which he had been practising for the last
+dozen years, and habit had now rendered ruin familiar to him. At length
+a little gleam of hope shone across his fortunes. George IV. arrived at
+Calais on his way to Hanover. The Duke d'Angoul�me came from Paris to
+receive his Majesty, and Calais was all in a tumult of loyalty. The
+reports of Brummell's conduct on this important arrival, of the King's
+notice of him, and of the royal liberality in consequence, were of every
+shape and shade of invention. But all of them, except the mere
+circumstance of the King's pronouncing his name, seem to have been
+utterly false. Brummell, mingling in the crowd which cheered his Majesty
+in his progress, was observed by the King, who audibly said, "Good
+heavens, Brummell!" But the recognition proceeded no further. The Beau
+sent his valet, who was a renowned maker of punch, to exhibit his talent
+in that art at the royal entertainment, and also sent a present of some
+excellent maraschino. But no result followed. The King was said to have
+transmitted to him a hundred pound note; but even this is unluckily
+apocryphal. Leleux, his landlord, thus gives the version. The English
+consul at Calais came to Mr Brummell late one evening, and intimated
+that the King was out of snuff, saying, as he took up one of the boxes
+lying on his table, "Give me one of yours."--"With all my heart," was
+the reply; "but not that box, for if the King saw it I should never have
+it again"--implying that there was some story attached to it. On
+reaching the theatre the consul presented the snuff, and the King
+turning, said, "Why, sir, where did you get your snuff? There is only
+one person that I know that can mix snuff in this way!"--"It is some of
+Mr Brummell's, your Majesty," replied the consul. The next day the King
+left Calais; and, as he seated himself in the carriage, he said to Sir
+Arthur Paget, who commanded the yacht that brought him over, "I leave
+Calais, and have not seen Brummell." From this his biographer infers
+that he had received neither money nor message, and his landlord is of
+the same opinion. But slight as those circumstances are, it seems
+obvious that George IV. had a forgiving heart towards the Beau
+notwithstanding all his impertinences, that he would have been glad to
+forgive him, and that he would, in all probability, have made some
+provision for his old favourite if Brummell had exhibited any signs of
+repentance. On the other hand, Brummell was a man of spirit, and no man
+ought to put himself in the way of being treated contemptuously even by
+royalty; but it seems strange that, with all his adroitness, he should
+not have hit upon a middle way. There could have been no great
+difficulty in ascertaining whether the King would receive him, in
+sending a respectful message, in offering his loyal congratulations on
+the King's arrival, or even in expressing his regret at his long
+alienation from a Prince to whom he had been once indebted for so many
+favours, and who certainly never harboured resentment against man.
+Brummell evidently repented his tardiness on this occasion; for he made
+up his mind to make a more direct experiment when the King should visit
+the town-hall on his return. But opportunities once thrown away are
+seldom regained. The king on his return did not visit the town-hall, but
+hurried on board, and the last chance of reconciliation was gone.
+
+Yet during his long residence in Calais, the liberality of his own
+connexions in England enabled him to show a good face to poverty. He
+paid his bills punctually whenever the remittance came, and was
+charitable to the mendicants who, probably for the last thousand years,
+have made Calais their headquarters. The general name for him was the
+_Roi de Calais_. An anecdote of his pleasantry in almsgiving reached the
+public ear. A French beggar asked him for a two-sous piece. "I don't
+know the coin," said Brummell, "never having had one; but I suppose you
+mean a franc. There, take it." His former celebrity had also spread far
+and wide among the population. A couple of English workmen in one of the
+factories of the town, one day followed a gentleman who had a
+considerable resemblance to Brummell. He heard one of them say to the
+other, "Now, I'll bet you a pot that's him." Shortly after, one of them
+strolled up to him, with, "Beg pardon, sir--hope no offence, but we two
+have got a bet--now, a'n't you George Ring the Bell?" Brummell's habits
+of flirtation did not desert him in France; and in one instance he paid
+such marked attention to a young English lady, that a friend was deputed
+to enquire his purposes. Here Brummell's knowledge of every body did him
+good service. The deputy on this occasion having once figured as the
+head of a veterinary hospital, or some such thing, but being then in the
+commissariat,--"Why, Vulcan!" exclaimed Brummell, "what a humbug you
+must be to come and lecture me on such a subject! You, who were for two
+years at hide-and-seek to save yourself from being shot by Sir T. S. for
+running off with one of his daughters." "Dear me," said the astonished
+friend, "you have touched a painful chord; I will have no more to do
+with this business." The business died a natural death.
+
+His dressing-table was _recherch�_. Its _batterie de toilette_ was
+curious, complete, and of silver; one part of it being a spitting-dish,
+he always declaring that "it was impossible to _spit in clay_." His
+"making up" every morning occupied two hours. When he first arrived in
+Caen he carried a cane, but often exchanged it for a brown silk
+umbrella, which was always protected by a silk case of remarkable
+accuracy of fit--the handle surmounted by an ivory head of George the
+Fourth, in well-curled wig and gracious smile. In the street he _never_
+took off his hat to any one, not even to a lady; for it would have been
+difficult to replace it in the same position, it having been put on with
+peculiar care. We finish by stating, that he always had the _soles_ of
+his boots blackened as well as the upper leathers; his reason for this
+being, that, in the usual negligence of human nature, he never could be
+sure that the polish on the _edge_ of the sole would be accurately
+produced, unless the whole underwent the operation. He occasionally
+polished a single boot himself, to show how perfection on this point was
+to be obtained. Clogs, so indispensable in the dirt of an unpaved French
+street, he always abhorred; yet, under cover of night, he _could_, now
+and then, condescend to wear them. "Theft," as the biographer observes,
+"in Sparta was a crime--but only when it was _discovered_."
+
+But after this life of fantasy and frivolity, on which so much
+cleverness was thrown away, the unfortunate Beau finished his career
+miserably. On his application to the Foreign Office, representing his
+wish to be removed to any other consulate where he might serve more
+effectually, and of course with a better income; the former part of his
+letter was made the ground of abolishing the consulate, while the latter
+received no answer. We say nothing of this measure, any further than
+that it had the effect of utter ruin on poor Brummell. The total loss of
+his intellect followed; he was reduced to absolute beggary, and finally
+spent his last miserable hours in an hospital for lunatic mendicants.
+Surely it could not have been difficult, in the enormous patronage of
+office, to have found some relief for the necessities of a man whose
+official character was unimpeached; who had been expressly put into
+government employ by ministers for the sake of preserving him from
+penury; who had been the companion, the _friend_ of princes and nobles;
+and whose faults were not an atom more flagrant than those of every man
+of fashion in his time. But he was now utterly ruined and wretched. Some
+strong applications were made to his former friends by a Mr Armstrong, a
+merchant of Caen, who seems to have constantly acted a most humane part
+to him, and occasional donations were sent. A couple of hundred pounds
+were even remitted from the Foreign Office; and, by the exertions of
+Lord Alvanley and the present Duke of Beaufort, who never deserted him,
+and this is much to the honour of both, a kind of small annuity was paid
+to him. But he was already overwhelmed with debt, for his income from
+the consulate netted him but L.80 a-year, the other L.320 being in the
+hands of the banker, his creditor; and it seems probable that his
+destitution deprived him of his senses after a period of wretchedness
+and even of rags. Broken-hearted and in despair, concluding with
+hopeless imbecility, this man of taste and talent, for he possessed both
+in no common degree, was left to die in the hands of strangers--no
+slight reproach to the cruel insensibility of those who, wallowing in
+wealth, and fluttering from year to year through the round of fashion,
+suffered their former associate, nay their envied example, to perish in
+his living charnel. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Caen,
+under a stone with this inscription:--
+
+            In
+        Memory of
+    GEORGE BRUMMELL, ESQ.,
+   who departed this life
+  On the 29th of March 1840.
+      Aged 62 years.
+
+Mr Jesse deserves credit for his two volumes. There is a good deal in
+them which has no direct reference to Brummell; but he has collected
+probably all that could be known. The books are _very_ readable, the
+anecdotes pleasantly told, the style is lively, and frequently shows
+that the biographer could adopt the thought as well as the language of
+his hero. At all events he has given us the detail of a character of
+whom every body had heard something, and every body wished to hear more.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} _The Life of George Brummell, Esq._ By Captain Jesse. 2 volumes.
+
+
+
+
+THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE GREEK STATE.
+
+                                     "Say why
+    That ancient story of Prometheus chain'd?
+    The vulture--the inexhaustible repast
+    Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes
+    By Tantalus entail'd upon his race,
+    And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes?
+    Fictions in form, but in their substance truths--
+    Tremendous truths!--familiar to the men
+    Of long past times; nor obsolete in ours."--_Excursion._
+
+
+In an article on the bankruptcy of the Greek kingdom, (No. CCCXXXV.,
+September 1843,) we gave an account of the financial condition of the
+new state; and we ventured to suggest that a revolution was unavoidable.
+That revolution occurred even sooner than we expected; for our number
+had hardly reached Athens ere King Otho was compelled to summon a
+national assembly to aid him in framing the long promised constitution.
+
+As our former number explained the immediate causes of the discontent in
+Greece, we shall now furnish our readers with a description of the
+revolution, of its results, and of the great difficulties which still
+oppose serious barriers to the formation of an independent _kingdom_ in
+Greece. The late revolution was distinguished by an open rebellion of
+the army; and as a rebellion, in which the troops have been covered with
+decorations, and have received a gratification of some months' pay, is
+not the era from which we should wish to date the civil liberty and
+national prosperity of a monarchy founded by Great Britain, France, and
+Russia, we shall use great delicacy in describing the movement, and
+record no fact which we cannot substantiate by legal or documentary
+evidence.
+
+It is not to be supposed when we in Edinburgh were informed of the
+approaching storm in Greece, that the people of the country were without
+anxiety. The _Morning Post_, (23d September 1843,) which has generally
+contained very accurate information from Athens, published a letter
+written from that city on the 5th September. This Athenian correspondent
+declared "that the Greeks have so fully made up their minds to put an
+end to the Bavarian dynasty, as to be resolved not even to accept a
+constitution at the hands of the king. They declare that they will
+abstain from all outrage and personal violence; and that they only
+desire the embarkation of King Otho and his German followers, who shall
+be free to leave the country without the slightest injury."
+
+We solicit the attention of her majesty's ministers to these memorable
+words, written before the revolution.
+
+The danger, in short, was visible to every body but King Otho, his
+German camarilla, and his renegade Greek ministers. At this time Kalergy
+was inspector of the cavalry. He had always expressed his
+dissatisfaction with the system of Bavarian favouritism in the army; and
+his gallant and disinterested conduct during the war against the Turks,
+rendered him universally popular. Infinitely more of a gentleman and a
+man of the world than any of the court faction, it is said that he was
+viewed with feelings of personal as well as political aversion. It
+happened that, about a week before the revolution, the king reviewed the
+garrison of Athens, and in the order of the day which followed this
+review, General Kalergy was noticed in such a way that he felt himself
+deeply insulted. A Bavarian, Captain Hess, then marshal of the palace,
+was supposed to be the author of this document. As the attack on Kalergy
+was evidently caused by his political conduct, the whole Greek army took
+his part, and the cry was raised that the Bavarians must be driven out
+of Greece.
+
+The prominent part which General Kalergy has taken in the late
+revolution, and the romantic incidents of his life, induce us to offer
+our readers a short sketch of his earlier career. We have known him in
+circumstances when intercourse ensures intimacy; for we have sat
+together round the same watch-fires, on the mountains of Argolis and
+Attica. To parody the words of Anastasius, we saw him achieve his first
+deed of prowess, and we were present when he heard his first praises.
+Hastings's lips have long been silenced by death, but the music of his
+applause still rings in our ears.
+
+Demetrius Kalergy is descended from a Cretan family, whose name is
+famous in the annals of Candia. He was born in Russia, and was studying
+in Germany when the Greeks took up arms against the Turks. His elder
+brothers, Nicolas and Manolis, having resolved to join the cause of
+their countrymen, repaired to Marseilles, where, with the assistance of
+their uncle, a man of great wealth in Russia, they freighted a vessel,
+and purchased a small train of artillery, consisting of sixteen guns,
+and a considerable supply of muskets and ammunition. Demetrius, though
+then only fifteen years of age, could not be restrained from joining
+them, and the three brothers arrived in Greece together. The young
+Kalergy soon gave proofs of courage and military talents. His second
+brother, Manolis, was killed during the siege of Athens; but the eldest,
+Nicolas, a man who unites the accomplishments of a court to the
+sincerest feelings of patriotism, still resides in Greece, universally
+respected. During the Bavarian sway he took no part in political
+affairs; but he was elected a member of the national assembly, which has
+just terminated its labours in preparing the constitution.
+
+Demetrius Kalergy was first entrusted with an independent command in
+1824, when the Peloponnesian chiefs and primates, Kolokotroni, Londos,
+Notaras, Deliyani, Zaimi, and Sessini, endeavoured to divide the Morea
+into a number of small principalities, of which they expected to secure
+the revenues for themselves. In spite of Kalergy's youth, he was ordered
+to take the field against the first corps of the rebels that had acted
+in open hostility to the existing government. With his usual promptitude
+and decision, he attacked Panos Kolokotroni, the son of the old Klepht,
+and Sta�kos, a Moreote captain of some reputation, in the plain of
+Tripolitza, where they were posted for the despicable purpose of
+intercepting the trains of mules laden with merchandise for the supply
+of the shops of Tripolitza, then the great market of all the central
+parts of the Morea.
+
+The affair was really brilliant. The rebels were encamped on a low hill,
+and, not expecting that Kalergy would depart from the usual practice of
+carrying on a long series of skirmishes, they had paid no attention to
+their position. The attack opened in the usual way by a fierce fire at a
+very long distance; but Kalergy, on perceiving the careless arrangements
+of his enemy, soon induced his troops to creep up pretty close to the
+Moreotes, when he suddenly jumped up, and shouted to his followers, "The
+shortest way is the best. Follow me!" and rushed forward. His whole band
+was within the hostile lines in an instant. The manoeuvre was so
+unexpected, that few of the rebels fired; many were loading their
+muskets, and none had time to draw their swords or yatagans. About 170
+were slain, and, if report may be trusted, one of the rebel chiefs was
+struck down by Kalergy, and the other taken prisoner after receiving a
+wound in personal combat with the young hero. The faction of the Moreote
+barons, as these greedy plunderers of the Greek shopkeepers would fain
+have been called, was dissolved by this unexpected victory. Many laid
+down their arms, and made peace with the government.
+
+General Kalergy was afterwards present in the town of Navarin when it
+was besieged by Ibrahim Pasha, and marched out with his band when the
+place capitulated. This defeat, though he had only held a subordinate
+command, afflicted him greatly, and he looked round for some means of
+avenging his country's loss on the Turks. He resolved at last to
+endeavour to make a diversion by recommencing the war in Crete; but
+without a strong fortress to secure the ammunition and supplies
+necessary for prosecuting a series of irregular attacks, it was evident
+that nothing important could be effected. In this difficulty, Kalergy
+determined to attack the impregnable island-fortress of Grabusa, as it
+was known that the strength of the place had induced the Turks to leave
+it with a very small garrison. Kalergy having learned that the greater
+part of this garrison was absent during the day, disguised a few of his
+men in Turkish dresses, and appeared on the beach at the point from
+which the soldiers of the garrison crossed to this island Gibraltar. The
+commander of Grabusa ordered the boat to transport them over as usual,
+and the Greeks entered the fort before the mistake was discovered. The
+place was in vain attacked by all the forces of Mohammed Ali; the Greeks
+kept possession of it to the end of the war. The sagacity and courage
+displayed by Kalergy in this affair placed him in the rank of the ablest
+of the Greek chiefs.
+
+When General Gordon (whose excellent history of the Greek revolution we
+recommend to our readers{A}) attempted to relieve Athens, then besieged
+by Kutayhi, (Reschid Pasha,) Kalergy and Makriyani commanded divisions
+of the troops which occupied the Pir�us. Subsequently, when Lord
+Cochrane and General Church endeavoured to force the Turkish lines,
+Kalergy was one of the officers who commanded the advanced division. In
+the engagement which ensued, his adventures afford an illustration of
+the singular vicissitudes of Eastern warfare. The Greek troops landed at
+Cape Kolias during the night, and pushed forward to within a mile and a
+half of the Turkish lines, where they formed a slight intrenchment on
+some undulating hills. They threw up some ill-constructed tambouria, (as
+the redoubts used in Turkish warfare are termed,) and of these some
+remains are still visible. A ravine descending from the lower slopes of
+Hymettus ran in front of this position, deep enough to shelter the
+Turkish cavalry, and enable them to approach without exposing themselves
+to the Greek artillery. This movement of the Turks was distinctly seen
+from the Greek camp at the Pir�us, and the approaching attack on the
+advanced posts of the army was waited for in breathless anxiety. The map
+of the plain of Athens is sufficiently familiar to most of our readers
+to enable then to picture to themselves the scene which ensued with
+perfect accuracy.
+
+The Greek troops destined for the relief of Athens amounted to about
+3000 men, and of these about 600 were posted far in advance of their
+companions, in three small redoubts. The main body drawn up in a long
+line remained inactive with the artillery, and a smaller corps as a
+rear-guard seemed destined to communicate with the fleet of Lord
+Cochrane at Cape Kolias. At the Pir�us, about 700 men were scattered
+about in all the disorder of an Eastern encampment, without making the
+slightest attempt to distract the attention of the Turkish troops. The
+French General Gueheneuc and the Bavarian General Heideck, both
+witnessed the battle.
+
+The Turkish cavalry, to the number of about 700, having formed in the
+ravine, rode slowly up towards the brow of the hill on which the
+tambouria of the Cretans, the Suliots, and the regular regiment were
+placed. As soon as their appearance on the crest of the ridge exposed
+them to the fire of the Greeks, they galloped forward. The fire of the
+Greeks, however, seemed almost without effect, yet the Turks turned and
+galloped down the hill into the shelter of the ravine. In a short time
+they repeated their attack with a determination, which showed that the
+preceding attempt had been only a feint to enable them to examine the
+ground. As they approached this time very near the intrenchments, the
+fire of the Greeks proved more effectual than on the former occasion,
+and several of the Delhis, horse and man, rolled on the ground. Again
+the Turks fled to conceal themselves in the ravine, and prepared for
+another attack by dividing their force into three divisions, one of
+which ascended and another descended the ravine, while the third
+prepared to renew the assault in the old direction. The vizier Kutayhi
+himself moved forward to encourage his troops, and it became evident
+that a desperate struggle would now be made to carry the Greek
+position, where the few troops who held it were left unsupported.
+
+The Turkish cavalry soon rushed on the Greeks, assailing their position
+in front and flanks; and, in spite of their fire, forced the horses over
+the low intrenchments into the midst of the enemy.{B} For the space of
+hardly three minutes pistol shots and sabre cuts fell so thick, that
+friends and foes were in equal danger. Of the Greeks engaged not one had
+turned to flee, and but few were taken alive. The loss of the Turks was,
+however, but trifling--about a dozen men and from fifteen to twenty
+horses.
+
+The centre of the Greek army, on beholding the destruction of the
+advanced guard, showed little determination; it wavered for a minute,
+and then turned and fled towards the shore in utter confusion,
+abandoning all its artillery to the Turks. The Delhis soon overtook
+their flying enemies, and riding amongst them, coolly shot down and
+sabred those whose splendid arms and dresses excited their cupidity. The
+artillery itself was turned on the fugitives, who had left the
+ammunition undestroyed as well as the guns unspiked. But our concern
+with the battle of the 6th May 1827, is at present confined to following
+the fortunes of Kalergy. He was one of the prisoners. His leg had been
+broken by a rifle-ball as the Turks entered the tambouri of the Cretans,
+and as he received an additional sabre cut on the arm, he lay helpless
+on the ground, where his youthful appearance and splendid arms caught
+the eye of an Albanian bey, who ordered him to be secured and taken care
+of as his own prisoner.
+
+On the morning after the battle, the prisoners were all brought out
+before the tent of Kutayhi, who was encamped at Patissia, very near the
+site of the house subsequently built by Sir Pulteney Malcolm. George
+Drakos, a Suliot chief, had killed himself during the night; and the
+Pasha, in consequence, ordered all the survivors to be beheaded,
+wishing, probably, to afford Europe a specimen of Ottoman economy and
+humanity, by thus saving the lives of these Greeks from themselves. Two
+hundred and fifty were executed, when Kalergy, unable to walk, was
+carried into the circle of Turkish officers witnessing the execution, on
+the back of a sturdy Albanian baker. Kutayhi calmly ordered his instant
+execution; but the prisoner having informed his captor that he would pay
+100,000 piastres for his ransom; the Albanian bey stepped forward and
+maintained his right to his prisoner so stoutly, that the Pasha, whose
+army was in arrears, and whose military chest was empty, found himself
+compelled to yield. As a memento of their meeting, however, he ordered
+one of Kalergy's ears to be cut off. The ransom was quickly paid, and
+Kalergy returned to Poros, where it was some time before he recovered
+from his wounds.
+
+Capodistrias on his arrival in Greece named Kalergy his aide-de-camp,
+and as he was much attached to the president, he was entrusted with the
+command of the cavalry sent against Poros and Nisi, when those places
+took up arms against the arbitrary and tyrannical conduct of
+Capodistrias. We are not inclined to apologize for the disorders which
+the Greek cavalry then committed; they were unpardonable even during the
+excitement of a civil war.
+
+The marriage of Kalergy was as romantic as the rest of his career. Two
+chiefs, both of the family of Notaras, (one of the few Greek families
+which can boast of territorial influence dating from the times of the
+Byzantine empire,) had involved the province of Corinth in civil war, in
+order to secure the hand of a young heiress. The lady, however, having
+escaped from the scene of action, conferred her hand on Kalergy, whose
+fame as a soldier far eclipsed that of the two rivals.
+
+As soon as the Bavarians arrived in Greece, they commenced persecuting
+Kalergy. An unfounded charge of treason was brought against him; but he
+was honourably acquitted by a court-martial, of which our country-man,
+General Gordon of Cairness, was the president; and from that period
+down to the publication of the order of the day, last September, he has
+been constantly an object of Bavarian hatred.
+
+About twenty-four hours before the revolution of the 15th of September
+broke out, the court of Greece received some information concerning the
+extent and nature of the plot, and orders were given by King Otho to
+hold a council of his trusted advisers. The Bavarians Hess and Graff,
+and the Greeks Rizos, Privilegios, Dzinos, and John the son of Philip,
+(for one of the courtly councillors of the house of Wittelspach rejoices
+in this primitive cognomen,) met, and decided on the establishment of a
+court-martial to try and shoot every man taken in arms. Orders were
+immediately prepared for the arrest of upwards of forty persons.
+
+A good deal has been said about the revolution as having been a mere
+military movement. This, however, is not a correct view of the matter,
+either with reference to the state of parties, or to the intensity of
+the national feeling at the time. Sir Robert Inglis most justly observed
+in Parliament--"That revolution in Greece had been prepared during years
+of intolerable despotism, and the soldiery merely shared in, and did not
+by any means lead, the proceedings of the great body of the nation." The
+fact is, that a plot for seizing the king and sending him to Trieste,
+had been formed by the Philorthodox or Russian party, in the early part
+of 1843; but the party, from some distrust of its own strength, and from
+the increasing unpopularity of King Otho, was induced to admit a few of
+the most determined of the constitutionalists into the plot, without
+intending to entrust them with the whole of the plan. The rising was at
+last fixed for the month of September. This occurred in consequence of
+the universal outcry raised by the Greeks, on finding that the
+representations of Great Britain in favour of the long-promised
+constitution, and the warnings which Sir Robert Peel threw out on the
+discussion of Greek affairs on Mr Cochrane's motion, were utterly
+neglected by King Otho. This indignation was reduced to despair when it
+was known that Mr Tricoupis, on his recall from London, had assured the
+king that the English cabinet was so determined to maintain the _statu
+quo_, that the constitutional party would meet with no countenance from
+England. Every party in Greece then prepared for action, and entered
+into negotiations, in which the opinions of the constitutionalists
+prevailed, because they were actively supported by the great body of the
+people.
+
+In order to prevent the country from becoming a scene of anarchy, in
+case a civil war proved unavoidable, it was necessary to employ all the
+regular authorities who could be induced to join the national cause, in
+their actual functions, without any reference to party feelings. This
+was done; and the fact that it was so, proves the intenseness of the
+public feeling. The constitutional party decided that the recognition of
+Greece as a constitutional state, and the immediate convocation of a
+national assembly, were to be the demands made on King Otho. The Russian
+party allowed these two questions to be first mooted in the firm
+persuasion that the king would be induced by his own pride, his despotic
+principles, and the mistaken views of several of the foreign ministers
+at Athens, to refuse these demands; and, in that case, the throne would
+infallibly have been declared vacant.
+
+About midnight, on the 14th of September, the _gendarmes_ were ordered
+to surround the house of General Makriyani, an officer of irregulars on
+half-pay, and to arrest him on a charge of treason. On approaching the
+house they were warned off; but pressing forward they were fired on, and
+one _gendarme_ was killed and one or two wounded. In consequence of the
+alarm given by the minister of war, for the purpose of supporting the
+arrests to be made, the garrison was all in readiness. In the mean time
+the greater part of the officers had been admitted into the secret, that
+a general movement of all Greece was to be made that night, and that
+their duty would be to maintain the strictest order and enforce the
+severest discipline.
+
+Kalergy, therefore, as soon as he was informed that the movement had
+been made to arrest Makriyani, assembled all the officers, and, in a few
+words, declared to them that the moment for saving their country from
+the Bavarian yoke had arrived; and that they must now, if they wished to
+be free, call on the king to adopt a constitutional system of
+government. The importance of this step, which Kalergy adopted with his
+usual decision, can only be understood when it is recollected, that
+there existed a strong party determined to avail itself of every
+opportunity of driving King Otho from the throne. Had Kalergy,
+therefore, delayed pledging the officers and the army to the
+constitution, or allowed them to march out of their barracks before
+making the constitution the rallying word of the revolution, there can
+be no doubt that the agents of the Russian and Philorthodox parties
+would have raised the cry of "Death to the Bavarians! down with the
+tyrant!" Kalergy, however, put the garrison in motion amidst shouts of
+_Long live the constitution_; and as the cavalry moved from their
+barracks, these shouts were echoed enthusiastically by the citizens who
+were waiting anxiously without.
+
+As soon as Kalergy had taken the command he marched all the troops to
+the square before the palace. Two squadrons of cavalry, two battalions
+of infantry, a company of Greek irregulars, and a number of half-pay
+officers and pensioners, were soon drawn up under King Otho's windows.
+His monstrous palace had begun to produce its effects. Strong patrols
+were detached to preserve order in the town, and to compel the
+_gendarmes_ to retire to their quarters. Makriyani, on being relieved
+from his blockade, repaired to the square, collecting on the way as
+large a body of armed citizens as he was able.
+
+The king had been waiting at one of the windows of the palace in great
+anxiety to witness the arrest of Makriyani; and on seeing the shots
+fired from the house, and the suspension of the attack by the
+_gendarmes_, he had dispatched a Bavarian aide-de-camp, named
+Steinsdorff, to order the artillery to the palace. The young and
+inexperienced Bavarian returned without the guns; but assured his
+Majesty that they would soon arrive. In the mean time, the whole
+garrison appeared in the square, and was ranged opposite the palace: the
+king, however, expected that the arrival of the artillery would change
+their disposition. In a short time, the guns came galloping up; but to
+the utter dismay of King Otho, they were ranged in battery against the
+palace, while the artillerymen, as soon as the manoeuvre was executed,
+gave a loud shout of "long live the constitution."
+
+His Majesty, after a long period of profound silence, appeared at a
+window of the lower story of the palace, attended by the Bavarian
+captain, Hess--the most unpopular man in Greece, unless Dzinos, the
+agent in the celebrated cases of judicial torture, could dispute with
+him that "bad eminence." One of the servants of the court called for
+General Kalergy in a loud voice; and when he approached the window the
+king asked--"What is the meaning of this disturbance? What am I to
+understand by this parade of the garrison?" To this Kalergy replied, in
+a loud and clear voice, "The people of Greece and the army desire that
+your Majesty will redeem the promise that the country should be governed
+constitutionally." King Otho then said, "Retire to your quarters; I
+shall consult with my ministers, with the council of state, and the
+ambassadors of the three protecting powers, and inform you of my
+determination." This appeared to the audience to be acting the absolute
+sovereign rather too strongly under the circumstances, and a slight
+movement of the officers, who overheard the king's words, was conveyed
+like lightning to the troops, so that the king received a distinct reply
+from the whole army in a sudden clang of sabres and noise of arms.
+Kalergy, however, immediately replied in the same distinct tone in which
+he had before spoken--"Sire, neither the garrison of Athens, nor the
+people will quit this spot, until your Majesty's decisions on the
+proposals of the council of state, which will be immediately laid before
+you, is known." At this moment Captain Hess put himself forward beside
+the king, and said--"Colonel Kalergy; that is not the way in which it
+becomes you to speak to his Majesty." But to this ill-timed lesson in
+politeness Kalergy replied sharply--"Draw your head back, sir: you and
+such as you have brought the king and the country into their present
+unfortunate circumstances. You ought to be ashamed of your conduct." The
+Bavarian hero at these words disappeared; and this was the last occasion
+in which this champion of Bavarianism appeared in a public character.
+
+At this time, Count Metaxas, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Church, and
+Major-General Londos, members of the council of state, who had been in
+the square with the troops, were engaged preparing the council for its
+share in the revolution. At the meeting which took place, Spiro Milios,
+the commandant of the military school, and an active member of the
+Russian party, was present as a representative of the army. It was
+evident that the council of state comprised three parties. One was
+willing to support King Otho and the actual system. This party included
+Kondouriotis, the president; Tricoupis, the late minister in London; and
+a German Greek named Theocharis. Another party was eager to drive King
+Otho from the throne, in order to proceed to the nomination of a regency
+preparatory to the choice of an orthodox prince. We are not sure that
+any individual is now anxious to identify his name with this party. The
+third party made the demand for a constitution their primary object; and
+as this party was led by Metaxas, Londos, Church, Palamidhis, and
+Mansolas, it was soon joined by the majority.
+
+The meeting was long, and it is said that the conduct of the members was
+much more disorderly than that of the people and the troops in the
+square; but at last, a proclamation and an oath were drawn up, by which
+the council of state, the army, and the people, all pledged themselves
+to support the constitution. A committee consisting of Metaxas, Londos,
+and Palamidhis, was also charged to prepare an address to the king,
+recommending his majesty to convoke a national assembly, in order to
+prepare a constitution for the state; at the same time they invited his
+majesty to appoint new ministers, and in the list presented they of
+course took care to insert their own names. As soon as this business was
+terminated, the council dispatched a deputation to wait on his majesty,
+consisting of the president and five members, who were to obtain the
+king's consent.
+
+The conduct of King Otho on receiving this deputation was neither wise
+nor firm. He delayed returning any answer for two hours, and attempted
+to open a negotiation with the council of state, by means of one of the
+members of the camarilla. The delay excited some distrust even among the
+best disposed in the square, and the report was spread that the king was
+endeavouring to communicate with the _corps diplomatique_, in order to
+create a diversion. At this very time a train of carriages suddenly
+appeared at the gates of the palace, and the ministers of the three
+protecting powers--Sir Edmund Lyons, Mr Katakazy, and Mr Piscatory,
+accompanied by General Prokesch d'Osten, and Mr Brassier de St Simon,
+the representatives of Austria and Prussia--requested to be admitted to
+see the king. General Kalergy, however, declared that he had orders to
+refuse all entry to the palace, until his majesty had terminated his
+conference with the deputation of the council of state; and repeated, in
+the presence of the ministers of Austria and Prussia, the assurance he
+had given at an early hour of the morning to Sir Edmund Lyons, Mr
+Katakazy, and Mr Piscatory, that the greatest respect would be shown to
+the person of his majesty. Mr Katakazy, the _doyen_ of the _corps
+diplomatique_, satisfied that any parade of foreign interference could
+only increase the difficulties of the king's position, accepted the
+answer of Kalergy and began to withdraw. The representatives of the
+powers which had never protected Greece, deemed the moment favourable
+for a display of a little independent diplomacy, and accordingly the
+Prussian minister asked Kalergy in a tone, neither mild nor low, if he
+durst refuse to admit him to see his majesty. To this Kalergy, who was
+extremely anxious to avoid any dispute with the foreign ministers at
+such a moment, politely replied that he was compelled to refuse even
+the minister of Prussia. Mr Brassier, however, returned to the charge
+aided by his Austrian colleague; but as the Greeks place all Germans in
+the category of Bavarians, they gave some manifestations of their
+dislike to any German interference, which could not be otherwise than
+displeasing to the Prussian, who addressed Kalergy in a very rough tone.
+His words were lost to the spectators, but they were supported by
+General Prokesch d'Osten with a good deal of gesticulation. The patience
+of Kalergy gave way under these repeated attacks, and he turned to Mr
+Brassier, saying--"Monsieur le ministre, you are generally unlucky in
+your advice, and I am afraid his majesty has heard too much of it
+lately."
+
+The thrust was a home one, and the Prussian minister, rather
+discomposed, addressed himself to Sir Edmund Lyons, who, while waiting
+till his carriage drew up, had been quietly contemplating the scene, and
+said--"Colonel Kalergy is insolent; but he only repeats what he has
+heard in the drawing-rooms of Athens." Sir Edmund Lyons replied--"I do
+not see, Mr Brassier, how that makes your case better," and withdrew to
+his carriage, leaving Austria and Prussia to battle out their dispute
+with Greece in the presence of the mob. The spectators considered the
+scene a very amusing one, for they laughed heartily as the _corps
+diplomatique_ retired; but, if all the reports current in diplomatic
+circles be true, Mr Katakazy, the _doyen_ of the Athenian diplomatists,
+was made to suffer severely for his prudent conduct; for it is said that
+his recall took place because he did not support with energy the foolish
+attempt of his enterprising colleagues. It is certain that any very
+violent support given to any feeling, in direct hostility to the
+national cause at the time, could hardly have failed to vacate the
+throne, or at least to push the people on to commit some disorders, of
+which the Russian court, and the friends of despotism at Vienna and
+Berlin, might have taken advantage.
+
+The king, finding at last that there was no hope of his deriving any
+assistance from without, signed the ordinances appointing a new
+ministery, and convoking a national assembly. The troops, after having
+remained more than thirteen hours under arms, were marched back to their
+barracks, as if from a review; and every thing at Athens followed its
+usual course. Thus was a revolution effected in the form of government
+in Greece without any interruption in the civil government--without the
+tribunals' ceasing to administer justice for a single day--without the
+shops' remaining closed beyond the usual hours, or the mercantile
+affairs of the country undergoing the slightest suspension. Such a
+people must surely be fit for a constitution.
+
+The national assembly has now met, and terminated its labours; and
+Greece is in possession of a constitution made by Greeks. In three
+months the first representative chamber will meet. It will consist of
+about 120 members. The senate, which is to consist of members named by
+the king for life, cannot exceed one-half the number of the
+representatives elected by the people. Faults may be found with some of
+the details of the constitution; but, on the whole, it must be regarded
+as a very favourable specimen of the political knowledge of the Greeks;
+and the manner in which the different articles were discussed, and the
+care with which every proposal and amendment were examined, gave all
+those who witnessed the debates a very high opinion of the legislative
+capacity of the people.
+
+The form of the Greek government, as a constitutional monarchy, may now
+be considered as settled. We shall therefore proceed to examine the
+difficulties, of a social and political nature, which still obstruct the
+advancement of the nation, and render its prosperity problematical. Some
+of our statements may appear almost paradoxical to travellers, whose
+hasty glance at distant countries enables them to come to rather more
+positive conclusions than those who devote years to study the same
+subject. We shall, however, strive to expose our facts in such a way as
+to show that we state the plain truth, nothing but the truth, and, as
+far as our subject carries us, the whole truth.
+
+That Greece has not hitherto improved, either in her wealth, population,
+or civilization, as fast as the energy of her people led her friends to
+expect would be the case after she was freed from the Turks, is
+universally admitted. The great bar to improvement exists in an evil
+rooted in the present frame of social life, but fortunately one which
+good and just government would gradually remove. In Greece there is no
+clear and definite idea of the sacred right of property in land. The god
+Terminus is held in no respect. No Greek, from the highest to the
+lowest, understands the meaning of that absolute right of property
+"which," as Blackstone says, "consists in the free use, enjoyment, and
+disposal by every Englishman of all his acquisitions, without control or
+diminution, save only by the laws of the land."
+
+The appropriation of Mr Finlay's land by King Otho, without measurement,
+valuation, or payment, to make a garden for his palace--the formation of
+a great road leading to the French minister's house, by the municipality
+of Athens, without indemnifying the owners of the land, though a road
+sufficiently good already existed--and the confiscation of half the
+estates purchased by foreigners from the Turks by Maurocordatos, when
+Minister of Finance under the Bavarian Regency, in a ministerial
+circular deciding on rights of property, are mere trifling examples of
+the universal spirit. When Maurocordatos wrote his memorable
+declaration, "that every spot where wild herbs, fit for the pasturage of
+cattle, grow, is national property, and that the Greek government
+recognises no individual property in the soil except the exclusive right
+of cultivation," he only, in deference to the Bavarian policy of the
+time, which wished to copy Mohammed Ali's administration in Egypt,
+caricatured a misconception of the right of property equally strong in
+every Greek, whether he be the oppressor or the oppressed. Even the late
+National Assembly has not thought it necessary to correct any of the
+invasions of private property by the preceding despotism. Individuals,
+almost ruined by the plunder of their land, have not even received the
+offer of an indemnity, though the justice of their claims is not
+denied.{C}
+
+The origin of this national obtuseness of mind on a question of
+interest, is to be found in the system of taxing the land. A Greek
+really views land somewhat as English labourers view game. The owner of
+the soil is absolute proprietor only during those months in which he is
+engaged in the labours of preparing the land and sowing the seed. As
+soon as the harvest time arrives, he ceases to be master of his estate,
+and sinks into the condition of a serf of the revenue officer, or of the
+farmer of the land revenue. It is true, that the government tax only
+amounts to a tenth of the gross produce of the soil; but, in virtue of
+this right to a tenth, government assumes the entire direction of all
+the agricultural operations relating to the crops, and the cultivator's
+nine-tenths (for it is really a misnomer to call him proprietor) become
+a mere adjunct of the government tenth.
+
+Many of our readers, who are unacquainted with Eastern life, may suppose
+that we colour our picture too strongly. In order, therefore, to divest
+our statement of all ornament, we shall describe the whole of the events
+of an agricultural year. Our classic readers will then comprehend
+practically how the vulture could feast on the perpetually growing heart
+of Prometheus--why Tantalus tempted the gods by murdering Pelops--and
+they will see that the calamities of the Theban race are an allegorical
+representation of the inevitable fate which awaits a people groaning
+under the system of taxation now in force in Greece.
+
+The tenths in Greece are usually farmed to speculators, and, as the
+collection is a matter of difficulty, extraordinary powers are conferred
+on the farmers; hence it happens, that the social position of the
+cultivators and the farmers is one of constant hostility. If the
+cultivator has it in his power, he cheats the farmer of the revenue,
+and if the farmer is able to do so he cheats the cultivator. The result
+is, that probably not one individual in the Greek kingdom really pays
+the exact tenth of the produce of his land. A few of the most active
+rogues contrive to cheat the farmers of the revenue; but these
+gentlemen, in virtue of the great powers with which the law invests
+them, contrive to cheat the greater part of the proprietors. As soon as
+the grain is ripe, the cultivator is compelled to address himself to the
+tax-farmer for permission to cut his crop; but as the farmer must keep a
+very sharp look-out after his interest, he only grants such permissions
+as accord with the arrangements he may have established for watching the
+cultivators at the smallest possible expense to himself, making the
+over-ripeness of the crop of the majority a very secondary
+consideration. It happens, consequently, that in Greece two-thirds of
+the grain are not gathered until it is over-ripe, and the loss is
+consequently very great.
+
+When the grain is cut, it must be carried to a certain number of
+authorized threshing-floors collected together, in order that the tax
+farmer may take every possible care to secure his tenth. To these
+threshing-floors the whole grain of a district must be transported from
+the fields in the straw, though the straw may be wanted as fodder for
+cattle at the very spot from which it is taken, and will require to be
+carried back a very great distance. An immense loss of grain and labour
+is sustained by this regulation; but it is a glorious season for the
+donkeys;--long trains of these animals, lively under their heavy loads
+of sheaves, may be seen galloping one after the other, each endeavouring
+to seize a mouthful from his neighbour. The roads are strewed with grain
+and the broken-hearted cultivators follow, cursing man and beast.
+
+The grain is at last collected in immense stacks round the
+threshing-floors--a cultivator perched on the top of each stack,
+defending it from the attacks of man and beast; and a tax-gatherer,
+seated with his pipe cross-legged in the middle of the circle, is
+watching the manoeuvres of the cultivators. No person who has not
+examined the subject with attention can imagine the scenes of fraud and
+violence which a Greek harvest produces. The grain is usually kept piled
+round the threshing-floors under various pretexts, for at least two
+months, unless the cultivator pay the farmer an additional sum, to
+facilitate the housing of his crops. Even in the vicinity of Athens, the
+operations of the wheat and barley harvest generally occupy the
+exclusive attention of the agricultural population for three months. The
+grain is trodden out by cattle; and a Greek who bought a winnowing
+machine at Athens, was not allowed to make use of it, as the farmers of
+the revenue contended that the introduction of such instruments would
+facilitate frauds.
+
+The farmers of the tenths likewise increase the evils of this ruinous
+system, by throwing every difficulty in the way of the cultivators, in
+order to compel them to consent to pay for each facility they may
+require. We have known regular contracts entered into with the
+peasantry, by which they agreed to pay from 3 to 5 per cent more than
+the legal tenth. We believe no honest man ever paid less than from 12 to
+13 per cent on his crop, even in the neighbourhood of the capital. It
+may be supposed that some redress can be obtained, in cases of gross
+oppression, by applying to the courts of law; but this is not the case.
+A special tribunal, consisting of administrative officers of the Crown,
+and municipal authorities, and from which lawyers have been always
+carefully excluded, is appointed to judge summarily all cases relating
+to the tenths. The infamous conduct of these administrative tribunals
+excited general discontent, and an article has been inserted in the
+constitution abolishing them, and sending all the pending cases to the
+ordinary courts of law. Government, however, defended them to the last,
+and even pressed for decisions down to the very hour in which King Otho
+took his oath to the constitution. There is here, however, some ground
+for consolation; for it is clear that the Greek ministers fear the
+ordinary administration of justice as being above their control.
+
+It is needless to say, that under such laws the improvement of
+agriculture in Greece is impossible. No green crops can be grown with
+profit at any distance from a large town. The tenth of garden produce
+and green crops being generally valued and paid for in money, the
+disputes concerning the valuation, and the impossibility of obtaining
+any redress, in case of injustice, have induced the cultivators to give
+up such cultivation. We have known proprietors pay half the value of a
+crop of potatoes as the value of the tenth; and in one case, on our
+asking the farmer of the tenths, who after all was not a bad fellow at
+heart, though he wished to make his farming of the revenues turn out a
+good speculation in his hands, what he would recommend a proprietor to
+do in order not to lose money by cultivating potatoes; he looked grave,
+and after a few moments' thought, candidly replied--"Never to plant them
+as long as the present law remains in force!" Vineyards which have been
+planted with care, and cultivated for eight years, have been lately
+abandoned, as the high valuation of their produce renders them
+unprofitable. The only agriculture which can be pursued in Greece
+without loss, is that in which only the simplest and rudest methods of
+cultivation are followed. The land only yields a rent when it is in the
+immediate vicinity of a large market, or when it is of the richest
+quality; the employment of capital in improvements only opens new
+channels for the extortions of the farmers of the revenue. No money can
+be safely invested on mortgage in such a country, and no loans by the
+Three Allied powers to the Government, no national bank, no manufactory
+of beet-root sugar, no model farms, and no schools of agriculture can
+introduce prosperity into a country taxed in such a manner.
+
+We do not intend to discuss any plan for ameliorating the condition of
+the Greeks; but we can easily point out what it is necessary for them to
+do before they can, by any possibility, better their condition. The
+system of selling the tenths must be abolished; for a government so
+inefficient as to be unable to collect them by its own officers, is
+incompetent to perform the functions for which it was created, and ought
+to be destroyed. The owners of the land must be rendered the real
+masters of their property. They must be allowed to reap their crops when
+they are ripe, and to thresh their grain when and where they please.
+Until this is the case, we can assure the Three Protecting Powers, they
+count without the people if they suppose that they have established a
+permanent monarchy in Greece. We do not hesitate to say that the royal
+dignity, even with the support of England and France, is not worth ten
+years' purchase until this is accomplished.
+
+Every traveller who visits Greece declaims against the number of
+coffee-houses throughout the country, and the hosts of idle people with
+which they are filled. But nothing else can be expected in a country
+where the system of agriculture keeps the cultivators idle for three
+months annually, and deprives the proprietor of all profit from his
+land. Under such circumstances the demand for labour becomes extremely
+irregular. Many of the lower classes turn brigands and plunder their
+neighbours; the educated and higher classes turn government _employ�s_
+and plunder the country. This evil has arrived at an alarming pitch; the
+Greek army contains almost as many officers as privates; the navy has
+officers enough to man a fleet twice as large as that which Greece
+possesses, for she has three admirals, a hundred and fifty captains, and
+two hundred and seventy commanders. It has been in vain pressed on every
+successive administration, that a list of the army, navy, and civil
+_employ�s_ ought to be published, in order to put an end to the shameful
+system of jobbing which has always existed. No minister would, however,
+adopt a principle which would so effectually have put an end to his own
+arbitrary power of quartering his friends and relations on the public.
+The loans of the three powers might be doubled to-morrow, and it is
+evident that, unless all the population of Greece were made pensioners,
+no surplus would be found to employ for any public improvement.
+
+Indeed the national revenues of the Greek kingdom, as of old those of
+Athens and Rome, seem to be considered the property of that body of
+citizens who pursue no useful occupation, and possess no taxable
+property; while the unlucky proprietors are viewed as a species of
+serfs, existing to supply a revenue to the state. This political
+principle has been exemplified in a decree of the late national
+assembly, excluding every Greek or foreigner from public employment who
+happens not to be a born subject of the new kingdom, or who did not take
+part in the war against the Turks before the end of 1827, and perhaps
+even more strongly in a very unconstitutional private vote of a
+committee of the whole house, giving 800 drachmas to each member--this
+vote being in direct violation of one of the articles of the
+constitution, which requires that all grants of money should originate
+from the crown. We do not deny the necessity of allowing the deputies
+this small grant; many of them were poor, and their conduct had been
+disinterested; but we are bound to complain of the slightest infraction
+of constitutional principles by those who frame a constitution.
+
+The length of this article compels us to leave a few observations we
+desire to make on the municipal government of the Greeks, and on the
+state of education, and of their judicial and ecclesiastical affairs, to
+another opportunity. The late debates in the House of Commons, and the
+able statement which Sir Robert Peel gave of the principles of our
+policy with regard to Greece, render it unnecessary for us to say one
+word on that subject. We can assure our readers that the policy of our
+present ministers has been applauded by every party in Greece, except
+the Philorthodox; and they, as they could find no fault, remained
+silent. We believe that no two governments ever acted more
+disinterestedly to a third than Great Britain end France have lately
+done to Greece, and that no ministers ever acted more fairly, in any
+international question, than Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot have done on
+the subject of the Greek revolution; but for this very reason we feel
+inclined to warn our countrymen against the leaven of old principles,
+which still exists in the palace at Athens. Let us judge of the new
+government of Greece by its acts, and let Great Britain and France
+remember that they are not looked on without some suspicion.
+
+    +Enesti gar p�s touto t� tyrannidi
+    Nos�ma, tois philoisi m� pepoithenai+.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1832.
+
+{B} The tambouria are always constructed with the ditch in the inside,
+in order that they may afford a better cover from artillery.
+
+{C} One English sufferer has for several years vainly attacked the king
+for justice, even with the assistance of the English Minister in Greece
+and the Foreign Office at home.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX TO VOL. LV.
+
+
+Aborigines of New Holland, the, 193.
+
+Achilles Tatius, account of his romance of Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Actual condition of the Greek state, the, 785.
+
+Aden, the British position of, 272.
+
+Adventures in Texas.--No. III. the Struggle, 18.
+
+Adventures of Clitophon and Leucippe, the, 33.
+
+Africa, ignorance of the interior of, 269.
+
+Africa--the Slave Trade--and Tropical Colonies, 730
+  various expeditions to explore, 731
+  its principal rivers, and countries watered by them, 734.
+
+Agriculture, causes of the decline of, in the Roman empire, 391.
+
+Ameer Ali, a Thug, account of, 326.
+
+Ameers of Scinde, case of the, 580.
+
+Anti-corn-law League, measures of the, 121.
+
+Ancient Greek romances--Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Arabs of Cordova, sketch of the history of the, 431.
+
+Australia, statistics of the various colonies of, 184.
+
+
+Banking in Australia, on, 186.
+
+Banking-House, the, a history in three part. Part III. Chap. I., Symptoms
+    of rottenness, 50
+  Chap. II., A meeting, 56
+  Chap. III., A chapter of loans, 61
+  Chap. IV., A dissolution of partnership, 65
+  Chap. V., The crisis, 69
+  Chap. VI., The crash, 75
+  Chap. VII., The vicarage, 79.
+
+Beau Brummell, Jesse's memoirs of, reviewed, 769.
+
+Beauclerk, Topham, 182.
+
+Beke, Dr. T. C., his travels in Africa, 740.
+
+Belfront castle, a retrospective review, 334.
+
+Benton, Mr, on the treaty of Washington, 112.
+
+Bewailment from Bath, a, or Poor Old Maids, 199.
+
+Bristol, the Earl of, 180.
+
+British fleet, the, 462.
+
+Brummell, Jesse's memoirs of, reviewed, 769.
+
+Bumbo Khan, sketch of, 223.
+
+Bundelcund, Colonel Davidson's travels in, 325.
+
+
+Canadian insurgents, trials of the, 3.
+
+Catholicism, effects of in Ireland, 520.
+
+Chartists, state trials of the, in 1842, 5.
+
+Cheap labour and cheap bread, connection of, 125.
+
+Chudleigh, Miss, career of, 180.
+
+Church of Scotland, the secession from the, 221.
+
+Churkaree, town of, 327.
+
+Circulating libraries, on, 556.
+
+Circulating medium of Great Britain, amount of the, 388.
+
+Clitophon and Leucippe, account of the romance of, 33.
+
+Cobden, Mr, on the effects of corn-law repeal, 125.
+
+Colonies, importance of, to England, 740.
+
+Columbus, a poem, by B. Simmons, 687.
+
+Conservatism, advance of, since the passing of the reform bill, 103
+  as exhibited by the general elections, 104.
+
+Cordova, history of the Moorish kingdom of, 431.
+
+Corn-law, the new, and its effects, 116.
+
+Corn-laws, on the, 385
+  viewed in connexion with the manufacturing distress, 105
+  effects of their repeal on wages, &c., 125.
+
+Corn question, letter from Lemuel Gulliver on the, 98
+  Sir Robert Peel on the, 106.
+
+Crime, the increase of, 533
+  table of it since 1805, 534
+  not attributable to its surer detection by a more efficient police, 535
+  nor to defects in the law, 540
+  nor to deficiency in education, 541
+  its diminution in India and France, 538.
+
+Cry from Ireland, review of the, 638.
+
+Customs revenue, improvement of the, since the new tariff, 114.
+
+
+Davidson's travels in India, review of, 321.
+
+Delta, lines by, on the snow, 617.
+
+Dhacca, account of the city of, 331.
+
+Difficulties of the present government on its accession, the, 108.
+
+Diligence, the, a leaf on a journal, 692.
+
+Disruption of the Scottish church, the, 221.
+
+Dublin state trials, the, 1.
+
+Duelling in Germany, 555.
+
+Dumas, Alexander; thrush-hunting, a tale by, 150
+  extracts from his work on Italy, 347
+  and from his Rhine and Rhinelanders, 546.
+
+
+Education, statistics of, with reference to crime, 541.
+
+Elections, results of the, since 1832, 104.
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, his Indian policy, 113.
+
+Emigration to Australia, letter on, 184
+  from Africa, on, 745.
+
+England, efforts made by, in favour of free trade, 261.
+
+Ethiopia, Harris's Highlands of, reviewed, 269.
+
+Europe, diminution of, British exports to, 263.
+
+Eusebius, letter to, on sitting for a portrait, 243.
+
+Exports, diminution of, to Europe, 263.
+
+
+Fairies' Sabbath, the, a tradition of Upper Lusatia, 665.
+
+Fireman's Song, the, 101.
+
+Foreign policy of the government, the, 111.
+
+France, increased commercial restrictions of, 261
+  statistics of crime in, 538.
+
+Freethinker, the, a tale, 593.
+
+Free trade and protection, on, 259
+  efforts made by England to introduce free trade, 261
+  protective system pursued by France, Germany, &c., _ib._
+  true principles of, 268. No. II.
+  The corn-laws, 385
+  failure of the reciprocity system, _ib._
+  comparison of a young and old state as to manufacturing and agricultural
+    productiveness, 386
+  effects of free trade on the Roman empire, 391
+  impracticability of that system, 396
+  and its inexpediency, 397.
+
+Frost and others, the trials of, 4.
+
+
+Gama, circumnavigation of Africa, by, 271.
+
+General elections, results of the, since 1832, 104.
+
+Germany Customs League, the, 262.
+
+Germany, Dumas in, 546.
+
+Gil Blas, on the authorship of, 698.
+
+Glum, Tabitha, letter from, 199.
+
+Goethe, lines to, 380.
+
+Gopal, a Hindu robber, account of, 326.
+
+Government, position and prospects of the, 103.
+
+Greece, the actual condition of, 785.
+
+Greek romances, the ancient: Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Gulliver, letter from, on the corn question, 98.
+
+Gunnings, career of the, 176.
+
+Gwalior, history and present state of, 579.
+
+
+Hackman, murder of Miss Ray, by, 178.
+
+Harris's Highlands of Ethiopia, review of, 269
+  notices of it, 730.
+
+Hawash river, the, 277.
+
+Henley, orator, notices of, 171.
+
+Heretic, the, a novel translated from the Russian of Laj�tchnikoff, review
+    of, 133.
+
+Hervey, Captain, 180.
+
+High life in the last century, 164.
+
+Hill's Fifty days on board a Slave vessel, review of, 425.
+
+Home policy of the government, the, 110.
+
+Hurdwar, account of the fair of, 324.
+
+Huskisson, Mr, first attempts to introduce the free trade system, 262.
+
+Hydrabad, battle at, 580.
+
+Hymn of a hermit, the, 382.
+
+
+Imprisonment and transportation--No. I.; the increase of crime, 533.
+
+Increase of crime, the, since 1808, 534
+  not attributable to greater number of detections, 535
+  nor to defect in the law, 540
+  nor to deficiency of education, 541.
+
+India, Colonel Davidson's travels in, review of, 321
+  diminution of crime in, 538.
+
+Indian affairs, Gwalior, 579.
+
+Ireland, its present position, and effects of the government measures
+    on, 127
+  its present state, and policy of ministers, 518
+  objections brought against the ministerial measures, 519
+  defence of them, 524
+  the landlord and tenant question, 638.
+
+Irish state trials, the, 1.
+
+
+J. S., poems by; the Olympic Jupiter, 378
+  a Roman idyl, 379
+  Goethe, 380
+  hymn of a hermit, 382
+  the luckless lover, 383.
+
+Jervis, Sir John, career of, 465.
+
+Jesse's Memoirs and Correspondence of George Selwyn, review of, 164
+  of George Brummell, 769.
+
+
+Kalergy, General, sketch of the life of, 785.
+
+Kieff, a poem, translated from the Russian of Iv�n Kozl�ff, by T. B.
+    Shaw, 80.
+
+Kingston, the Duchess of, 180.
+
+Krapf, Mr, notices of his mission to Africa, 730.
+
+
+Labour, gradual reduction in the cost of, in Great Britain, 125.
+
+Lahore, revolution at, 581.
+
+Laj�tchnikoff, the Heretic by, reviewed, 133.
+
+Lanarkshire, statistics of crime in, and its police, 537, 539.
+
+Land of slaves, the, a poem, 257.
+
+Landlord and tenant question in Ireland, the, 638.
+
+Larresse on Portrait Painting, extracts from, 246.
+
+Law, administration of the, in India, 333.
+
+Lazzaroni of Naples, anecdotes of the, 354.
+
+League, measures of the, 121.
+
+Lemuel Gulliver, letter from, to the editor, 98.
+
+Le Sage not the author of Gil Blas, 698.
+
+Letter from an exiled contributor, 184.
+
+Literature, the monster misery of, 556.
+
+Llorente, M. on the authorship of Gil Blas, 698.
+
+Lorgnon; a word or two of the opera-tive classes by, 292.
+
+Love in the wilderness. Chap. I., 621
+  Chap. II., 624
+  Chap. III., 627
+  Chap. IV., 631
+  Chap. V., 635.
+
+Luckless lover, the, a poem, 383.
+
+Lusatia, traditions and tales of; No. I., the Fairies' Sabbath, 665.
+
+
+Mahratta war, origin, &c., of the, 584.
+
+Manufacturing distress, Sir Robert Peel on the causes of the, 105.
+
+Marston, or, Memoirs of a Statesman. Part VII., 81
+  Part VIII., 202
+  Part IX., 362
+  Part X., 483
+  Part XI., 561.
+
+Meeanee, battle of, 580.
+
+Melbourne in Australia, letter from, with account of the colony, &c., 184.
+
+Memoirs of a Statesman--_see_ Marston.
+
+Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, review of, 462.
+
+Mexico, two nights in, 449.
+
+Michael Kalliphournas, a tale, 725.
+
+Monster misery of literature, the, 556.
+
+Monmouthshire rioters, trial of the, 4.
+
+Moslem histories of Spain; the Arabs of Cordova, 431.
+
+My friend; a poem, 256.
+
+
+Naples, account of, by Dumas, 347.
+
+Narration of certain uncommon things that did formerly happen to me,
+    Herbert Willis, B. D., 749.
+
+Nelson, notices of the early services of, 477.
+
+New art of printing, by a designing devil, 45.
+
+News from an exiled contributor, a letter from New Holland, 184.
+
+Non-intrusionists, secession of the, from church of Scotland, 221.
+
+
+O'Connell and others, trial of, 1
+  his trial in 1831, 3
+  his present trial and demeanour during it, 7
+  his probable policy in agitating for Repeal, 128.
+
+O'Connor, Fergus, state prosecutions of, 6.
+
+Olympic Jupiter, the, a poem, 378.
+
+Opera-tive classes, a word or two of the, 292.
+
+Oude, a sporting excursion to, 329.
+
+Oxford, trial of, 5.
+
+
+Peel, Sir Robert, on the progress of Conservatism, 103, 104
+  on the causes of the manufacturing distress, 105
+  defence of his conduct on the corn-law question, 107.
+
+Phenicians, circumnavigation of Africa by the, 271.
+
+Pirates of Segna, the, a tale of Venice and the Adriatic. Part I. Chap. I.,
+    The Studio, 299
+  Chap. II., The Cavern, 303
+  Chap. III., The Jewels, 310
+  Chap. IV., The Ball, 316.
+  Part II. Chap. I., The Battle of the Bridge, 401
+  Chap. II., The Picture, 409
+  Chap. III., The Pirates, 415
+  Chap. IV., The Recognition, 421.
+
+Poetry:--Kieff, from the Russian of Kozl�ff, 80
+  The Proclamation, 100
+  the Fireman's Song, 101
+  The Prophecy of the Twelve Tribes, 196
+  My Friend, 256
+  The Land of Slaves, 257
+  the Priest's Burial, _ib._
+  Prudence, 258
+  The Olympic Jupiter, 378
+  A Roman Idyl, 379
+  Goethe, 380
+  Hymn of a Hermit, 382
+  The Luckless Lover, 383
+  The Snow, by Delta, 617
+  Columbus, by B. Simmons, 687
+  To Swallows on the eve of departure, by the same, 690.
+
+Police, repugnance to assessment for, 536.
+
+Poor old maids, a bewailment from Bath, 199.
+
+Porter, Mr, on the decrease of our European exports, 263.
+
+Portrait painting, in a letter to Eusebius, 213.
+
+Portugal, restrictive commercial system adopted by, 262.
+
+Portuguese, circumnavigation of Africa by the, 271.
+
+Position and Prospects of the government, on the: its position on the
+    secession of the Whigs, 103
+  advance of Conservatism since the passing of the Reform Bill, _ib._
+  the manufacturing distress, 105
+  the sugar and corn question, 106
+  difficulties with which it had to contend, 108
+  its home policy, and what it has done, 110
+  its foreign policy, 111
+  the new tariff and corn-law, 113
+  results of its measures in the revival of trade, tranquillity, &c., 120
+  its measures with reference to Ireland, 127.
+
+Priest's burial, the, a poem, 257.
+
+Printing, the new art of, by a designing devil, 45.
+
+Proclamation, the, 100.
+
+Prophecy of the twelve tribes, the, poem, 196.
+
+Prosecution, the State, 1.
+
+Prudence, a poem, 258.
+
+
+Rampore, city of, 322.
+
+Ray, Miss, murder of, by Hackman, 178,
+
+Rebeccaites, trials of the, 6.
+
+Reciprocity system, effect of, in diminishing the exports to Europe, 263
+  failure of the, 385.
+
+Repeal agitation, the, 128.
+
+Revenue, improvement of the, 114.
+
+Reviews: the Heretic, 133
+  George Selwyn and his contemporaries, 164
+  Harris's Highlands of Ethiopia, 269
+  Davidson's Travels in India, 321
+  Hill's Fifty days on board a Slave Ship, 425
+  Tucker's Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, 462
+  Cry from Ireland, 638
+  Jesse's memoirs of Beau Brummell, 769.
+
+Rhine, the, and Rhinelanders, 546.
+
+Rigby, Richard, notices of, 172.
+
+Roman empire, effects of free trade on the, 391.
+
+Roman Idyl, a, 379.
+
+
+Sahela Selassee, King of Abyssinia, British mission to, 282.
+
+St Vincent, Earl, Tucker's Memoirs of, reviewed, 462.
+
+Sandwich, Lord, notices of, 177.
+
+Scinde, subjugation of, by the British, 580.
+
+Segna, Pirates of--_see_ Pirates.
+
+Selim, Captain, expedition under, to explore Central Africa, 731.
+
+Selwyn and his contemporaries, review of, 164.
+
+Shaw, T. B., translation of Kieff, a poem, from the Russian by, 80
+  review of his translation of the Heretic, 133.
+
+Shoa, mission to the kingdom of, 275.
+
+Simmons, B., poems by:--Columbus, 687
+  To swallows on the eve of departure, 690.
+
+Sindiah, history of the house of, 582.
+
+Sitting for a portrait, on, in a letter to Eusebius, 243.
+
+Slave trade, the, 425, 730, 741.
+
+Sliding scale, effects of the, 119.
+
+Snow, the, a poem by Delta, 617.
+
+Song of the Fireman, the, 101.
+
+Southern Mexico, two nights in, 449.
+
+Spain, condition of, under the Arabs of Cordova, 431.
+
+Speculation in grain, diminution of, under the new corn law, 118.
+
+State prosecutions, comparison of, in ancient and modern times, 1
+  that of O'Connell in 1831, 3
+  those of the Canadian insurgents, _ib._
+  of the Monmouthshire rioters, 4
+  of Oxford, 5
+  of the Chartists in 1842, _ib._
+  of the Welsh rioters, 6
+  the present, of O'Connell and others, for conspiracy, 7.
+
+Statesman, memoirs of a--_see_ Marston.
+
+Struggle in Texas, the, 18.
+
+Sugar question, Sir Robert Peel on the, 106.
+
+Swallows on the eve of departure, address to, by B. Simmons, 690.
+
+
+Tariff, the new, and its results, 113.
+
+Tatius, Achilles, account of his romance, Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Texas, adventures in. No. III.; the struggle, 18.
+
+Thrush-hunting, a tale; by Alexander Dumas, 150.
+
+Traditions and tales of Upper Lusatia. No. I., The Fairies' Sabbath, 665.
+
+Tropical colonies, on, 730, 741.
+
+Tucker's Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, review of, 462.
+
+Twelve tribes, prophecy of the, a poem, 196.
+
+Two nights in Southern Mexico, a fragment from the journal of an American
+    traveller, 449.
+
+Two patrons, the, a tale. Chapter I., 500
+  Chap. II., 503
+  Chap. III., 505
+  Chap. IV., 509
+  Chap. V., 511
+  Chap. VI., 514
+  Chap. VII., 515.
+
+
+Vardarelli, account of the, 358.
+
+
+Wages, gradual reduction of, in Great Britain, 125.
+
+Washington, the treaty of, 112.
+
+Welsh rioters, trial of the, 6.
+
+Who wrote Gil Blas? 698.
+
+Wiggins' Cry from Ireland, review of, 638
+
+William, John, letter from, to the editor, 184.
+
+Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 174
+  Gilly, 175.
+
+Willis, Herbert, B. D., narration of, 749.
+
+Word or two of the opera-tive classes, a, 292.
+
+
+END OF VOL. LV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine -
+Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55,
+No. 344, June, 1844, 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 - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2007 [EBook #23529]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Louise Pryor
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h4>Transcriber's Note</h4>
+<p>Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious
+misprints have been corrected, but in general the original spelling has
+been retained. Accents in the French and Spanish passages are
+inconsistent, and have not been standardised. </p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD’S<br />
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+<h3><span class="rspace">No CCCXLIV.</span>
+<span class="btbb">JUNE, 1844.</span>
+<span class="lspace">VOL. LV.</span></h3>
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="Table of contents">
+<tr><td class="toc">Traditions and Tales of Upper Lusatia. No. I. the Fairies’
+  Sabbath,</td><td class="tocpage"> <a href="#Page_665">665</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Columbus. (A Print After a Picture by Parmeggiano.)
+  By B. Simmons,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_687">687</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">To Swallows on the Eve of Departure. By the Same,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_690">690</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">The Diligence. A Leaf from a Journal,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_692">692</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Who wrote Gil Blas?</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_698">698</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Michael Kalliphournas,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_725">725</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Africa&mdash;Slave Trade&mdash;Tropical Colonies,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_731">731</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Narration of certain Uncommon Things that did
+  formerly happen to me, Herbert Willis, B.D.</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_749">749</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Beau Brummell, </td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_769">769</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">The Actual Condition of the Greek State,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_785">785</a>
+</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toc">Index,</td><td class="tocpage"><a href="#Page_797">797</a>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">
+EDINBURGH:<br />
+
+<span class="little">WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;<br />
+AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.<br />
+
+<i>To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.</i></span><br />
+
+<span class="littler">SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p class="littler center">PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="665">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665"></a>
+BLACKWOOD’S<br />
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+<h3><span class="rspace">No CCCXLIV.</span>
+<span class="btbb">JUNE, 1844.</span>
+<span class="lspace">VOL. LV.</span></h3>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.</h2>
+
+<h3>No. I.<br />
+
+<span class="smcap">The Fairies’ Sabbath.</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">What</span> is a fairy?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Read</span>!</p>
+
+<p>[“<i>A Wood near Athens.&mdash;Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the
+other.</i><a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnnum">A</a>]</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">“<i>Puck.</i> How now, Spirit! whither wander you?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2"><i>Fairy.</i> Over hill, over dale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">Thorough bush, thorough brier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Over park, over pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">Thorough flood, thorough fire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I do wander ever where,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Swifter than the moones sphere;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I serve the Fairy Queen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To dew her orbs upon the green:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The cowslips tall her pensioners be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In their gold coats spots you see;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Those be rubies, fairy favours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In those freckles live their savours:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I must go seek some dewdrops here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I’ll begone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our queen and all our elves come here anon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Puck.</i> The King doth keep his revels here to-night;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Take heed, the queen come not within his sight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Because that she, as her attendant, hath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She never had so sweet a changeling.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And jealous Oberon would have the child<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now they never meet in grove, or green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And there, then, they are!&mdash;The blithe and lithe, bright and fine
+darlings of your early-bewitched and for ever-enamoured fancy! There
+they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="666">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666"></a>
+gorgeous, remote, and cloud-walled Elf-land: The fairies of the vision
+once wafted, “by moon or star light,” upon the “creeping murmur” of the
+Avon!&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Fairies in England</span>! <span class="smcap">Your</span> fairies!</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust
+information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe
+of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the
+lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the
+confluent streams of primitively distinct superstitions! Or your
+suspicious inquisition rebels against this insular banishment of ours,
+which, sequestering us from the common mind of the world, may, as you
+augur, have perverted, into an excessive individuality of growth, our
+mythological beliefs: Or&mdash;Southwards then!</p>
+
+<p>One good stride over salt water lands you amongst a people, who, from
+the old, have kept <span class="smcap">themselves to themselves</span>; whose warm, bold,
+<i>thorough</i>-loyal hearts hereditarily believe, after the love and
+reverence owed from the children’s children to the fathers’ fathers.
+Here are&mdash;for good and for ill&mdash;and from a sure hand:&mdash;“<span class="smcap">The Fairies in
+Lower Britanny</span>; <i>alio nomine</i>&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Korrigans</span>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Like these holy virgins, (the Gallicen&aelig; or Barrigen&aelig; of Mela,) our
+Korrigans predict the future. They know the skill of healing incurable
+maladies with particular charms; which they impart, it is affirmed, to
+magicians that are their friends. Ingenious Proteuses, they take the
+shape of any animal at their pleasure. In the twinkling of an eye they
+whisk from one end of the world to the other. Annually, with returning
+spring, they celebrate a high nocturnal festivity. A tablecloth, white
+as the driven snow, is spread upon the greensward, by the margin of a
+fountain. It is covered with the most delicious viands; in the midst
+sparkles a crystal goblet, which sheds such a splendour as serves in the
+stead of torches. At the close of the repast, this goblet goes round
+from hand to hand; it holds a miraculous beverage, one drop of which, it
+is averred, would make omniscient, like the Almighty. At any least
+breath or stir of human kind, all vanishes.</p>
+
+<p>“In truth, it is near fountains that the Korrigans are oftenest met
+with; especially near such as rise in the neighbourhood of <i>dolmens</i>.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnnum">B</a>
+For in the sequestered spots whence the Virgin Mary, who is held for
+their chief foe, has not yet driven them, they still preside over the
+fountains. Our traditions bestow upon them a strong passion for music,
+with sweet voices; but do not, like those of the Germanic nations, make
+dancers of them. The popular songs of all countries frequently depict
+them combing their fine fair hair, which they seem daintily to cherish.
+Their stature is that of the other European fairies: they are not above
+two feet in height. Their shape, exquisitely proportioned, is as airy,
+slight, and pellucid as that of the wasp. They have no other dress than
+a white veil, which they wrap around their body. Seen by night, they are
+very beautiful: in the daytime, you perceive that their hair is
+grey&mdash;that their eyes are red&mdash;that their face is wrinkled. Accordingly,
+they begin to show themselves only at the shut of eve; and they loathe
+the light. <i>Every thing about them denotes fallen intelligences.</i> The
+Breton peasants maintain that <i>they are high princesses, who, because
+they would not embrace Christianity when the apostles came to preach in
+Armorica, were stricken by the curse of God</i>. The Welsh recognise in
+them, souls of Druids doomed to penance. This coincidence is remarkable.</p>
+
+<p>“They are universally believed to
+<span class="pagebreak" title="667">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667"></a>
+feel a vehement hatred for the
+clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the
+spirits of darkness&mdash;a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and
+offence to them. The sight of a surplice, <i>the sound of bells</i>, scares
+them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to
+support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny;
+the blast of their breath is mortal in Wales, in Ireland, in Scotland,
+and in Prussia. They cast weirds.<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnnum">C</a> Whosoever has muddied the waters of
+their spring, or caught them combing their hair, or counting their
+treasures beside their <i>dolmen</i>, (for they there keep, it is believed,
+concealed mines of gold and of diamonds,) almost inevitably dies;
+especially should the misencounter fall upon a Saturday, which day, holy
+to the Virgin Mother, is inauspicious for their kind,”<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnnum">D</a> &amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the stead of the joyously-sociable monarchal hive, you behold a
+republic of solitarily-dwelling, and not unconditionally beautiful,
+naiads! No dancing! And a stature, prodigiously disqualifying for the
+asylum of an acorn cup! You are unsatisfied. Shakspeare has indeed
+vividly portrayed one curiously-featured species, and M. De la
+Villemarqu&eacute; another, of the air-made inscrutable beings evoked by your
+question; but your question, from the beginning, struck at the <span class="smcap">Generic</span>
+notion in its purified logical shape&mdash;at the definition, then&mdash;of the
+thing, a fairy.</p>
+
+<p>Sir <i>Walter Scott</i>,<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnnum">E</a> writing&mdash;the first in time of all men who have
+written&mdash;at large and scientifically upon the fairies of Western Europe,
+steps into disquisition by a description, duly loose for leaving his own
+foot unentangled. “The general idea of <span class="smcap">Spirits</span>, of <span class="smcap">a limited power and
+subordinate nature, dwelling among the woods and mountains</span>, is perhaps
+common to all nations.”</p>
+
+<p>A little <i>too</i> loose, peradventure!</p>
+
+<p>Dr James Grimm, heroically bent upon rescuing from the throat of
+oblivion and from the tooth of scepticism, to his own <span class="smcap">Teutons</span>&mdash;yet
+heathen&mdash;a faith outreaching and outsoaring the gross definite
+cognisances of this fleshly eye and hand, sets apart one&mdash;profoundly
+read and thought&mdash;chapter, to <span class="smcap">Wights and Elves</span>.<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnnum">F</a></p>
+
+<p>These terms, <span class="smcap">Wight</span> and <span class="smcap">Elf</span>, are presented by Dr Grimm as being, after a
+rough way, synonymous; and you have above seen another Germanic
+writer&mdash;a native of Warwickshire&mdash;take <span class="smcap">Elf</span> for equivalent, or nearly so,
+with <span class="smcap">Fairy</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Of his many-natured Teutonic <i>wights and elves</i>, then, but with glances
+darted around, northwards and westwards, and southwards and eastwards,
+Dr Grimm begins with speaking thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“From the <i>deified</i> and <i>half-divine</i> natures [investigated by this
+author in several of his antecedent chapters] <i>a whole order of other
+beings</i> is especially herein distinguished, that whilst the former
+either proceed of mankind,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="668">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668"></a>
+or seek human intercourse, these form a
+segregated society&mdash;one might say, a peculiar kingdom of their own&mdash;and
+are only, by accident or the pressure of circumstances, moved to
+converse with men. Something superhuman, approximating them to the gods,
+is mingled up in them: they possess power to help and to hurt man. They
+are however, at the same time, afraid of him, because they are not his
+bodily match. They appear either far below the human stature, or
+misshapen. Almost all of them enjoy the faculty of rendering themselves
+invisible.”</p>
+
+<p>You turn away your head, exclaiming that the weighty words of our
+puissant teacher are, for your proficiency, somewhat bewildering, and
+for your exigency by much too&mdash;<span class="smcap">Teutonic</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Have a care!</p>
+
+<p>However, “Westward Hoe!” Put the old Rhine between the master of living
+mythologists and yourself, and listen to Baron Walckenaer unlocking the
+fountains of the fairy belief, and showing how it streams, primarily
+through France, and secondarily through all remaining Western Europe.
+“If there is a specifically characterized superstition, it is that which
+regards <i>the fairies</i>: those <i>female genii</i>,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnnum">G</a> most frequently <i>without
+name</i>, without descent, without kin, who are incessantly busied
+subverting the order of nature, for the weal or the woe of mortals whom
+they love and favour <i>without a motive</i>, or, as causelessly, hate and
+persecute.”<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnnum">H</a></p>
+
+<p>What, <i>female</i> only? Where are Oberon and Puck? <i>Without a name?</i> Where
+Titania?&mdash;Mab? <i>Without a motive?</i> Where the godmother of the
+sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a
+distinct type in your own recollections, you guessingly pronounce the
+characterization of the perpetual secretary too&mdash;&mdash;<i>French</i>. Driven
+back, disappointed on all sides, you turn round upon your difficulties,
+and manfully project beating out <i>a definition of your own</i>; to which
+end, glancing your eye back affectionately, and now, needle-like,
+northwards across the Channel, you “at one slight bound” once more find
+yourself at your own fireside, and on your table <i>The Midsummer Night’s
+Dream</i>, open at the second scene of the first act.</p>
+
+<p>Inquirer whosoever! A problem lies large before us&mdash;complicated,
+abstruse even, yet&mdash;suitably to the subject&mdash;a delicate one! To hunt
+down an elusive word, and a more elusive notion! It is to find a set of
+determinings which, laid together, shall form a circle fitted to confine
+that inconfinable spirit&mdash;a Fairy; or, if you better like plain English,
+to find the terms needed for signifying, describing, expounding the
+Thought which, lurking as at the bottom of your mind, under a crowd of
+thoughts, rises up, in all circumstances, to meet and answer the
+name&mdash;&mdash;a fairy; the Thought, which when all accidental and unessential
+attributes liable to be attracted to the fairy essence have been
+stripped away, remains; the <i>substrate</i>, absolute, essential, <i>generic</i>
+notion, therefore&mdash;a fairy; that Thought, which whencesoever acquired,
+and held howsoever, enables you to deal to your satisfaction with
+proposed fairies, acknowledging <span class="smcap">this</span> one frankly;&mdash;<span class="smcap">this</span>, but for a
+half-sister; shutting the door upon <span class="smcap">another</span>. You may distinguish these
+terms at your pleasure, by sundry denominations: for example, you may
+call them Elements of the notion&mdash;a fairy&mdash;or circumscriptive Lines of
+such a notion, or indispensable Fairy-marks, or elfin Criteria, or by
+any other name which you may happen to like as well or better; but when
+found, call them as you will, they must reveal in essence, the thing
+which we look for&mdash;the answer to the question with which we first
+started, and to which we have as yet found no satisfactory solution.</p>
+
+<p>As for the process of the finding.
+<span class="pagebreak" title="669">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669"></a>
+This notion is to be tracked after
+widely, and in intimate recesses; more hopefully, therefore, according
+to a planned campaign than a merely wild chance expatiation. The chase
+ranges over a material and an intellectual ground. Of either&mdash;a word.</p>
+
+<p>I. The <i>material</i>&mdash;is a <i>geographical</i>&mdash;region, and may be called,
+summarily&mdash;<i>The western half of Europe</i>. Let us regard it as laid out by
+languages at this day spoken. Here is a map, roughly sketched:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>A.&mdash;Aboriginal.</h4>
+
+<p class="hanging indent2">1. <span class="smcap">North-Western CELTS</span>.&mdash;Ireland, Highlands of Scotland, and
+       the interjacent Isle of Man.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging indent2">2. <span class="smcap">South-Western CELTS</span>.&mdash;Wales, Britanny, and the, till lately,
+       Celtic-speaking Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging indent2">3. <span class="smcap">Northern GERMANS</span>, or <span class="smcap">Germans beyond the Eider</span>, or
+       <span class="smcap">Scandinavians</span>.&mdash;Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging indent2">4. <span class="smcap">Southern GERMANS</span>, or <span class="smcap">Germans below the Eider</span>, or
+       <span class="smcap">Teutons</span>.&mdash;Netherlands, the German empire, Switzerland.</p>
+
+<h4>B.&mdash;Latin speaking.</h4>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">1. <span class="smcap">Italy</span>.&mdash;Sicily.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">2. <span class="smcap">Spain</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">3. <span class="smcap">Portugal</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">4. Latin-speaking <span class="smcap">France</span>, distinguishing Normandy.</p>
+
+   <h4>C.&mdash;German and Latin mixed.</h4>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">1. <span class="smcap">England</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">2. <span class="smcap">Scottish Lowlands.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>II. From all this tangible territory, we are to sweep up&mdash;what? An
+overlying <i>intellectual</i> kingdom, <i>videlicet</i>&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Kinds of the Fairies</span>,
+rudely marked out, perhaps, as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">1. The <i>community</i> of the Fairies, monarchal or republican:&mdash;The
+       Fairy folk; Fairies proper.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">2. The <i>solitary</i> domestic serviceable Fairy.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">3. In the mines, under the water; a Fairy folk.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">4. The solitary water Fairy.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">5. The Fairy-ancestress.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">6. The Fairy, tutelary or persecuting, of the chivalrous metrical romance.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">7. The Fairy, tutelary or persecuting, now giving and now turning
+       destinies, of the fairy tale proper.</p>
+
+
+<p>We have then to ask what are the terms, marks, common traits, or by
+whatsoever name they are to be called, which are yielded by a comparison
+of such seven kinds. Something like the following eight will possibly
+arise:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">First, <span class="smcap">A Fairy is a subordinate spirit</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Secondly, <span class="smcap">Is attracted to the surface of our planet</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Thirdly, <span class="smcap">At once seeks and shuns mankind</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Fourthly, <span class="smcap">Has a body</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Fifthly, <span class="smcap">Is attenuate</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Sixthly, <span class="smcap">Is without proper station and function in the general economy
+    of the universe; or is mythologically displaced</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Seventhly, <span class="smcap">Is endowed with powers of intelligence and of agency excelling
+    human</span>.</p>
+
+  <p class="hanging indent2">Eighthly, <span class="smcap">Stands under a doom</span>.</p>
+
+<p>To these eight criteria, taken <i>in the nature of the thing enquired</i>,
+the reflective inquirer will perchance find himself led on to add two
+furnished from within himself, as that&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>First, Acknowledging, as in these latter days our more delicate
+psychologists have called upon us to do, the names <span class="smcap">fancy</span> and <span class="smcap">imagination</span>
+as designating <span class="smcap">two</span> faculties, the fairies belong rather to the <span class="smcap">fancy</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, Accepting for a legitimate thought, legitimately and cogently
+signified, the High Marriage
+<span class="pagebreak" title="670">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670"></a>
+which one of these finer
+Metaphysicians<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnnum">I</a>&mdash;instructed no doubt by his personal
+experience&mdash;prophesies to his kind, between the “intellect of man” and
+“this goodly universe,” we may say that, regularly, this marriage must
+have its antecedent possessing and agitating Love; that this love must,
+like all possessing agitated love, have its attendant Reverie. Now,
+might one venture to surmise that <i>this</i> <span class="smcap">reverie</span> breathes into the
+creating of a fairy?</p>
+
+<p>Does the jealous reader perchance miss in the above proposed eight
+several elements the <span class="smcap">unity of notion</span>, which he has all along seemed to
+feel in his own spirit and understanding? Let him at once conceive, as
+intensely joined, the two permanent characters of <i>tenuity</i> and
+<i>mythological displacement</i>, and take this compound for the nucleus of
+the unity he seeks. About these two every other element will easily
+place itself. For a <i>soul</i>, he shall infuse into the whole, after in
+like manner inseparably blending them&mdash;<span class="smcap">fancy</span>, and that love-inspired
+<span class="smcap">reverie</span> which won its way to us from Grassmere.</p>
+
+<p>And so take, reader, our answer to your question, “<i>What is a fairy?</i>”
+<span class="smcap">THIS is a Fairy</span>. Are you still unsatisfied? Good. The field of
+investigation lies open before you, free and inviting. On, in your own
+strength, and Heaven speed you!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The eight or nine tales of sundry length, and exceedingly diversified
+matter, contained in the two little volumes of Herr Ernst Willkomm,<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnnum">J</a>
+which have put us a-journeying to Fairy-land, have begun to produce
+before the literary world the living popular superstitions of a small
+and hidden mountainous district, by which <i>Cis Eidoran</i> Germany leans
+upon Sclavonia: hidden, it would seem, for any thing like interesting
+knowledge, until this author began to write, from the visiting eye of
+even learned curiosity. Nor this without a sufficient reason; since the
+mountains do, of themselves, shut in their inhabitants, and, for a
+stranger, the temper of the rugged mountaineer, at once shy and mailing
+himself in defiance, is, like the soil, inaccessible. To Ernst Willkomm
+this hinderance was none. He discloses to us the heart of the country,
+and that of the people which have born him, which have bred him up; and
+he will, if he is encouraged, write on. Three of these tales, or of
+these traditions&mdash;for the titles, with this writer, appear to us
+exchangeable&mdash;regard the fairies properly so called. They are, “<i>The
+Priest’s Well</i>,” “<i>The Fairies’ Sabbath</i>,” here given, and “<i>The Fairy
+Tutor</i>,” being the first, the third, and the seventh, of the entire
+present series. Upon these three tales the foregoing attempt at fixing
+the generic notion of a fairy was intended to bear. Should pretty Maud,
+the stone-mason’s daughter, our heroine for to-day, find the favour in
+English eyes which her personal merit may well claim, the remaining two
+are not likely to be long withheld.</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations which shall now follow, drawn from distinguished
+authorities, aim at showing the consonancy of Herr Willkomm’s pictures
+with authentic representations of Elfin superstition already known to
+the
+<span class="pagebreak" title="671">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671"></a>
+world. If, however, the criteria which have been proposed, have
+been rightfully deduced, the illustrations should as materially serve us
+in justifying these by proof.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the numerous points of analogy which strikingly connect our tale
+with popular tales and traditions innumerable, <i>three</i> are main to the
+structure of the tale itself. They may be very briefly described as&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="hanging indent2">I. The Heathenism of the Fairies.</p>
+   <p class="hanging indent2">II. Their need, thence arising.</p>
+  <p class="hanging indent2">III. Maud’s ability to help them.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>I. The opinion, which sets the fairies in opposition to the established
+faith of all Christendom, is widely diffused. To the <i>Breton</i> peasant,
+as M. de la Villemarqu&eacute; has above informed us, his Korrigan is a heathen
+princess, doomed to a long sorrow for obstinately refusing the message
+of salvation.</p>
+
+<p>The brothers Grimm, speaking of the fairies in <i>Ireland</i>, say that “they
+are angels cast out from heaven, who have not fallen as low as hell; but
+in great fear and uncertainty about their future state, doubt,
+themselves, whether they shall obtain mercy at the last day.”<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnnum">K</a></p>
+
+<p>Of the fairies in <i>Scotland</i>, it is averred by the same learned and
+exact writers, that “they were originally angels dwelling in bliss, but
+who, because they suffered themselves to be seduced by the archfiend,
+were hurled down from heaven in innumerable multitudes. They shall
+wander till the last day over mountains and lakes. They know not how
+their sentence will run&mdash;whether they shall be saved or damned; but
+dread the worst.”</p>
+
+<p>Tales, in many parts of Europe, which represent the fairies as
+exceedingly solicitous about their salvation, and as <i>inquiring of
+priests</i> and others concerning their own spiritual prospects, for the
+most part with an unfavourable answer, tend to fix upon them a
+reproachful affinity with the spirits of darkness.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>II. That the powerful fairies, who have appeared to us, from childhood
+upwards, as irresistible dispensers of good and evil to our kind, should
+<i>need aid</i> of any sort from us, is an unexpected feature of the fairy
+lore, which breaks by degrees upon the zealous and advancing inquirer.</p>
+
+<p>The two excellent brothers Grimm, in the most elaborate and
+comprehensive collection,<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnnum">L</a> probably, of national traditions that
+Europe possesses, have furnished us with various instances. We select a
+very few. In the following graceful Alpine pastoral, the need of human
+help attaches to an exigency of life or death:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h4>GERMAN TRADITIONS.</h4>
+
+<h4>No. CCXX. <i>The Queen of the Snakes.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“A herd maiden found upon the fell a sick snake lying and almost
+famished. Compassionately she held down to it her pitcher of milk. The
+snake licked greedily, and was visibly revived. The girl went on her
+way; and it presently happened that her lover sued for her, but was too
+poor for the proud wealthy father, who tauntingly dismissed him till the
+day when he too should be master of as large herds as the old herdsman.
+From this time forwards had the old herdsman no luck more, but sheer
+misfortune. Report ran that a fiery dragon was seen passing o’ nights
+over his grounds; and his substance decayed. The poor swain was now as
+rich, and again sued for his beloved, whom he obtained. Upon the
+wedding-day a snake came gliding into the room, upon whose coiled tail
+there sat a beautiful damsel, who said that it was she to whom formerly
+the kind
+<span class="pagebreak" title="672">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672"></a>
+herd maid had, in strait of hunger, given her milk, and, out
+of gratitude, she took her brilliant crown from her head, and cast it
+into the bride’s lap. Thereupon she vanished; but the young couple
+throve in their housekeeping greatly, and were soon well at ease in the
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>Since fairies, like ourselves, are mortal, <span class="smcap">two lives</span> may be understood
+as at stake in the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h4>No. LXVIII. <i>The Lady of Alvensleben.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“Some hundred years ago, there lived at Calb, in the Werder, an aged
+lady of the house of Alvensleben, who feared God, was gracious to the
+people, and willingly disposed to render any one a service: especially
+she did assist the burgesses’ wives in difficult travail of childbirth,
+and was, in such cases, of all desired and highly esteemed. Now,
+therefore, there did happen in wise following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“In the night season there came a damsel to the castle gate, who knocked
+and distressfully called, beseeching that it should not mislike her, if
+possible, forthwith to arise, and to accompany her from the town, where
+there lay a good woman in travail of child, because the last hour and
+uttermost peril was already upon her, and her mistress wist no help for
+her life. The noblewoman said, ‘It is very midnight; all the town gates
+be shut and well barred: how shall we make us forth?’ The damsel
+rejoined that the gate was ready open, she should come forth only, (but
+beware, as do some add, in the place whither she should be conducted, to
+eat or to drink any thing, or to touch that should be proffered her.)
+Thereupon did the lady rise from her bed, dressed her, came down, and
+went along with the damsel which had knocked. The town gate she found
+open, and as they came further into a field was there a fair way which
+led right into a hillside. The hill stood open, and although she did
+well perceive that the thing was darksome, she resolved to go still on,
+unalarmed, until she arrived at last where was a <i>little wifikin</i> that
+lay on the bed, in great pains of travail. But the noble lady gave her
+succour, (by the report of some, <i>she needed no more than lay her hand
+upon her body</i>,) and a little baby was born to the light of day.</p>
+
+<p>“When she had yielded her aid, desire took her to return from out the
+hill, home; she took leave of the sick woman, (without having any thing
+touched of the meats and liquors that were offered her,) and the former
+damsel anew joined her, and brought her back unharmed to the castle. At
+the gateway the damsel stood still, thanked her highly in her mistress’s
+name, and drew off from her finger a golden ring, which she presented to
+the noblewoman with these words, ‘Have this dear pledge in right heedful
+keeping, and let it not part from you and from your house. They of
+Alvensleben will flourish so long as they possess this ring. Should it
+ever leave them, the whole race must become extinct.’ Herewith vanished
+the damsel.</p>
+
+<p>“It is said that the ring, at this day, is rightly and properly kept in
+the lineage, and for good assurance deposited at Lubeck. But others,
+that it was, at the dividing of the house into two branches, diligently
+parted in two. Others yet, that the one half has been melted, since when
+it goes ill with that branch: the other half stays with the other branch
+at Zichtow. The story moreover goes, that the benevolent lady was a
+married woman. When she upon the morrow told her husband the tale of
+that had betid her in the night, he would not believe her, until she
+said, ‘Forsooth, then, an’ ye will not trow me, take only the key of yon
+room from the table: there lieth, I dare warrant, the ring.’ Which was
+exactly so. It is marvellous the gifts that men have received of the
+fairies.”</p>
+
+<p>The most touching by far of the traditions at our disposal for
+illustrating at once the dependence of the fairies upon man, and their
+anxiety concerning their souls’ welfare, is one in which the
+all-important hope which we have said that they sometimes solicit from
+the grave and authorized lips of priests, appears as floating on the
+lightest breath of children. Our immediate author is James Grimm,
+speaking in his German <i>Mythology</i> of the water spirit. The tradition
+itself is from Sweden, where this mythological
+<span class="pagebreak" title="673">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673"></a>
+being, the solitary
+water fairy, bears the name of “The <i>Neck</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Two lads were at play by the river side. The <i>Neck</i> sate and touched
+his harp. The children called to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘Why sittest thou here, <i>Neck</i>, and playest? Thou wilt not go to
+heaven.’ Then the <i>Neck</i> began bitterly weeping, flung his harp away,
+and sank in the deep water. When the boys came home they told their
+father, who was a priest, what had happened. The father said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘Ye have sinned towards the <i>Neck</i>. Go ye back, and give him promise of
+salvation.’</p>
+
+<p>“When they returned to the river, the <i>Neck</i> sate upon the shore,
+mourning and weeping. The children said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘Weep not so, thou <i>Neck</i>. Our father hath said, that thy Redeemer too
+liveth.’</p>
+
+<p>“Then the <i>Neck</i> took joyfully his harp, and played sweetly until long
+after sundown.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know,” tenderly and profoundly suggests Dr Grimm, “that any
+where else in our traditions is as significantly expressed how <span class="smcap">needy</span> of
+the Christian belief the <span class="smcap">Heathen</span> are, and how <span class="smcap">mildly</span> it should approach
+them.”</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>III. A few words shall here satisfy the claims of a widely-stretching
+subject. Is there <i>one</i> order of spirits which, as the Baron Walckenaer
+has assured us, lavishes on chosen human heads love unattracted, and
+hate unprovoked? We must look well about us ere fixing the imputation.
+Spirits, upon the other hand, undoubtedly there are, and those of not a
+few orders, fairies of one or another description being amongst them,
+who exert, in the choice of their human favourites, a discrimination
+challenging no light regard.</p>
+
+<p>A host of traditions, liberally scattered over a field, of which,
+perhaps, Ireland is one extremity and China the other, now plainly and
+emphatically declare, and now, after a venturous interpretation, may be
+understood to point out, <i>simplicity of will</i> and <i>kindness of heart</i> as
+titles in the human being to the favour of the spirits. At times a
+brighter beam irradiates such titles, to which holiness, purity, and
+innocence, are seen to set their seal. We cull a few instances, warning
+the reader, that, although of our best, he will possibly find them a
+mere working upwards to the most perfect which we have it in our power
+to bring before him in the beautiful tale of Maud.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the searchers who seem to have been roused into activity by the
+German traditions of the brothers Grimm, Ludwig Bechstein takes
+distinguished place for the diligence with which he has collected
+different districts of Germany. Our inquiry shall owe him the two
+following</p>
+
+
+<h4>TRADITIONS OF THE GRABFELD.</h4>
+
+<h4>No. LVII. <i>The little Cherry-Tree upon Castle Raueneck.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“There prevails, concerning the ruins of the old hill-castle Raueneck, a
+quite similar tradition to that which holds of the like named ruined
+strength near Baden, in Austria. There lies yet buried here a vast
+treasure, over which a spirit, debarred from repose, keeps watch,
+anxiously awaiting deliverance. But who is he that can and shall
+actually lift this treasure and free the spirit? Upon the wall there
+grows a cherry seedling that shall one day become a tree; and the tree
+shall be cut down, and out of it a cradle made. He that, being a
+Sunday’s child, is rocked in this cradle, will grow up, but only
+provided that he have kept himself virginally pure and chaste, <i>at some
+noontide hour</i> set free the spirit, lift the treasure, and become
+immeasurably rich; so as he shall be able to rebuild Castle Raueneck and
+all the demolished castles in the neighbourhood round. If the plant
+wither, or if a storm break it, then must the spirit again wait until
+once more a cherry stone, brought by a bird to the top of the lofty
+wall, shoot and put forth leaves, and haply grow to a tree.”</p>
+
+
+<h4>No. LXII. <i>The Hollow Stone.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“In the wood near Altenstein there stands a high rock. The inhabitants
+<span class="pagebreak" title="674">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674"></a>
+of the neighbourhood say that this rock is hollow within, and filled
+with treasure in great store from the olden time. At certain seasons and
+hours, it is given <i>to Sunday children</i> to find the rock doors open, or
+to open them with <i>the lucky flower</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>The singular superstition of spiritual favour fixing itself upon the
+human child, consecrated, as it were, by the hallowed light upon which
+the eyes first open, will shortly return upon us in <i>The Fairies’
+Sabbath</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Lo! where, from the bountiful hand of the Brothers Grimm, fall two
+bright dewdrop of tradition upon the pure opening flower of childhood.</p>
+
+
+<h4>GERMAN TRADITIONS.</h4>
+
+<h4>NO. CLIX. <i>The Treasure at Soest.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“In the time of the Thirty Years’ war, there was to be seen standing not
+far from the town of Soest, in Westphalia, an old ruin, of which the
+tradition ran that there was an iron trunk there, full of money, kept by
+a black dog and a bewitched maiden. The grandfathers and grandmothers
+Who are gone, used to tell that a strange nobleman shall one day arrive
+in the country, deliver the maiden, and open the chest with a fiery key.
+They said that divers itinerant scholars and exorcists had, within the
+memory of man, betaken themselves thither to dig, but been in so strange
+sort received and dismissed, that no one since further had list to the
+adventure, especially after their publishing that the treasure might be
+lifted of none who had once taken woman’s milk. It was not long since a
+little girl from their village had led her few goats to feed about the
+very spot; one of which straying amongst the ruins, she had followed it.
+Within, in the castle court, was a damsel who questioned her what she
+did there: and when she was informed, pointing to a little basket of
+cherries, further said, ‘It is good; therefore take of that thou see’st
+before thee, with thy goat and all, and go; and come not again, neither
+look behind, that a harm befall thee not.’ Upon this the frightened
+child caught up seven cherries, and made her way in alarm out of the
+ruins. The cherries turned, in her hand, to money.”</p>
+
+
+<h4>NO. CLX. <i>The Welling Silver.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“In February of the year 1605, in the reign of Henry Julius, Duke of
+Brunswick, at a mile’s distance from Quedlinburg, where it is called <i>at
+the Dale</i>, it happened that a poor peasant sent his daughter into the
+next shaw to pick up sticks for fuel. The girl took for this use a
+larger basket upon her head, and a smaller in her hand; and when she had
+filled them both and was going home, a mannikin clad all in white came
+towards her, and asked:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘What art carrying there?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Gathered sticks,’ the girl made answer, ‘for heating and cooking.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Empty the wood out,’ said further the little manling, ‘take thy basket
+and follow me. I shall show thee something that is better and more
+profitable than thy sticks.’</p>
+
+<p>“He then took her by the hand, and led her back again to a knoll, and
+showed her a place which might be of two ordinary tables’ breadth of a
+fair pure silver, being smaller and larger coins of a moderate
+thickness, with a image stamped like a Virgin Mary, and all round an
+impress of exceedingly old writing. As the silver <i>welled up</i>, as it
+were, abundantly out of the ground, the little girl was terrified and
+drew back, neither would she empty out the sticks from her small
+hand-basket. Accordingly, the little man in white himself did so, filled
+the basket with the money, and gave it back to the little damsel with
+saying, ‘That shall be better for thee than thy sticks.’ She was
+confounded and took it; but upon the mannikin’s requiring that she
+should likewise empty out her larger basket and take silver therein, she
+refused and said&mdash;‘That she must carry fuel home too; for there were
+little children at home who must have a warm room, and there must be
+wood ready likewise for cooking.’ This contented the manling, who said,
+‘Well, then, go; take it all home,’ and thereupon disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="675">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675"></a>
+“The girl carried the basket of silver home, and told what had happened
+to her. The boors now ran flocking with pickaxes and other tools, and
+would have their share of the treasure, but none of them was able to
+find the spot where the silver had welled out.</p>
+
+<p>“The Prince of Brunswick had a pound of the coined silver brought him,
+as did moreover a burgess of Halberstadt, N. Everkan, purchase the
+like.”</p>
+
+<p>The quick-sighted reader will not easily have missed detecting the
+sudden effect produced upon the two spirits by <span class="smcap">the truthful
+right-mindedness of the two little girls</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Correspondingly, James Grimm, from surveying collectively the Teutonic
+traditions of bewitched or mysteriously hidden treasure, says&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“To the lifting of the treasure is required <i>silence</i> and <i>innocence</i>.
+<span class="together">* * *</span> Innocent children’s hands are able to lay hold upon it, as to draw
+the lot. <span class="together">* * *</span> Who has viciously stained himself cannot approach it.”<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnnum">M</a></p>
+
+<p>Two short instances more from the copious fraternal collection, and we
+have done. With a temper of pure childlike antiquity, they express in
+the persons of the dwarfs&mdash;<i>Teutonic approximative, fairies</i>&mdash;the
+sympathy of the spirits with unstained and innocent human manners; and
+may, if the traditions which exhibit the fairies under a cloud of sin
+and sorrow should have been felt by the reader as at all grating upon
+his old love of them, help to soothe and reconcile him by a soft gleam
+of illumination, here lingering as in a newly revealed Golden Age of his
+own.</p>
+
+
+<h4>GERMAN TRADITIONS.</h4>
+
+<h4>No. CXLVII. <i>The Dwarfs upon the Tree.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“In the summer, the dwarfs often came trooping from the cliffs down into
+the valley, and joined either with help, or as lookers-on at least, the
+human inhabitants at their work, especially the mowers, in hay-harvest.
+They, then and there, seated themselves at their ease and pleasantly,
+upon the long and thick arm of a maple in the embowering shade. But once
+there came certain evil-disposed persons, who, in the night, sawed the
+bough through, so that it held but weakly on to the trunk; and when the
+unsuspecting creatures, upon the morrow, settled themselves down upon
+it, the bough cracked in two, the dwarfs tumbled to the ground, were
+heartily laughed at, fell into violent anger, and cried aloud&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">‘O, how is the heaven high and long!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And falsehood waxen on earth so strong!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here to-day, and for ever away!’<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They kept their word, and never again made their appearance in the
+country.”</p>
+
+
+<h4>No. CXLVIII. <i>The Dwarfs upon the Crag Stone.</i></h4>
+
+<p>“It was the wont of the dwarflings to seat themselves upon a great crag
+stone, and from thence to watch the haymakers; but a few mischievous
+fellows kindled a fire upon the stone, made it red-hot, and swept away
+embers and ashes. Morning came, and with it the tiny folk, who burned
+themselves pitiably. They exclaimed in high anger&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">‘O wicked world! O wicked world!’<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>cried vengeance, and vanished for evermore!”</p>
+
+<p>We have shown,&mdash;1. The Anti-christian character imputed by tradition to
+the fairies. 2. The occasional dependence of the more powerful spirits
+upon the less powerful human beings; and, 3. The strong affectionate
+leaning in the will of the spirits towards moral human excellence. Of
+the <i>ability</i> which, in virtue of this excellence, the human creature
+possesses <i>to help</i>, Maud must, for the present, be permitted to stand
+for the
+<span class="pagebreak" title="676">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676"></a>
+sole, as she is beyond all comparison our best, example.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The book of Ernst Willkomm takes a position in strong contrast to the
+corresponding works due to the Brothers Grimm, and other great gatherers
+of legendary lore. He has a personal poetic interest in the tales which
+they have not. He presents himself as the expositor, not only of his
+native superstitions, but also, zealously, of the Upper Lusatian
+manners. Himself cradled amongst the mountains, he has drawn with
+infinite pains, and by slow degrees, as he best could, from the deep
+interior life of the people, their jealously withheld credences, and the
+traditions which are sacredly associated with every nook of their craggy
+district.</p>
+
+<p>“The tract of country,” says Willkomm in his Preface, “the true
+Highlands of Upper Lusatia, called by the inhabitants themselves the
+Upper Country, to which the tales are native, is one very narrowly
+circumscribed. It amounts to scarcely ten square (German) miles. I have,
+however, selected it for my undertaking,” he continues, “because it is
+intimately familiar to me; because the innermost character of the small
+population who inhabit it is confidentially known to me; because there
+is hardly a road or a path in the country which, on the darkest night, I
+could not find. Interesting, romantic, magnificent is the piece of earth
+which, at the confines of Bohemia, runs over hilly heights and lofty
+hill, tops on to the high mountain-chain. But still more interesting, I
+maintain with confidence, is the race of people.”</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange at first, that the wise and profound explorers whom
+we have so often had occasion to cite, the brothers Grimm, should have
+failed to present us with any traditions from a corner of ground around
+which they have so successfully laboured. We have hinted already at the
+sufficient reason of the blank. Willkomm tells us, that the rest of the
+world, which “the cabin’d cribb’d” Lusatian has himself learned to call
+“<i>o’ th’ outside</i>,” has taken no cognisance of his beautiful hill
+country. Lusatia has a literature of her own, and no one is acquainted
+with it. “She had, and partly still has, her own, similar to the
+Imperial cities, exceeding free and energetic municipal constitution.”
+But no one cares about it. Celebrated and learned historians, questioned
+by Willkomm on the subject, have acknowledged their ignorance in regard
+to the character and laws of its small people. A more cogent reason,
+however, lies nearer home, in the impenetrable reserve and
+self-insulation of the mountaineers themselves. Willkomm confesses that
+their coldness towards strangers is unparalleled; they have no
+confidence whatever in foreigners; “and let a Lusatian but suspect,” he
+says, “that you come a-fishing to him, and to listen out his privacies;
+then may you,” as we may render the Lusatian proverb, “‘Lose yourself
+before you find his mushroom.’” He will communicate to strangers little
+of his manners and customs; of his superstitious practices, his sacredly
+guarded traditions, absolutely nothing. “He is unpliant,
+self-sequestered, coarse-grained; beyond all conception easy and
+phlegmatic.”</p>
+
+<p>Every genuine people, however, is rough-handed; and Willkomm proceeds,
+after an ingenuous description of their defects, to vindicate the
+natural heart of his brother highlanders. “Let him amongst the gentle,”
+he proudly exclaims, “who desire to hear for once something novel,
+something right vigorous, sit down beside me. He need not fear that
+morals and decency will be cast out of doors. No, no! The people are
+thoroughly moral and chaste at heart, if they are somewhat coarse in
+expression;&mdash;ay, and tender withal. Their imagination glides as
+delighted along fragrant threads of gold, as it eagerly descends amongst
+the powers of darkness, amidst the dance of will-o’-the-wisps and
+horrible ghost-reels. They are, at once, a blunt, good-hearted,
+aboriginal stamp of men, with all the advantages and deficiencies
+appurtenant.”</p>
+
+<p>The Lusatian traditions, brought to light in Germany by Ernst Willkomm,
+and now first made known to Englishmen in these pages, were collected by
+our author, as we have already observed, with difficulty and labour. A
+native only of the mountain district
+<span class="pagebreak" title="677">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677"></a>
+could obtain from the lips of the
+people their sacred and well-preserved lore, and even he not easily. The
+tales were narrated from time to time in the spinning-room, or in the
+so-called “<i>Hell</i>” of the boor or weaver, without any determinate
+connexion. The listener gathered mere fragments, and these not fully,
+when, thrown off his guard, he ventured to interrupt the speaker. Each
+narrator conceives his tale differently, and one individual is apt to
+garnish the experience of many, or what he has heard from others, with a
+little spice of his own invention. Further, the details of ten or twelve
+occurrences are associated with one single spot; all of which appear
+externally different, and yet internally are connected closely, “so that
+when comprehended in one whole picture, and not till then, they form
+what, in a strict and literary sense, we are accustomed to call a
+<span class="smcap">Tradition</span> or <span class="smcap">Tale</span>. I, at least,” adds Ernst Willkomm, “in such an
+upgathering of these disjointed tones of tradition, could only
+accomplish something that satisfied me by searching out the profound
+hidden meaning of the people’s poesy: and I have at last gone no further
+than attempting to compose these detached fragments of tradition,
+Lusatianwise and popularwise, from the people’s own telling, into a
+whole. Upon this scheme only could alike the poetical worth of the
+tales, and the portraiture of the race, be rescued and rightly secured.”</p>
+
+<p>That the traditions have been rescued and maintained in their purity and
+truth; coloured, no doubt, in the telling, and that unavoidably, under
+the pencil of their educated renderer&mdash;we have every reason to believe
+from internal evidences. Maintaining their own originality, they
+correspond in the main to the traditions which come to us from almost
+every known country on the globe, concurring to attest the intimate and
+necessary relation of the human soul with what would seem to be the
+remnants of an ancient and universal mythology. They bear upon their
+front the minute impress of reality, not to be mistaken, and beyond the
+mere invention of the poet. They are a valuable addition to the common
+stock. The style of Willkomm is clear, and to the point; almost always,
+as he says, in characterizing the speech of his own Upper Lusatians,
+“hitting the nail upon the head.” It breathes of his own mountain air,
+and possesses a charm, a vigour, and freshness, which we fear that we
+shall endeavour in vain to transfer to the following version:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE FAIRIES’ SABBATH.</h4>
+
+<p>“Children born of a Sunday, and bastards, inherit the gift, denied to
+other human beings, of beholding spirits, of talking with them, and, if
+opportunity befriend, of right intimately communing with them. This was
+a truth experienced by pretty Maud, the stone-mason’s only daughter,
+who, a hundred years ago or so, led, at the foot of the mountain-ridge
+yonder, a quiet home-loving life. Maud was born, of all days in the
+year, upon Easter Sunday, which is said to be a truly lucky day for a
+mortal not otherwise heavily burdened with earthly blessings. In this
+last respect, Maud had no reasonable cause of complaint; for her father,
+by the labour of his hands, painfully earned just as much as went to a
+frugal housekeeping, and the mother kept the little family in order; so
+that things looked always neat and clean enough in the abode of the
+stone-mason.</p>
+
+<p>“All Sunday’s children are very wise, and, if they are maidens, always
+uncommonly beautiful. Maud was, as a child, admired by every body; nay,
+it once went so far, as that a rich and beautiful, but very
+sickly-looking, lady of quality, who was travelling over the mountain in
+a fine carriage, tried hard to coax the poor mother out of her pretty
+Maud with a large sum of gold. When the maiden had fairly stepped out of
+child’s shoes, and was obliged to seek employment away from home, there
+was a mighty ado. It was for all the world as if a fairy was going
+through the place, when Maud, early in the morning, strolled along the
+banks of the murmuring stream on her road to a wealthy weaver’s. The
+young fellows saluted the fair one as they greeted no other.
+<span class="pagebreak" title="678">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678"></a>
+No one
+ventured, however, to accost her with unseemly speeches&mdash;a kind of
+thing, by the way, that young men at all times are very prone to. Maud
+was treated by every one like a saint. Maidens even, her equals in
+years, prized her highly; and in no way envied her the general
+admiration. This might be founded in the behaviour itself of Maud. More
+forward to oblige, to do good offices, more sweetly behaved, was no one.
+And then she had such a grace with it all, so innocent an eye, that when
+you looked into it, heaven itself seemed to shine out upon you. In
+short, whoever spoke with Maud, or might walk a few steps with her, that
+man was for the whole day another and a happier creature, and whatever
+he undertook prospered with him.</p>
+
+<p>“It would have been strange indeed had such a maiden lacked suitors, or
+not very early found a sympathizing heart. Now, as for the suitors,
+there was no dearth of them, Heaven knows! for there were youngsters of
+the queerest fashion. Many without manners, though right well to look
+at; others wealthy, but without heart or soul; and others again ready to
+burst with rage, if any one but touched his hat to the beautiful
+Matilda. To all such, the innocent child had not a word to say; for she
+knew well enough, that scant blessing waits on marriages of such a make.
+There was but one young fellow who could be said to please her
+thoroughly, and he was neither rich nor singularly handsome. She had
+become acquainted with him at the weaver’s, where he, like herself, went
+daily to work. Albert was industrious, well-behaved, and spoke so
+sensibly and right-heartedly, that Maud ever listened to him with
+delight. Truth to tell, he simply put her own feelings into words. A
+very little time passed, before she engaged herself secretly to Albert;
+and all would have gone on happily and well with them, had the two
+lovers but possessed just money enough to scrape a few matters together,
+and to set up housekeeping. But both were poor&mdash;poor as church mice;
+and, just for that reason, the father of Maud did not look very
+favourably upon the settled love-affair of his daughter. He would have
+been better satisfied if the silly thing, as he called her, had given
+her hand to one of the rich suitors, who would have given their ears to
+please her. Since, however, once for all, the mischief was done, he,
+like a good man, determined to cause his only child no heartache, and
+let matters get on as they might. One condition only he insisted
+upon&mdash;which was, that Maud should for the future work under her father’s
+roof; Albert, meanwhile, having leave every evening to pay his visits
+there. In this arrangement the two lovers cordially acquiesced; for,
+young as they were, they could well afford a little waiting. Meantime,
+it must be their endeavour, by incessant labour and careful economy, to
+save up as much as they needed for setting themselves up in their humble
+dwelling. So they lived on from day to day in quiet content. And so, no
+doubt, many days, and many, would have glided by, had not a singular
+occurrence disturbed the profound tranquillity. This was the way of
+it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Maud’s father, the stone-mason, found it too much for him, with his
+heavy work and all, when, at noon, he had the long journey to make
+between the stone quarry and his own home. Besides, the fine stone-dust
+had brought on an inflammation of the eyes, so that he was obliged to
+avoid the glare of the sun: no easy thing for him to do, since his road
+homeward lay over a green high hill, upon which the sun beat
+scorchingly: wherefore, also, the people have given it the name of the
+Sun’s hill. It was made, in consequence, Maud’s duty to take daily her
+father’s homely dinner to the stone quarry&mdash;a road which, although
+toilsome, was by no means disagreeable to her; inasmuch as Albert often
+found means to get leave of absence, and then always escorted her a part
+of the way.</p>
+
+<p>“Over the Sun’s hill nobody went willingly alone, either by day or by
+night; for the tale ran, that to many persons wondrous things had
+happened. Some had even caught, they said, their death-sickness there.
+True it is, any more definite report was not easily obtained. Only so
+much had Maud heard from her mother, that the <span class="smcap">Good People</span> were said, a
+very, very long time ago, to have vanished
+<span class="pagebreak" title="679">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679"></a>
+into the green hill; just
+when, in all the places around, so many churches had sprung up, and the
+sound of bells rang over mountain and wood. These reports
+notwithstanding, Maud, unconscious of evil, took her daily walk over the
+Sun’s hill, where indeed no one ever encountered her; so that the
+splendid landscape looked often desolate and awful in the hot midday’s
+glow.<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnnum">N</a> For this reason it was always a great relief to her, when, from
+the top of the steep hill, she saw Albert ascending towards her. She
+then felt herself more secure, and went with better spirits forward. It
+was near Whitsuntide&mdash;the father sickly and more peevish than ever, and
+work bringing in no supply; for provisions had risen fearfully in price
+in consequence of the previous unusually hard winter. Now, as often as
+Maud brought the dinner to her father, he complained bitterly, and
+reproached her harshly for her folly; so that the poor child was almost
+heartbroken, pined, and led a melancholy life.</p>
+
+<p>“She most deeply felt her trouble, when at noon she took her lonely
+journey along the desolate path that led to the quarry. Then she often
+shed the bitterest tears, and prayed to God to show her an outlet, and
+to have pity on their poverty.</p>
+
+<p>“One day&mdash;it was just a week to Whitsun-eve&mdash;it happened that as she
+went upon her way, silently and in sorrow, and in vain looked for the
+beloved figure of Albert, she suddenly heard such a marvellously clear
+sound of a bell that she stood still to hearken. It was upon the mid
+summit of the Sun’s hill; the air perfectly calm, and around, far and
+near, not a creature to be seen. From the distant hamlet in the valley
+clinked only the sharp tones of the whetting scythe. Maud believed that
+she had had a ringing in her ears, and walked on. The singular sound was
+repeated, resembling the tone exactly of a small silver bell.</p>
+
+<p>“‘How strange it is!’ said the maiden to herself, casting her eyes upon
+the ground; and in the soft moss, right at her feet, she perceived
+something glistening like a fragment of blue glass. She stooped and
+picked up what in colour and shape resembled a blue harebell, or, as it
+is called, <i>Fairy’s hat</i>; only, where the stalk should have been, there
+was a so small and elegantly-wrought little silver bell, that Maud could
+not help laughing outright.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Bless me!’ she exclaimed, ‘who can have made that comical thing?’ and
+thereupon she shook the flower, and the wee little bell began to sound
+so prodigiously clear, that the poor damsel let it fall, affrighted.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What are thy commands?’ asked immediately a slender bright voice.
+Before her stood a delicate creature, not higher than her hand; but of a
+symmetry of person that was perfectly astonishing. His small expressive
+head, round which a grove of curls, like crisped sunbeams, played, was
+just of a size, that the flower with the wondrous bell served it for a
+covering. For Maud saw how he put on the sparkling hat with much
+gravity, and at the same time, very knowingly, giving himself a right
+bold and dandy appearance.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What are you then?’ asked Maud trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“The little fellow made a smart bow, ‘Thy servant, with thy good leave,’
+replied the strange being. ‘I and my people have known thee a long time.
+We have heard thy complainings; and because thou hast a kind heart, and
+lovest the flowers, and dost not wantonly pull them to pieces, am I
+charged to do thee a pleasure, provided thou wilt do the like for me and
+my people.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Indeed! you pretty little original!’ answered Maud, ‘who are thy
+people? I’&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘Hush!’ interrupted the little one, with a repelling gesture of the
+hand and a very impressive contraction of the brow. ‘These are questions
+which I cannot answer, and, what is more, cannot suffer. It is not civil
+to put questions of the <span class="smcap">whence</span> and the <span class="smcap">what</span>. If thou wilt trust me, and
+I
+<span class="pagebreak" title="680">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680"></a>
+should think that I have the air of a proper gentleman, then resolve
+without delay whether thou wilt do me a pleasure for a reasonable
+compensation.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Dear little sir!’ replied Maud, overcome, ‘I am not mistrustful, but
+so beset and afflicted that I really do not know how I am to understand
+this strange business. Do not make sport of me, good child; or, if thou
+art a spirit, I beseech thee have compassion on me, and let me go my way
+in peace. My father is waiting for me. His little bit of dinner is
+drying in the heat of the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Silly prattle!’ interrupted the little one. ‘Thy old father lies under
+the rock side, and snores till the fern leaves waggle over him. The good
+man’s dinner will not take much harm. However, that thou mayest see how
+good and honourable my intentions are, take thou my little cap. Be it
+the pledge which I shall redeem from thee with a compensation. Only
+resolve quickly now whether thou wilt trust me. My time is short.’</p>
+
+<p>“Maud hesitated still. She held the miraculous cap with its silver bell
+in her hand. The desire to get rid of the <i>uncanny</i> creature the sooner
+the better, and also, perhaps, a particle of female curiosity wrung from
+her her consent.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Good!’ said the little one in great glee. ‘Now, hear me! This day
+week, upon Whitsun-eve, as ye call it, do thou come here in the evening,
+as soon as the moon has mounted this green hill. Be not afraid; for only
+good will befall thee. As soon as thou hast reached this spot, ring with
+the little bell which I have given thee; and thou wilt not repent having
+been serviceable to the good people.’</p>
+
+<p>“Scarcely had the little man given Maud her direction, when the
+astonished maiden remarked that the ground before her feet flashed like
+molten gold, sunk deeper and deeper, and in this glowing gulf the
+extraordinary being vanished, like a silver star. The whole phenomenon
+lasted only a few seconds, then every thing was again at rest as before.
+The little bell-flower only assured Matilda that she did not dream, and
+that something unusual had really taken place.</p>
+
+<p>“Possessed with her feelings, she took her father his meal; and found
+him, in sooth, fast asleep under the wall of rock. Of her adventure she
+said nothing, but carried the pledge of the little man well secured in
+her bosom. And yet how was it possible for her to persevere in her
+silence? It is true, Maud knew not if the communication of the incident
+was permitted her. She put her trust, however, in the pledge; and, since
+she had not been commanded to silence, she hoped to be justified in
+making Albert acquainted with what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>“She did it with fear and trembling, and produced to her astonished
+lover, as witness, the flower which had withered in the warmth of her
+bosom. Singularly enough, let her shake it as often as she would, the
+little bell could not be made to ring.</p>
+
+<p>“‘And you really mean to go?’ asked Albert, when he had a little
+recovered from his surprise. ‘I should like to see you! To get flirting
+with ghosts and hobgoblins, or whatever else the devils may be. No! go
+you don’t. You will throw that stupid thing into the running stream.
+<i>There</i> it won’t hurt you; and upon that confounded Sun’s hill you will
+please never to set foot more.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I have given my word, Albert; and I must keep my word let what will
+happen.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Very well,’ said the youngster, ‘that’s enough! Then every thing’s at
+an end between us&mdash;clean at an end!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘How you take on now! For whom else, but for you, have I accepted this
+pledge? For whom else have I so long endured&mdash;so long borne my father’s
+upbraidings? Dost thou think that, had I wished it, I could not long
+since have wedded? And is it my fault that I am a Sunday’s child? Is it
+not said that all Sunday’s children are born to good-luck? If you hinder
+me from keeping my word with this miraculous being&mdash;and the luck that is
+decreed me is meanwhile scattered to all the four winds&mdash;you may settle
+it with the spirit and face his anger; for I wash my hands in
+innocency.’</p>
+
+<p>“Maud began to cry, kissed the shrunken leaf, and hid it again in her
+bosom. Albert was not at ease. He was annoyed at the untoward encounter,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="681">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681"></a>
+a touch of jealousy disquieted and distressed his soul, and yet he
+could not say that the girl was in the wrong. At length he said,
+dispiritedly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘Go through with your folly then. I will, however, be near you, and if
+the moon-spun rascal takes improper liberties, I will snap his neck,
+though mine too should crack for it.’</p>
+
+<p>“For the first time in his life, Albert parted with Maud in an
+ill-humour, and the poor girl herself passed a bad and restless night.</p>
+
+<hr class="narrow" />
+
+<p>“‘Mother,’ said Maud a few days afterwards, whilst she was getting the
+father’s dinner ready for her, ‘did you ever see a fairy?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘God forbid, girl!’ cried the worthy and somewhat timid woman, crossing
+herself. ‘How came that into thy head? What hast thou to do with fairies
+and elves, dwarfs and wights? A good Christian has no business with such
+things of nothing, or worse.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Why, aunt Nelly was telling the other day such surprising stories of
+the people!’ Matilda replied; ‘but she did not drop a hint of our having
+reason to fear any harm from them. She even called them the <span class="smcap">good
+people</span>.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Daughter!’ the mother seriously rejoined, ‘we call them so that they
+may do us no mischief. It is safer for us to leave them quite alone.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Can it be true, mother, that they have buried themselves under the
+Sun’s hill, and keep house and home there? Aunt Nelly would have it that
+in the still of the night, by bright moonlight, you may hear them
+singing wonderful tunes.’</p>
+
+<p>“The mother fixed her eyes upon Maud, set the old man’s morsel of food
+upon the hearth stone, and, taking her daughter by the hand, led her to
+the stove, and seated her upon the family bench.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Listen!’ she said, ‘and take thou heed to my words. The good people,
+or the fairies, which is their proper name, although they do not like to
+be called so, do indeed live, though few have the gift of beholding
+them, in all the mountains and valleys round about. Very, very seldom,
+and only upon the most extraordinary occasions, do they ever show
+themselves. When they do, it betokens luck to him that sees them, and
+brings it, if he quietly fulfill their wishes. These are certainly often
+out of the way, just like the people, who are strange and
+incomprehensible enough. Thank Goodness, they never crossed my path! but
+your godmother Helen, she had many, many years ago, a curious adventure
+with the fairies.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Really, mother! Aunt Nelly spoken to the fairies! O pray, dear mother,
+tell me quickly and fully the whole story!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘First run to the quarry, and take your father his dinner,’ said the
+mother. ‘I will try in the meanwhile to remember all about it; and if
+you will promise me to say not a word to any one&mdash;not even to your
+godmother, you shall hear what your aunt told me at that time.’</p>
+
+<p>“Maud very naturally promised every thing, took herself off, and was
+back again as quickly as possible. She did not loiter for a moment upon
+the road, did not even notice the signals which her Albert made as he
+came towards her from the distance. She could think only of her mother’s
+story.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Here I am again, mother!’ she said breathless. ‘I call that running! I
+should say that the king’s trained runners could do no better. But now
+begin, dear mother. I will listen to you as if you were saying mass.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘As well as I can remember,’ proceeded the mother, ‘the case of the
+fairies is a very singular one. Your godmother Helen disclosed to me, it
+is true, just the chief particulars only; but they were quite enough to
+let you understand something of the good people. They told her that,
+once in every fifty or a hundred years, they have a kind of church
+meeting, which from old time they call a Sabbath. For you must know,
+child, that the fairies are properly Jews,<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnnum">O</a> right down
+<span class="pagebreak" title="682">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682"></a>
+old chaffering
+Jews, from <i>Olim’s</i> time.’<a name="FNanchor_P_16" id="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16" class="fnnum">P</a></p>
+
+<p>“‘O bless me! Jews!’ cried Maud, frightened out of her wits.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Yes, yes, Jews and nothing else,’ repeated the mother warmly; ‘and
+that’s the very reason why, up to this day, they are so given to
+trafficking in precious stones, pearls, gold, silver, and artful
+jewellery. And when they give themselves a holiday, they go running
+about above-ground, making presents to new-born babies if they are very
+lovely, and playing all kinds of odd pranks. According to your godmother
+Helen, the history of the fairies runs thus:&mdash;The whole people, and
+their name is <span class="smcap">legion</span>, were formerly in heaven.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘In heaven!’ cried Maud, interrupting her mother, ‘then why didn’t the
+silly creatures stay there? Where else do they hope to be more snug and
+comfortable than in heaven! seated under the fur-cap of father Abraham!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘How you prate!’ said the mother, checking her. ‘If you do not
+instantly tie up your tongue, and think more respectfully of the good
+people, I shall not tell you another syllable.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘O pray! I will be quite quiet!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Very well. Then the fairies were a long while ago in heaven,’
+continued the mother. ‘At that time they were part of the angelic host,
+were fine handsome people, went about in glittering robes, and sat at
+God’s right hand. Now, it befell that the chief angel of all got
+dissatisfied with the old management of affairs in heaven, stirred up
+discontent, tampered with the half of all the angels, and tried, with
+their help, to thrust out the old rightful Master of heaven and earth
+from his bright throne. But it fared with him as it does with most
+rebels, and rightly should with all. Our Father, in his glory, got the
+better of Satan, took him by the hair of his head, and pitched him
+head-foremost out of heaven into the pit of darkness, and his whole
+sharkish band of retainers after him. Amongst these, however, a good
+many had given ear to his fine tales, and had followed him
+thoughtlessly, although they were not properly wicked at heart. They
+repented their hasty work, even whilst they were falling deeper and
+deeper into gloom. They put up a prayer of repentance to their Lord, and
+implored his forgiveness; and because God saw that they were not rotten
+at the core, he hearkened to their petition, and rescued them out of the
+claws of Satan. But since they were not worthy to be received into
+heaven again, the Lord banished them back to the earth, with leave given
+them to dwell either within it, or in upper air, upon the hills and
+rocks. You must know that, during their fall, a surprising change had
+gone on in the transgressors. They had kept their forms of
+light&mdash;dwindled in size, however, immensely. And since they could not
+now become men,<a name="FNanchor_Q_17" id="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17" class="fnnum">Q</a> and had fooled away their celestial bliss, the Lord
+granted them a clear field, with power, until the last day, to make
+themselves worthy by good deeds of being re-admitted into heaven. And
+thus they have their abodes all about the open hills and the meadow
+flats; and only once in every fifty or a hundred years, upon
+Whitsun-eve, are they permitted, in their own way, to keep the Sabbath.
+And then they can only do it by loading a truly good human being with
+the blessings of fortune. For thus only can they hope to expiate their
+great offence in the sight of Heaven.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘And did godmother Helen hear this from the good people themselves?’
+asked Maud, as her mother ceased. ‘Was she, then, lucky?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘No,’ said the mother, ‘Nelly was not lucky, because she did not
+observe the commandment of the fairies.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Well, if one of the creatures came to me, and should lay a command
+upon me, I would keep a quiet tongue within my head, and do readily what
+he wished.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Foolish chatter!’ said the mother chidingly. ‘Thou dost offend the
+quiet people with thy empty babbling
+<span class="pagebreak" title="683">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_683" id="Page_683"></a>
+for they can hear every thing that
+human lips utter.’</p>
+
+<p>“Maud went singing to her work, and long mused upon her timid mother’s
+narrative. What she had heard filled her with so eager a curiosity that
+she could scarcely wait for Whitsun-eve, although she took care to let
+no one observe it. From time to time she stole a glance at her
+bell-flower, tried to make it ring with shaking, but failed to bring, by
+any means, one sound from the delicate little bell.</p>
+
+<p>“With a longing dread, Maud saw the promised Whitsun-eve draw near. It
+was not easy to leave the parental roof at nightfall. The enamoured
+maiden, however, found a becoming excuse which placed a few hours at her
+disposal. She went her way with the fairy cap in her bosom, ascended the
+green summit of the Sun’s hill, now glimmering in the moonlight, and
+drew from its hiding-place the pledge that had been entrusted to her. As
+if by a miracle, the little flower, touched by the moon’s silvery glow,
+expanded in an instant. Almost spontaneously it began to oscillate in
+her hand, and shrill and clear the little bell rang, so that it
+resounded into the adjacent wood, whence a soft echo melodiously
+responded.</p>
+
+<p>“The voice of Albert, who with vigorous strides was ascending the hill
+to look close after the adventure of his beloved, reached her ear. But
+the senses of Matilda were engrossed by the fairies, and to his repeated
+calls she gave no answer. And she had good reason. For scarcely had the
+little bell rung, when a flash, like a sparkling snake, darted here and
+there upon the grass, and out of the quivering light there arose a small
+and exceedingly beautiful creature, whom Maud immediately recognised for
+the lord of the bell-flower. The little fellow was in Spanish costume.
+He wore a doublet of sky-blue butterflies’ wings, over which dropped a
+magnificent lace collar woven of the gossamer. The delicate feet were
+covered with transparent shoes, made of dew-drops.</p>
+
+<p>“Maud stood mute with astonishment, as well at the tiny smallness of the
+fairy, as at his truly classical beauty. The little creature was, in his
+way, a perfect Adonis.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Now, my trembler, art thou resolute to follow me?’ whispered the fairy
+in a note that came to her like a note of the harmonicon. ‘Restore me
+the pledge, for we have no time to lose.’</p>
+
+<p>“Maud gave back the bell-flower; the elf seized it in his little
+diaphanous alabaster floral hands, waved it three times round his
+dazzling head, so that the little bell sent a peal round the hills, and
+then threw it upon the ground. It dilated immediately, took the shape of
+a galley with masts and yards, although no larger than the moon’s disk
+as we see it from the earth. In the same instant the elf sat in the
+little vessel, which trembled at every step, drew a rush from his
+girdle, and steered with it in the air.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Now, come, step in!’ he called to Maud.</p>
+
+<p>“‘In that!’ exclaimed the maiden astounded. ‘Heaven love you, there’s
+hardly room for my two feet! Besides, it will tear under me like a
+poppy-leaf, for I verily believe it is made of mere air.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Spare your remarks, Miss Pert!’ returned the fairy, ‘and step in. I
+pledge my honour, and will give up my hope of salvation, if this bark of
+our master’s do not carry thee safely over half the earth ball in less
+than no time.’</p>
+
+<p>“It might be that Maud now stood under the mysterious power of a spell,
+or that she was urged by an invincible curiosity. Enough: she placed her
+feet in the quaking gondola, which swelled aloft like an air-balloon
+until it reached the maiden’s shoulders. Now the ground sank away, and
+Matilda’s senses failed her in the dizzy speed with which she was
+hurried down into the bowels of the earth. At this precise moment Albert
+reached the top of the hill. He had only the pleasure of looking after
+them, and hardly that; for it appeared to him as if every thing about
+him was immersed in a sea of azure so resplendently clear, that he was
+for several minutes robbed of his sight.</p>
+
+<p>“From the magical slumber into which the child had fallen during her
+descent into the kingdom of the fairies, she was awakened by a witching
+harmony of sounds. She opened her eyes, and observed, with not a little
+wonder, that she was lying upon a bed or mat, or whatsoever else it
+<span class="pagebreak" title="684">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_684" id="Page_684"></a>
+might be called, of costly emerald. Over her head nodded marvellous
+flowers of the most glowing colours; butterflies, of unseen splendour,
+flitted on cooling pinions around her couch, and fanned her with an air
+so sweet, so invigorating, that the maiden had never breathed before
+with such delight. But with all the magnificence, all the spirit and
+splendour, every thing was quite other than upon the sunny earth above.
+The flowers and herbs glittered indeed; but they seemed to be juiceless,
+and looked as if formed of crystal. Even the butterflies had a peculiar
+motion, like that of an involuntary sleepwalker. Only the harmonious
+strains, which now rang louder and louder, more and more ravishing, were
+so ecstatic, so inviting to joyous devotion, that Maud would fain have
+shouted aloud for joy; but she felt that she could not speak, could not
+cry out, and sight, touch, and hearing, were more alive than ever.</p>
+
+<p>“Thus she lay for some time motionless, pleasingly intent upon the
+nodding flowers, the swarming butterflies. At length the winged
+multitude dispersed, and two slender fairy-forms approached her bed and
+beckoned her to arise and follow them.</p>
+
+<p>“Maud arose; and the fairies, who hardly reached up to her knee, taking
+her between them, conducted her through a gate of mother-of-pearl into
+an illimitable space, through which throng of countless millions of
+elves confusedly moved. The converse of these semi-spirits sounded in
+the distance harmonious, like perfect music. Notwithstanding the immense
+multitude, there was nothing of tumult, nothing of uproar. They stood
+all in the finest concord, and bent, waving their flower-caps
+gracefully, towards the abashed, astonished maiden. It bewildered Maud
+to see that not only overhead arched a star-bespangled sky, but likewise
+underneath her feet the same solemn starry splendour was revealed, as if
+the slight fairy people walked, between two heavens, upon the milkwhite
+vapour which rolled on under them like clouds. Every fairy had on glass
+or crystal shoes, if that which they wore on their feet might be so
+called. It is, however, possible that the exquisitely made limbs of
+these perplexing beings only deluded the eyes of the poor girl with such
+an appearance.</p>
+
+<p>“Nearly in the middle of the immeasurable arena rose a temple of gold,
+silver, and precious stones, which, with its lofty pillars reaching to
+the sky, was emblazoned in so wondrous a light, that, notwithstanding
+the extreme refulgence, it did not dazzle. Within this, upon a
+ceaselessly revolving sun-orb, stood the most beautiful and tallest of
+the fairies. In her golden hair gleamed stars. Joy and ecstasy radiated
+like a glory from her lovely pale face, and vapoury raiment concealed,
+but as with a breath, her incomparable figure. Towards her pressed the
+innumerable host; for the sublime creature might be the priestess of the
+united elfin race. Maud was carried forwards with them, that she might
+be a witness of the singular worship that was here solemnized. Not a
+word was spoken, no hymn was sung; there was but a looking-up of
+supplication, of trustfulness, in which all the fairies, turning round
+upon their sparkling little feet, took part. After a few minutes a
+joyful expression in the countenance of the worshippers proclaimed the
+happy issue of the Sabbath. The stars of the upper sky shot down like
+silver spangles, and hung suspended in the luminous hair of the fairies,
+giving them the appearance of carrying dancing lights on their heads. A
+loud, melodious, strain of rejoicing thrilled through the vast room. The
+radiant structure heaved and sank. Overhead a verdurous canopy of leaves
+vaulted itself; the elves, entwining arms and legs, flew in a lightning
+whirl around the high priestess and the dazzled Maud, who, unawares, had
+come close upon the lovely fairy.</p>
+
+<p>“In a little while the slender body-chain of elves gave way; they
+grouped themselves into numberless rows; every one took off the star
+from his head, and, tripping up, deposited it at the feet of the
+priestess, where they at length all united in composing themselves into
+a great gold-bright sphere, exactly resembling that upon which the high,
+officiating fairy had been borne round in the temple.</p>
+
+<p>“The elfin now extended her hand to Maud and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘We thank thee for the readiness
+<span class="pagebreak" title="685">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685"></a>
+with which thou hast followed my
+messenger into this our hidden kingdom. Thou hast, by thy presence,
+prospered our Sabbath festival. Receive, for thy reward, the gratitude
+of all the fairies; and bear with thee this gift in remembrance of this
+day.’</p>
+
+<p>“So speaking, she plucked the coronal of stars from her hair, stretched
+it out with both her hands, and hung it upon the head and neck of
+Matilda.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Whenever thou art in trouble,’ she continued, ‘think of the good
+people; pull one of these stars, throw it in the air by the light of the
+moon, and whatsoever thou wishest, provided it be lawful, shall be
+granted thee.’</p>
+
+<p>“Maud would have stammered forth her thanks, but she felt herself still
+powerless to speak. A kiss of the fairy upon her forehead was the signal
+for breaking up. The good people once more waved their caps. The gondola
+floated by, Maud mounted it, and, as quickly as she had descended, was
+lifted up upon the earth again.</p>
+
+<p>“‘There!’ said the little pilot fairy, tying the supple rudder about the
+wrist of Maud, ‘that is my wedding gift to you and Albert. Give him the
+half of it if he pouts; and&mdash;have a care&mdash;no blabbing!’</p>
+
+<p>“With that the gondola dissolved like a cloud in the air. The fairy
+vanished; and Maud lay alone upon the fragrant dewy grass of the Sun’s
+hill.</p>
+
+<p>“Still all-amazed at what had happened, and not yet come rightly to
+herself, she slowly rose, intending to go home. It was then she
+perceived Albert, who, with folded arms, was staring wildly and savagely
+into the wood below. Matilda coughed.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Why where, in the name of all that is holy, have you been dancing to?’
+was the not very tender greeting of her lover. ‘I saw you standing there
+as I came up the hill; and then lightning and streams of fire were all
+about me, and here I have been full five minutes, running about in all
+directions, without being able to find a trace of you.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Only five minutes!’ exclaimed Maud; ‘that is extraordinary!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Yes; and, no offence to you, not altogether right,’ answered Albert.
+‘Did I not beg of you to wait for me?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘That you might wring the fairy’s neck for him?’ said the maiden,
+laughing. ‘Set yourself at ease, Albert; it is much better as it is.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What is?’ screamed the youngster.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Never mind! It is all done now; and indeed, dear boy, we shall neither
+of us repent it. Come, let us go home.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘O ho!&mdash;<i>dear boy!</i>&mdash;Mighty wise and patronizing truly!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Well, then, good Albert,’ said Matilda coaxingly; ‘only come away, and
+don’t be angry. In four weeks we shall be married.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘In fo&mdash;ur wee&mdash;eeks!’ stuttered Albert.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Yes, and in three, if you like it better,’ prated the overjoyed Maud.
+‘The good people,’ she added, almost inaudibly, ‘have enabled us to
+marry. Therefore behave pretty, be quiet, and don’t quarrel&mdash;or
+else&mdash;‘<i>every thing is at an end between us&mdash;clean at an end!</i>’ Don’t
+you know that I am a Sunday’s child, and am under the especial
+protection of these kind, little, powerful creatures?’</p>
+
+<p>“The jealous youth followed the maiden with reluctance. Whilst he
+walked, murmuring in an under-tone at her side, he noticed by the light
+of the full moon something flickering in Matilda’s hair. He examined it
+more closely, and then stood still.</p>
+
+<p>“‘What new fashion do you call that?’ he asked in a voice of chagrin.
+‘The idea of hanging dried mushrooms in one’s hair! If you will only
+walk with that finery by daylight down to the brook, the children will
+run after you, and point at you with their finger.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Mushrooms!’ replied Maud. ‘Why, where are your eyes again?’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Well, I suppose you don’t mean to call them silver crowns? Thank
+Heaven, my eyes are good enough yet to see the difference between dried
+funguses and coined money!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘They are glittering stars, sir,’ said Maud, short and decided.</p>
+
+<p>“‘O indeed!’ returned Albert. ‘Well, then, the next time I would
+recommend you to select some that shine rather brighter.’</p>
+
+<p>“The lovers had, in the meanwhile, reached the hut of the stone-mason.
+Albert entered with Matilda. The father lay asleep by the stove. The
+mother turned her spinning-wheel.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="686">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_686" id="Page_686"></a>
+“‘Good-evening, mother!” said Albert. ‘Have the goodness to tell that
+conceited girl there, that her headgear is the most miserable that ever
+was seen.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘What!’ said the old lady wondering, and with a shake of the head.
+‘Maud has no other gear that I see, but her own beautiful hair, which
+may God long preserve to her!’</p>
+
+<p>“Instead of giving any answer, Albert would have set the daughter before
+her mother’s eyes. But Maud had already, in the doorway, pulled off the
+fairy’s gift, and turned pale as she saw that she had actually worn
+dried mushrooms on a string, twisted of withered rushes. Albert observed
+her perplexity, and laughed. He bantered her, and snatched two or three
+mushrooms from the chain, to hoard up for future sport. This was the
+token of their reconciliation. Maud, although very calmly, assured her
+lover, over and over again, that within a month their nuptials should
+take place. That the tired old man might not be disturbed, Albert went
+home early; and Maud hastened to put carefully away, for a while, the
+very meagre-looking fairy gifts.</p>
+
+<p>“On the following morning, Albert was off betimes to his work. Putting
+on his jacket, he heard something chinking within. His surprise was
+naturally great, knowing that he had no money there. He dived at once
+into his pocket, and drew out two large old gold pieces. Then he
+suddenly remembered, that the evening before he had pocketed the
+mushrooms which he had snatched away from Maud, and the most extravagant
+joy possessed him. He forgot his work and every thing else; started off,
+and ran, as fast as his legs could carry him, to the house of the
+stone-mason.</p>
+
+<p>“Maud stood at the brook, before the door, washing her small white hands
+in the clear stream.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Good-morrow, dear Maud, and a thousand blessings on thy sweet head!’
+cried Albert to her, as he came running. ‘Look, look, how thy mushrooms
+have changed! If the others turn out as well, I am afraid that, after
+all, I must forgive that little shrimp that was so killingly polite to
+you!’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Delightful! delightful!’ exclaimed Matilda, gazing at the gold pieces.
+‘Mine have not changed yet&mdash;but that doesn’t matter; for in the night, a
+little rush band, with which the fairy steered me into his kingdom of
+wonders, has bloomed into precious pearls and brilliants, and two
+sparkling wreaths are now lying upstairs in my drawer.’</p>
+
+<p>“Joyful surprise choked Albert’s words in his throat; but Maud drew him
+on, and displayed to him her glories from the fairy world.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Let us leave nothing undone that may help our luck. Do you take the
+little wreath for the present. Such is the wish of the mysterious being,
+who required my attendance at the Fairies’ Sabbath.’</p>
+
+<p>“Albert received the gift with a softened heart. He begged Maud’s
+forgiveness of his fault; she granted it willingly, and before four
+weeks had passed by, the lovers were man and wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Of her adventure on Whitsun-eve, Maud never spoke. So much the more had
+her godmother Helen to say about it; for it was not difficult to guess
+that the fairies had had their prospering hand in the marriage of her
+godchild. The stone-mason now gave up his laborious calling. Albert
+became the master of a moderate property, which he diligently cultivated
+with his beloved Maud; and, as fair child after child was born to them,
+the happy mother laid upon the breast of each a shriveled leaf from the
+elfin chain, for so had her little guide counseled her, when she once,
+in a doubtful hour, had summoned him to her aid. Albert and Matilda
+reached a good old age; their children throve, and carefully preserved,
+like their parents, the gifts received from the subterranean folk, who
+continued their favour to them and to all their posterity.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_1">A</a></span> Midsummer Night’s Dream.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_B_2">B</a></span> <span class="smcap">Dolmen</span>; literally, <i>stone table</i>. Remarkable structures,
+learnedly ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and
+fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and
+massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the
+ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The
+superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity,
+stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the
+peasantry:&mdash;<i>Grotte aux f&eacute;es</i>, <i>Roche aux f&eacute;es</i>, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_C_3">C</a></span> <span class="smcap">Weirds</span>. The French has&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lots</span>. “<i>Elles jettent des <span class="smcap">sorts</span>.</i>”
+For justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of
+<span class="smcap">Kempion</span>; or <span class="smcap">Kemp Owayne</span>, at the beginning:&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Come here, come here, ye <i>freely fede</i>, (i. e. <i>nobly born</i>,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lay your head low on my knee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A heavier <span class="smcap">weird</span> I shall ye read<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than ever was read to gay ladye.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I <span class="smcap">weird</span> ye to a fiery beast:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And released shall ye never be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Kempion the kinges son<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come to the crag and thrice kiss thee!”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_D_4">D</a></span> From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection
+by M. Th. de la Villemarqu&eacute;, of the transmitted songs that are current
+amongst his Bas Breton countrymen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_E_5">E</a></span> Essay on <i>The Fairies of Popular Superstition</i>, in “The
+Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_F_6">F</a></span> Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1.
+1835, and xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_G_7">G</a></span> “<i>Ces g&eacute;nies femelles.</i>”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_H_8">H</a></span> From Walckenaer’s Dissertation on the Origin of the Fairy
+Belief; last printed, in an abridged form, by Jacob, in his edition of
+the <i>Contes des F&eacute;es, par Perrault</i>, (Paris, 1842.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_I_9">I</a></span>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i9">“Paradise and groves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Elysian, fortunate fields&mdash;like those of old<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought in the Atlantic main, why should they be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A history only of departed things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or a mere fiction of what never was?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the discerning <i>Intellect of man,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>When wedded to this goodly Universe</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In love and holy passion</i>, shall find these<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>A simple produce of the common day.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I long before the blissful hour arrives</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Of this great consummation.”</i><br /></span>
+<span class="attrib"><span class="smcap">Wordsworth.</span> <i>Preface to the Excursion.</i></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_J_10">J</a></span> <i><span class="smcap">Sagen und Mahrchen</span> aus der Oberlausitz</i>. Nacherzahlt von
+<i>Ernst Willkomm</i>, Hanover, 1843.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_K_11">K</a></span> <span class="smcap">Irische Elfenmarchen</span>: Uebersetzt von den Br&uuml;dern Grimm.
+Leipzig, 1826. <i>Introduction.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_L_12">L</a></span> <span class="smcap">Deutsche Sagen</span>: Herausgegeben von den Br&uuml;dern Grimm.
+Berlin, 1816 and 1818.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_M_13">M</a></span> Grimm’s German Mythology, p. 544.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_N_14">N</a></span>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">“&mdash;&mdash;his look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drew audience and attention, <span class="smcap">still as</span> night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or <span class="smcap">Summer’s noontide air</span>.”&mdash;<i>Paradise Lost. Book II.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_O_15">O</a></span> The fairies themselves hardly can have imparted to
+godmother Helen the two irreconcilable derivations of their order: that
+they were Jews, and that they were fallen angels. But the poet
+<span class="smcap">dramatically</span> joins, upon the mother’s lip, the two current traditions.
+With her, fallen angel and Jew are synonymous, as being both opposed to
+the faith of the cross.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_P_16" id="Footnote_P_16"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_P_16">P</a></span> Who is this unknown <span class="smcap">Olim</span>? Our old friend perchance, the
+Latin adverb, “<i>Olim</i>,” <i>of yore</i>&mdash;gradually slipped from the mouths of
+scholars into the people’s, and risen in dignity as it descended.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Q_17" id="Footnote_Q_17"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17">Q</a></span> <i>Sic.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagebreak" title="687">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687"></a>
+COLUMBUS.</h2>
+
+<h3>(<i>A Print after a Picture by Parmeggiano.</i>)<br />
+
+<span class="smcap">BY B. Simmons.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Rise, Victor</span>, from the festive board<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flush’d with triumphal wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lifting high thy beaming sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fired by the flattering Harper’s chord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who hymns thee half divine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vow at the glutted shrine of Fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That dark-red brand to consecrate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long, dread, and doubtful was the fray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That gives the stars thy name to-day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But all is over; round thee now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fame shouts, spoil pours, and captives bow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No stormier joy can Earth impart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than thrills in lightning through thy heart.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">II.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Gay <span class="smcap">Lover</span>, with the soft guitar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hie to the olive-woods afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to thy friend, the listening brook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alone reveal that raptured look;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The maid so long in secret loved&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A parent’s angry will removed&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This morning saw betroth&egrave;d thine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That Sire the pledge, consenting, blest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life bright as motes in golden wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is dancing in thy breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">III.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Statesman</span> astute, the final hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Arrives of long-contested Power;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each crafty wile thine ends to aid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Party and principle betray’d;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The subtle speech, the plan profound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pursued for years, success has crown’d;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-night the Vote upon whose tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The nicely-poised Division hung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was thine&mdash;beneath that placid brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What feelings throb exulting now!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy rival falls;&mdash;on grandeur’s base<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Go shake the nations in his place!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">IV.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Fame, Love, Ambition</span>! what are Ye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With all your wasting passions’ war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the great Strife that, like a sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’erswept His soul tumultuously,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose face gleams on me like a star&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A star that gleams through murky clouds&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As here begirt by struggling crowds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A spell-bound Loiterer I stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before a print-shop in the Strand?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What are your eager hopes and fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose minutes wither men like years&mdash;<br /></span>
+
+<span class="pagebreak" title="688">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688"></a>
+<span class="i0">Your schemes defeated or fulfill’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the emotions dread that thrill’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>His</i> frame on that October night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, watching by the lonely mast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>He saw on shore the moving light</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And felt, though darkness veil’d the sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The long-sought World was his at last?<a name="FNanchor_A_18" id="FNanchor_A_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_18" class="fnnum">A</a><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">V.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How Fancy’s boldest glances fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Contemplating each hurrying mood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thought that to that aspect pale<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sent up the heart’s o’erboiling flood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through that vast vigil, while his eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Watch’d till the slow reluctant skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should kindle, and the vision dread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all his livelong years be read!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In youth, his faith-led spirit doom’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still to be baffled and betray’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His manhood’s vigorous noon consumed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere Power bestow’d its niggard aid;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That morn of summer, dawning grey,<a name="FNanchor_B_19" id="FNanchor_B_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_19" class="fnnum">B</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When, from Huelva’s humble bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He full of hope, before the gale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn’d on the hopeless World his sail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And steer’d for seas untrack’d, unknown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And westward still sail’d on&mdash;sail’d on&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sail’d on till Ocean seem’d to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All shoreless as Eternity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, from its long-loved Star estranged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At last the constant Needle changed,<a name="FNanchor_C_20" id="FNanchor_C_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_20" class="fnnum">C</a><br /></span>
+
+<span class="pagebreak" title="689">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689"></a>
+<span class="i0">And fierce amid his murmuring crew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prone terror into treason grew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While on his tortured spirit rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More dire than portents, toils, or foes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The awaiting World’s loud jeers and scorn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yell’d o’er his profitless Return;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No&mdash;none through that dark watch may trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The feelings wild beneath whose swell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As heaves the bark the billows’ race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His Being rose and fell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet over doubt, and pride, and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er all that flash’d through breast and brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As with those grand, immortal eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He stood&mdash;his heart on fire to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When morning next illumed the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What wonders in its light should glow&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O’er all one thought must, in that hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have sway’d supreme&mdash;Power, conscious Power&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lofty sense that Truths conceived,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And born of his own starry mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And foster’d into might, achieved<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A new Creation for mankind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when from off that ocean calm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The Tropic’s dusky curtain clear’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All those green shores and banks of balm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And rosy-tinted hills appear’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silent and bright as Eden, ere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth’s breezes shook one blossom there&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against that hour’s proud tumult weigh’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Love, Fame, Ambition</span>, how ye fade!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">VI.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou <span class="smcap">Luther</span> of the darken’d Deep!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor less intrepid, too, than He<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose courage broke <span class="smcap">Earth’s</span> bigot sleep<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst thine unbarr’d the <span class="smcap">Sea</span>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like his, ’twas thy predestined fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against your grin benighted age,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With all its fiends of Fear and Hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">War, single-handed war, to wage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And live a conqueror, too, like him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till Time’s expiring lights grow dim!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, Hero of my boyish heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere from thy pictured looks I part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My mind’s maturer reverence now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In thoughts of thankfulness would bow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the <span class="smcap">Omniscient Will</span> that sent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee forth, its chosen instrument,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To teach us hope, when sin and care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the vile soilings that degrade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our dust, would bid us most despair&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hope, from each varied deed display’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along thy bold and wondrous story,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That shows how far one steadfast mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Serene in suffering as in glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May go to deify our kind.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_18" id="Footnote_A_18"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_18">A</a></span> October 11, 1492.&mdash;“As the evening darkened, Columbus took
+his station on the top of the castle or cabin, on the high poop of his
+vessel. However he might carry a cheerful and confident countenance
+during the day, it was to him a time of the most painful anxiety; and
+now, when he was wrapped from observation by the shades of night, he
+maintained an intense and unremitting watch, ranging his eye along the
+dusky horizon in search of the most vague indications of land. Suddenly,
+about ten o’clock, <i>he thought he beheld a light glimmering at a
+distance</i>. Fearing that his eager hopes might deceive him, he called to
+Pedro Gutierrez, gentleman of the king’s bedchamber, and enquired
+whether he saw a light in that direction; the latter replied in the
+affirmative. Columbus, yet doubtful whether it might not be some
+delusion of the fancy, called Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and made the
+same enquiry. By the time the latter had ascended the roundhouse, the
+light had disappeared. They saw it once or twice afterwards in sudden
+and passing gleams, as if it were a torch in the bark of a fisherman
+rising and sinking with the waves, or in the hand of some person on
+shore, borne up and down as he walked from house to house. So transient
+and uncertain were these gleams, that few attached any importance to
+them; Columbus, however, considered them as certain signs of land, and,
+moreover, that the land was inhabited.”&mdash;<span class="smcap">Irving’s</span> <i>Columbus</i>, vol. i.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_19" id="Footnote_B_19"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_B_19">B</a></span> “It was on Friday, the 3d of August 1492, early in the
+morning, that Columbus set sail on his first voyage of discovery. He
+departed from the bar of Saltes, a small island in front of the town of
+Huelva, steering in a south-westerly direction,” &amp;c.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Irving</span>. He was
+about fifty-seven years old the year of the Discovery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_20" id="Footnote_C_20"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_C_20">C</a></span> “On the 13th September, in the evening, being about two
+hundred leagues from the island of Ferro, he, for the first time,
+noticed the variation of the needle, a phenomenon which had never before
+been remarked. Struck with the circumstance, he observed it attentively
+for three days, and found that the variation increased as he advanced.
+It soon attracted the attention of the pilots, and filled them with
+consternation. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing as
+they advanced, and that they were entering another world subject to
+unknown influences.”&mdash;<i>Ibid.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="690">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690"></a>
+TO SWALLOWS ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY THE SAME.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“The day before V&mdash;&mdash;’s departure for the last time from the
+country&mdash;it was the 4th of August, one of the hottest days of the
+season&mdash;as evening fell, he strolled with an old school-fellow
+through the cool green avenues and leafy arcades of the
+neighbouring park, where his friend amused him by pointing out to
+his attention vast multitudes of Swallows that came swarming from
+all directions to settle on the roofs and gables of the
+manor-house. This they do for several days preparatory to their
+departing, in one collected body, to more genial climates.”&mdash;<i>MS.
+Memoir.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Joyous Birds! preparing<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">In the clear evening light<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To leave our dwindled summer day<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">For latitudes more bright!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">How gay must be your greeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">By southern fountains meeting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To miss no faithful wing of all that started in your flight!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">II.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Every clime and season<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Fresh gladness brings to you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Howe’er remote your social throngs<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Their varied path pursue;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">No winds nor waves dissever&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">No dusky veil’d <span class="smcap">for ever</span>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frowneth across your fearless way in the empyrean blue.<a name="FNanchor_A_21" id="FNanchor_A_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_21" class="fnnum">A</a><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">III.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Mates and merry brothers<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Were ye in Arctic hours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mottling the evening beam that sloped<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Adown old Gothic towers!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As blythe that sunlight dancing<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Will see your pinions’ glancing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scattering afar through Tropic groves the spicy bloom in showers!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">IV.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Haunters of palaced wastes!<a name="FNanchor_B_22" id="FNanchor_B_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_22" class="fnnum">B</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i3">From king-forlorn Versailles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To where, round gateless Thebes, the winds<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Like monarch voices wail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Your tribe capricious ranges,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Reckless of glory’s changes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love makes for ye a merry home amid the ruins pale.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">V.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Another day, and ye<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">From knosp and turret’s brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall, with your fleet of crowding wings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Air’s viewless billows plough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With no keen-fang’d regretting<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Our darken’d hill-sides quitting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Away in fond companionship as cheerily as now!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="pagebreak" title="691">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691"></a>
+<span class="i8">VI.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Woe for the Soul-endued&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The clay-enthrall&egrave;d Mind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Leaving, unlike you, favour’d birds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Its all&mdash;its all behind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Woe for the exile mourning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To banishment returning&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mateless bird wide torn apart from country and from kind!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">VII.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">This moment blest as ye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Beneath his own home-trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With friends and fellows girt around,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Up springs the western breeze,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Bringing the parting weather&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Shall all depart together?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, no!&mdash;he goes a wretch alone upon the lonely seas.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">VIII.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">To him the mouldering tower&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The pillar’d waste, to him<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A broken-hearted music make<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Until his eyelids swim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">None heeds when he complaineth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Nor where that brow he leaneth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A mother’s lips shall bless no more sinking to slumber dim.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">IX.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Winter shall wake to spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">And ’mid the fragrant grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The daffodil shall watch the rill<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Like Beauty by her glass<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But woe for him who pineth<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Where the clear water shineth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With no voice near to say&mdash;How sweet those April evenings pass!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">X.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Then while through Nature’s heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Love freshly burns again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hither shall ye, plumed travellers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Come trooping o’er the main;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The selfsame nook disclosing<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Its nest for your reposing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That saw you revel years ago as you shall revel then.<a name="FNanchor_C_23" id="FNanchor_C_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_23" class="fnnum">C</a><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">XI.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;Your human brother’s lot!<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">A few short years are gone&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Back, back like you to early scenes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Lo! at the threshold-stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Where ever in the gloaming<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Home’s angels watch’d his coming,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A stranger stands, and stares at him who sighing passes on.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">XII.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Joy to the Travail-worn!<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Omnific purpose lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even in his bale as in your bliss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Careerers of the skies!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">When sun and earth, that cherish’d<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Your tribes, with you have perish’d,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A home is his where partings more shall never dim the eyes.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_21" id="Footnote_A_21"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_21">A</a></span> “They all quit together; and fly for a time east or west,
+possibly in wait for stragglers not yet arrived from the interior&mdash;they
+then take directly to the south, and are soon lost sight of altogether
+for the allotted period of their absence. Their rapidity of flight is
+well known, and the ‘murder-aiming eye’ of the most experienced
+sportsman will seldom avail against the swallow; hence they themselves
+seldom fall a prey to the raptorial birds.”&mdash;<span class="smcap">Cuvier</span>, <i>edited by
+Griffiths</i>. Swallows are long-lived; they have been known to live a
+number of years in cages.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_22" id="Footnote_B_22"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_B_22">B</a></span> In the fanciful language of Chateaubriand, “This daughter
+of a king (the swallow) still seems attached to grandeur; she passes the
+summer amid the ruins of Versailles, and the winter among those of
+Thebes.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_23" id="Footnote_C_23"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_C_23">C</a></span> “However difficult to be credited, it seems to be
+ascertained beyond doubt, that the same pair which quitted their nest
+and the limited circle of their residence here, return to the very same
+nest again, and this for several successive years; in all probability
+for their whole lives”&mdash;<i>Griffiths’</i> <span class="smcap">Cuvier</span>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="692">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_692" id="Page_692"></a>
+THE DILIGENCE.</h2>
+
+<h3 class="smcap">A Leaf from a Journal.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A diligence is as familiar to our countrymen as a stage-coach; and, as
+railroads flourish more amongst us than with our less commercial and
+enterprising neighbours, it is probable that, to many English
+travellers, it is even more familiar. There is no need, therefore, to
+describe the portentous vehicle. Suffice it to say, that, of the three
+compartments into which it is divided, I found myself lodged&mdash;not in the
+<i>coup&eacute;e</i> which looks out in front, and which has the appearance of a
+narrow post-chaise that has been flattened and compressed in the effort
+to incorporate it with the rest of the machine&mdash;nor in the <i>rotunde</i>
+behind, where one rides omnibus-fashion&mdash;but in the central compartment,
+the <i>interieur</i>, which answers to the veritable old English stage-coach,
+and carries six. I was one of the central occupants of this central
+division; for I had not been so fortunate as to secure a corner seat.
+Now, for the convenience of the luckless person who occupies this
+position, there depends from the roof of the coach, and hangs just
+before his face, a broad leathern strap, with a loop through which he
+can, if so disposed, place his arms; and, when his arms are thus slung
+up, he can further rest his head upon them or upon the strap, and so
+seek repose. Whether he finds the repose he seeks, is another matter.
+One half of the traveller swings like a parrot on his perch, the other
+half jolts on stationary&mdash;jolts over the eternal stones which pave the
+roads in France. Perhaps there are who can go to roost in this fashion.
+And if it is recorded of any one that he ever slept in this state of
+demi-suspension&mdash;all swing above, all shake below&mdash;I should like very
+much to know, in the next place, what sort of dreams he had. Did he
+fancy himself a griffin, or huge dragon, beating the air with his wings,
+and at the same time trotting furiously upon the ground? Or, in order to
+picture out his sensations, was he compelled to divide himself into two
+several creatures, and be at once the captured and half-strangled goose,
+with all its feathers outstretched in the air, and the wicked fox who is
+running away with it, at full speed, upon its back? As to myself, in no
+vain expectation of slumber, but merely for the sake of change of
+position, I frequently slung my arms in this loop, and leaning my head
+against the broad leathern strap, I listened to the gossip of my
+fellow-travellers, if there was any conversation stirring; or, if all
+was still, gave myself up to meditations upon my own schemes and
+projects.</p>
+
+<p>And here let me observe, that I have always found that a journey in a
+stage-coach is remarkably favourable to the production of good
+resolution and sage designs for the future; which I account for partly
+on the ground that they cannot, under such circumstances, demand to be
+carried into immediate execution, and therefore may be indulged in the
+more freely; and partly on this other ground, that one who has become a
+traveller has loosened himself from his old customary moorings, and so
+gives himself, as it were, a new starting-point in life, from which he
+may, if the spirit of delusion is still happily strong within him, draw
+a mathematically straight line in the given direction A B, to be the
+faithful index of his future career.</p>
+
+<p>What a generous sample of humanity it is that a well filled diligence
+carries out of the gates of Paris! The mountain of luggage upon the
+roof, consisting of boxes of all shapes and sizes, does not contain in
+its numerous <i>strata</i> of stuffs, and implements, and garments, rags and
+fine linen, a greater variety of dead material, than does the threefold
+interior, with its complement of human beings, of living character and
+sentiment. As to the observation not unfrequently made, that Frenchmen
+have less variety of character than ourselves, it is one which seems to
+me to have little or no foundation. Something there doubtless is of
+national character, which pervades all classes and all classifications
+of men; and this colouring, seen diffused over the mass, makes us
+apprehend, at first view, that there is
+<span class="pagebreak" title="693">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_693" id="Page_693"></a>
+in the several parts a radical
+similarity which, in fact, does not exist. We have only to become a
+little more intimate with the men themselves, and this national
+colouring fades away; while the strong peculiarities resulting from
+social position, or individual temperament, stand out in sharp relief.
+And, in general, I will venture to say of national character&mdash;whatever
+people may be spoken of&mdash;that one may compare it to the colour which the
+sea bears at different times, or which different seas are said to be
+distinguished by: view the great surface at a distance, it is blue, or
+green, or grey; but take up a handful of the common element, and it is
+an undistinguishable portion of brackish water. It is French, or
+Flemish, or Spanish nature in the mass, and at a distance; looked at
+closer, and in the individual, there is little else than plain human
+nature to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>But I did not open my journal to philosophize upon national character;
+but to record, while it is still fresh in my memory, some part of the
+conversation to which I was, as I travelled along, of necessity, and
+whether willingly or unwillingly, a listener. To the left of me the
+corner seats were occupied by two Englishmen&mdash;would it be possible to
+enter into a diligence without meeting at least two of our dear
+compatriots? They were both men in the prime of life, in the full flush
+of health, and apparently of wealth, who, from allusions which they
+dropt, could evidently boast of being of good family, and what follows
+of course&mdash;of having received an university education; and whom some one
+of our northern counties probably reckoned amongst its most famous
+fox-hunters. All which hindered not, but that they proved themselves to
+belong to that class of English travellers who scamper about the
+Continent like so many big, boisterous, presumptuous school-boys, much
+to the annoyance of every one who meets them, and to the especial
+vexation of their fellow-countrymen, who are not, in general, whatever
+may be said to the contrary, an offensive or conceited race, and are by
+no means pleased that the name of Englishmen should be made a by-word
+and a term of contempt. Opposite to me sat a Frenchman, of rather formal
+and grave demeanour, and dressed somewhat precisely. He was placed in a
+similar position in the diligence to myself; he had, however, curled up
+his leathern strap, and fastened it to the roof. Apparently he did not
+think the posture to which it invited one of sufficient dignity; for
+during the whole journey, and even when asleep, I observed that he
+maintained a certain becomingness of posture. Beside me, to the right,
+sat a little lively Frenchwoman, not very young, and opposite to her,
+and consequently in front also of myself, was another lady, a person of
+extreme interest, who at once riveted the eye, and set the imagination
+at work. She was so young, so pale, so beautiful, so sad, and withal so
+exceeding gentle in her demeanour, that an artist who wished to portray
+Our Lady in her virgin purity and celestial beauty, would have been
+ravished with the model. She had taken off her bonnet for the
+convenience of travelling, and her dark brown hair hung curled round her
+neck in the same simple fashion it must have done when she was a child.
+She was dressed in mourning, and this enhanced the pallor of her
+countenance; ill-health and sorrow were also evidently portrayed upon
+her features; but there was so much of lustre in the complexion, and so
+much of light and intelligence in the eye, that the sense of beauty
+predominated over all. You could not have wished her more cheerful than
+she was. Her face was a melody which you cannot quarrel with for being
+sad&mdash;which you could not desire to be otherwise than sad&mdash;whose very
+charm it is that it has made the tone of sorrow ineffably sweet.</p>
+
+<p>Much I mused and conjectured what her history might be, and frequently I
+felt tempted to address myself in conversation to her; but still there
+was a tranquillity and repose in those long eyelashes which I feared to
+disturb. It was probable that she preferred her own reflections,
+melancholy as they might be, to any intercourse with others, and out of
+respect to this wish I remained silent. Not so, however, my
+fellow-traveller of her own sex, who, far from practising this
+forbearance, felt that she acted the kind and social part by engaging
+her in conversation. And so perhaps she did. For certainly, after some
+time, the beautiful
+<span class="pagebreak" title="694">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_694" id="Page_694"></a>
+and pensive girl became communicative, and I
+overheard the brief history of her sufferings, which I had felt so
+curious to know. It was indeed brief&mdash;it is not a three-volumed novel
+that one overhears in a stage-coach&mdash;but it had the charm of truth to
+recommend it. I had been lately reading Eugene Sue’s romance, <i>The
+Mysteries of Paris</i>, and it gave an additional interest to remark, that
+the simple tale I was listening to from the lips of the living sufferer
+bore a resemblance to one of its most striking episodes.</p>
+
+<p>The shades of evening were closing round us, and the rest of the
+passengers seemed to be preparing themselves for slumber, as, leaning
+forward on my leathern supporter, I listened to the low sweet voice of
+the young stranger.</p>
+
+<p>“You are surprised,” she said in answer to some remark made by her
+companion, “that one of our sex, so young and of so delicate health,
+should travel alone in the diligence; but I have no relative in Paris,
+and no friend on whose protection I could make a claim. I have lived
+there alone, or in something worse than solitude.”</p>
+
+<p>Her companion, with a woman’s quickness of eye, glanced at the rich
+toilette of the speaker. It was mourning, but mourning of the most
+costly description.</p>
+
+<p>“You think,” she continued, replying to this glance, “that one whose
+toilette is costly ought not to be without friends; but mine has been
+for some time a singular condition. Wealth and a complete isolation from
+the world have been in my fate strangely combined. They married me”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“What! are you a married woman and so young?” exclaimed the lady who was
+addressed.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been; I am now a widow. It is for my husband that I wear this
+mourning. They took me from the convent where I was educated, and
+married me to a man whom I was permitted to see only once before the
+alliance was concluded. As I had been brought up with the idea that my
+father was to choose a husband for me, and as the Count D&mdash;&mdash; was both
+handsome and of agreeable manners, the only qualities on which I was
+supposed to have an opinion, there was no room for objection on my part.
+The marriage was speedily celebrated. My husband was wealthy. Of that my
+father had taken care to satisfy himself; perhaps it was the only point
+on which he was very solicitous. For I should tell you that my father,
+the only parent I have surviving, is one of those restless unquiet men
+who have no permanent abode, who delight in travelling from place to
+place, and who regard their children, if they have any, in the light
+only of cares and encumbrances. There is not a capital in Europe in
+which he has not resided, and scarcely a spot of any celebrity which he
+has not visited. It was therefore at the house of a maiden aunt&mdash;to whom
+I am now about to return&mdash;that I was married.</p>
+
+<p>“I spent the first years of my marriage, as young brides I believe
+generally do, in a sort of trouble of felicity. I did not know how to be
+sufficiently thankful to Heaven for the treasure I found myself the
+possessor of; such a sweetness of temper and such a tenderness of
+affection did my husband continually manifest towards me. After a short
+season of festivity, spent at the house of my aunt, we travelled
+together without any other companion towards Paris, where the Count had
+a residence elegantly fitted up to receive us. The journey itself was a
+new source of delight to one who had been hitherto shut up, with her
+instructress, in a convent. Never shall I forget the hilarity, the
+almost insupportable joy, with which the first part of this journey was
+performed. The sun shone out upon a beautiful landscape, and there was
+I, travelling alone with the one individual who had suddenly awoke and
+possessed himself of all my affections&mdash;travelling, too, with gay
+anticipations to the glorious city of Paris, of which I had heard so
+much, and in which I was to appear with all the envied advantages of
+wealth.</p>
+
+<p>“As we approached towards Paris, I noticed that my husband became more
+quiet and reserved. I attributed it to the fatigue of travelling, to
+which my own spirits began to succumb; and as the day was drawing to a
+close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest
+there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and
+impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the
+<span class="pagebreak" title="695">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_695" id="Page_695"></a>
+least symptom before,
+he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the
+speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became
+restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. It was
+now night. Leaning back in the carriage, and fixing my eye upon the full
+moon that was shining brightly upon us, I tried to quiet my own spirit,
+somewhat ruffled by this unexpected behaviour of my husband. I observed,
+after a short time, that <i>his</i> eye also had become riveted on the same
+bright object; but not with any tranquillizing effect, for his
+countenance grew every minute more and more sombre. On a sudden he
+called aloud to the postilion to stop&mdash;threw open the carriage-door, and
+walked in a rapid pace down towards a river that for some time had
+accompanied our course. I sprang after him. I overtook, and grasped him
+as he was in the very act of plunging into the river. O my God! how I
+prayed, and wept, and struggled to prevent him from rushing into the
+stream. At length he sat down upon the bank of the river; he turned to
+me his wild and frenzied eye&mdash;he laughed&mdash;O Heaven! he was mad!</p>
+
+<p>“They had married me to a madman. Cured, or presumed to be cured, of
+his disorder, he had been permitted to return to society; and now his
+malady had broken out again. He who was to be my guide and protector,
+who was my only support, who took the place of parent, friend,
+instructor&mdash;he was a lunatic!</p>
+
+<p>“For three dreadful hours did I sit beside him on that bank&mdash;at
+night&mdash;with none to help me&mdash;restraining him by all means I could devise
+from renewed attempts to precipitate himself into the river. At last I
+succeeded in bringing him back to the carriage. For the rest of the
+journey he was quiet; but he was imbecile&mdash;his reason had deserted him.</p>
+
+<p>“We arrived at his house in Paris. A domestic assisted me in conducting
+him to his chamber; and from that time I, the young wife, who the other
+morning had conceived herself the happiest of beings, was transformed
+into the keeper of a maniac&mdash;of a helpless or a raving lunatic. I wrote
+to my father. He was on the point of setting out upon one of his
+rambling expeditions, and contented himself with appealing to the
+relatives of my husband, who, he maintained, were the proper persons to
+take charge of the lunatic. They, on the other hand, left him to the
+care of the new relations he had formed by a marriage, which had
+interfered with their expectations and claims upon his property. Thus
+was I left alone&mdash;a stranger in this great city of Paris, which was to
+have welcomed me with all its splendours, and festivities, and its
+brilliant society&mdash;my sole task to soothe and control a maniac husband.
+It was frightful. Scarcely could I venture to sleep an hour
+together&mdash;night or day&mdash;lest he should commit some outrage upon himself
+or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk
+under it; but, by God’s good providence, the malady of my husband took a
+new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon
+other vital parts of the constitution. He wasted away and died. I indeed
+live; but I, too, have wasted away, body and soul, for I have no health
+and no joy within me.”</p>
+
+<p>Just at this time a low murmuring conversation between my two
+fellow-countrymen, at my left, broke out, much to my annoyance, into
+sudden exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>“By God! sir,” cried one of them, “I thrashed him in the <i>Grande Place</i>,
+right before the hotel there&mdash;what’s its name?&mdash;the first hotel in
+Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my
+britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he
+did it again I would <i>punish</i> him; that is, I did not exactly <i>tell</i>
+him&mdash;for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, of which I
+could not speak a word&mdash;but I held out my fist in a significant manner,
+which neither man nor brute could mistake. Well, just as we turned into
+the <i>Grande Place</i>, the lubber grazed my wheel again. I jumped out of
+the carriage&mdash;I pulled him&mdash;boots and all&mdash;off his horse, and how I
+cuffed him! My friend Lord L&mdash;&mdash; was standing at the window of the
+hotel, looking out for my arrival, and was witness to this exploit. He
+was most dead with laughter when I came up to him.”</p>
+
+<p>“I once,” said his interlocutor,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="696">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_696" id="Page_696"></a>
+ “thrashed an English postilion after
+the same fashion; but your Russian, with his enormous boots, must have
+afforded capital sport. When I travel I always look out for <i>fun</i>. What
+else is the use of travelling? I and young B&mdash;&mdash;, whom you may remember
+at Oxford, were at a ball together at Brussels, and what do you think we
+did? We strewed cayenne pepper on the floor, and no sooner did the girls
+begin to dance than they began incontinently to sneeze. Ladies and
+gentlemen were curtsying, and bowing, and sneezing to one another in the
+most ludicrous manner conceivable.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ha! ha! ha! Excellent! By the way,” rejoined the other, “talking of
+Brussels, do you know who has the glory of that famous joke practised
+there upon the statues in the park? They give the credit of it to the
+English, but on what ground, except the celebrity they have acquired in
+such feats, I could never learn.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know nothing of it. What was it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, you see, amongst the statues in the little park at Brussels are a
+number of those busts without arms or shoulders. I cannot call to mind
+their technical name. First you have the head of a man, then a sort of
+decorated pillar instead of a body, and then again, at the bottom of the
+pillar, there protrude a couple of naked feet. They look part pillar and
+part man, with a touch of the mummy. Now, it is impossible to
+contemplate such a figure without being struck with the idea, how
+completely at the mercy of every passer-by are both its nose&mdash;which has
+no hand to defend it&mdash;and its naked toes, which cannot possibly move
+from their fixed position. One may tweak the one, and tread upon the
+other, with such manifest impunity. Some one in whom this idea, no
+doubt, wrought very powerfully, took hammer and chisel, and shied off
+the noses and the great toes of several of these mummy-statues. And
+pitiful enough they looked next morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that was capital!”</p>
+
+<p>“And the best of it is, that even now, when the noses have been put on
+again, the figures look as odd as if they had none at all. The join is
+so manifest, and speaks so plainly of past mutilation, that no one can
+give to these creatures, let them exist as long as they will, the credit
+of wearing their own noses. The jest is immortal.”</p>
+
+<p>The recital of this excellent piece of <i>fun</i> was followed by another
+explosion of laughter. The Frenchman who sat opposite to me&mdash;a man, as I
+have said, of grave but urbane deportment, became curious to know what
+it was that our neighbours had been conversing about, and which had
+occasioned so much hilarity. He very politely expressed this wish to me.
+If it was not an indiscretion, he should like to partake, he said, in
+the wit that was flowing round him; adding, perhaps superfluously, that
+he did not understand English.</p>
+
+<p>“Monsieur, I am glad of it,” I replied.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur, who concluded from my answer that I was in a similar
+predicament with respect to the French language, bowed and remained
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>Here the conversation to my left ceased to flow, or subsided into its
+former murmuring channel, and I was again able to listen to my fair
+neighbours to the right. The lively dame who sat by my side had now the
+word; she was administering consolations and philosophy to the young
+widow.</p>
+
+<p>“At your age health,” said she, “is not irretrievable, and, sweet madam,
+your good looks are left you. A touch of rouge upon your cheek, and you
+are quite an angel. And then you are free&mdash;you will one day travel back
+again to Paris with a better escort than you had before.”</p>
+
+<p>And here she gave a sigh which prepared the hearer for the disclosure
+that was to follow.</p>
+
+<p>“Now I,” she continued, “have been married, but, alas! am <i>not</i> a widow.
+I have a husband standing out against me somewhere in the world. In the
+commercial language of my father, I wish I could cancel him.”</p>
+
+<p>“What! he has deserted you?” said her fair companion, in a sympathizing
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall hear, my dear madam. My father, you must know, is a plain
+citizen. He did not charge himself with the task of looking out a
+husband for his girls; he followed what he called the English plan&mdash;let
+the girls look out for themselves, and contented
+<span class="pagebreak" title="697">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_697" id="Page_697"></a>
+himself with a <i>veto</i>
+upon the choice, if it should displease him. Now, Monsieur Lemaire was a
+perfect Adonis; he dressed, and danced, and talked to admiration; no man
+dressed, danced, or talked better; his mirth was inexhaustible&mdash;his
+good-humour unfailing.”</p>
+
+<p>Well, thought I to myself, what is coming now? This lady, at all events,
+chose with her own eyes, and had her own time to choose in. Is her
+experience to prove, that the chance of securing a good husband is much
+the same, let him be chosen how he may?</p>
+
+<p>“No wonder, then,” continued the lady, “that I accepted his proposal.
+The very thought of marrying him as paradise; and I <i>did</i> marry him.”</p>
+
+<p>“And so were really in paradise?” said the widow, with a gentle smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes! it <i>was</i> a paradise. It was a constant succession of
+amusements; theatre, balls, excursions&mdash;all enjoyed with the charming
+Lemaire. And he so happy, too! I thought he would have devoured me. We
+were verily in paradise for three months. At the end of which time he
+came one morning into the room swinging an empty purse in the air&mdash;‘Now,
+I think,’ said he with the same cheerful countenance that he usually
+wore, ‘that I have proved my devotion to you in a remarkable manner.
+Another man would have thought it much if he had made some sacrifice to
+gain possession of you for life; I have spent every farthing I had in
+the world to possess you for three months. Oh, that those three months
+were to live over again! But every thing has its end.’ And he tossed the
+empty purse in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I laughed at what I considered a very pleasant jest; for who did not
+know that M. Lemaire was a man of ample property? I laughed still more
+heartily as he went on to say, that a coach stood at the door to take me
+back to my father, and begged me not to keep the coachman waiting, as in
+that case the fellow would charge for time, and it had taken his last
+sou to pay his fare by distance. I clapped my hands in applause of my
+excellent comedian. But, gracious Heavens! it was all true! There stood
+the coach at the door, the fare paid to my father’s house, and an empty
+purse was literally all that I now had to participate with the gay,
+wealthy, accomplished Lemaire.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” I exclaimed with rage and agony, as the truth broke upon me, “do
+you desert your wife?”</p>
+
+<p>“Desert my charming wife!” he replied. “Ask the hungry pauper, who turns
+his back upon the fragrant <i>restaurant</i>, if he deserts his dinner. You
+are as beautiful, as bright, as lovely as ever&mdash;you cannot think with
+what a sigh I quit you!”</p>
+
+<p>“But”&mdash;&mdash;and I began a torrent of recrimination.</p>
+
+<p>“‘But,’ said he, interrupting me, ‘I have not a sou. For you,’ he
+continued, ‘you are as charming as ever&mdash;you will win your way only the
+better in the world for this little experience. And as for me&mdash;I have
+been in Elysium for three months; and that is more than a host of your
+excellent prudent men can boast of, who plod on day after day only that
+they may continue plodding to the end of their lives. Adieu! my
+adorable&mdash;my angel that will now vanish from my sight!’ And here, in
+spite of my struggles, he embraced me with the greatest ardour, and
+then, tearing himself away as if he only were the sufferer, he rushed
+out of the room. I have never seen him since.”</p>
+
+<p>“And such men really exist!” said the young widow, moved to indignation.
+“For so short a season of pleasure he could deliberately compromise the
+whole of your future life.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it not horrible? His father, it seems, had left him a certain sum of
+money, and this was the scheme he had devised to draw from it the
+greatest advantage. <i>Mais, mon Dieu!</i>” added the lively Frenchwoman, “of
+what avail to afflict one’s-self? Only if he would but die before I am
+an old woman! And then those three months”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Here the diligence suddenly stopped, and the conductor opening the door,
+invited us to step out and take some refreshment, and so put an end for
+the present to this medley conversation.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="698">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_698" id="Page_698"></a>
+WHO WROTE GIL BLAS?</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the year 1783, Joseph Francisco De Isla, one of the most eminent of
+modern Spanish writers, published a Spanish translation of Gil Blas. In
+this work some events were suppressed, others altered, the diction was
+greatly modified, the topographical and chronological errors with which
+the French version abounded were allowed to remain, and the Spanish
+origin of that celebrated work was asserted on such slender grounds, and
+vindicated by such trifling arguments, as to throw considerable doubt on
+the fact in the opinion of all impartial judges. The French were not
+slow to seize upon so favourable an occasion to gratify their national
+vanity; and in 1818, M. le Comte Fran&ccedil;ois de Neufchateau, a member of
+the French Institute and an Ex-minister of the Interior, published a
+dissertation, in which, after a modest insinuation that the
+extraordinary merit of Gil Blas was a sufficient proof of its French
+origin, the feeble arguments of Padre Isla were triumphantly refuted,
+and the claims of Le Sage to the original conception of Gil Blas were
+asserted, to the complete satisfaction of all patriotic Frenchmen. Here
+the matter rested, till, in 1820, Don Juan Antonio Llorente drew up his
+reasons for holding the opinion of which Isla had been the unsuccessful
+advocate, and, with even punctilious courtesy, transmitted them before
+publication to M. Le Montey, by whose judgment in the matter he
+expressed his determination to abide. M. Le Montey referred the matter
+to two commissioners&mdash;one being M. Raynouard, a well-known and useful
+writer, the other M. Neufchateau, the author whom Llorente’s work was
+intended to refute.</p>
+
+<p>This literary commission seems to have produced as little benefit to the
+public as if each of the members had been chosen by a political party,
+had received a salary varying from &pound;1500 to &pound;2000 a-year, and been sent
+into Ireland to report upon the condition of the people, or into Canada
+to discover why French republicans dislike the institutions of a Saxon
+monarchy. To be sure, the advantage is on the side of the French
+academicians; for, instead of sending forth a mass of confused,
+contradictory, and ill-written reports, based upon imperfect evidence,
+and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as
+Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente
+attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of
+the three French <i>savans</i>, to the impossibility of finding any thing to
+say, after the lapse of a year and a half publishes his arguments, and
+appeals to literary Europe as the judge “en dernier ressort” of this
+important controversy. Llorente, however, was too precipitate; for on
+the 8th of January 1822, M. de Neufchateau presented to the French
+Academy an answer to Llorente’s observations, on which we shall
+presently remark.</p>
+
+<p>It is maintained by the ingenious writer, Llorente&mdash;whose arguments,
+with such additions and remarks as have occurred to us upon the subject,
+we propose to lay before our readers,</p>
+
+<p>1st, That Gil Blas and the Bachiller de Salamanca were originally one
+and the same romance.</p>
+
+<p>2dly, That the author of this romance was at any rate a Spaniard.</p>
+
+<p>3dly, That his name was Don Antonio de Solis y Ribadeneira, author of
+<i>Historia de la Conquista de M&eacute;jico</i>.</p>
+
+<p>4thly, That Le Sage turned the single romance into two; repeating in
+both the same stories slightly modified, and mixing them up with other
+translations from Spanish novels.</p>
+
+<p>As the main argument turns upon the originality of Le Sage considered as
+the author of Gil Blas, we shall first dispose in a very few words of
+the third proposition; and for this purpose we must beg our readers to
+take for granted, during a few moments, that Gil Blas was the work of a
+Spaniard, and to enquire, supposing that truth sufficiently established,
+who that Spaniard was.</p>
+
+<p>Llorente enumerates thirty-six eminent writers who flourished in 1655,
+the period when, as we shall presently see, the romance in question was
+written. Of these Don Louis de
+<span class="pagebreak" title="699">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699"></a>
+Guevarra, author of the Diablo Cojuelo,
+Francisco de Santos, Jos&eacute; Pellicer, and Solis, are among the most
+distinguished. Llorente, however, puts all aside&mdash;and all, except
+Pellicer perhaps, for very sufficient reasons&mdash;determining that Solis
+alone united all the attributes and circumstances belonging to the
+writer of Gil Blas. The writer of Gil Blas was a Castilian&mdash;this may be
+inferred from his panegyric on Castilian wit, which he declares equal to
+that of Athens; he must have been a dramatic writer, from his repeated
+criticisms on the drama, and the keenness with which he sifts the merit
+of contemporary dramatic authors; he must have been a great master of
+narrative, and thoroughly acquainted with the habits and institutions of
+his age and country; he must have possessed the art of enlivening his
+story with caustic allusions, and with repartees; he must have been
+perfectly conversant with the intrigues of courtiers, and have acquired
+from his own experience, or the relation of others, an intimate
+knowledge of the private life of Olivarez, and the details of Philip
+IV.’s court. All these requisites are united in Solis:&mdash;he was born at
+Alcal&aacute; de Henares, a city of Castile; he was one of the best dramatic
+writers of his day, the day of Calderon de la Barca. That he was a great
+historical writer, is proved by his <i>Conquista de M&eacute;jico</i>; his comedies
+prove his thorough knowledge of Spanish habits; and the retorts and
+quiddities of his Graciosos flash with as much wit as any that were ever
+uttered by those brilliant and fantastic denizens of the Spanish stage.
+He was a courtier; he was secretary to Oropezo, viceroy successively of
+Navarre and of Valencia, and was afterwards promoted by Philip IV. to be
+“Oficial de la Secretaria” of the first minister Don Louis de Haro, and
+was allowed, as an especial mark of royal favour, to dispose of his
+place in favour of his relation. This happened about the year
+1654&mdash;corresponding, as we shall see, exactly with the mission of the
+Marquis de Lionne. Afterwards he was appointed Cronista Mayor de las
+Indias, and wrote his famous history. These are the arguments in favour
+of Solis, which cannot be offered in behalf of any of his thirty-six
+competitors. It is therefore the opinion of Llorente that the honour of
+being the author of Gil Blas is due to him; and in this opinion,
+supposing the fact which we now proceed to investigate, that a Spaniard,
+and not Le Sage, was the author of the work, is made out to their
+satisfaction, our readers will probably acquiesce.</p>
+
+<p>The steps by which the argument that Gil Blas is taken from a Spanish
+manuscript proceeds, are few and direct. It abounds in facts and
+allusions which none but a Spaniard could know: this is the first step.
+It abounds in errors that no Spaniard could make&mdash;(by the way, this is
+much insisted upon by M. de Neufchateau, who does not seem to perceive
+that, taken together with the preceding proposition, it is fatal to his
+argument:) this is the second step, and leads us to the conclusion that
+the true theory of its origin must reconcile these apparent
+contradictions.</p>
+
+<p>A Spanish manuscript does account for this inconsistency, as it would
+furnish the transcriber with the most intimate knowledge of local
+habits, names, and usages; while at the same time it would not guard him
+against mistakes which negligence or haste, or the difficulty of
+deciphering a manuscript in a language with which the transcriber was by
+no means critically acquainted, must occasion. Still less would it guard
+him against errors which would almost inevitably arise from the
+insertion of other Spanish novels, or the endeavour to give the work a
+false claim to originality, by alluding to topics fashionable in the
+city and age when the work was copied.</p>
+
+<p>The method we propose to follow, is to place before the reader each
+division of the argument. We shall show a most intimate knowledge with
+Spanish life, clearly proving that the writer, whoever he is, is
+unconscious of any merit in painting scenes with which he was habitually
+familiar. Let any reader compare the facility of these unstudied
+allusions with the descriptions of a different age or time, even by the
+best writers of a different epoch and country, however accurate and
+dramatic they may be&mdash;with <i>Quentin Durward</i> or <i>Ivanhoe</i>, for instance;
+or with Barante’s <i>Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne</i>, and they will see
+<span class="pagebreak" title="700">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_700" id="Page_700"></a>
+the force of this remark. In spite of art, and ability, and antiquarian
+knowledge, it is evident that a resemblance is industriously sought in
+one case, and is spontaneous in the other; that it is looked upon as a
+matter of course, and not as a title to praise, by the first class of
+writers, while it is elaborately wrought out, as an artist’s pretension
+to eminence, in the second. If Le Sage had been the original author of
+Gil Blas, he would have avoided the multiplication of circumstances,
+names, and dates; or if he had thought it necessary to intersperse his
+composition with them, he would have contented himself with such as were
+most general and notorious; the minute, circuitous, and oblique
+allusions, which it required patient examination to detect, and vast
+local knowledge to appreciate, could not have fallen within his plan.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly&mdash;We shall point out the mistakes, some of them really
+surprising even in a foreign writer, with regard to names, dates, and
+circumstances, oversetting every congruity which it was manifestly Le
+Sage’s object to establish. We shall show that the Spanish novels
+inserted by him do not mix with the body of the work; and moreover we
+shall show that in one instance, where Le Sage hazarded an allusion to
+Parisian gossip, he betrayed the most profound ignorance of those very
+customs which, in other parts of the work passing under his name, are
+delineated with such truth of colouring, and Dutch minuteness of
+observation.</p>
+
+<p>If these two propositions be clearly established, we have a right to
+infer from them the existence of a Spanish manuscript, as on any other
+hypothesis the claims of an original writer would be clashing and
+contradictory.</p>
+
+<p>M. Neufchateau, as we have observed, reiterates the assertion that the
+errors of Gil Blas are such as no Spaniard could commit, leaving
+altogether unguarded against the goring horn of the dilemma which can
+only be parried by an answer to the question&mdash;how came it to pass that
+Le Sage could enumerate the names of upwards of twenty inconsiderable
+towns and villages, upwards of twenty families not of the first class;
+and in every page of his work represent, with the most punctilious
+fidelity, the manners of a country he never saw? Nay, how came it to
+pass that, instead of avoiding minute details, local circumstances, and
+the mention of particular facts, as he might easily have done, he
+accumulates all these opportunities of mistake and contradiction,
+descends to the most trifling facts, and interweaves them with the web
+of his narrative (conscious of ignorance, as, according to M.
+Neufchateau, he must have been) without effort and without design.</p>
+
+<p>Let us begin by laying before the readers the <i>pi&egrave;ces du proc&egrave;s</i>. First,
+we insert the description of Le Sage given by two French writers.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Voici ce que disoit Voltaire &agrave; l’article de Le Sage, dans la
+premi&egrave;re &eacute;dition du Si&egrave;cle de Louis XIV.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“‘Son roman de Gil Blas est demeur&eacute;, parcequ’il y a du naturel.’</p>
+
+<p>“Dans les editions suivantes du Si&egrave;cle de Louis XIV., Voltaire
+ajoute un fait qu’il se contente d’&eacute;noncer simplement, comme une
+chose hors de doute; c’est que Gil Blas est pris enti&egrave;rement d’un
+livre &eacute;crit en Espagnol, et dont il cite ainsi le t&icirc;tre&mdash;La vidad
+de lo Escudero Dom Marco d’Obrego&mdash;sans indiquer aucunement la
+date, l’auteur, ni l’objet de cette vie de l’&eacute;cuyer Dom Marco
+d’Obrego.”</p>
+
+<p>“Extrait du Nouveau Porte-feuille historique, poetique, et
+litteraire de Bruzen de La Martini&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p>“‘Baillet n’entendoit pas l’Espagnol. Au sujet de Louis Vel&eacute;s de
+Guevarra, auteur Espagnol, dans ses jugements des savants sur les
+po&egrave;tes modernes, &sect; 1461, il dit: On a de lui plusieurs comedies qui
+ont &eacute;t&eacute; imprim&eacute;es en diverses villes d’Espagne, et une pi&egrave;ce
+fac&eacute;tieuse, sous le t&icirc;tre El Diabolo Cojuelo, novella de la otra
+vida: sur quoi M. de La Monnoye fait cette note. Comment un homme
+qui fait tant le modeste et le reserv&eacute; a-t-il pu &eacute;crire un mot tel
+que celui-la? Cette note n’est pas juste. Il semble que M. de La
+Monnoye veuille taxer Baillet de n’avoir pas sontenu le caract&egrave;re
+de modestie, qu’il affectoit. Baillet ne faisoit pas le modeste, il
+l’&eacute;toit v&eacute;ritablement par &eacute;tat et par principe; et s’il e&ucirc;t entendu
+le mot immodeste, ce mot lui auroit &eacute;t&eacute; suspect; il eut eu recours
+&agrave; l’original, o&ugrave; il auroit trouv&eacute; Diablo, et non Diabolo, Cojuelo
+et non Cojudo, et auroit bien v&icirc;te corrig&eacute; la faute. Mais comme il
+n’entendoit ni l’un ni l’autre de ces derniers mots, il lui fut
+ais&eacute;, en copiant ses extraits, de
+<span class="pagebreak" title="701">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_701" id="Page_701"></a>
+prendre un <i>el</i> pour un <i>d</i>, et
+de changer par cette l&eacute;g&egrave;re diff&eacute;rence Cojuelo, qui veut dire
+boiteux, en Cojudo, qui signifie quelqu’un qui a de gros
+testicules, et sobrino l’exprime encore plus grossi&egrave;rement en
+Fran&ccedil;ois. M. de La Monnoye devoit moins s’arr&ecirc;ter &agrave; l’immodestie de
+l’&eacute;pith&egrave;te, qu’&agrave; la corruption du vrai t&icirc;tre le Guevarra.”</p>
+
+<p>“Au reste, c’est le m&ecirc;me ouvrage que M. La Sage nous a fait
+conno&icirc;tre sous le t&icirc;tre du Diable Boiteux; il l’a tourn&eacute;, &agrave; sa
+mani&egrave;re, mais avec des diff&eacute;rences si grandes que Guevarra ne se
+reconno&icirc;troit qu’&agrave; peine dans cette pretendue traduction. Par
+exemple, le chapitre xix de la seconde partie contient une aventure
+de D. Pablas, qui se trouve en original dans un livre imprim&eacute; &agrave;
+Madrid en 1729, (sic.) L’auteur des lectures amusantes, qui ne
+s’est pas souvenu que M. Le Sage, en avoit ins&eacute;r&eacute; une partie dans
+son Diable Boiteux, l’a traduite de nouveau avec assez de libert&eacute;,
+mais pourtant en s’&eacute;cartant moins de l’original, et l’a ins&eacute;r&eacute;e
+dans sa premi&egrave;re partie &agrave; peu pr&egrave;s telle qu’elle se lit dans
+l’original Espagnol. Mais M. Le Sage l’a trait&eacute;e avec de grands
+changements, c’est sa mani&egrave;re d’embellir extr&ecirc;mement tout ce qu’il
+emprunte des Espagnols. C’est ainsi qu’il en a us&eacute; envers Gil Blas,
+dont il a fait un chef-d’œuvre inimitable.”&mdash;(Pages 336-339,
+&eacute;dition de 1757, dans les <i>Passetemps Politiques, Historiques, et
+Critiques</i>, tome 11, in 12.)</p></div>
+
+<p>As an example of the accuracy with which Le Sage has imitated his
+originals, we quote the annexed passages from Marcos de Obregon&mdash;Page 3.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“En leyendo el villete, dixo al que le traia: Dezilde a vuestro
+amo, que di goyo, que para cosas, que me inportan mucho gusto no me
+suelo leuantar hasta las doze del dia: que porque quiere, que pare
+matarme me leuante tan dema&ntilde;ana? y boluiendose del otro lado, se
+torn&ocirc; a dormir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don Mathias prit le billet, l’ouvrit, et, apr&egrave;s l’avoir lu, dit
+an valet de Don Lope. ‘Mon enfant, je ne me leverois jamais avant
+midi, quelque partie de plaisir qu’on me p&ucirc;t proposer; juge si je
+me leverai &agrave; six heures du matin pour me battre. Tu peux dire &agrave;
+ton ma&icirc;tre que, s’il est encore &agrave; midi et demi dans l’endroit o&ugrave;
+il m’attend, nous nous y verons: va, lui porter cette r&eacute;ponse.’ A
+ces mots il s’enfon&ccedil;a dans son lit, et ne tarda gu&egrave;re &agrave; se
+rendormir.”</p>
+
+<p>“No quereys que si&eacute;ta ofensa hecha a un corderillo, como este? a
+una paloma sin hiel, a un mocito tan humilde, y apazible que, aun
+quexarse no sabe de una cosa tan mal hecha? cierto y quisiera ser
+hombre en este punto para v&eacute;garle.”</p>
+
+<p>“‘Pourquoi,’ s’&eacute;cria-t-elle avec emportement&mdash;pourquoi ne
+voulez-vous pas que je ressente vivement l’offense qu’on a fait &agrave;
+ce petit agneau, &agrave; cette colombe sans fiel, qui ne se plaint
+seulement pas de l’outrage qu’il a re&ccedil;u? Ah! que ne suis-je homme
+en ce moment pour le venger!”</p></div>
+
+<p>After this we think we are fairly entitled to affirm, that Le Sage was
+not considered by his contemporaries as a man of original and creative
+genius; although he possessed, in an eminent degree, the power of
+appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was
+graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any
+one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and that he is entitled to
+the credit of an inventor, let him cite any single work written by Le
+Sage, except <i>Gil Blas</i>, in proof of his assertion. Of course <i>Gil Blas</i>
+is out of the question. Nothing could be more circular than an argument
+that Le Sage, because he possessed an inventive genius, might have
+written <i>Gil Blas</i>; and that because he might have written <i>Gil Blas</i>,
+he possessed an inventive genius. This being the case, let us examine
+his biography. Le Sage was born in 1668 at Sargan, a small town near
+Vannes in Bretagne; at twenty-seven he published a translation of
+Aristœn&aelig;tus; and declining, from his love of literature, the hopes of
+advancement, which, had he taken orders, were within his reach, he came
+to Paris, where he contracted an intimate friendship with the Abb&eacute; de
+Lyonne, who settled a pension on him, taught him Spanish, and bequeathed
+to him his library&mdash;consisting,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="702">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702"></a>
+among other works, of several Spanish
+manuscripts&mdash;at his death. His generous benefactor was the third son of
+Hugo, Marquis de Lyonne, one of the most accomplished and intelligent
+men in France. In 1656 he was set on a secret mission to Madrid; the
+object of this mission was soon discovered in the peace of the Pyrenees
+1650, and the marriage of Maria Theresa of Austria, eldest daughter of
+Philip IV., with Louis XIV. During his residence in Spain the Marquis de
+Lyonne lived in great intimacy with Louis de Haro, Duke of Montoro. The
+Marquis de Lyonne was passionately fond of Spanish literature; he not
+only purchased all the printed Spanish works he could procure, but a
+vast quantity of unprinted manuscripts in the same language, all which,
+together with the rest of his library, became at his death the property
+of his son, the Abb&eacute; de Lyonne&mdash;the friend, patron, and testator of Le
+Sage. To these facts must be added another very important circumstance,
+that Le Sage never entered Spain. Of this fact, fatal as it is to Le
+Sage’s claims, Padre Isla was ignorant; but it is stated with an air of
+triumph by M. Neufchateau, is proved by Llorente, and must be considered
+incontestable. The case, then, as far as external evidence is concerned,
+stands thus. Le Sage, a master of his own language, but not an inventive
+writer, and who had never visited Spain, contracts a friendship which
+gives him at first the opportunity of perusing, and afterwards the
+absolute possession of, a number of Spanish manuscripts. Having
+published several elegant paraphrases and translations of printed
+Spanish works, he published <i>Gil Blas</i> in several volumes, at long
+intervals, as an original work; after this, he published the <i>Bachelier
+de Salamanque</i>, which he calls himself a translation from a Spanish
+manuscript, of which he never produces the original. Did the matter rest
+here, much suspicion would be thrown upon Le Sage’s claims to the
+authorship of <i>Gil Blas</i>; but we come now to the evidence arising, “ex
+visceribus caus&aelig;,” from the work itself, and the manner of its
+publication.</p>
+
+<p>The chief points of resemblance between Gil Blas and the Bachelier de
+Salamanque, are the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. The Bachelier de Salamanque is remarkable for his logical
+subtilty&mdash;so is Gil Blas.</p>
+
+<p>2. The doctor of Salamanque, by whom the bachelor is supported after his
+father’s death, is avaricious&mdash;so is Gil Blas’s uncle, the canon of
+Oviedo, Gil Perez.</p>
+
+<p>3. The doctor recommends the bachelor of Salamanca to obtain a situation
+as tutor&mdash;the canon gives similar advice to Gil Blas.</p>
+
+<p>4. The bachelor is dissuaded from becoming a tutor&mdash;Fabricio dissuades
+Gil Blas from taking the same situation.</p>
+
+<p>5. A friar of Madrid makes it his business to find vacant places for
+tutors&mdash;a friar of Cordova, in Gil Blas, does the same.</p>
+
+<p>6. The bachelor is obliged to leave Madrid because he is the favoured
+lover of Donna Lucia de Padilla&mdash;Gil Blas is obliged to leave the
+Marquise de Chaves for the same reason.</p>
+
+<p>7. Bartolome, the comedian, encourages his wife’s intrigues&mdash;Melchier
+Zapata does the same.</p>
+
+<p>8. The lover of Donna Francisca, in Granada, is a foreign nobleman kept
+there by important business&mdash;the situation of the Marquis de Marialva is
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>9. The comedian abandons an old and liberal lover, for Fonseca, who is
+young and poor&mdash;Laura prefers Louis de Alaga to his rival, for the same
+reason.</p>
+
+<p>10. Bartolome, to deceive Francisca, assumes the name of Don Pompeio de
+la Cueva&mdash;to deceive Laura, Gil Blas pretends to be Don Fernando de
+Ribera.</p>
+
+<p>11. <i>Le Bachelier</i> contains repeated allusions to Dominican friars, and
+particularly to Cirilo Carambola&mdash;similar allusions abound in <i>Gil
+Blas</i>, where Louis de Aliaga, confessor of Philip III., is particularly
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>12. The character of Diego Cintillo, in the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i>,
+is identical with that of Manuel Ordo&ntilde;ez in <i>Gil Blas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>13. An aunt of the Duke of Uzeda obtains for the bachelor the place of
+secretary in the minister’s office&mdash;Gil Blas obtains the same post by
+means of an uncle of the Count of Olivarez.</p>
+
+<p>14. The bachelor, whilst secretary at Uzeda, assists in bringing about
+<span class="pagebreak" title="703">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_703" id="Page_703"></a>
+his patron’s daughter’s marriage&mdash;Gil Blas does the same whilst
+secretary of the Duke of Olivarez.</p>
+
+<p>15. Francisca, the actress, is shut up in a convent at Carthagena,
+because the corregidor’s son falls in love with her&mdash;Laura, in <i>Gil
+Blas</i>, is shut up in a convent, because the corregidor’s only son falls
+in love with her.</p>
+
+<p>16. The adventures of Francisca and Laura resemble each other.</p>
+
+<p>17. So do those of Toston and Scipio.</p>
+
+<p>18. Toston and Scipio both lose their wives; and both disbelieve in
+reality, though they think proper to accept, the excuses they make on
+their return.</p>
+
+<p>19. <i>Finally</i>, in <i>Gil Blas</i> we find a vivid description of the habits
+and manners prevalent in the European dominions of Spain during the
+reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. But in no part of <i>Gil Blas</i> do we
+find any allusion to the habits and manners of the viceroy’s canons,
+nuns, and monks of America; and yet Scipio is dispatched with a
+lucrative commission to New Spain. It may fairly be inferred, therefore,
+that so vast a portion of the Spanish monarchy did not escape the notice
+of the attentive critic who wrote <i>Gil Blas</i>; and the silence can only
+be accounted for by the fact, that the principal anecdotes relating to
+America, were reserved to make out the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i>, from
+the remainder of which <i>Gil Blas</i> was taken.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the dates of <i>Gil Blas</i> and the Bachelier de Salamanque were
+these:&mdash;the two first volumes of <i>Gil Blas</i> were published in 1715, the
+third volume in 1724, which, it is clear, he intended to be the last.
+First, from the Latin verses with which it closes; and secondly, from
+the remark of the anachronism of Don Pompeyo de Castro, which he
+promises to correct if his work gets to a new edition. In 1735 he
+published a fourth volume of <i>Gil Blas</i>, and, in 1738, the two volumes
+of the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i> as a translation. Will it be said that
+Le Sage’s other works prove him to have been capable of inventing <i>Gil
+Blas</i>? It will be still without foundation. All his critics agree, that,
+though well qualified to embellish the ideas of others, and master of a
+flowing and agreeable style, he was not an inventive or original writer.
+Such is the language of Voltaire, M. de la Martini&egrave;re, and of Chardin,
+and even of M. Neufchateau himself; and yet, it is to a person of this
+description that the authorship of <i>Gil Blas</i>, second only to <i>Don
+Quixote</i> in prose works of fiction, has been attributed.</p>
+
+<p>Among the topics insisted upon by the Comte de Neufchateau as most
+clearly establishing the French origin of <i>Gil Blas</i>, an intimate
+acquaintance with the court of Louis XIV., and frequent allusions to the
+most remarkable characters in it, are very conspicuous. But to him who
+really endeavours to discover the country of an anonymous writer, such
+an argument, unless reduced to very minute details, and contracted into
+a very narrow compass, will not appear satisfactory. He will recollect
+that the extremes of society are very uniform, that courts resemble each
+other as well as prisons; and that, as was once observed, if King
+Christophe’s courtiers were examined, the great features of their
+character would be found to correspond with those of their whiter
+brethren in Europe. The abuses of government, the wrong distribution of
+patronage, the effects of clandestine influence, the solicitations and
+intrigues of male and female favourites, the treachery of confidants,
+the petty jealousies and insignificant struggles of place-hunters, are
+the same, or nearly so, in every country; and it requires no great
+acuteness to detect, or courage to expose, their consequences&mdash;the name
+of Choiseul, or Uzeda, or Buckingham, or Bruhl, or Kaunitz, may be
+applied to such descriptions with equal probability and equal justice.
+But when the Tiers Etat are portrayed, when the satirist enters into
+detail, when he enumerates circumstances, when local manners, national
+habits, and individual peculiarities fall under his notice; when he
+describes the specific disease engendered in the atmosphere by which his
+characters are surrounded; when, to borrow a lawyer’s phrase, he
+condescends to particulars, then it is that close and intimate
+acquaintance with the scenes and persons he describes is requisite; and
+that a superficial critic falls, at every step into errors the most
+glaring
+<span class="pagebreak" title="704">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_704" id="Page_704"></a>
+and ridiculous. There are many passages of this description in
+<i>Gil Blas</i> to which we shall presently allude; in the mean time let us
+follow the advice of Count Hamilton, and begin with the beginning&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Me voila donc hors d’Ovi&eacute;do, sur le chemin de Pe&ntilde;aflor, au milieu
+de la campagne, ma&icirc;tre de mes actions, d’une mauvaise mule, et de
+quarante bons ducats, sans compter quelques r&eacute;aux que j’avois vol&eacute;s
+&agrave; mon tr&egrave;s-honor&eacute; oncle.</p>
+
+<p>“La premi&egrave;re chose que je fis, fut de laisser ma mule aller &agrave;
+discr&eacute;tion, c’est-&agrave;-dire au petit pas. Je lui mis la bride sur le
+cou, et, tirant mes ducats de ma poche, je commen&ccedil;ai &agrave; les compter
+et recompter dans mon chapeau. Je n’&eacute;tois pas ma&icirc;tre de ma joie; je
+n’avois jamais vu tant d’argent; je ne pouvois me lasser de le
+regarder et de le manier. Je la comptois peut-&ecirc;tre pour la
+vingti&egrave;me fois, quand tout-&agrave;-coup ma mule, levant la t&ecirc;te et les
+oreilles, s’arr&ecirc;ta au milieu du grand chemin. Je jugeai que quelque
+chose l’effrayoit; je regardai ce que ce pouvoit &ecirc;tre. J’aper&ccedil;us
+sur la terre un chapeau renvers&eacute; sur lequel il y avoit un rosaire &agrave;
+gros grains, et en meme temps j’entendis une voix lamentable qui
+pronon&ccedil;a ces paroles: Seigneur passant, ayez piti&eacute;, de grace, d’un
+pauvre soldat estropi&eacute;: jetez, s’il vous plait, quelques pi&egrave;ces
+d’argent dans ce chapeau; vous en serez recompens&eacute; dans l’autre
+monde. Je tournai aussit&ocirc;t les yeux du c&ocirc;t&eacute; d’o&ugrave; partoit la voix.
+Je vis au pied d’un buisson, &agrave; vingt ou trente pas de moi, une
+esp&egrave;ce de soldat qui, sur deux batons crois&eacute;s, appuyoit le bout
+d’une escopette, qui me parut plus longue qu’une pique, et avec
+laquelle il me couchoit en joue. A cette vue, qui me fit trembler
+pour le bien de l’&eacute;glise, je m’arretai tout court; je serrai
+promptement mes ducats; je tirai quelques reaux, et, m’approchant
+du chapeau, dispos&eacute; &agrave; recevoir la charit&eacute; des fid&egrave;les effray&eacute;s, je
+les jetai dedans l’un apr&egrave;s l’autre, pour montrer au soldat que
+j’en usois noblement. Il fut satisfait de ma generosit&eacute;, et me
+donna autant de b&eacute;n&eacute;dictions que je donnia de coups de pieds dans
+les flancs de ma mule, pour m’eloigner promptement de lui; mais la
+maudite b&ecirc;te, trompant mon impatience, n’en alla pas plus vite; la
+longue habitude qu’elle avoit de marcher pas &agrave; pas sous mon oncle
+lui avoit fait perdre l’usage du galop.”</p></div>
+
+<p>In France, the custom of travelling on mules was unknown, so was the
+coin ducats, so was that of begging with a rosary, and of extorting
+money in the manner in which Gil Blas describes. In fact, the “useful
+magnificence,” as Mr Burke terms it, of the spacious roads in France,
+and the traffic carried on upon them, would render such a manner of
+robbing impossible. How then could Le Sage, who had never set his foot
+in Spain, hit upon so accurate a description? Again, Rolando explains to
+Gil Blas the origin of the subterraneous passages, to which an allusion
+is also made by Raphael; now such are in France utterly unknown.</p>
+
+<p>Rolando, giving an account of his proceedings, says, that his
+grandfather, who could only “<i>dire son rosaire</i>,” “<i>rezar su rosario</i>.”
+This is as foreign to the habits of a “vieux militaire Fran&ccedil;ois,” as any
+thing that can be imagined; and, on the other hand, exactly conformable
+to those of a Spanish veteran:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Nous demeur&acirc;mes dans le bois la plus grande partie de la journ&eacute;e,
+sans apercevoir aucun voyageur qui p&ucirc;t payer pour le religieux.
+Enfin nous en sort&icirc;mes pour retourner an souterrain, bornant nos
+exploits &agrave; ce risible &eacute;v&eacute;nement, qui faisoit encore le sujet de
+notre entretien, lorsque nous decouvr&icirc;mes de loin un carrosse &agrave;
+quatre mules. Il venoit &agrave; nous au grand trot, et il &eacute;toit
+accompagn&eacute; de trois hommes &agrave; cheval qui nous parurent bien arm&eacute;s.”</p></div>
+
+<p>In this statement are many circumstances irreconcilable with French
+habits. 1st, A whole day passing without meeting a traveller on the
+high-road of Leon, an event common enough in Spain, but in France almost
+impossible; 2d, the escort of the coach, a common precaution of the
+Spanish ladies against violence&mdash;the fact that the coach is drawn by
+mules, not horses, of which national trait six other instances may be
+found in the same story:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Plusieurs personnes me voulurent voir par curiosit&eacute;. Ils venoient
+l’un apr&egrave;s l’autre se pr&eacute;senter &agrave; une petite fen&ecirc;tre par o&ugrave; le jour
+entroit dans ma prison; et lorsqu’ils m’avoient consid&eacute;r&eacute; quelque
+temps, ils s’en alloient. Je fus surpris de cette nouveaut&eacute;: depuis
+que j’&eacute;tois prisonnier, je n’avois
+<span class="pagebreak" title="705">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_705" id="Page_705"></a>
+pas vu un seul homme se montrer
+&agrave; cette fen&ecirc;tre, qui donnoit sur une cour o&ugrave; regnoient le silence
+et l’horreur. Je compris par l&agrave; que je faisois du bruit dans la
+ville, mais je ne savois si j’en devois concevoir un bon ou mauvais
+presage.” ... “L&agrave; dessus le juge se retira, en disant qu’il alloit
+ordonner au concierge de m’ouvrir les portes. En effet, un moment
+apr&egrave;s, le geolier vint dans mon cachot avec un de ses guichetiers
+qui portoit un paquet de toile. Ils m’ot&egrave;rent tous deux, d’un air
+grave et sans me dire un seul mot, mon pourpoint et mon
+haut-de-chausses, qui &eacute;toit d’un drap fin et presque neuf; puis,
+m’ayant rev&ecirc;tu d’une vieille souquenille, ils me mirent dehors par
+les &eacute;paules.”</p></div>
+
+<p>This is an exact description of the manner in which prisoners were
+treated in Spain, but bears not the slightest resemblance to any abuse
+that prevailed at that time in France:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Une fille de dix ans, que la gouvernante faisoit passer pour sa
+ni&egrave;ce, en depit de la m&eacute;disance, vint ouvrir; et comme nous lui
+demandions si l’on pouvoit parler au chanoine, la dame Jacinte
+parut. C’&eacute;toit une personne deja parvenue &agrave; l’&acirc;ge de discretion,
+mais belle encore; et j’admirai particuli&egrave;rement la fra&icirc;cheur de
+son teint. Elle portoit une longue robe d’un &eacute;toffe de laine la
+plus commune, avec une large ceinture de cuir, d’o&ugrave; pendoit d un
+c&ocirc;t&eacute; un trousseau de clefs, et de l’autre un chapelet &agrave; gros
+grains”&mdash;“Rosario de cuentas gordas.”&mdash;<i>Lib. II.</i> <i>c.</i> 1.</p></div>
+
+<p>This is an exact description of a class of women well known in Spain by
+the name Beata, but utterly unknown in France till the Sœurs de
+Charit&eacute; were instituted:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Pendant qu’ils &eacute;toient ensemble j’entendis sonner midi. Comme je
+savois que les secretaires et les commis quittoient &agrave; cette heure
+la leurs bureaux, pour aller diner o&ugrave; il leur plaisoit, je laissai
+l&agrave; mon chef-d’œuvre, et sortis pour me rendre, non chez
+Monteser, parcequ’il m’avoit pay&eacute; mes appointemens, et que j’avois
+pris cong&eacute; de lui, mais chez le plus fameux traiteur du quartier de
+la cour.”-<i>Lib. III.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>During the reign of Philip III. and Philip IV., and even till the time
+of Charles IV., twelve was the common hour of dinner, and all the public
+offices were closed: this is very unlike the state of things in Paris
+during the reign of Louis XV., when this romance was published.</p>
+
+<p>In Spain, owing in part to the hospitality natural to unsettled times
+and a simple people, in part to the few strangers who visited the
+Peninsula, inns were for a long time almost unknown, and the occupation
+of an innkeeper, who sold what his countrymen were delighted to give,
+was considered degrading: so dishonourable indeed was it looked upon,
+that where an executioner could not be found to carry the sentence of
+the law into effect upon a criminal, the innkeeper was compelled to
+perform his functions: therefore the innkeepers, like usurers and other
+persons, who follow a pursuit hostile to public opinion, were profligate
+and rapacious. Don Quixote teems with instances to this effect; and
+there are other allusions to the same circumstance in <i>Gil Blas</i>. It
+must be observed that if M. Le Sage stumbled by accident upon so great a
+peculiarity, he was fortunate; and if it was suggested to him by his own
+enquiries, they were more profound in this than in most other instances.
+The Barber, describing his visit to his uncle’s, (1, 2, 7,) mentions the
+narrow staircase by which he ascended to his relation’s abode. Here,
+again, is a proof of an intimate acquaintance with the structure of the
+hotels of the Spanish grandees: in all of them are to be found a large
+and spacious staircase leading to the apartments of the master, and a
+small one leading to those of his dependents. So the hotel in which
+Fabricio lives, (3, 7, 13,) and that inhabited by Count Olivarez, are
+severally described as possessing this appurtenance. It is singular that
+Le Sage, who seems to have been almost as fond of Paris as Socrates was
+of Athens, should have picked up this intimate knowledge of the hotels
+of Madrid. The knowledge of music and habit of playing upon the guitar
+in the front of their houses, is another stroke of Spanish manners which
+no Frenchman is likely to have thought of adding to his work (1, 2, 7.)
+Marcelina puts on her mantle to go to mass. This custom prevailed in
+Spain till the
+<span class="pagebreak" title="706">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_706" id="Page_706"></a>
+sceptre passed to the Bourbons&mdash;in many towns till the
+time of Charles III., and in small villages till the reign of Charles
+IV. Gil Blas joins a muleteer, (1, 3, 1,) with four mules which had
+transported merchandise to Valladolid&mdash;this method of carrying goods is
+not known in France. The same observation applies to 3, 3, 7. Rolando
+informs Gil Blas, (1, 3, 2,) “Lorsqu’il eut parl&eacute; de cette sorte, il
+nous fit enfermer dans un cachot, o&ugrave; il ne laissa pas languir mes
+compagnons; ils en sortirent au bout de trois jours pour aller jouer un
+r&ocirc;le tragique dans la grande place.”</p>
+
+<p>This exactly corresponds with the Spanish custom, which was to allow
+prisoners, capitally convicted, three days to prepare for a Christian
+death. Rolando continues, “Oh! je regrette mon premier metier, j’avoue
+qu’il y a plus de s&ucirc;ret&eacute; dans le nouveau; mais il y a plus d’agr&eacute;ment
+dans l’autre, et j’aime la libert&eacute;. J’ai bien la mine de me defaire de
+ma charge, et de partir un beau matin pour aller gagner les montagnes
+qui sont aux sources du Tage. Je sais qu’il y a dans cet endroit une
+retraite habit&eacute;e par une troupe nombreuse, et remplie de sujets
+Catalans: c’est faire son &eacute;loge en un mot. Si tu veux m’accompagner,
+nous irons grosser le nombre de ces grands hommes. Je serai dans leur
+compagnie capitaine en second; et pour t’y faire recevoir avec agr&eacute;ment,
+j’assurerai que je t’ai vu dix fois combattre &agrave; mes c&ocirc;t&eacute;s.”</p>
+
+<p>The chain of mountains of Cuen&ccedil;a Requena Aragon y Abaracin, in which the
+Tagus rises, does contain such excavations as Rolando employed for such
+purposes as Rolando mentions, (1, 3, 11.) The grace of Carlos Alfonso de
+la Ventolera in managing his cloak, was an Andalusian accomplishment,
+and an accomplishment which ceased to prevail when the Bourbons entered
+Spain. It could not have been applied to describe a Castilian, as it was
+confined to the inhabitants of Murcia, Andalusia, Valencia, and la
+Mancha. How could Le Sage have known this? When the Count Azumar dines
+with Don Gonzalo Pacheco, the conversation turns on bull-fights, (2, 4,
+7.)</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Leur conversation roula d’abord sur une course de taureaux qui
+s’&eacute;toit faite depuis peu de jours. Ils parl&egrave;rent des cavaliers qui
+y avoient montr&eacute; le plus d’adresse et de vigueur; et la-dessus le
+vieux comte, tel que Nestor, &agrave; qui toutes les choses presentes
+donnoient occasion de louer les choses pass&eacute;es, dit en
+soupirant&mdash;H&eacute;las! je ne vois point aujourd’hui d’hommes comparables
+&agrave; ceux que j’ai vus autrefois, ni les tournois ne se font pas avec
+autant de magnificence qu’on les faisoit dans ma jeunesse.”</p></div>
+
+<p>This alludes to the “Caballeros de Plaza,” as they were called,
+gentlemen by birth animated by the love of glory, very different from
+the hired Picadors. This custom of the Spanish gentlemen, which many of
+our fox-hunting and pheasant-shooting squires will condemn for its
+cruelty, was very common during the reigns of Philip III. and IV., but
+gradually declined, and was at last only prevalent at the <i>Fiestas
+Reales</i>. The last example was known in 1789, to celebrate the <i>jura</i> of
+the Prince of Asturia, afterwards the pious and exemplary Ferdinand VII.
+This must have been before his attempted parricide. Ambrosio de Lamela,
+in order to accomplish his designs on Simon, (2, 6, 1,) purchases
+articles at Chelva in Valencia, among others&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Il nous fit voir un manteau et une robe noire fort longue, deux
+pourpoints avec leurs hauts-de-chausses, une de ces &eacute;critoires
+compos&eacute;es de deux pi&egrave;ces li&eacute;es par un cordon, et dont le cornet est
+s&eacute;par&eacute; de l’etui o&ugrave; l’on met les plumes; une main de beau papier
+blanc un cadenas avec un gros cachet, et de la cire verte; et
+lorsqu’il nous eut enfin exhib&eacute; toutes ses emplettes, Don Raphael
+lui dit en plaisantant: Vive Dieu! Monsieur Ambroise, il faut
+avouer que vous avez fait l&agrave; un bon achat.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Now this is a faithful portrait of the inkstand, called Tintero de
+Escribano, which the Spanish scriveners always carry about with them,
+and which it is most improbable that M. Le Sage should ever have seen in
+his life, or indeed have heard of but through the medium of a Spanish
+manuscript. The account proceeds; and the distinction, which the reader
+will find taken with so much accuracy, between the inquisitor and
+<span class="pagebreak" title="707">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_707" id="Page_707"></a>
+familiar of the holy office, is one which, however familiar to every
+Spaniard, it is not likely a Frenchman should be acquainted with. In
+France the inquisitor was confounded with the commissary, and all were
+supposed to be Dominican friars.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“L&agrave;, mon gar&ccedil;on barbier &eacute;tala ses vivres, qui consistoient das cinq
+ou six oignons, avec quelques morceaux de pain et de fromage: mais
+ce qu’il produisit comme la meilleure pi&egrave;ce du sac, fut une petite
+outre, remplie, disoit-il, d’un vin delicat et friand,” (2, 6.)</p></div>
+
+<p>This custom of carrying wine in a leathern bag, is a peculiar trait of
+Spanish manners.</p>
+
+<p>Catalena, the chambermaid of Guevarra, nurse of Philip IV., obtains from
+her mistress, for Ignatio, the archdeaconry of Granada, which, as “pais
+de conquista,” was subject to the crown’s disposal:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Cette soubrette, qui est la m&ecirc;me dont je me suis servi depuis pour
+tirer de la tour de Segovie le seigneur de Santillane, ayant envie
+de rendre service &agrave; Don Ignacio, engagea sa ma&icirc;tresse &agrave; demander
+pour lui un b&eacute;n&eacute;fice an Duc de Lerme. Ce ministre le fit nommer &agrave;
+l’archidiaconat de Granade, lequel &eacute;tant en pays conquis; est &agrave; la
+nomination du roi.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Now, that Le Sage should have been acquainted with this fact, for fact
+it unquestionably is, does appear astonishing. Till the concordat of
+1753, the kings of Spain could only present to dignities in churches
+subject to the royal privilege, among which was this of Granada, by
+virtue of particular bulls issued at the time of its conquest. This is a
+fact, however, with which very few Spaniards were acquainted. Antonio de
+Pulgar, in his <i>Cronica de Los Reyes Catholicos</i>, c. 22, tells us that
+Isabella, “En el proueer de las yglesias que vacaron en su tiempo, ouo
+respecto tan recto, que pospuesta toda afficion siempre supplico al Papa
+por hombres generosos, y grandes letrados, y de vida honesta; lo que no
+se lee que con tanta diligencia ouiesse guardado ningun rey de los
+passados.” Another remarkable passage, and to us almost conclusive, is
+the following&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Je le menai au comte-duc, qui le re&ccedil;ut tr&egrave;s poliment, et lui dit
+qu’il s’&eacute;toit si bien conduit dans son gouvernement de la ville de
+Valence, que le roi, le jugeant propre &agrave; remplir une plus grande
+place, l’avoit nomm&eacute; &agrave; la viceroyaut&eacute; d’Aragon. D’ailleurs,
+ajouta-t-il, cette dignit&eacute; n’est point au-dessus de votre
+naissance, et la noblesse Aragonoise ne sauroit murmurer contre le
+choix de la cour.”</p></div>
+
+<p>This alludes to a dispute between the Spanish government and the
+Aragonese, which had continued from the days of Charles V. The Aragonese
+claimed either that the king himself should reside among them, or be
+represented by some person of the royal blood. Charles V. appointed, as
+viceroy of Aragon, his uncle, the Archbishop of Zaragoza, and then Don
+Fernando de Aragon, his cousin. Philip II. appointed a Castilian to that
+dignity. This produced great disturbances in Aragon, and the dispute
+lasted till 1692, when the Aragonese settled the matter by putting the
+Castilian viceroy, Inigo de Mendoza, to death. His successor was an
+Aragonese, Don Miguel de Luna, Conde de Morata, and he was succeeded by
+Don John of Austria, his brother. It is most improbable that M. Le Sage,
+whose knowledge of Spanish literature was very superficial, and whose
+ignorance of Spanish history was complete, should have understood this
+allusion. This, therefore, leads to the conclusion that it must have
+been taken from a Spanish manuscript.</p>
+
+<p>In conformity with this we find Mariana saying, in the days of Ferdinand
+and Isabella&mdash;“Los Aragoneses no querian recebir por Virrey a D. Ramon
+Folch, Conde de Cardona, que el rey tenia se&ntilde;alado para este cargo;
+decian era contra sus fueros poner en el gobierno de su reyno hombre
+extrangero. Hobo demandas y respuestas, mas al fin el rey temporizo con
+ellos, y nombro por Virrey a su hijo D. Alonso de Aragon, Arzobispo de
+Zaragoza.”</p>
+
+<p>Can any one doubt that the writer of the following passage had seen the
+spot he describes?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Il me fit traverser une cour, et monter par un escalier fort
+&eacute;troit &agrave; une petite chambre qui &eacute;toit tout an haut de la tour. Je
+ne fus pas peu surpris, en entrant dans cette chambre, de voir sur
+<span class="pagebreak" title="708">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_708" id="Page_708"></a>
+une table deux chandelles, qui bruloient dans des flambeaux de
+cuivre, et deux couverts assez propres. Dans un moment, me dit
+Tordesillas, on va nous apporter &agrave; manger: nous allons souper ici
+tous deux. C’est ce reduit que je vous ai destin&eacute; pour logement.
+Vous y serez mieux que dans votre cachot; vous verrez de votre
+fen&ecirc;tre les bords fleuris de l’Er&ecirc;ma, et la vall&eacute;e delicieuse qui,
+du pied des montagnes qui separent les deux Castilles, s’&eacute;tend
+jusqu’&agrave; Coca. Je suis bien que vous serez d’abord peu sensible &agrave;
+une si belle vue, mais quand le temps aura fait succeder une douce
+m&eacute;lancolie &agrave; la vivacit&eacute; de votre douleur, vous prendrez plaisir &agrave;
+promener vos regards sur des objets si agr&eacute;ables.”</p></div>
+
+<p>These notices of reference, taken at random, are all adapted to the
+places at which they are found&mdash;the narrative leads to them by regular
+approximation, or they are suggested by the subject and occasion which
+it draws forth. To introduce a given story into the body of a writing
+without abruptness, or marks of unnatural transition,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">“Ut per l&aelig;ve moventes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Effundat junctura ungues.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is, as Paley observes, one of the most difficult artifices of
+composition; and here are upwards of a hundred Spanish names,
+circumstances, and allusions, incorporated with the story written, as M.
+Neufchateau assures us, by a Frenchman concerning the court of Louis
+XIV. A line touching on truth in so many points, could never have been
+drawn accidentally; it is the pencil thrown luckily full upon the
+horse’s mouth, and expressing the foam which the painter, with all his
+skill, could not represent without it. Let the reader observe how
+difficult Le Sage has found the task of connecting the anecdotes taken
+from Marcos de Obregon, and put into the mouth of Diego, with the main
+story. How awkward is this transition? “Le <i>seigneur</i> Diego de La Fuente
+me raconta d’autres aventures encore, qui lui &eacute;toient arriv&eacute;es depuis;
+mais elles me semblent si peu dignes d’&ecirc;tre rapport&eacute;es, que je les
+passerai sous silence.”</p>
+
+<p>The next branch of the argument which we are called upon to consider,
+relates to the Spanish words in <i>Gil Blas</i>, which imply the existence of
+a Spanish manuscript. The names Juan, Pedro, often occur in Le Sage’s
+work, and Pierre, Jean, are sometimes used in their stead. The word
+<i>Don</i> is prefixed by the Spaniards to the Christian, and never to the
+surname, as Don Juan, Don Antonio, not Don Mariana, Don Cervantes. In
+France, <i>Dom</i>, its synonyme, is, on the contrary, prefixed to the
+surname&mdash;as Dom Mabillon, Don Calmet. Le Sage always adheres to the
+Spanish custom. The robber who introduces Gil Blas to the cavern, says,
+“Tenez, Dame Leonarde, voici un jeune gar&ccedil;on,” &amp;c. Again, “On dressa
+dans le salon une grande table, et l’on me renvoya dans la cuisine, o&ugrave;
+la <i>Dame</i> Leonarde m’instruisit de ce que j’avais a faire.... Et comme
+depuis sa mort c’&eacute;toit la <i>Senora Leonarda</i> qui avoit l’honneur de
+pr&eacute;senter le nectar &agrave; ces dieux infernaux,” &amp;c. This expression “Se&ntilde;ora
+Leonarda,” is much in favour of a Spanish original; why should not Le
+Sage have repeated the expression “Dame Leonarde,” on which we have a
+few observations to offer, had it not been that he thought the word
+under his eyes at the moment would lend grace and vivacity to the
+narrative. A French writer would have said, “Tenez, Leonarde,” or
+perhaps, “Tenez, Madame Leonarde;” but such a phrase as “Tenez, Dame
+Leonarde,” in a French writer, can be accounted for only by the
+translation of “se&ntilde;ora.” So we have “la Se&ntilde;ora Catalena,” (7, 12)&mdash;“la
+Se&ntilde;ora Sirena,” (9, 7)&mdash;and “la Se&ntilde;ora Mencia,” (8, 10) of the French
+version, and instead of “une demoiselle,” “une jeune dame,” which is a
+translation of “se&ntilde;orita.” In giving an account of his projected
+marriage with the daughter of Gabriel Salero, Gil Blas says, (9,
+1)&mdash;“C’&eacute;toit un bon bourgeois qui &eacute;toit comme nous disons poli hasta
+porfiar. Il me pr&eacute;senta la Se&ntilde;ora Eugenia, sa femme, et la jeune
+Gabriela, sa fille.” Here are three Spanish idioms&mdash;“hasta porfiar,”
+which Le Sage thinks it necessary to explain, “la Se&ntilde;ora Eugenia,”
+“Gabriela.” Diego de la Fuente tells his friend, “J’avois pour ma&icirc;tre de
+cet instrument un vieux ‘se&ntilde;or escudero,’ &agrave; qui je faisois la barbe. Il
+se nommoit Marcos D&ocirc;bregon.” A
+<span class="pagebreak" title="709">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_709" id="Page_709"></a>
+French author, instead of “se&ntilde;or
+escudero,” would have said, “vieux ecuyer;” a Spanish transcriber would
+have written “Marcos de Obregon.” We have (x. 3, 11) “Se&ntilde;or Caballero
+des plus lestes,” “romances” instead of “romans,” (1, 5,) “prado”
+instead of “pr&eacute;,” twice, (4, 10; 7, 13.)</p>
+
+<p>Laura says&mdash;“Un jour il nous vint en fantaisie &agrave; Doroth&eacute;e et &agrave; moi
+d’aller voir joner les com&eacute;diens de Seville. Ils avaient affich&eacute; qu’ils
+representaient <i>la famosa comedia</i>, et Embajador de si mismo, de Lope de
+Vega Carpio.... En fin le moment que j’attendais &eacute;tant arriv&eacute;,
+c’est-&agrave;-dire, la fin de <i>la famosa comedia</i>, nous nous en all&acirc;mes.” We
+have “hidalgo” instead of “gentilhomme” three times; “contador mayor”
+twice, once used by Chinchillo, again by the innkeeper at Suescas,
+“oidor” instead of “juge” or “membre de la cour royale,” “escribano”
+instead of “notaire,” (8, 9.) “Hospital de ni&ntilde;os” instead of “hospice
+des enfans orphelins,” “olla podrida” three times “marmalada de
+berengaria,” (9, 4,) and “picaro” instead of “fripon,” (4, 10, 12.)
+Scipio says, “un jour comme je passois aupr&egrave;s de l’&eacute;glise de los reyes.”
+There is at Toledo a church named “San Juan de los Reyes.” How could Le
+Sage, who never had been in Spain, know this fact? Gil Blas thus relates
+an event at Valencia&mdash;“Je m’en approchai pour apprendre pourquoi je
+voyois l&agrave; un si grand concours d’hommes et de femmes, et bient&ocirc;t je fus
+au fait, en lisant ces paroles &eacute;crites en lettres d’or sur une table de
+marbre noir, qu’il-y avait audessus de la porte, ‘<i>La posada de los
+representantes</i>,’ et les com&eacute;diens marquaient dans leur affiche qu’ils
+joueraient ce jour-l&agrave; pour la premi&egrave;re fois une trag&eacute;die nouvelle de Don
+Gabriel Triaguero.” This passage is an attestation of the fact, that
+during the reign of Philip IV. the buildings of the Spanish provinces in
+which dramatic performances were represented were at the same time the
+residence, “posada,” of the actors&mdash;a custom even now not altogether
+extinguished; but which Le Sage could only know through the medium of a
+Spanish manuscript. Gil Blas, imprisoned in the tower of Segovia, hears
+Don Gaston de Cavallos sing the following verses&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Ayde nie un a&ntilde;o <i>felice</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Parece un soplo ligero<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pero sin duda un instante<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Es un siglo de tormento.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Where did Le Sage find these verses, sweet, gracious, and idiomatic as
+they are? The use of the word “felice” for “feliz” is a poetical
+license, and displays more than a stranger’s knowledge of Spanish
+composition. It has been said that Smollett has left many French words
+in his translation of Gil Blas, and that too strong an inference ought
+not to be drawn from the employment of Spanish phrases by Le Sage. But
+what are the words? Are they words in the mouth of every one, and such
+as a superficial dilettante might easily pick up; or do they, either of
+themselves or from the conjunctures in which they are employed, exhibit
+a consummate acquaintance with the dialect and habits of the people to
+which they refer? Besides, it should be remembered that French is a
+language far more familiar to well-educated people in England, than
+Spanish ever was to the French, and that Smollett had lived much in
+France; whereas Le Sage knew from books alone the language which he has
+employed with so much colloquial elegance and facility. We now turn to
+the phrases and expressions in French which Le Sage has manifestly
+translated.</p>
+
+<p>The first word which occurs in dealing with this part of the subject is
+“seigneur” as a translation for “se&ntilde;or;” “seigneur” in France was not a
+substitute for “monsieur,” which is the proper meaning of “se&ntilde;or.” On
+the use of the word “dame” we have already commented. Instead of Dame
+Leonarde and Dame Lorenzo Sephora, a French writer would have put
+“Madame” or “la cuisini&egrave;re,” or “la femme de chambre,” as the case might
+be. So the exclamation of the highwayman, “Seigneur passant,” &amp;c., must
+be a translation of “Se&ntilde;or passagero.” Describing the parasite at
+Pe&ntilde;aflor, Gil Blas says, “le cavalier portait une longue rapi&egrave;re, et il
+s’approcha de moi d’un air empress&eacute;, <i>Seigneur</i> &eacute;colier, me dit-il, je
+viens d’apprendre que vous &ecirc;tes le <i>seigneur</i>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="710">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_710" id="Page_710"></a>
+Gil Blas de Santillane.
+Je lui dis, <i>seigneur</i> cavalier, je ne croyois pas que mon nom f&ucirc;t connu
+&agrave; Pen&aacute;flor.” “Le cavalier” means a man on horseback, which is not a
+description applicable to the parasite; “chevalier” is the French word
+for the member of a military order. “Cet homme,” or “ce monsieur,” would
+have been the expression of Le Sage if “este caballero” had not been in
+the manuscript to be copied. “Carillo” for “Camillo,” “betancos” for
+“betangos,” “rodillas” for “revilla;” and yet M. Le Sage is not
+satisfied with making his hero walk towards the Prado of Madrid, but
+goes further, and describes it as the “pr&eacute; de Saint Jerome”&mdash;Prado de
+S^te Geronimo, which is certainly more accurate. Again he speaks of “la
+Rue des Infantes” at Madrid, (8, 1)&mdash;“De los Infantos is the name of a
+street in that city&mdash;and in the same sentence names “une vieille dame
+Inesile Cantarille.” Inesilla is the Spanish diminutive of Ines, and
+Cantarilla of Cantaro. The last word alludes to the expression “mozas de
+Cantaro,” for women of inferior degree. Philip III. shuts up Sirena
+“dans la maison des repenties.” This is also the name of a convent at
+Madrid, called “casa de las arrepentidas.” But a still stronger argument
+in favour of the existence of a Spanish manuscript, is to be found in
+the passage which says that Lucretia, the repentant mistress of Philip
+IV., “quitte tout &agrave; coup le monde, et se ferme dans le monast&egrave;re de la
+<i>Incarnacion</i>;” that having been founded by Philip III. in compliance
+with the will of Do&ntilde;a Margarita, his wife, it was reserved expressly for
+nuns connected in some way with the royal family of Spain; and that
+therefore Lucretia, having been the mistress of Philip IV., was entitled
+to become a member of it.</p>
+
+<p>“Nous aper&ccedil;umes <i>un r&eacute;ligieux de l’ordre de Saint Domingue</i>, mont&eacute;,
+<i>contre l’ordinaire de ces bons p&egrave;res, sur une mauvaise mule</i>.<a name="FNanchor_A_24" id="FNanchor_A_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_24" class="fnnum">A</a> <i>Dieu
+soit lou&eacute;</i>, s’&eacute;cria le capitaine.” In this sentence all the passages in
+Italics are of Spanish origin. “<i>Seigneur cavalier</i>, vous &ecirc;tes bien
+heureux qu’on se soit adress&eacute; &agrave; moi plut&ocirc;t qu’&agrave; un autre: je ne veux
+point d&eacute;crier mes confr&egrave;res: &agrave; <i>Dieu ne plaise</i> que je fasse le moindre
+tort &agrave; leur r&eacute;putation: mais, entre nous, il n’y en a pas un qui ait de
+la conscience&mdash;<i>ils sont tous plus durs que des Juifs</i>. Je suis le seul
+fripier qui ait de la morale: je ne borne &agrave; un prix raisonable; je me
+contente de la livre pour sou&mdash;je veux dire du sou pour livre. <i>Gr&acirc;ces
+au ciel</i>, j’exerce rondement ma profession.” Here we find “Seigneur
+cavalier,” “&agrave; Dieu ne plaise,” which is the common Spanish phrase, “no
+permita Dios,” “Gr&acirc;ces an ciel,” instead of “Dieu merci,” from “Gracias
+a Dios.” A little further we find the phrase “<i>Seigneur gentilhomme</i>,”
+which can only be accounted for as a translation of “Se&ntilde;or hidalgo;”
+“gar&ccedil;on de famille,” (1, 17,) “b&eacute;n&eacute;fice simple,” (11, 17) are neither of
+them French expressions. “The virtuous Jacintha,” says Fabricio, “m&eacute;rite
+d’&ecirc;tre la gouvernante du patriarche des Indes.” Now, it is impossible
+that the existence of such a dignity as this should have been known at
+Paris. It was of recent creation, and had been the subject of much
+conversation at Madrid. “Gar&ccedil;on de bien et d’honneur,” (1, 2, 1,) “un
+mozo, hombre de bien y de honor.” “Je servis un potage qu’on auroit pu
+pr&eacute;senter <i>au plus fameux directeur de Madrid</i>, et deux entr&eacute;es qui
+auroient eu de quoi piquer la sensualit&eacute; <i>d’un viceroi</i>.” It is
+impossible not to see that the first of the phrases in italics is a
+translation “del director mas famoso de Madrid;” first, because a
+Frenchman would have used “c&eacute;l&egrave;bre,” and secondly, because the word
+“director” in a different sense from that of confessor was unknown at
+Madrid. The allusion to the Viceroy, a functionary unknown to the French
+government, also deserves notice. The notaire, hastening to Cedillo,
+takes up hastily “son manteau et son chapeau.” This infers a knowledge
+on
+<span class="pagebreak" title="711">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_711" id="Page_711"></a>
+the part of the writer that the Spanish scrivener never appeared,
+however urgent the occasion, without his “capa.” We have the word
+“laboureurs” applied to substantial farmers, (1, 2, 7.) This is a
+translation of “labradores,” to which the French word does not
+correspond, as it means properly, men dependent on daily labour for
+their daily bread. “J’ai fait &eacute;l&eacute;ver,” says the schoolmaster of Olmedo,
+“un th&eacute;atre, sur lequel, Dieu aidant, je ferai r&eacute;pr&eacute;senter par mes
+<i>disciples</i> une pi&egrave;ce que j’ai compos&eacute;e. Elle a pour titre les jeunes
+amours de Muley Bergentuf Roi de Moroi.” “<i>Disciples</i>” is a translation
+of “discipulos.” A French writer would have said “&eacute;l&egrave;ves.” Again, the
+title of the Pedant’s play is thoroughly Spanish. It was intended to
+ridicule the habit which prevailed in Spain, after the expulsion of the
+Moriscoes in 1610, of adapting for the stage Moorish habits and
+amusements, by making a stupid pedant in an obscure village, select them
+as the subject of his tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>Describing the insolence of the actors, Gil Blas says, “Bien loin de
+traiter d’excellence les seigneurs, elles ne leur donnoient pas m&ecirc;me <i>de
+la seigneurie</i>.” This would hardly be applicable to the manners of the
+French. The principal of Lucinde’s creditors, “se nommoit Bernard
+Astuto, qui meritoit bien son nom.” The signification of the name is
+clear in Spanish; but in French the allusion is totally without meaning.
+This probably escaped Le Sage in the hurry of composition, or it would
+have been easy to have removed so clear a mark of translation. The
+following mark is still stronger. Speaking of Simon, the bourgeois of
+Chelva, he says&mdash;“Certain Juif, qui s’est fait Catholique, mais dans le
+fond de l’&acirc;me il est encore <i>Juif comme Pilate</i>.” Now, the lower classes
+of Spain perpetually fall into this error of calling Pilate a Jew; and
+this is a trait which could hardly have occurred to a foreign writer,
+however well acquainted with Spain, much less to a writer who had never
+set his foot in that country. Here we cannot help observing, that the
+whole scene from which this passage is taken is eminently Spanish. In
+Spain only was such a proceeding possible as the scheme for deprecating
+Simon, executed by Lucinda and Raphael. The character of the victim, the
+nature of the fraud, the absence of all suspicion which such proceedings
+would necessarily provoke in any other country, are as conclusive proofs
+of Spanish origin as moral evidence can supply. Count Guliano is found
+playing with an ape, “pour dormir <i>la siesta</i>.” Lucretia says to Gil
+Blas, “Je vous rends de tr&egrave;s humbles gr&acirc;ces,” “doy a usted muy umildes
+gracias.” A French writer would have said, “Je vous remercie
+infiniment.” Melendez is described as living “&agrave; la Porte du Soleil du
+coin de la Rue des Balustr&eacute;es,” “esquina de la Calle de Cofreros.” There
+is such an alley as this, but it is unknown to ninety-nine Spaniards in
+a hundred. Beltran Moscada tells Gil Blas, “Je vous reconnois bien,
+moi&mdash;nous avons jou&eacute; mille fois tous deux <i>&agrave; la Gallina ciega</i>.” This Le
+Sage thinks it necessary to explain by a note, to inform his readers
+that it is the same as “Colin Maillard.” From all these various phrases
+and expressions, scattered about in different passages of Gil Blas, and
+taken almost at random from different parts of the work, the conclusion
+that it was copied from a Spanish manuscript appears inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Le Sage has named Sacedon, Buendia, Fuencarrat, Madrid, Campillo,
+Aragon, Penaflor, Castropot, Asturias; Salcedo, Alava; Villaflor,
+Cebreros, Avila; Tardajos, Kevilla, Puentedura, Burgos; Villar-de-saz;
+Almodovar, Cuen&ccedil;a; Almoharin, Monroy, Estremadura; Adria, Gavia, Vera,
+Granada; Mondejar, Gualalajara; Vierzo, Ponferrada, Cacabelos, Leon;
+Calatrava, Castilblanco, Mancha; Chinchilla, Lorque, Murcia; Duenas,
+Palencia; Colmenar, Coca, Segovia; Carmona, Mairena, Sevilla; Cobisa,
+Galvez, Illescas, Loeches, Maqueda, Kodillas, Villarejo, Villarrubia,
+Toledo; Bunol, Chelva, Chiva; Gerica, Liria Paterna, Valencia;
+Ataquines, Benavente, Mansilla, Mojados, Olmedo, Penafiel, Puente de
+Duero, Valdestillas, Valladolid.</p>
+
+<p>The story of <i>Gil Blas</i> contains the names of no less than one hundred
+and three Spanish villages and towns of inferior importance, many of
+them are unknown out of Spain&mdash;such as
+<span class="pagebreak" title="712">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_712" id="Page_712"></a>
+Albarracin, Antequera, Betanzos,
+Ciudad Real, Coria, Lucena, Molina, Mondonedo, Monzon, Solsona,
+Trujillo, Ubeda.</p>
+
+<p>There are also cited the names of thirteen dukes&mdash;Alba, Almeida,
+Braganza, Frias (condestable de Castilia,) Lerma, Medina-celi, Medina de
+Rioseco, (almirante de Castilia,) Medina-Sidonia, Medina de las Tarres
+(Marques de Toral,) Mantua, Osuna, Sanlucar la Mayor y Uceda. Eleven
+marquises&mdash;De Almenara, Carpia, Chaves, Laguardia, Leganes, Priego,
+Santacruz, Toral, Velez, Villa-real y Zenete. Eight condes&mdash;De Azumar,
+Galiano, Lemos, Montanos, Niebla, Olivares, Pedrosa y Polan. Of these
+four only are fictitious. It is remarkable also, that one title cited in
+<i>Gil Blas</i>, that of Admirante de Castilia, did not exist when Le Sage
+published his romance&mdash;Felipe V. having abolished it, to punish the
+holder of that dignity for having embraced the cause of the house of
+Austria. Nor are there wanting the names of persons celebrated in their
+day among the inhabitants of the Peninsula. Such are Fray Luis Aliago,
+confessor of Philip III., Archimandrite of Sicily, and
+inquisitor-general, Don Rodrigo Calderon, secretary of the king,
+Calderon de la Barca, Antonio Carnero, secretary of the king, Philip
+IV., Cervantes, Geronimo de Florencia, Jesuit preacher of Philip IV.,
+Fernando de Gamboa, one of the gentlemen of his bedchamber, Luis de
+Gongora, A&ntilde;a de Guevarra, his nurse, Maria de Guzman, only daughter of
+Olivarez, Henry Philip de Guzman, his adopted son, Baltasar de Zuniga,
+uncle of Olivarez, Lope de Vega Carpio, Luis Velez de Guevarra, Juana de
+Velasco, making in all nineteen persons. There are the names of not only
+thirty-one families of the highest class in Spain, as Guzman, Herrera,
+Mendoza, Acuna, Avila, Silva, &amp;c., but twenty-five names belonging to
+less illustrious, but still distinguished families; and twenty-nine
+names really Spanish, but applied to imaginary characters. This makes a
+list of eighty-five names, which it seems impossible for any writer
+acquainted only with the lighter parts of Spanish literature to have
+accumulated. Nor should it be forgotten that there are forty-five names,
+intended to explain the character of those to whom they are given, like
+Mrs Slipslop and Parson Trulliber, retained by Gil Blas, notwithstanding
+the loss of their original signification. Doctor Andros don A&ntilde;ibal de
+Chinchilla, Alcacer, Apuntador, Astuto, Azarini, Padre Alejos y Don
+Abel, Buenagarra, Brutandof, Campanario Chilindron, Chinchilla, Clarin,
+Colifichini, Cordel, Coscolina, Padre Crisostomo, Doctor Cuchillo,
+Descomulgado, Deslenguado, Escipion, Forero, Guyomar, Ligero, Majuelo,
+Mascarini, Melancia, Mogicon, Montalban, Muscada, Nisana, Doctor
+Oloroso, Doctor Oquetos, Penafiel, Pinares, Doctor Sangrado, Stheimbach,
+Samuel Simon, Salero, Talego, Touto, Toribio, Triaquero, Ventolera,
+Villaviciosa, are all names of this sort. Who but a Spaniard, then, was
+likely to invent them? Were there no other argument, the case for Spain
+might almost safely be rested on this issue. But this is not all, since
+the mistakes, orthographical and geographical, which abound in the
+French edition of <i>Gil Blas</i>, carry the argument still further, and
+place it beyond the reach of reasonable contradiction. The reader will
+observe, that much of the question depends upon the fact, admitted on
+all sides, that Le Sage did not transcribe his version from any printed
+work, but from a manuscript. Had Le Sage merely inserted stories here
+and there taken from Spanish romances, his claims as an original writer
+would hardly be much shaken by their discovery, supposing the plot, with
+which they were skilfully interwoven, and the main bulk and stamina of
+the story, to be his own. But where the errors are such as can only be
+accounted for by mistakes, not of the press, but of the copies of a
+manuscript, and are fully accounted for in that manner&mdash;where they are
+so thickly sown, as to show that they were not errors made by a person
+with a printed volume before his eyes, but by a person deciphering a
+manuscript written in a language of which he had only a superficial
+acquaintance, no candid enquirer will hesitate as to the inference to
+which such facts lead, and by which alone they can be reconciled with
+the profound and intimate
+<span class="pagebreak" title="713">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_713" id="Page_713"></a>
+knowledge of Spanish literature, habits, and
+manners, to which we have before adverted. The innkeeper of Pe&ntilde;aflor is
+named <i>Corcuelo</i> in the French version, an appellation utterly without
+meaning. The real word was <i>Corzuelo</i>, a diminutive from <i>corzo</i>, which
+carries a very pointed allusion to the character of the person. It was
+usual to write instead of the <i>z</i>&mdash;<i>c</i> with a cedilla, and this was
+probably the origin of the mistake. The innkeeper of Burgos is called in
+the French text <i>Manjuelo</i>, which is not Spanish, and is equally
+unmeaning. The original undoubtedly was <i>Majuelo</i>, the diminutive of
+<i>Majo</i>, which is very significant of the class to which the person
+bearing the name belonged. The person to whom Gil Blas applies for a
+situation at Valladolid, is called in the French text <i>Londona</i>. The
+real word is Londo&ntilde;o, the name of a village near Ordu&ntilde;a, in Biscay.
+<i>Inesile</i> is the name given to the niece of Jacinta. This is instead of
+<i>Inesilla</i>, and corresponds with the French Agn&eacute;s. Castel Blargo is used
+for Castel Blanco. Rodriguez says to his master, “Je ne touche pas un
+marav&eacute;<i>dis</i> de vos finances.” The word in the manuscript was <i>marivedi</i>.
+Le Sage has used the plural for the singular. “Seguier,” a proper name,
+is used for “Seguiar.” “De la Ventileria” is the unmeaning name given to
+a frivolous coxcomb, instead of “De la Ventilera.” Le Sage, speaking of
+the same person, sometimes calls her “Do&ntilde;a <i>K</i>imena de Guzman,” and
+sometimes “Do&ntilde;a <i>Ch</i>imena,” a manifest proof that “Do&ntilde;a <i>X</i>imena” was
+written in the work from which he transcribed; as the French substitute
+sometimes <i>k</i> and sometimes <i>ch</i>, for the Spanish <i>x</i>.<br />
+  Pedros is used for Pedroga, (the name of a noble family.)<br />
+  Moyades for Miagades, (a village.)<br />
+  Zendero for Zenzano, (do.)<br />
+  Salceda for Salcedo, (do.)<br />
+  Calderone for Calderon.<br />
+  Oliguera for Lahiguera.<br />
+  Niebles for Niebla.<br />
+  Jutella for Antella.<br />
+  Leiva for Chiva.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>After Gil Blas’s promotion, he says that his haughty colleague treated
+him with more respect; and this is expressed in such a way as to show
+that Le Sage was ignorant of Spanish etiquette, and did not understand
+thoroughly the meaning of what he transcribed. “Il Don Rodrigo de
+Calderone ne m’appela plus que Seigneur de Santillane, lui qui
+jusqu’alors ne m’avoit trait&eacute; que de <i>vous</i>, sans jamais se servir du
+terme de seigneurie,” supposing the meaning equivalent&mdash;whereas, in
+fact, though Gil Blas might complain of not being addressed in the third
+person, which would draw with it the use of se&ntilde;or, and was a common form
+of civility&mdash;it would have been ridiculous to represent him as addressed
+by a name, se&ntilde;oria, to which none but people of high station and
+illustrious rank were entitled. But Le Sage supposed that every one
+addressed as se&ntilde;or, might also be spoken of by the term se&ntilde;oria; a
+mistake against which a very moderate knowledge of Spanish usages would
+have guarded him. We may illustrate this by a quotation from Navarete:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“En este estado enviaron a decir a Magallanes.... Que si se queria
+avenir a lo que cumpliese, al servicio de S. M. estarian a lo que
+les mandase, y que si hasta entonces le dieron tratamiento de
+merced, <i>en adelante se lo darian de senoria</i>, y le besarian pies y
+manos.”</p></div>
+
+<p>This was intended as a proof of the greatest reverence by the mutineers,
+whom, notwithstanding this submission, Magallanes took an early
+opportunity to destroy.</p>
+
+<p>Gil Blas relates the absurd resolution of the Conde Duque D’Olivarez, to
+adopt the son of a person with whom he, among others, had intrigued as
+his own. This anecdote was well known in Spain. The supposed father of
+this youth was an alcalde de corte, called Valcancel; and <i>he</i> had been
+rivaled by an alguazil. The son was called in the early part of his life
+Julian Valcancel. When adopted by Olivarez, he took the name of Eurique
+Felipe de Guzman, which the people said ought to be exchanged for that
+of Del Alguazil del Alcalde de Corte. Olivarez divorced him from the
+woman to whom he was certainly married, and obliged him to marry the
+daughter of the Duca de Frias. He was called by the people of Madrid a
+man with two names, the son of three
+<span class="pagebreak" title="714">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_714" id="Page_714"></a>
+fathers, and the husband of two
+wives. Le Sage, by substituting the name of Valdeasar for that of
+Valcancel, proves that he was ignorant of the whole transaction. In the
+<i>auto da f&eacute;</i> which Gil Blas sees at Toledo, and in which his old friends
+terminate their adventures in so tragical a manner&mdash;some of the guilty
+are represented as wearing <i>carochas</i> on their heads. This is a word
+altogether without meaning; the real word was <i>corozas</i>, a cap worn by
+criminals as a badge of degradation.</p>
+
+<p>Another mistake deserves attention, as supplying the strongest proof of
+an inaccurate transcriber. “J’esp&egrave;re,” says Ma&icirc;tre Joachim to his
+master, “que je vous servirai tant&ocirc;t un ragout digne d’un <i>can</i>tador
+mayor.” The word was not “<i>can</i>tador,” but “<i>con</i>tador mayor,” the
+“ministro de hacienda,” or chancellor of the exchequer; a situation
+under a despotic government of the highest dignity and opulence. So Don
+Annibal de Chinchilla exclaims&mdash;“Me croit-elle un contador mayor,” when
+repelling a demand of a rapacious prostitute. But Le Sage mistook the
+<i>o</i> of his manuscript for an <i>a</i>, and turned a phrase very intelligible
+into nonsense. We now come to the passage which M. Neufchateau quotes as
+decisive in favour of Le Sage’s claims. It certainly was to be found in
+no Spanish manuscript.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Don Louis nous mena chez un jeune gentilhomme de ses amis, qu’on
+appeloit don Gabriel de Pedros. Nous y pass&acirc;mes le reste de la
+journ&eacute;e; nous y soup&acirc;mes m&ecirc;me, et nous n’en sort&icirc;mes que sur les
+deux heures apr&egrave;s minuit pour nous en retourner au logis. Nous
+avions peut-&ecirc;tre fait la moiti&eacute; du chemin, lorsque nous
+rencontr&acirc;mes sous nos pieds dans la rue deux hommes &eacute;tendus par
+terre. Nous juge&acirc;mes que c’&eacute;toient des malheureux qu’on venoit
+d’assassiner, et nous nous arret&acirc;mes pour les secourir, s’il en
+&eacute;toit encore temps. Comme nous cherchions &agrave; nous instruire, autant
+que l’obscurit&eacute; de la nuit nous le pouvoit permettre, de l’&eacute;tat o&ugrave;
+ils se trouvoient, la patrouille arriva. Le commandant nous prit
+d’abord pour des assassins, et nous fit environner par ses gens;
+mais il eut meilleure opinion de nous lorsqu’il nous eut entendus
+parler, et qu’&agrave; la faveur d’une lanterne sourde, il vit les traits
+de Mendoce et de Pacheco. Ses archers, par son ordre, examin&egrave;rent
+les deux hommes que nous nous imaginions avoir &eacute;t&eacute; tu&eacute;s; et il se
+trouva que c’&eacute;toit un gros licencie avec son valet, tous deux pris
+de vin, ou plut&ocirc;t ivres-morts. ‘Messieurs,’ s’&eacute;cria un des archers,
+‘je reconnois ce gros vivant. Eh! c’est le seigneur licencie
+Guyomar, recteur de notre universit&eacute;. Tel que vous le voyez, c’est
+un grand personnage, un g&eacute;nie superieur. Il n’y a point de
+philosophe qu’il ne terrasse dans une dispute; il a un flux de
+bouche sans pareil. C’est dommage qu’il aime un peu trop de vin, le
+proc&egrave;s, et la grisette. Il revient de souper de chez son Isabella,
+o&ugrave;, par malheur, son guide s’est enivre comme lui. Ils sont tombes
+l’un et l’autre dans le ruisseau. Avant que le bon licencie fut
+recteur, cela lui arrivoit assez souvent. Les honneurs, comme vous
+voyez, ne changent pas toujours les mœurs.’ Nous laiss&acirc;mes ces
+ivrognes entre les mains de la patrouille, qui eut soin de les
+porter chez eux. Nous regagn&acirc;mes notre h&ocirc;tel, et chacun ne songea
+qu’&agrave; se reposer.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Now this story pierces to the heart the theory which M. Neufchateau
+cites it in order to establish. It is an anecdote incorporated by Le
+Sage with the rest of the work; and how well it tallies with a Spanish
+story, and the delineation of Spanish manners, let the reader judge. The
+rector of the university of Salamanca was required to unite a great
+variety of qualifications. In the first place, his birth must have been
+noble for several generations; not perhaps as many as a canon of
+Strasburg was required to trace, but more than it was possible for the
+great majority even of well born gentlemen to produce. The situation,
+indeed, was generally conferred upon the members of the second class of
+nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with
+royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop
+in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His
+morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified
+ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the
+streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but
+from habitual indulgence in a vice which, throughout Spain, is
+considered infamous, and
+<span class="pagebreak" title="715">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_715" id="Page_715"></a>
+which none but those who are below the
+influence of public opinion, and even those but in rare instances, are
+ever known to practise. To call a man a drunkard in Spain, is considered
+a worse insult than to call him a thief; and the effect of the story is
+the same as if a person, pretending to describe English manners, were to
+represent the Lord Chancellor as often in custody on a charge of
+shoplifting, and permitted, in consideration of his abilities, still to
+remain in office and exercise the duties of his station.</p>
+
+<p>The principal topographical errors are the following:&mdash;Do&ntilde;a Mencia names
+to Gil Blas two places on the road near Burgos&mdash;these she calls Gofal
+and Rodillas; the real names are Tardagal and Revilla, (1, 11;) Ponte de
+Mula is put for Puenta Duro, (1, 13;) Luceno for Luyego; Villardera for
+Villar del Sa, (5, 1;) Almerim for Almoharia, (5, 1;) Sliva for Chiva,
+(7, 1;) Obisa for Cobisa, (10, 10;) Sinas for Linas; Mililla for
+Melilla; Arragon for Aragon. Describing his journey from Madrid to
+Oviedo, Gil Blas says they slept the first night at Alcala of Henares,
+and the second at Segovia. Now Alcala is not on the road from Madrid to
+Segovia, nor is it possible to travel in one day from one of these
+cities to the other&mdash;probably Galapagar was the word mistaken. Penafiel
+is mentioned as lying on the road from Segovia to Valladolid, (10, 1;)
+this is for Portillo. Now, if Le Sage had invented the story, and
+clothed it with names of Spanish cities and villages, taken from
+<i>printed</i> books, can any one suppose that he could have fallen into all
+these errors?</p>
+
+<p>A thread of Spanish history winds through the whole story of <i>Gil Blas</i>,
+and keeps every circumstance in its place; therefore the date of the
+hero’s birth may be fixed with the greatest precision. He tells us he
+was fifty-eight at the death of the Count Duke of Olivarez, that is,
+1646; Gil Blas was therefore born 1588, and this corresponds altogether
+with different allusions, which show that when the romance was written
+the war between Spain and Portugal was present to the author’s mind, and
+the subject of his constant animadversion. Portugal, as our readers may
+recollect, became subject to the Spanish yoke in 1580, the Duke of
+Braganza was raised to the throne of that kingdom in 1640; and the war
+to which that event gave rise was not terminated till 1668; when Charles
+II. acknowledged Alphonso VI. as the legitimate ruler of Portugal. That
+when the work was written the war between Spain and Portugal continued,
+may be inferred from the fact, that the mention of Portugal is
+perpetually accompanied with some allusion to hostilities which were
+then carried on between the two countries. The romance must therefore
+have been written between the disgrace of the Count Duke, 1646, and the
+recognition of Portuguese independence, 1668. But we may contract the
+date of the work within still narrower limits. It could not have been
+written before 1654, as the works of Don Augustini Moreto, none of which
+were published before 1654, are cited in it&mdash;it is not of later date,
+because there is no allusion in any part of the work to the death of
+Philip IV., to the peace of the Pyrenees, or to any other ministers but
+Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez. Don Louis de Haro, Marquis of Carpio, and
+Duke of Montora, is not mentioned moreover. Gil Blas, describing himself
+to Laura, says that he is the only son of Fernando de Ribera, who fell
+in a battle on the frontiers of Portugal fifteen years before. This is a
+prolepsis; for the battle was fought in 1640. But this manifest
+anachronism, which entirely escaped Le Sage, was intended by the author
+as an autograph, a sort of “chien de Bassano,” to point out the real
+date of the work. Bearing in mind, then, that Gil Blas was born in 1588;
+that Portugal was annexed to Spain in 1580 without a struggle; and
+remained subject to its dominion till 1640; let us consider the
+anachronisms in which Le Sage has plunged himself, partly through his
+ignorance of Spanish history, partly from the attempt to interpolate
+other Spanish novels with the main body of the work he has translated.
+One of these is confessed by Le Sage himself, and occurs in the story of
+Don Pompeio de Castro, inserted in the first volume. Don Pompeio is
+supposed to relate this story at Madrid
+<span class="pagebreak" title="716">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_716" id="Page_716"></a>
+in 1607; in it a king of
+Portugal is spoken of at that time as being an independent sovereign.
+Now in the third volume of the seventh book, in the year 1608, Pedro
+Zamora tells Laura, with whom he has eloped, that they were in security
+in Portugal, a foreign kingdom, though actually subject to the crown of
+Spain. Now this is quite correct, and here Le Sage’s attention was
+called to the anachronism above cited in his preceding volume, which he
+undertakes to correct in another edition&mdash;a promise which he fulfilled
+by the clumsy expedient of transferring the scene from Portugal to
+Poland. But how comes it to pass that Le Sage, who singles out with such
+painful anxiety the error to which we have adverted, suffers others of
+equal importance to pass altogether unnoticed? For instance, in the
+twelfth book, eighth chapter, Olivarez speaks of a journey of Philip IV.
+to Zaragoza; which took place indeed, but not until two years after the
+disgrace of Olivarez. Cogollos, speaking in 1616, alludes to a
+circumstance connected with the revolt of Portugal in 1640; Olivarez,
+sixteen months afterwards, mentions the same circumstance, saying to
+Cogollos&mdash;“Your patron, though related to the Duke of Braganza, had, I
+am well assured, no share in his revolt.” In 1607, Gil Blas, being the
+servant of Don Bernardo de Castel Blanco, says, that some suppose his
+master to be a spy of the king of Portugal, a personage who at that time
+did not exist. Now, if Le Sage intended to leave to posterity a lasting
+and unequivocal proof of his plagiarism, how could he do so more
+effectually than by dwelling on one anachronism as an error which he
+intended to correct, in a work swarming in every part with others
+equally flagrant, of which he takes no notice? We have mentioned these
+mistakes, particularly as being mistakes into which the original author
+had fallen, and which, as his object was not to give an exact relation
+of facts, he probably disregarded altogether. And here again we must
+repeat our remark, that these perpetual allusions indicate a writer not
+afraid of exposing himself by irretrievable blunders, and certain of
+being understood by those whom he addressed. A Spaniard writing for
+Spaniards, would of course take it for granted that his countrymen were
+acquainted with those very facts and allusions which Le Sage sometimes
+formally endeavours to explain, and sometimes is unable to detect; while
+a writer conscious, as the French author was, of a very imperfect
+acquaintance with the language and usages of Spain, would never indulge
+in those little circumstantial touches which a Spaniard could not help
+inserting.</p>
+
+<p>We now come to errors of Le Sage himself. Do&ntilde;a Mencia speaks of her
+first husband dying in the service of the king of Portugal, five or six
+years after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Events are
+described as taking place in the time of Philip II., under the title of
+Le Mariage de Vengeance, which happened three hundred years before, at
+the time of the Sicilian Vespers, 1283. Gil Blas, after his release from
+the tower of Segovia, tells his patron, Alonzo de Leyva, that four
+months before he held an important office under the Spanish crown; while
+he tells Philip IV. that he was six months in prison at Segovia. But the
+following very remarkable error almost determines the question, as it
+discovers demonstrably the mistake of a transcriber. Scipio, returning
+to his master in April 1621, informs Gil Blas that Philip III. is dead;
+and proceeds to say that it is rumoured that the Cardinal Duke of Lerma
+has lost his office, is forbidden to appear at court, and that Gaspar de
+Guzman, Count of Olivarez, is prime minister. Now, the Cardinal Duke of
+Lerma had lost his office since the 4th October 1618, three years before
+the death of Philip III. How is this mistake explained? By the
+transcriber’s omission of the words “Duke of Uzeda, son of,” which
+should precede the cardinal duke, &amp;c., and which makes the sentence
+historically correct; for the Duke of Uzeda was the son of the Cardinal
+Duke of Lerma, did succeed his father, and was turned out of office at
+the death of Philip III., when he was succeeded by Olivarez. If there
+was no other argument but this, it would serve materially to invalidate
+Le Sage
+<span class="pagebreak" title="717">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_717" id="Page_717"></a>
+’s claims to originality; as the omission of these words makes
+nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes
+the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in
+Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in
+other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of
+the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism
+can ever be said “digito monstrari et dicier hic est,” it is here.</p>
+
+<p>If we consider the effect of all these accumulated circumstances&mdash;the
+travelling on mules, the mode of extorting money, the plunder of the
+prisoners by the jailer, the rosary with its large beads carried by the
+Spanish Tartuffe, instead of the “haire and the discipline” mentioned by
+Moli&egrave;re, the description of the hotels of Madrid, the inferior condition
+of surgeons, the graceful bearing of the cloak, the notary’s inkstand,
+the posada in which the actors slept as well as acted, the convent in
+which Philip’s mistress is placed with such minute propriety, the
+Gallina Ciega, the lane in Madrid, the dinner hour of the clerks in the
+minister’s office, the knowledge of the ecclesiastical rights of the
+crown over Granada, and of the Aragonese resistance to a foreign
+viceroy, the number of words left in the original Spanish, and of others
+which betray a Spanish origin, the names of cities, villages, and
+families, that rise spontaneously to the hand of the writer, and the
+perpetual mistakes which their enumeration occasions, among which we
+will only here specify that of C<i>a</i>ntador for C<i>o</i>ntador, and the
+omission of the words “Duc d’Uzeda,” which can alone set right a
+flagrant anachronism&mdash;if we consider the effect of all these
+circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result
+which such a complication of probabilities conspires to fortify.</p>
+
+<p>The objections stated by M. Neufchateau to this overwhelming mass of
+evidence, utterly destructive as it is to the hypothesis of which he was
+the advocate, are so feeble and captious, that they hardly deserve the
+examination which Llorente, in the anxiety of his patriotism, has
+condescended to bestow on then. M. Neufchateau objects to the minute
+references on which many of Llorente’s arguments are built; but he
+should remember that, in an examination of this sort, it is “one thing
+to be minute, and another to be precarious;” one thing to be oblique,
+and another to be fantastical. On such occasions the more powerful the
+microscope is that the critic can employ, the better; not only because
+all suspicion of contrivance or design is thereby further removed, but
+because proofs, separately trifling, are, when united, irresistible; and
+the circumstantial evidence to which courts of justice are compelled, by
+the necessity of human affairs, to recur, in matters where the lives and
+fortunes of individuals are at stake, is not only legitimate, but
+indispensable, before tribunals which have not the same means of
+investigation at their command. In this, however, the evidence is as
+full, positive, and satisfactory as any evidence not appealing to the
+senses or mathematical demonstration for its truth, can possibly be; and
+any one in active life who was to forbear from acting upon it, would
+deserve to be treated as a lunatic. Let us, however, consider the
+admissions of M. Neufchateau. He admits, 1st, That Le Sage was never in
+Spain. 2dly, Le Sage, in 1735, acknowledged the chronological error into
+which he had fallen, from inserting the story of Don Pompeyo de Castro,
+and announced his intention to correct it. 3dly, He allows, in 1724,
+when the third volume of <i>Gil Blas</i> was published, Le Sage annexed to it
+the Latin distich, implying that the work was at an end&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Inveni portum, spes et fortuna, valete;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He allows, therefore, that the publication of the fourth volume, eleven
+years after the third volume of <i>Gil Blas</i> was published, was as far
+from the original intention of the author as it was on the expectation
+of the public. 4thly, That, from the introduction of the Duke of Lerma
+on the stage at the close of the work, the history of Spain is adhered
+to with exact fidelity. 5thly, He allows that the description of Spanish
+inns, (10, 12,) is taken from the “Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon.”
+6thly, He allows that the novel of “Le Mariage de
+<span class="pagebreak" title="718">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_718" id="Page_718"></a>
+Vengeance,” related
+by Do&ntilde;a Elvira, is inconsistent with all the rest of the story of <i>Gil
+Blas</i>. The anachronisms in which Le Sage is entangled, by applying a
+story to the seventeenth century that relates to the thirteenth, prove
+his ignorance of Spanish history. On this M. Neufchateau remarks as
+usual, that no Spaniard would have fallen into such an error. True; but
+how does it happen that the person making it is so intimately acquainted
+with the topography and habits of Spain? and how can this contradiction
+be solved, but by supposing that Le Sage incorporated a Spanish story
+which caught his fancy with the manuscript before him? 7thly, He allows
+that the story of Do&ntilde;a Laura de Guzman is taken from a Spanish comedy
+entitled, “Todo es enredos amor y el diablo son las mugeres.” 8thly, He
+allows that the expression, “et je promets de vous faire tirer pied ou
+aile du premier ministre,”<a name="FNanchor_B_25" id="FNanchor_B_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_25" class="fnnum">B</a> is not French; it is in fact the
+translation of a Spanish proverb, “Agarrar pata o alon.” 9thly, He
+admits that the intimate acquaintance with the personal history of the
+Count Duke, displayed by Le Sage, is astonishing. 10thly, He admits that
+the stories of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Do&ntilde;a Mencia de Mosquera, contained in 1st book, 11th, 12th, 13th, and
+14th chapters,</p>
+
+<p class="gilblaslist">
+  Of the story of Diego de la Fuente, contained in the 2d book,
+                    7th chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Don Bernardo de Castelblanco, contained in the 2d book,
+                    1st chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Don Pompeyo de Castro, contained in the 2d book, 7th
+                    chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Do&ntilde;a Aurora de Guzman, contained in the 4th book, 2d, 3d,
+                    5th, and 6th chapters,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Matrimonio por Venganza, contained in the 4th book, 4th
+                    chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Do&ntilde;a Serafina de Polan and Don Alfonso de Leiva,
+                    contained in 10th book,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Rafael and Lucinda, contained in 5th book, 1st chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Samuel Simon en Chelva, contained in 6th book, 1st
+                    chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Laura, contained in 7th book, 7th chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Don A&ntilde;ibal de Chinchilla, contained in 7th book, 12th
+                    chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Valerio de Luna and Inesilla Cantarilla, contained in
+                    8th book, 1st chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Andres de Tordesillas, Gaston de Cogollos, and Elena de
+                    Galisteo, contained in 9th book, 4th, 11th, and 13th
+                    chapters,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Scipio, contained in 10th book, 10th, 11th, and 12th
+                    chapters,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>Laura and Lucrecia, contained in 12th book, 1st chapter,</p>
+<p class="gilblaslist"><span class="gilblasdash">&mdash;</span>And the Histories of Lerma and Olivarez, contained in
+                    11th book, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th, 13th; and
+                    2d book, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th,
+                    12th, and 13th chapters.</p>
+
+
+<p>Composing more than two-thirds of <i>Gil Blas</i>&mdash;are taken from the
+Spanish. Such are the admissions of Le Sage’s advocates.</p>
+
+<p>Even after these important deductions, there remains enough to found a
+brilliant reputation. To this remainder, however, Le Sage is not
+entitled. It is, we trust, proved to every candid reader, that, with the
+exception of one anecdote, entertaining in itself, but betraying the
+greatest
+<span class="pagebreak" title="719">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_719" id="Page_719"></a>
+ignorance of Spanish manners, two or three allusions to the
+current scandal and topics of the day, and the insertion of several
+novels avowedly translated from other Spanish writers; all the merit of
+Le Sage consists in dividing a manuscript placed by his friend, the Abb&eacute;
+de Lyonne, in his possession, into two stories&mdash;one of which was <i>Gil
+Blas</i>, and the other, confessed by himself to be a translation and
+published long after the former, was the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i>. To
+the argument of chronological error, the sole answer which M.
+Neufchateau condescends to give is, that they are incomprehensible; and
+on his hypothesis he is right. As to the Spanish words and phrases
+employed in <i>Gil Blas</i>, the names of villages, towns, and families which
+occur in it, he observes that these are petty circumstances&mdash;so they
+are, and for that very reason the argument they imply is irresistible.
+The story of the examination of Gaspar, the servant of Simon, in the
+Inquisition scene, is gravely urged by M. Neufchateau as a proof that
+the writer was a Frenchman, as no Spaniard would dare to attack the
+Inquisition. This is strange confusion. Not a word is uttered against
+the Inquisition in the scene. Some impostors disguise themselves in the
+dress of inquisitors to perpetrate a fraud. If a French novel describe
+two or three swindlers, assuming the garb of members of the old
+Parliament of Paris in execution of their design, is this an attack on
+the Parliament of Paris? Is the “Beaux’ Stratagem” an attack on our army
+and peerage? The argument, however, may be retorted; for had a Frenchman
+been the author of the story, it is more than probable that he would
+have introduced some attack upon the Inquisition, and quite certain that
+the characters brought forward would have deviated from the strict
+propriety they now preserve. Some confusion would have been made among
+them&mdash;an error which M. Neufchateau, in the few lines he has written
+upon the subject, has not been able to avoid. We may add that this whole
+scene was printed in Spanish, under the eye of the Inquisition, without
+any interference on the part of that venerable body, who, though
+tolerably quick-sighted in such matters, were not, it should seem, aware
+of the attack upon them which M. Neufchateau has been sagacious enough
+to discover. To the argument drawn from the geographical blunders, M.
+Neufchateau mutters that they are excusable in a writer who had never
+been in Spain. The question, how such a writer came wantonly to incur
+them, he leaves unanswered. M. Neufchateau asserts, that there is in
+Spanish no proverb that corresponds to the French saying, “A quelque
+chose le malheur est bon.” But a comedy was written in the time of
+Philip IV., entitled, “No hay man que por bien no venga.” He argues that
+<i>Gil Blas</i> is not the work of a Spaniard, because it does not, like <i>Don
+Quixote</i>, abound with proverbs; by a parity of reasoning, he might infer
+<i>The Silent Lady</i> was not written by an Englishman; as there is no
+allusion to Falstaff in it.</p>
+
+<p>But it may be said, if Le Sage was so unscrupulous as to appropriate to
+himself the works of another writer in <i>Gil Blas</i>, how came he to
+acknowledge the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i> as a translation?</p>
+
+<p>This is a fair question, but the answer we can give is satisfactory. The
+originals of all his translations, except <i>Gil Blas</i> and the <i>Bachelier
+de Salamanque</i>, were printed; and therefore any attempt at wholesale
+plagiarism must have been immediately detected. The <i>Bachelier de
+Salamanque</i>, it is true, was in manuscript; but it had been long in the
+possession of the Marquis de Lerma and his son, before it became the
+property of Le Sage; and although tolerably certain that it had never
+been diligently perused, Le Sage could not be sure that it had not
+attracted superficial notice, and that the name was not known to many
+people. Now, by eviscerating the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i> of its most
+entertaining anecdotes, and giving them a different title, and then
+publishing the mutilated copy of a work, the name of which, with the
+outline of its story, was known to many people as an acknowledged
+translation, he took the most obvious means of disarming all suspicion
+of plagiarism, and setting, as it seems he did, on
+<span class="pagebreak" title="720">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_720" id="Page_720"></a>
+a wrong track the
+curiosity of enquirers. How came the original manuscript not to be
+printed by its author? Because it could not be printed with impunity
+within the jurisdiction of the Spanish monarchy: the allusions to the
+abuses of the court and the favourites of the day are so obvious&mdash;the
+satire upon the imbecility of the Spanish government so keen and
+biting&mdash;the personal descriptions of Philip III. and Philip IV. so
+exact&mdash;the corruption of its ministers of justice, and the abuses
+practised in its prisons, branded in terms so lively and vehement&mdash;the
+attacks upon the influence of the clergy, their hypocrisy, their
+ambition, and their avarice, so frequent and severe&mdash;that while Philip
+IV. and Don John of Austria, the fruit of his intrigue with the actress
+Marie Calderon, so carefully pointed out, were still alive, and before
+the generation to which it alludes had passed away, its publication, in
+Spain at least, was impossible. The <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i> was not
+published for the same reason; and for the same reason, even in a
+country with perhaps more pretensions to freedom than Spain possessed,
+no one has yet acknowledged himself the writer of <i>Junius</i>. But why do
+you not produce the Spanish manuscript, and set the question at rest?
+exclaims with much <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> M. Neufchateau. Does such an argument
+deserve serious refutation? That is, why do not you Spaniards produce a
+manuscript given to one Frenchman by another at Paris, in the 18th
+century, which of course, if our theory be true, he had the strongest
+temptation to destroy? Rather may the Spaniards ask, why do not <i>you</i>
+produce the original manuscript of the <i>Bachelier de Salamanque</i>, which
+would overthrow at least one portion of our hypothesis?</p>
+
+<p>The object of <i>Gil Blas</i> is to exhibit a vivid representation of the
+follies and vices of the successive administrations of Lerma, Uzeda, and
+Olivarez; to point out the actual state of the drama in Spain under the
+reign of Philip IV., who, indolent as he was, possessed the taste of a
+true Spaniard for dramatic representation; to criticise the absurd
+system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of
+justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders
+and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and
+inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the
+towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found
+shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages
+of their violence&mdash;in short, to hold up every species of national error,
+and every weakness of national folly, to public obloquy and derision. In
+dwelling upon such topics the writer will, of course, describe scenes
+and characters common to every state of civilized society. The broad and
+general features of the time-serving courtier, of the servile coxcomb,
+of the rapacious mistress, of the expecting legatee, the frivolous man
+of fashion, and the still more frivolous pedant, will be the same,
+whatever be the country in which the scene is laid, and by whatever
+names they happen to be distinguished. France had, no doubt, her
+Sangrados and Ochetos, her Matthias de Silva and Rodrigo, her Lauras and
+her Archbishops of Granada.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some wandering touches, some reflected light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some flying stroke, alone can hit ’em right.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Where the touches are more exact and delicate, where the strokes are
+laid on with the painful labour of a Flemish pencil, where the business
+and the bosoms of men are addressed more directly, there it is we shall
+find proofs of the view and purpose of the author; such traits are the
+key with the leather strap that verified the judgment of Sancho’s
+kinsmen. To what purpose should a Frenchman, writing in the time of
+Louis XIV., censure the rapacity of innkeepers, and the wretchedness of
+their extorted accommodation, when France, from the time of Chaucer to
+the present hour, has been famous for the civility of the one and the
+convenience of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were
+to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns
+unexplored by a negligent administration,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="721">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_721" id="Page_721"></a>
+in which bandits found a
+refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature
+of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and
+fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the
+severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is
+perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste
+began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious,
+inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to
+ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less
+ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point
+of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing
+could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be
+attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of
+genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When <i>Gil Blas</i>
+was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the
+fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste
+of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the
+master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the
+vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, F&eacute;n&eacute;lon, and
+Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of
+European literature.</p>
+
+<p>Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national
+prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one
+were to affirm that the <i>Adelphi</i> of Terence was not a translation from
+Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater
+authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for
+proselytes. Let us see what he might allege&mdash;he might urge that Terence
+had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on
+this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus
+as his original&mdash;he might insist that Syrus could only have been the
+slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our
+notions of a Roman pander, that &AElig;schinus was the picture of a dissolute
+young patrician&mdash;in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian
+drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and
+society; nay more, he might insist on the marriage of Micio at the close
+of the drama, as Neufchateau does upon the drunkenness of Guyomar, as
+alluding to some anecdote of the day, and at any rate as the admitted
+invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of
+Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed;
+he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the
+Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the
+names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of
+Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the
+administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. All this
+such a reasoner might do, and all this M. Neufchateau has done. But
+would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man
+of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the
+whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent
+translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy, that his language
+in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not
+Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he
+would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a
+fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish
+servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome,
+at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of
+what value were such broad and general features common to a species,
+when the fidelity of an individual likeness was in question? He would
+say, that the incident quoted as a proof of originality, served only, by
+its repugnance to Grecian manners, and its inferiority to the work in
+which it was inserted, to prove that the rest was the production of
+another writer. He would quote the translations from fragments still
+extant, which the work, exquisite as it is, contains, as proofs of a
+still more beautiful original. Lastly, he would cite the “Dimidiate
+Menander” of C&aelig;sar, as a proof of the opinion
+<span class="pagebreak" title="722">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_722" id="Page_722"></a>
+entertained of his genius
+by the great writers of his own country; and when he had done this, he
+might enquire with confidence whether any one existed capable of forming
+a judgment upon style, or of distinguishing one author from another, who
+would dispute the position for which he contended.</p>
+
+<p>The sum and substance of all M. Neufchateau’s argument is the slight
+assumption, that every allusion to a man eminent for wit and genius,
+must be intended for a Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that
+Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid
+declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not
+as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are
+shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to
+Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic
+writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such
+trifling difficulties are as dust when placed in the balance with the
+inveterate opinion to which we have already alluded.</p>
+
+<p>According to the principles adopted by M. Neufchateau, <i>Gil Blas</i> might
+be adapted to any court, or age, or country. For instance, if Triaquero,
+meaning a charlatan, (which, by the way, it does not,) refers of
+necessity to Voltaire, might not any Englishman, if the work had been
+published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an
+Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who,
+having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without
+Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an
+historian without research?</p>
+
+<p>The difference between Dr Sangrado and our hydropathists is merely that
+between hot and cold water, by no means excluding an allusion to the
+latter, under the veil, as M. Neufchateau has it, of Spanish manners.
+Would it be quite impossible to find in St James’s Street, or in certain
+buildings at no great distance from the Thames, the exact counterparts
+of Don Matthias de Silva and his companions? Gongora, indeed, in spite
+of his detestable taste, was a man of genius; and therefore to find his
+type among us would be difficult, if not impossible, unless an excess of
+the former quality, for which he was conspicuous, might counterbalance a
+deficiency in the latter. Are our <i>employ&eacute;s</i> less pompous and empty than
+Gil Blas and his companions? our squires less absurd and ignorant than
+the hidalgoes of Valencia? Let any one read some of the pamphlets on
+Archbishop Whately’s Logic, or attend an examination in the schools at
+Oxford, and then say if the race of those who plume themselves on the
+discovery, that Greek children cried when they were whipped is extinct?
+To be sure, as the purseproud insolence of a <i>nouveau riche</i>, and indeed
+of <i>parvenus</i> generally, is quite unknown among us, nobody could rely on
+those points of resemblance. But with regard to the other topics, would
+it not be fair to say, in answer to such an argument&mdash;All this is mere
+commonplace generality; such are the characters of every country where
+European institutions exist, or European habits are to be found?
+Something more tangible and specific is requisite to support your claim.
+You are to prove that the picture is a portrait of a particular
+person&mdash;and you say it has eyes and a nose; so have all portraits. But
+where are the strokes that constitute identity, and determine the
+original?&mdash;There is no mention of Crockford’s or of the Missionary
+Society, of the Old Bailey or the Foundling Hospital; and if Ordonez is
+named, who gets rich by managing the affairs of the poor, this can never
+be meant for a satire on the blundering pedantry of your Somerset-house
+commissioners.&mdash;Here is no hint that can be tortured into a glance at
+fox-hunters, or game-preservers, of the society for promoting rural
+deans, at your double system of contradictory law, at special pleading
+at quarter-sessions,<a name="FNanchor_C_26" id="FNanchor_C_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_26" class="fnnum">C</a> at the technical rigour
+<span class="pagebreak" title="723">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_723" id="Page_723"></a>
+of your institutions,
+at the delay, chicanery, and expense of your judicial proceedings, at
+the refinement, ease, wit, gayety, and disinterested respect for merit,
+which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing
+is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and
+mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by
+making a turn for tumid metaphor and the love of display necessary
+ingredients in the character of its votaries, extirpating from among
+them that simplicity which was so fatal an obstacle to the progress of
+Newton,&mdash;and turning the newly discovered joint of an antediluvian
+reptile into a theme of perennial and ambitious declamation; nothing is
+said about those discussions on baptismal fonts, those discoveries of
+trochees for iambics, or the invention of new potatoe boilers, which in
+the days of Hegel, Berryer, Schlosser, Savigny, and Cousin, are the
+glory and delight of England; in short, there is nothing to fix the
+allusions on which you rely on to distinguish them from those which
+might be applicable to Paris, Vienna, or Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>There are no people less disposed than ourselves to detract from the
+merit of eminent French writers; they are always clear, elegant, and
+judicious; often acute, eloquent, and profound. There is no department
+of prose literature in which they do not equal us; there are many in
+which they are unquestionably our superiors. Unlike our authors, who, on
+those subjects which address the heart and reason jointly, adopt the
+style of a treatise on the differential calculus; and when pure science
+is their topic, lead us to suppose (if it were not for their disgusting
+pomposity) they had chosen for their model the florid confusion of a
+tenth-rate novel;&mdash;the French write on scientific subjects with
+simplicity and precision, and on moral, &aelig;sthetic, and theoretical
+questions with spirit, earnestness, and sensibility. Having said so
+much, we must however add, that a liberal and ingenious acknowledgment
+of error is not among the shining qualities of our neighbours. When a
+question is at issue in which they imagine the literary reputation of
+their country to be at stake, it is the dexterity of the advocate,
+rather than the candour of the judge, that we must look for in their
+dissertations. He who has argued on the guilt of Mary with a Scotchman,
+or the authenticity of the three witnesses with a newly made archdeacon,
+and with a squire smarting under an increasing poor-rate or the
+corn-laws, may form a just conception of the task he will undertake in
+endeavouring to persuade a French critic that his countrymen are in the
+wrong. The patient, if he does not, as it has sometimes happened in the
+cases to which we have referred, become “pugil et medicum urget,” is
+sure, as in those instances, to triumph over all the proofs which reason
+can suggest, or that the hellebore of nine Anticyras could furnish him
+with capacity to understand. Of this the work of M. Neufchateau is a
+striking proof. Truth is on one side, Le Sage’s claim to originality on
+the other; and he supports the latter: we do not say that he is willing,
+rather than abandon his client, to assert a falsehood; but we are sure
+that, in order to defend him, he is ready to believe absurdities.</p>
+
+<p>The degree of moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we
+attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected
+with our subject, and upon which we enter with regret.</p>
+
+<p>Lessing accused Wieland of having destroyed a palace, that he might
+build a cottage with its materials. However highly we may think of the
+original, we can hardly suppose such an expression applicable to <i>Gil
+Blas</i>. Of the name of the author whose toil Le Sage thus appropriated,
+charity
+<span class="pagebreak" title="724">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_724" id="Page_724"></a>
+obliges us to suppose that he was ignorant; but we should not
+forget that the case of Le Sage is not precisely that of a person who
+publishes, as an original, a translation from a printed work, as Wieland
+did with his copy of Rowe’s Lady Jane Grey, and Lord Byron with his copy
+of the most musical lines in Goethe. The offence of Le Sage more
+resembles that imputed (we sincerely believe without foundation) to
+Raphael; namely, that after the diligent study of some ancient frescoes,
+he suffered them to perish, in order to conceal his imitation. But we
+hasten to close these reflections, which tenderness to the friend and
+companion of our boyhood, and gratitude to him who has enlivened many an
+hour, and added so much to our stock of intellectual happiness, forbid
+us to prolong. Let those who feel that they could spurn the temptation,
+in comparison with which every other that besets our miserable nature is
+as dross&mdash;the praise yielded by a polished and fastidious nation to rare
+and acknowledged genius&mdash;denounce as they will the infirmity of Le Sage.
+But let them be quite sure, that instead of being above a motive to
+which none but minds of some refinement are accessible, they are not
+below it. Let them be sure that they do not take dulness for integrity,
+and that the virtue, proof to intellectual triumphs, and disdaining “the
+last infirmity of noble minds,” would not sink if exposed to the ordeal
+of a service of plate, or admission in some frivolous coterie. For
+ourselves we will only say, “Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.”</p>
+
+<p>For these reasons, then, which depend on the nature of the thing, and
+which no testimony can alter&mdash;reasons which we cannot reject without
+abandoning all those principles which carry with them the most certain
+instruction, and are the surest guides of human life&mdash;we think the main
+fact contended for by M. Llorente, that is, the Spanish origin of <i>Gil
+Blas</i>, undeniable; and the subordinate and collateral points of his
+system invested with a high degree of probability; the falsehood of a
+conclusion fairly drawn from such premises as we have pointed out would
+be nearer akin to a metaphysical impossibility; and so long as the light
+of every other gem that glitters in a nation’s diadem is faint and
+feeble when compared with the splendour of intellectual glory, Spain
+will owe a debt of gratitude to him among her sons who has placed upon
+her brow the jewel which France (as if aggression for more material
+objects could not fill up the measure of her injustice towards that
+unhappy land) has kept so long, and worn so ostentatiously.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_24" id="Footnote_A_24"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_24">A</a></span> So in Don Quixote the friars are described “Estando en
+estas razones, aslomaron por el camino dos Frayles de la Orden de san
+Benito, Cavalleros <i>sobre dos Dromedarios, que no eran mas pequneas dos
+mulas en que venian</i>.”</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_25" id="Footnote_B_25"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_B_25">B</a></span> It occurs, however, in Madame de Sevign&eacute;’s letters. But
+that most charming of letter-writers understood Spanish, which Anne of
+Austria had probably made a fashionable accomplishment at the court of
+France. The intrigue for which Vardes was exiled, shows, that to write
+in Spanish was an attainment common among the courtiers of Louis XIV.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_26" id="Footnote_C_26"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_C_26">C</a></span> We call ourselves a <i>practical</i> people! A man incurred, a
+<i>few months</i> ago, an expense of &pound;70, for saying that he was “ready,”
+instead of saying that he was “ready and <i>willing</i>” to do a certain act.
+The man’s name was Granger. Another unfortunate creature incurred costs
+to the amount of &pound;3000, by one of the most ordinary proceedings in our
+courts, called a motion, of course, and usually settled for a guinea. A
+clergyman libelled two of his parishioners in a Bishop’s Court. The
+matter never came to be heard, and the expense of the <i>written</i>
+proceedings was upwards of &pound;800! Can any system be more abominable than
+one which leads to such results?</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="725">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_725" id="Page_725"></a>
+MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Few of the events of our life afford us greater pride than revisiting a
+well-known and celebrated city after many years’ absence. The pleasure
+derived from the hope of enjoyment, the self-satisfaction flowing from
+the presumption of our profound knowledge of the place, and the feeling
+of mental superiority attached to our discernment in returning to the
+spot, which, at the moment, appears to us the particular region of the
+earth peculiarly worthy of a second visit&mdash;or a third, as the case may
+be&mdash;all combine to stuff the lining of the diligence, the packsaddle of
+the Turkish post-horse, or the encumbrance on the back of the camel
+which may happen to convey us, with something softer than swandown. Time
+soon brings the demon of discontent to our society. The city and its
+inhabitants appear changed&mdash;rarely for the better, always less to our
+taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh
+for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous
+odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece,
+and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of
+Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our youth every where.</p>
+
+<p>I enjoyed all the delights and regrets which mere local associations can
+call up, a few months ago, on revisiting Athens after many years’
+absence. On the 6th of May 1827, I had witnessed the complete defeat of
+the Greek army. I had beheld the delhis of Kutayia sabring the flying
+troops of Lord Cochrane and General Church, and seen 1500 men slain by
+the sword in less than half an hour, amidst the roll of an ill-sustained
+and scattered fire of musketry. The sight was heartbreaking, but grand.
+The Turkish cavalry came sweeping down to the beach, until arrested by
+the fire of the ships. Lord Cochrane and his aide-de-camp, Dr Goss,
+themselves had been compelled to plunge more than knee-deep in the &AElig;gean
+ere they could gain their boat. On the hill of the Phalerum I had heard
+General Gueheneuc criticise the manœuvres of the commander-in-chief,
+and General Heideck disparage the quality of his coffee. As the Austrian
+steamer which conveyed me entered the Pir&aelig;us, my mind reverted to the
+innumerable events which had been crowded into my life in Greece. A new
+town rose out of the water before my eyes as if by enchantment; but I
+felt indignant that the lines of Colonel Gordon, and the tambouria of
+Karaiskaki, should be effaced by modern houses and a dusty road. As soon
+as I landed, I resolved to climb the Phalerum, and brood over visions of
+the past. But I had not proceeded many steps from the quay, lost in my
+sentimental reverie, ere I found that reflection ought not to begin too
+soon at the Pir&aelig;us. I was suddenly surrounded by about a dozen
+individuals who seemed determined to prevent me from continuing my walk.
+On surveying them, they appeared dressed for a costume ball of
+ragamuffins. Europe, Asia, and Africa had furnished their wardrobe. The
+most prominent figure among them was a tall Arab, in the nizam of
+Mehemet Ali, terminated with a Maltese straw hat. His companions
+exhibited as singular a taste in dress as himself. Some wore sallow
+Albanian petticoats, carelessly tied over the wide and dusky nether
+garments of Hydriots, their upper man adorned by sailors’ jackets and
+glazed hats; others were tightly buttoned up in European garments, with
+their heads lost in the enormous fez of Constantinople. This antiquarian
+society of garments, fit representatives to a stranger of the
+Bavaro-Hellenic kingdom of Otho the gleaner, and the three donative
+powers, informed me that it consisted of charioteers. Each member of the
+society speaking on his own account, and all at the same time&mdash;a
+circumstance I afterwards found not uncommon in other antiquarian and
+literary societies at Athens&mdash;asked me if I was going to Athens:
+<span class="translit" title="eis Ath&ecirc;nas">εἰς Ἀθήνας</span> was the phrase. The Arab and a couple of Maltese alone said
+“Ees teen Atheena.” Entrapped into
+<span class="pagebreak" title="726">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_726" id="Page_726"></a>
+a reply by the classic sound, I
+unwittingly exclaimed “Malista&mdash;Verily I am.”</p>
+
+<p>The shouts my new friends uttered on hearing me speak Greek cannot be
+described. Their volubility was suddenly increased a hundredfold; and
+had all the various owners of the multitudinous garments before me
+arisen to reclaim their respective habiliments, it could hardly have
+been greater. I could not have believed it possible that nine Greeks,
+aided by two Maltese and a single Arab, could have created such a din.
+The speakers soon perceived that it was utterly impossible for me to
+hear their eloquent addresses, as they could no longer distinguish the
+sounds of their own voices; so with one accord they disappeared, and ere
+I had proceeded many steps again surrounded me, rushing forward with
+their respective vehicles, into which they eagerly invited me to mount.
+If their habiliments consisted of costumes run mad, their chariots were
+not less varied, and afforded an historical study in locomotion. Distant
+capitals and a portion of the last century must have contributed their
+representatives to the motley assemblage. The tall Arab drove a superb
+fiacre of the days of hoops, a vehicle for six insides; phaetons,
+chariots, droschkies, and britskas, Strong’s omnibus, and Rudhart’s
+stuhlwagen, gigs, cars, tilburies, cabriolets, and dogcarts, were all
+there, and each pushing to get exactly before me. Lord Palmerston’s
+kingdom is doubtless a Whig satire on monarchy; the scene before me
+appeared a Romaic satire on the Olympic games. I forgot my melancholy
+sentiment, and resolved to join the fun, by attempting to dodge my
+persecutors round the corners of the isolated houses and deep lime-pits
+which King Otho courteously terms streets. I forgot that barbarians were
+excluded from the Olympic games, not on account of the jealousy of the
+Greeks, but because no barbarian could display the requisite skill. The
+charioteers and their horses knew the ground so much better than I did,
+that they blockaded me at every turn; so, in order to gain the rocky
+ground, I started off towards the hill of the Phalerum pursued by the
+<i>pancosmium</i> of vehicles. On the first precipitous elevation I turned to
+laugh at my pursuers, when, to my horror, I saw Strong’s omnibus
+lumbering along in the distance, surrounded by a considerable crowd, and
+I distinguished the loud shouts of the
+mob:&mdash;<span class="translit" title="Pou einai ho trelos ho Anglos?">Ποῦ
+εἶναι ὁ τρελός ὁ Ἄγγλος;</span>
+“Where is the mad Englishman?” So my melancholy was
+conducting me to madness.</p>
+
+<p>My alarm dispelled all my reminiscences of Lord Cochrane, and my visions
+of the Olympic games. I sprang into the droschky of a Greek sailor, who
+drove over the rocks as if he only expected his new profession to endure
+for a single day. We were soon on the Pir&aelig;us road, which I well knew
+runs along the foundations of one of the long walls; but I was too glad
+to escape, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, unscathed from the
+imbroglio I had created, to honour even Themistocles with a single
+thought. My charioteer was a far better specimen of the present, than
+foundations of long walls, ruined temples, and statues without noses,
+can possibly be of the past. He informed me he was a sailor: by so
+doing, he did not prove to me that he estimated my discernment very
+highly, for that fact required no announcement. He added, however, what
+was more instructive; <i>to wit</i>, that he had received the droschky with
+the horses, that morning, from a Russian captain, in payment of a bad
+debt. He had resolved to improviso the coachman, though he had never
+driven a horse before in his life&mdash;<span class="translit" title="eukolon einai">εὔκολον
+εἶναι</span>&mdash;“it is an
+easy matter;” and he drove like Jehu, shouted like Stentor, and laughed
+like the Afrite of Caliph Vathek. He ran over nobody, in spite of his
+vehemence. Perhaps his horses were wiser than himself: indeed I have
+remarked, that the populace of Greece is universally more sagacious than
+its rulers. In taking leave of this worthy tar at the Hotel de Londres,
+I asked him gravely if he thought that, in case Russia, England, or
+France should one day take Greece in payment of a bad debt, they would
+act wisely to drive her as hard as he drove his horses? He opened his
+eyes at me as if he was about to unskin his head, and began to reflect
+in silence; so, perceiving that he entertained a very high opinion of my
+wisdom, I availed myself of the opportunity
+<span class="pagebreak" title="727">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_727" id="Page_727"></a>
+to advise him to moderate
+his pace a little in future, if he wished his horses to survive the
+week.</p>
+
+<p>During my stay at Athens, King Otho was absent from his capital; so
+that, though I lost the pleasure of beholding the beautiful and graceful
+queen, I escaped the misfortune of being dishonoured by receiving the
+cross of an officer of the order of the Redeemer. His Hellenic majesty
+takes a peculiar satisfaction in hanging this decoration at the
+buttonholes of those who served Greece during the revolutionary war;
+while he suspends the cross of Commander round the necks, or ornaments
+with the star of the order the breasts, of all the Bavarians who have
+assisted him in relieving Greece of the Palmerstonian plethora of cash
+gleaned from the three powers. For my own part, I am not sure but that I
+should have made up my mind to return the cross, with a letter full of
+polite expressions of contempt for the supposed honour, and a few hints
+of pity for the donor; as a very able and distinguished friend of
+Greece, whose services authorized him so to act, did a few days before
+my arrival.</p>
+
+<p>On attempting to find my way through Bavarian Athens, I was as much at a
+loss as Lady Francis Egerton, and could not help exclaiming, “Voila des
+rues qui ont bien peu de logique!” After returning two or three times to
+the church Kamkarea, against whose walls half the leading streets of the
+new city appear to run bolt up, I was compelled to seek the assistance
+of a guide. At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my
+friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian
+blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the
+picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I
+enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to
+his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for
+information to the patriotic and enterprising Demarch, or mayor, who
+bears the same name.</p>
+
+<p>In the end my enquiries were successful, and their result seemed
+miraculous. To my utter astonishment I learned that Michael had become a
+monk, and dwelt in the monastery of Pentelicus; but I could obtain no
+explanation of the mystery. His relations referred me to the monk
+himself&mdash;strangers had never heard of his existence. How often does a
+revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is
+shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There
+remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution
+of the singular enigma from my friend’s own mouth; so, joining a party
+of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus,
+and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such
+a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure sky of Attica.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery of our ride is now familiar to tourists. Parnes or Parnethus
+with its double top,<a name="FNanchor_A_27" id="FNanchor_A_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_27" class="fnnum">A</a> Brilessus or Pentelicus with its numerous rills
+and fountains, and Hymettus with its balmy odours, have been “hymned by
+loftier harps than mine.” My companions proved gay and agreeable young
+men. They knew every body at Athens, and every thing, and willingly
+communicated their stores of knowledge. I cannot resist recounting some
+of the anecdotes I heard, as they do no discredit to the noble princes
+to whom they relate.</p>
+
+<p>When an English prince visited Athens, King Otho, who it seems is his
+own minister, and conducts business quite in a royal way, learned that
+he was no Whig, and instantly conceived the sublime idea of making use
+of his royal highness’s services to obtain Lord Palmerston’s dismissal
+from office. The monarch himself arranged the plan of his campaign. The
+prince was invited to a <i>f&ecirc;te champ&ecirc;tre</i> at Phyle, and when the party
+was distributed in the various carriages, he found himself planted in a
+large barouche opposite the king and queen. King Otho then opened his
+<span class="pagebreak" title="728">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_728" id="Page_728"></a>
+intrigue; he told the prince of the notes in favour of constitutional
+government and economical administration which Lord Palmerston had
+written, and Sir Edmund Lyons had presented; and he exclaimed, “I assure
+you, my dear prince, all this is done merely to vex me, because I would
+not keep that speculating charlatan Armansperg! Lord Palmerston cares no
+more about a constitution, nor about economy, than Queen Victoria, or
+you and I. When the Duc de Broglie, who has really more conscience than
+our friend the Viscount, proposed that Greece should be pestered with a
+constitution and such stuff, Palmerston answered very judiciously,
+‘Greece&mdash;bah!&mdash;Greece is not fit for a constitution, nor indeed for any
+other government but that of my nabob!’ Now, my dear prince, Queen
+Victoria can never mean to offend me, the sovereign of Greece, when the
+Ottoman empire is so evidently on the eve of dismemberment; and,” quoth
+Otho the gleaner, “I am deeply offended, at which her British majesty
+must feel grievously distressed.” The prince doubtless thought her
+majesty’s distress was not inconsolable; but he only assured his
+Hellenic majesty that he could be of no possible use to him in his
+delicate intrigue at the court of St James’s. He tried to get a view of
+the scenery, and to turn the conversation on the state of the country;
+but Otho was not so easily repulsed. He insisted that the prince should
+communicate his sentiments to Queen Victoria; and, in spite of all the
+assurances he received of the impossibility of meddling with diplomatic
+business in such a way, his Hellenic majesty, to this very day, feels
+satisfied that Lord Palmerston was sent to the right-about for offending
+him; and he is firmly persuaded that, unless Lord Aberdeen furnish him
+with as many millions as he demands to secure his opposition to Russia,
+the noble earl will not have a long tenor of office.</p>
+
+<p>A young Austrian of our party shouted, “Ah, it requires to be truly <i>bon
+gar&ccedil;on</i>, like the English prince, to submit to be so bored, even by a
+king! But,” added he, “our gallant Fritz managed matters much better.
+The Archduke Frederick, who behaved so bravely at Acre, and so amiably
+lately in London, heard, it seems, of the treatment the prince had met
+with, and resolved to cure his majesty of using his guests in such
+style. Being invited to a party at Pentelicus, he was aware that he
+would be placed alone on the seat, with his back to the horses, and
+deprived of every chance of seeing the country, if it were only that the
+diplomatic intrigue at the court of Queen Victoria might remain
+concealed from the lynx-eyed suspicion of the <i>corps diplomatique</i> of
+Athens; for King Otho fancies his intrigues always remain the
+profoundest secrets. When the archduke handed the lovely queen into the
+carriage, politeness compelled King Otho to make a cold offer to the
+young sailor to follow; the archduke bowed profoundly, sprang into the
+carriage, and seated himself beside her majesty. The successor of
+Agamemnon followed, looking more grim than Hercules Furens: he stood for
+a moment bolt upright in the carriage, hoping his guest would rise and
+vacate his seat; but the young man was already actively engaged in
+conversation. The Emperor of the East&mdash;in expectancy&mdash;was compelled to
+sit down with his back to the horses, and study the landscape in that
+engaging manner of viewing scenery. Never was a f&ecirc;te given by a sulkier
+host than King Otho that day proved to be. In returning, the archduke
+had a carriage to himself. When questioned on the subject of his ride,
+he only remarked that he always suffered dreadfully from sickness when
+he rode with his back to the horses. He was sure, therefore, that King
+Otho had placed him beside the queen to avoid that horrible
+inconvenience.”</p>
+
+<p>Other anecdotes were recounted during our ride, and our opinion of his
+Hellenic majesty’s tact and taste did not become more favourable, when
+it was discovered that his proceedings had utterly ruined the immense
+quarries of Pentelicus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Still in its beam Pentele’s marbles glow,”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>can now only be said of the ruins, not of the quarries. In order to
+obtain the few thousand blocks required for the royal palace at Athens,
+millions of square feet of the purest statuary marble have been shivered
+to atoms
+<span class="pagebreak" title="729">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_729" id="Page_729"></a>
+by the random process of springing mines with gunpowder. If
+King Otho had done nothing worse in Greece than converting the marble
+quarries of Pentelicus into a chaos of rubbish, when he found them
+capable of supplying all Europe for ages with the most beautiful
+material for the sculptor, he would have merited the reputation he so
+justly bears, of caring as little about the real welfare of Greece as
+Lord Palmerston himself. My companions quitted me at the quarries,
+making pasquinades on the royal palace and its royal master; while I put
+up my horse and walked slowly on to the ancient monastery of Pentele,
+not Mendele, as Lord Byron has it.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon sitting alone in the cell of Michael, and shall now recount
+his history as I had it from his own mouth. Michael Kalliphournas was
+left an orphan the year the Greek revolution broke out. He was hardly
+fourteen years old, and yet he had to act as the guardian and protector
+of a sister four years younger than himself. The storm of war soon
+compelled him to fly to &AElig;gina with the little Euphrosyne. The trinkets
+and gold which his relations had taught him to conceal, enabled him to
+place his sister in a Catholic monastery at Naxos, where she received
+the education of a European lady. Michael himself served under Colonel
+Gordon and General Fabvier with great distinction. In 1831, when the
+Turks were about to cede Attica to Greece, Michael and Euphrosyne
+returned to Athens, to take possession of their family property, which
+promised to become of very great value. At that time I had very often
+seen Phr&oacute;ssa, as she was generally called; indeed, from my intimacy with
+her brother, I was a constant visitor in the house. Her appearance is
+deeply impressed on my memory. I have rarely beheld greater beauty,
+never a more elegant figure, nor a more graceful and dignified manner.
+She was regarded as a fortune, and began to be sought in marriage by all
+the young aristocracy of Greece. It was at last conjectured that a young
+Athenian, named Nerio, the last descendant of the Frank dukes of Athens,
+had made some impression on her heart. He was a gay and spirited young
+man, who had behaved very bravely when shut up with the troops in the
+Acropolis during the last siege of Athens, and he was an intimate friend
+of her brother. I had left Athens about this time, and my travels in the
+East had prevented my hearing any thing of my friends in Greece for
+years.</p>
+
+<p>There is a good deal of society among the Greek families at Athens for a
+few weeks before the Carnival. They meet together in the evenings, and
+amuse themselves in a very agreeable way. At one of these parties the
+discourse fell on the existence of ghosts and spirits; Michael, who was
+present, declared that he had no faith in their existence. With what
+groans did he assure me his opinion was changed, and conjured me never
+to express a doubt on the subject. All the party present exclaimed
+against what they called his free-masonry; and even his sister, who was
+not given to superstition, begged him to be silent lest he should offend
+the <i>nerai&iuml;dhes</i>, who might punish him when he least expected it. He
+laughed and ridiculed Phr&oacute;ssa, offering to do any thing to dare those
+redoubted spirits which the company could suggest. Nerio, a far greater
+sceptic than Michael, suddenly affected great respect for the invisible
+world, and by exciting Michael, gradually engaged him, amidst the
+laughing of his companions, to undertake to fry a dozen of eggs on the
+tomb of a Turkish <i>santon</i>, a short distance beyond the Patissia
+gate&mdash;to leave a pot of charcoal, to be seen next morning, as a proof of
+his valour, and return to the party with the dish of eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The expedition was arranged, in spite of the opposition of the ladies;
+four or five of the young men promised to follow at a little distance,
+unknown to Michael, to be ready lest any thing should happen. Michael
+himself, with a <i>zembil</i> containing a pot of charcoal, a few eggs and a
+flask of oil in one hand, and a frying-pan and small lantern in the
+other, closely enveloped in his dusky capote, proceeded smiling to his
+task. The tomb of the Turk consisted of a marble cover taken from some
+ancient sarcophagus, and sustained at the corners by four small pillars
+of masonry&mdash;the top was not higher than an ordinary table, and below the
+marble slab there was an empty space between the columns.
+<span class="pagebreak" title="730">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_730" id="Page_730"></a>
+It has long
+since disappeared; but that is not wonderful, since King Otho and his
+subjects have contrived to destroy almost every picturesque monument of
+the past in the new kingdom. The thousands of Turkish tombs which not
+many years ago gave a historic character to the desert environs of
+Negrepont, and the splendid <i>s&eacute;rail</i> of Zeitouni, with its magnificent
+marble fountains and baths, have almost disappeared&mdash;the storks have bid
+adieu to Greece&mdash;nightly bonfires, caused by absurd laws, destroy the
+few trees that remain; and in short, unless travellers make haste and
+visit Greece quickly, they will see nothing but the ruins which King
+Otho cannot destroy nor Pittaki deface, and the curiosities which Ross
+cannot give to Prince P&uuml;ckler, added to the pleasure they will derive
+from beholding King Otho’s own face and the fa&ccedil;ade of his new palace.</p>
+
+<p>The night was extremely dark and cold, so that the friends of Michael,
+familiar as they were with their native city, found some difficulty in
+following him without a lantern through the mass of ruins Athens then
+presented. As they approached the tomb, they perceived that he had
+already lighted his charcoal, and was engaged in blowing it vigorously,
+as much to warm his hands as to prepare for his cooking operations.
+Creeping as near to him as possible without risking a discovery, they
+heard, to their amazement, a deep voice apparently proceeding from the
+tomb, which exclaimed, “Bou gedje kek sohuk der adamlera.&mdash;It must be a
+cold night for mankind.” “To pisevo effendi,” said Michael in a careless
+tone, but nervously proceeded to pour a whole bottle of oil into the
+frying-pan. As soon as the oil was boiling and bubbling, the voice from
+the tomb again exclaimed, “Gaiour ne apayorsun, mangama
+pisheriorsun&mdash;yuckle buradam&mdash;aiyer yiklemassun ben seni kibab
+ederem, tahamun yerine seni yerim,” signifying pretty nearly,
+“Infidel, what are you doing here? You appear to be cooking; fly hence,
+or I will eat my supper of thy carrion.” And at the instant a head
+covered by an enormous white turban protruded itself from under the
+tombstone with open mouth. Michael, either alarmed at the words and the
+apparition, or angry at the suspicion of a premeditated trick on the
+part of his companions, seized the panful of boiling oil, and poured the
+whole contents into the gaping mouth of the spectre, exclaiming, “An
+echeis toson orexin, na to ladhi, Scheitan oglou!&mdash;If you are so hungry,
+take the oil, son of Satan!” A shriek which might have awakened the dead
+proceeded from the figure, followed by a succession of hideous groans.
+The friends of Michael rushed forward, but the lamp had fallen to the
+ground and was extinguished in the confusion. Some time elapsed ere it
+was found and lighted. The unfortunate figure was dragged from the tomb,
+suffocated by the oil, and evidently in a dying state, if indeed life
+was not already extinct. Slowly the horrible truth became apparent.
+Nerio had separated himself from the rest of the party unperceived,
+disguised himself, and gained the tomb before the arrival of Michael,
+who thus became the murderer of his sister’s lover. I shall not attempt
+to describe the feelings of Michael in recounting this dreadful scene.</p>
+
+<p>The affair never made much noise. The Turks did not consider themselves
+authorized to meddle in the affairs of the Greeks. Indeed, the infamous
+murder of the Greek <i>bakalbashi</i>, a short time before by Jussuf-bey,
+with his own hand, had so compromised their authority, that they were in
+fear of a revolution. The truth was slowly communicated to Euphrosyne by
+Michael himself&mdash;she bore it better than he had anticipated. She
+consoled her brother and herself by devoting her life to religious and
+charitable exercises; but she never entered a monastery nor publicly
+took the veil. She still lives at Athens, where her charity is
+experienced by many, though few ever see her. When I left Greece on a
+visit to Mount Athos, my friend Michael insisted on accompanying me;
+and, after our arrival on the holy mountain, he exacted from me a
+promise that I would never discover to any one the monastery into which
+he had retired, nor even should we by chance meet again, address him as
+an acquaintance, unless he should speak to me. His sister alone is
+entrusted with his secret.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_27" id="Footnote_A_27"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_27">A</a></span> The <i>par</i>, which indicates the double or equal summit, is
+only found in Latin, though unquestionably &AElig;olic; the other two
+derivations are classic Greek. Parnes, Parnettus, Parnassus. The name of
+the two mountains is precisely the same.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="731">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_731" id="Page_731"></a>
+AFRICA&mdash;SLAVE TRADE&mdash;TROPICAL COLONIES.</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;">
+<a href="images/map.png"><img src="images/thumbnail_map.png" width="200" height="126" alt="Map" title="Click for larger image" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>The readers of this magazine will readily remember the part which it
+took, at an early period, in discussing and in delineating the
+geographical features of Africa. In the number for June 1826 there is an
+article, accompanied by a map, showing from undoubted authorities the
+course and termination of the great river Niger in the sea in the Bight
+of Benin, where, from similar authorities, it was placed by me in 1820
+and 1821, and where actual observation by Englishmen has lately clearly
+established the fact that it does terminate. In the upper and middle
+parts of its course the longitudes were erroneous, having adopted Major
+Rennell’s delineation of Western Africa as a guide; but in 1839 the
+whole of that quarter of Africa was narrowly examined, and the courses
+of the western rivers reduced to their proper positions, as delineated
+in my large map of Africa constructed in that year, to which, with the
+“Geographical Survey of Africa,” for which it was made, the reader is
+referred for further and particular information on all these subjects.</p>
+
+<p>With these observations, I proceed to bring before the reader
+geographical information concerning eastern and central Africa of the
+highest and most gratifying importance, and obtained by the researches
+of different voyagers and travellers within the last four years.
+Foremost amongst these ranks, the expedition sent by the present Viceroy
+of Egypt to explore the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White River, above its
+junction with the Blue River, from Khartoum upwards and southwards;
+after it, the interesting travels of Messrs Krapf and Isenberg, two
+missionaries from the Church Missionary Society, from Tajura to Ankobar,
+from Ankobar south-west to the neighbourhood of the sources of the
+Hawash; and after that, Mr Krapf’s journey from Ankobar north by Lake
+Haik, through Lasta to Antalow, and thence to Massouah on the Red Sea.
+Next, the interesting accounts collected by M. Lefebvre and M.
+D’Abbadie, concerning the countries in some parts of the more eastern
+horn of Africa; and last, and the most specific and important of the
+whole, the accounts received of the country of Adel, and the countries
+and rivers in and south of Shoa, and those from the Blue Nile in Gojam
+and Damot to the sea at the mouth of the Jub, under the equator, by
+Major Harris, late British ambassador to the King of Shoa.</p>
+
+<p>As the present article is accompanied by a map, constructed after great
+labour, and engraved most carefully by Mr Arrowsmith, the general
+outline of the whole may here be deemed sufficient, without lengthened
+discussion and observation.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian expedition alluded to started from Khartoum (now become a
+fine town) at the close of the wet season in 1839. It consisted of four
+or five small sailing vessels, some passage boats, and four hundred men
+from the garrison of Senaar, the whole commanded by an able officer,
+<span class="smcap">Captain Selim</span>. They completed their undertaking, and returned to
+Khartoum at the end of 135 days, during which time, in obedience to the
+commands of their master, they explored the Bahr-el-Abiad to the
+distance southwards of 1300 miles, (turnings and windings included,) to
+three degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and thirty-one east
+longitude, from Greenwich, where it divided into two streams; the
+smaller, and it is very small, coming from the south-west, and the
+larger, still even at the close of the dry season a very considerable
+river, which came from the south-east, upwards from the east, and still
+more upwards from the north-east. A subsequent voyage in 1841 gained the
+information that the stream descended past Barry, and there can be no
+doubt that another, if not the chief branch, comes from the south-east,
+in the bearing which Ptolemy gave it, and, as he states, from amongst
+mountains covered with perpetual snow, of which Bruce also heard, and
+which we now learn from Major Harris really stand in that quarter of
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The longitude of the river at the bifurcation is exactly the same as
+Ptolemy has given it, which is very
+<span class="pagebreak" title="732">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_732" id="Page_732"></a>
+remarkable. The sources of the
+White River will therefore be found where Ptolemy and Bruce have placed
+them. The latter, in his notes, states expressly that the Bahr-el-Abiad
+rose to the south of Enarea, not far from the equator, and that it had
+no great western branch, nor was any necessary to give the river its
+magnitude. (Vol. vii. App. p. 92.)</p>
+
+<p>The expedition in question found no very large affluents from the west
+side; but they found two of very considerable magnitude on the east
+side&mdash;one the Blue River, and the other the Red River, or Bahr-Seboth,
+which latter they navigated upwards of 150 miles in a direct line, and
+left it a considerable stream, nearly as large as the eastern branch of
+the White River, where they had left it. The banks of the Bahr-Seboth
+were precipitous and high, whereas those of the Bahr-el-Abiad were low,
+and on both sides covered with lakes, the remains probably of the
+preceding inundation. Scarcely a hill or mountain was in sight from the
+river till approaching the bifurcation, when the country became
+mountainous, the climate more cool, and the vegetation and trees around
+those of the temperate zone. The country on both sides is a high
+table-land, the scenery every where very beautiful, well peopled by
+different tribes, copper-coloured, and some of them even fair. Every
+where the banks are covered and ornamented with beautiful trees, and
+cattle, sheep, goats, elephants, &amp;c., are numerous and abundant. Amongst
+the Bhours, they found Indian goods brought from the shores of the
+Indian ocean. Day by day, the breadth, depth, and current of the river
+were observed and marked. For a considerable distance above Khartoum,
+the breadth was from one and a half to one and a quarter mile, the depth
+three or four fathoms, and the current about one and a half mile per
+hour. Above the parallel of nine degrees, the river takes a remarkable
+bend due west for about 90 miles, when it passes through a large lake,
+the waters of which emitted an offensive smell, which might proceed from
+marshy shores.<a name="FNanchor_A_28" id="FNanchor_A_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_28" class="fnnum">A</a> Above the lake, the breadth decreases to one-third or
+one-fourth of a mile, the depth to twelve or thirteen feet, with a
+current of one and a half mile per hour, the bottom every where sand,
+with numerous islands interspersed in the stream. The mountainous
+country around the upper part abounds with iron mines.</p>
+
+<p>Going eastward, we come to the elevated mountainous ranges which give
+birth to the Bahr-el-Abiad to the south, the Gochob, the Kibbee, and
+their numerous tributary streams to the east and south-east, and the
+Toumat, the Yabous, the Maleg, and other rivers which flow north into
+the Abay. This vast chain is very elevated, and in many places very
+cold, especially to the west of Enarea, and to the west and south of
+Kaffa. From the sources of the Kibbee and the Yabous, it stretches
+eastwards to Gurague, and thence, still eastward, by the Aroosi, Galla,
+and Hurrur or Harrar, to Cape Guardafui, approaching in some places to
+within sixty miles or less of the sea of Babel-Mandeb; the elevation to
+the east of Berbera decreases to about 5000 feet, and from which
+numerous streams flow both to the north and to the south. Eastward of
+the meridian of Gurague, a branch from the chain strikes off due north
+through Shoa, by Ankobar and Lake Haik, to the northward of which it
+separates, and runs one branch N.N.W. to Samen, and another by Angot,
+N.E. by east, to the Red Sea, at Assab, and the entrance of the straits
+of Babel-mandeb. The whole of this chain is very elevated; near Ankobar
+some peaks being 14,000 feet high, and constantly white with snow or
+hail; and round the sources of the Tacazz&egrave; and the Bashilo, near the
+territory of the Edjow Galla, the mountains are covered with snow. Mr
+Krapf, in his journey more to the east, found the cold exceedingly keen,
+the elevation exceeding 10,000 feet; and still more eastward, near the
+little Assanghe lake, Pearce found hoar frost in the
+<span class="pagebreak" title="733">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_733" id="Page_733"></a>
+mornings in the
+month of October. From the ranges mentioned, numerous other ranges
+branch off in different directions, forming the divisions between tribes
+and rivers, the latter of which are very rapid, and their borders or
+banks very high and precipitous, and rugged.</p>
+
+<p>From the province of Bulga or Fattygar, this chain, running
+northwards, rises to a great height, springing like the walls of a
+fortification from the western bank of the Hawash, from whence numerous
+small streams descend to increase that river. All to the eastward of
+that river is comparatively low, (called K&ocirc;lla, or the low hot country,)
+and to the sea-shore is one continued sheet of volcanic strata and
+extinct volcanoes, dry and poor, especially during the dry season, when
+travelling is difficult and dangerous owing to the want of water. It is
+inhabited chiefly by wild beasts and by fierce tribes of the wandering
+Dancali, and, more to the south-east, by the Mohammedan Somauli. In
+early times this country, however, was rich and powerful, from being the
+channel of commerce between Abyssinia when powerful, and the countries
+to the east, Arabia, Persia, and India. From Zeila and Erur southward,
+the country improves, and becomes fertile and well watered.</p>
+
+<p>Before turning our attention to the interesting countries round the
+sources of the Gochob and its tributary streams, and those through which
+it subsequently flows, so clearly brought to our knowledge by Major
+Harris, (he is certainly the first who has done so,) and the survey of
+the coast near its mouth by Lieutenant Christopher of the Indian navy,
+and by him given to the gallant major&mdash;it is necessary, for the better
+understanding of our subject, to turn our attention to the explanation
+of the names of some countries and places given so differently by
+different informants, and which, thus given and not sufficiently
+attended to, create great confusion and great errors in African
+geography.</p>
+
+<p>By the aid of Mr Bruce, Mr Krapf, Major Harris, and information
+collected from native travellers, (see <i>Geographical Bulletins of
+Paris</i>, Nos. 78 and 98,) we are enabled to rectify these points, and
+clear away heaps of inaccuracies and confusion.</p>
+
+<p>First, then, Enarea and Limmu are the same. The country is called Enarea
+by the Abyssinians, and Limmu by the Gallas, having been conquered by a
+Galla tribe of that name, which tribe came originally from the
+south-west. There is another Limmu, probably so named from another
+portion of the same tribe. It is near or the same as Sibou, which,
+according to Bruce, is ten days’ journey from the capital of Enarea,
+and, according to the French Geographical Bulletin, (No. 114,) not far
+from Horro and Fazoglo. But the first Limmu is the Limmu of Jomard’s
+Galla Oware, because he states distinctly that Sobitche was its capital;
+that, in marching northwards from it, he crossed the Wouelmae river; and
+that Gingiro, to which he had been, lay to the right, or east, of his
+early route; and further, that the river which passed near Sobitche ran
+to the south. Enarea is not very extensive, but a high table-land, on
+every side surrounded by high mountain ranges, and is situated (see
+<i>Geographical Bulletin</i>, 1839) at the confluence of two rivers, the Gibe
+and the Dibe.</p>
+
+<p>Kaffa, in its restricted sense, is a state on the upper Gochob; but, in
+its ancient and extended meaning, it is a large country, extending from
+north to south a journey of one month, and includes in it several states
+known by separate names, although the whole of these are often referred
+to in the name Kaffa by native travellers. It is known also by the names
+of Sidama and Susa, and the people of Dauro call it Gomara; but the
+Christians in Southern Abyssinia call it Kaffa, and Sidama or Susa,
+which latter, properly speaking, forms its southern parts.</p>
+
+<p>Dawro, Dauro, or Woreta, are the same; it is a large country, and
+divided into three states&mdash;namely, Metzo or Metcho, Kulloo, and Goba;
+and is a low and hot, but fertile country, situated to the east of
+Kaffa, and to the west of the Gochob.</p>
+
+<p>Major Harris is the only individual who has given us the bearings and
+distances connected with this portion of Africa, and without which the
+geographical
+<span class="pagebreak" title="734">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_734" id="Page_734"></a>
+features of the country could not have been fixed with any
+precision; but which, having been obtained, act as pivots from which the
+correct positions of other places are ascertained and fixed with
+considerable accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now attend to the sources and the courses of the principal
+rivers. The Kibbee, or Gibe, has three sources. The chief branch springs
+to the west of Ligamara, and southwards of that place it runs east,
+(<i>Geographical Bulletin</i>, No. 105, <i>and also</i> No. 78,) when suddenly
+turning upon itself; as it were, it bends its course westward to Limmu,
+having below Leka received the Gwadab, coming from the west and passing
+to the south of Lofe. The Kibbee waters the small but elevated country
+of Nono, and passes very near Sakka. Westward of Sakka it is joined by
+two other branches coming from the north-west and west, one called
+Wouelmae, the Wouelmae of Oware, and the other Dibe. From thence it
+flows eastward, and bounds Gingiro on the north. The early Portuguese
+travellers expressly state, that six days’ journey due east from Sakka,
+and at one day’s journey from the capital of Gingiro, having first
+crossed a very high mountain, they crossed the Kibbee, a rapid rocky
+stream, and as large as the Blue River where they had crossed it in the
+country of the Gongas. On the third day after leaving the capital of
+Gingiro, pursuing their course due east to the capital of Cambat, they
+again crossed the Zebee, or Kibbee, <i>larger</i> than it was to the westward
+of Gingiro, but less rapid and rocky; its waters resembling <i>melted
+butter</i>, (hence its name,) owing, no doubt, to the calcareous ridges
+through which it flowed. From thence it bends its course to the
+southward, and is soon after joined by the Gochob, which bounds the
+empire of Gingiro to the south. Bruce particularly and emphatically
+mentions the extraordinary angle which the Kibbee here makes.</p>
+
+<p>To the north of Gingiro the Kibbee is joined by the Dedhasa, (pronounced
+Nassal,) and which is considered to be the same as Daneza or Danesa,
+which, according to Lieutenant Christopher, is a Galla name for the Jub
+or Gochob. This river is passed (see <i>Geographical Bulletin of 1839</i>)
+before coming to Ligamara and Chelea, and one and a half day’s journey
+from Gouma, in the route from Gooderoo to Enarea. In its lower course it
+abounds with crocodiles. Below the junction with the Dedhasa, the Kibbee
+receives the Gala river, coming from the north-east, and from the
+confines of Gurague and Kortshassie.</p>
+
+<p>The separation of the waters in these parts takes place to the north of
+Gonea and Djimma, or Gouma. The rivers that flow to the Blue Nile or
+Abay, with the exception of the Yabous, which is, according to Bruce, a
+considerable stream descending from the south and south-east, are all
+small streams. Shat, the province where the tea-plant is produced, is
+situated to the north of Enarea, and is watered by the river called
+Giba, the fish of which are said to be poisonous, (<i>Bruce</i>, vol. iii. p.
+254.) Bruce states most pointedly that the capital of Enarea is fifty
+leagues distant from the passage of the Abay at Mine, “due south, a
+little inclining to the west,” (Vol. iii. page 324;) and which bearing
+and distance corresponds very correctly with several very clear and
+satisfactory itineraries lately obtained. Without any high peaks or
+mountains, the country round the sources of these rivers is very
+elevated, and from the grain and fruits which they produce, cannot be
+less than 7500 feet above the level of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The Toumat is a small stream. Above Cassan, says the <i>Geographical
+Bulletin</i>, No. 110, it has water all the year, thus indicating that
+below that place the water fails in the dry season. It runs between two
+high chains of mountains; the east Bank, that chain being known as the
+country called Bertat. The rains, according to Bruce, (the <i>Geographical
+Bulletin</i> agrees in this,) commence in April; but they do not fall heavy
+at that time, and but little affect the rivers. Beyond the chain, on the
+western bank of the Toumat, the country is level to Denka and the banks
+of the White River, which is stated to be eleven days’ journey due west
+from Fazoglo. Iron is very abundant in the countries round
+<span class="pagebreak" title="735">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_735" id="Page_735"></a>
+the Toumat
+and the Yabous, and caravans of Arabian merchants regularly traverse the
+country from Ganjar near Kuara, and two days’ journey south of
+Kas-el-Fael, by Fazoglo and Fadessi, to Kaffa and Bany; the road, as the
+latter places are approached, being described as hilly and very woody,
+with numerous small streams.</p>
+
+<p>The Gochob rises in Gamvou, a high, wild, and woody country, part of
+Limmu; and bending its course south-east, next east, and then
+south-east, it forms the lake Tchocha, and afterwards rolls over the
+great cataract Dumbaro, soon after which it joins the Kibbee, when the
+united stream tales the name of the Gochob, or Jub, by which it is known
+till it enters the sea. Where crossed in the road from Sakka to Bonga,
+it is described as larger than any other stream which flows to join it
+from the country more to the south; much larger, indeed, than either the
+Gitche or Omo, its subsequent tributaries. These are the principal
+rivers of Kaffa, which is described as a high, cold country, as cold as
+Samen, or Simien, as Major Harris writes it, in Abyssinia. Bonga, the
+capital of Kaffa, or Susa, is one of the largest cities in these parts,
+and coffee of superior quality is produced every where, both in Kaffa
+and Enarea, in the greatest abundance. So also is civet and ivory.</p>
+
+<p>The Omo, where crossed in the road to Tuftee, is passed by a bridge of
+wood sixty yards in length, which shows that it is not a very large
+river, nor can it be, this place being so near the district where its
+sources must lie. In the dry season it is described as a very small
+stream. The mountains in the south of Kaffa or Susa, are covered with
+snow, and to the south of this place they are said to rise to a
+stupendous height, “to reach the skies,” and are clothed with eternal
+snow!</p>
+
+<p>Malo, or Malee, (as Major Harris spells it,) is westward from Koocha,
+and not far from Jajo, (certainly the Jedo of Salt,) and which is at a
+considerable distance from the sea, (<i>Geographical Bulletin</i>, No. 114.)
+Malee touches upon both Goba and Doko, and the latter again touches upon
+Kulloo. It is in Malee that the Omo, now a considerable stream, joins
+the Gochob, after having received from the mountains of Souro and
+valleys of Sasa the Toreesh or Gotze, a considerable stream. Doko and
+Malee, like Dauro or Woreta, are very hot low countries, abounding in
+cotton. In Doko, bamboo forests are frequent and extensive. The
+population are represented to be of a diminutive stature, exceedingly
+rude and ignorant, and are a prey to all their surrounding neighbours,
+who invade their country at pleasure, and carry off the wretched people
+into slavery. In this portion of Africa, or very near it, the early Arab
+writers and Portuguese navigators placed a nation of pigmies; and in
+this it would appear that they were correct. After the junction of the
+Omo, the Gochob pursues its way by Ganana to the sea at Juba, a few
+miles to the south of the equator. The western bank is inhabited by
+Galla tribes, and the eastern by Somauli. In this part of its course it
+is called Jub by the Arabians, Gowend or Govend by the Somauli, Yumbu by
+the Souahilis, and Danesa by the Gallas.</p>
+
+<p>The Gochob below Wolama is joined on the east side by a considerable
+stream called the Una, which rises to the south of Gurague; and in
+Koocha and on the same side by a still larger stream, which comes from
+the country of the Ara or Ala Galla to the east of Gurague, and near the
+western sources of the Wabbe or Webbe. Koocha is thirty days’ navigation
+upwards and fifteen downwards from the sea, with which it has a
+considerable trade; white or fair people coming up the river to that
+place; but these are not allowed to proceed further inland. The
+inhabitants of Koocha carry on a great trade by means of the Gochob with
+Dauro in slaves, ivory, coffee, &amp;c.; the Galla of Dauro bringing these
+down the Gochob in rafts with high gunwales, which indicates that the
+Gochob is a river of considerable magnitude, and may become of great
+importance in the future communications with Africa; the soil and
+climate around it being very fine, particularly in the lower parts near
+the sea, where the land is level, and the soil a fine deep red mould.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="736">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_736" id="Page_736"></a>
+After Bruce, Salt had delineated with considerable accuracy the source
+of the Webbe and the countries around it; but, except his map, we had no
+further particulars. These are, however, supplied by Major Harris and Mr
+Krapf in the countries south-east of Shoa, about Harrar and its sources;
+and further by accounts collected by D’Abbadie at Berbera from
+intelligent natives, travellers regarding the countries more to the
+south, and over the remainder of the north-eastern coast of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The principal source of the Webbe is to the east of the Aroosi
+mountains, and in the country of the Ala Galla; whence, running
+eastward, it passes Imi and Karanle, (the Karain of Krapf;) it runs
+south-east and afterwards south in a winding course towards the Indian
+ocean. To the north of six degrees of latitude, it is joined by several
+streams from the neighbourhood of Harrar and places more to the east;
+and in about six degrees of latitude, by a large stream which rises near
+Lake Souaie, and runs through the country of Bergama or Bahr Gama. The
+various countries through which the Webbe and his tributaries flow, are
+distinctly marked on the map. The country around its sources is very
+hilly and cold, the mountains resembling in height and appearance the
+boldest in Abyssinia; and to the eastward of its middle course, the
+mountains in Howea are very high and cold. In these springs the river
+Doaro, which flows into the sea, a considerable river during the rains;
+but at other times its mouth is nearly blocked up with sand, which is
+the case with some streams more to the northward.</p>
+
+<p>North of Mount Anot the country is fine and well watered, and during the
+rains a very large river, according to Christopher, flows through it,
+descending from the range to the south-east of Berbera, and entering the
+sea in about eight degrees thirty minutes north latitude. Around Capes
+Halfoon and Guardafui the country is fine and well watered with small
+streams, and the climate delicious, as is the coast from Cape Guardafui
+westward to Berbera.</p>
+
+<p>Harrar stands in a beautiful, fertile, and well-watered valley,
+surrounded with hills, the soil rich, and producing fine coffee
+abundantly. It is strictly Mahommedan, and, comparatively speaking, a
+considerable place, though much shorn of its dominion and power from
+those days when it had become the capital of that portion of eastern
+Africa ruled by the Mahommedans; and when under Mahommed <i>Gragne</i>,
+(left-handed,) it overran and desolated the whole Abyssinian empire,
+then under that unfortunate sovereign King David. In the county south of
+Berbera there is abundance of fine wells of excellent water. Waggadeyn
+is a very beautiful country, and produces abundance of myrrh and
+frankincense, as in fact every portion of the eastern horn, from Enarea
+inclusive, also does. It is the great myrrh and frankincense country,
+from which Arabia, Egypt, Judea, Syria, and Tyre were supplied in early
+days of Scripture history. The Webbe is only six fathoms broad and five
+feet deep in the dry season in Waggadeyn; but in the rainy season the
+depth is increased to five fathoms. It is navigated by rafts lower down.
+Incense, gum, and coffee, are every where abundant around the Webbe and
+its tributary streams. Harrar contains about 14,000 inhabitants, and
+Berbera 10,000; Sakka about 12,000.</p>
+
+<p>All the early Arabian writers pointedly state, and so also do the
+Portuguese discoverers, that the Webbe entered the sea <i>near Mukdishu</i>
+or Magadoxo. This was no doubt the fact; but from what cause we know
+not, the river, after approaching within a short distance of Magadoxo to
+the north, turns south-west, and approaching in several places very near
+the sea, from which it is only separated by sandhills, it terminates in
+a lake about halfway between Brava and the Jub. This is Christopher’s
+account; but my opinion is, that this lake communicates with the sea
+during the rainy season, and even in a small stream in the dry season
+also. Christopher pointedly states, that besides filtrating through the
+sandhills, it communicates with the sea in two places, between Merka and
+Brava; and that this is correct, is proved from the fact, that while the
+river near Merka is 175 feet broad, it is reduced to seventy-five feet
+near Brava; while the <i>Geographical Bull.</i>, No. 98, p. 96,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="737">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_737" id="Page_737"></a>
+states, that
+a small river enters the sea to the south of Brava, a branch
+unquestionably from the Webbe.</p>
+
+<p>The country between Magadoxo and the Jub is called Ber-el-Banader, and
+north of Magadoxo, and situated between the Webbe and the Doaro, is the
+considerable province called Hamer. Christopher describes the Somauli
+inhabiting the lower Webbe as civil and obliging, the soil fine and
+fruitful, and the climate the most delicious he had ever visited. The
+inhabitants offered to conduct him in safety to Abyssinia, and into very
+remote districts in the interior. The name of England is beginning to be
+well known, respected, and feared in this fine portion of Africa; and it
+is not a little to be regretted and lamented that this has not been the
+case at a much earlier period.</p>
+
+<p>The early Arabian writers, such as Batouta, write Magadoxo, Mukdishu;
+Christopher states that it is now divided into two parts, in a state of
+hostilities with each other, and that the southern part is called
+Mukutshu, and the northern Mukkudeesha.</p>
+
+<p>According to the <i>Geographical Bulletin</i>, No. 98, p. 98, the word
+<i>ganana</i> signifies <i>queue</i>, or tail, which explains at once the river
+which Christopher makes enter the Webbe near Galwen, coming from the
+north-westward, to be in reality a branch flowing off from the Jub at
+that place. It is a thing unknown to find a river rising in a low
+alluvial country.</p>
+
+<p>To the east of the Webbe the country is inhabited by Somauli tribes, who
+are Mahommedans and considerable traders. The country seems every where
+to have a considerable population; and instead of being a blank and a
+waste, as hitherto supposed and represented on maps, it is found to be
+one of the finest portions of Africa, or of the world. Grain of every
+kind known in the temperate zones, especially wheat of superior
+qualities, is most abundant, and so cheap that the value of a dollar can
+purchase as much as will maintain a man for a whole year!</p>
+
+<p>The sources of the Hawash approach within about thirty miles of the
+Abay. The lake Souaie in Gurague is about thirty miles in circumference,
+and contains numerous islands. In these are lodged some ancient and
+valuable Abyssinian records. It is fed by five small rivers, and empties
+itself into the Hawash, (see <i>Ludolf</i>.) Gurague is a Christian state,
+but reduced to great misery and poverty by the Galla tribes which
+surround it on every side. The elevation of Ankobar above the sea is
+8200 feet, and of Augollalla about 200 more; so that the climate is very
+moderate. The country is every where very mountainous; but at the same
+time is in many places well cultivated. The rivers run in deep valleys
+or dells, and are very rocky and rapid. The present kingdom of Shoa
+contains about 2,500,000 of inhabitants, chiefly Christians of the
+Alexandrian Church.</p>
+
+<p>In March 1842, Mr Krapf set out from Ankobar, to proceed to Egypt, by
+way of Gondar and Massuah; but, after traversing the mountainous parts
+of Northern Shoa, and the countries of the Woollo-Galla, and reaching a
+short distance beyond the Bashilo, (then only five days’ journey from
+Gondar,) he was compelled, from hostilities prevailing among the chiefs
+in that quarter, to retrace his steps to Gatera. In the journey which he
+had so far accomplished, Mr Krapf traversed the country near the sources
+of the numerous rivers which flow to form the Jimma and the Bashilo. The
+mountains were high and cold, (especially in the province of Mans,) and
+exceedingly precipitous, ascending and descending 3000 feet in the
+course of a few hours. The soil in the valleys was good, and tolerably
+well cultivated. Sheep, with long black wool, were numerous; the
+population in general rude and ignorant. From Gatera he took his course
+to Lake Haik, and from thence, pursuing his route north-eastward, he
+crossed the numerous streams which rise in the mountainous range to the
+westward, and pursue their course to the country of Adel, north of
+Aussa. Crossing the very elevated range on the western frontier of
+modern Angot, he pursued his journey to Antalon, leaving at Lat the
+Tacazz&egrave; four days’ journey to the west, and crossing in his course the
+numerous streams, such as the Tarir, the Ghebia, Sumshato, and the
+Tyana, (this last a considerable river,) which flow northward from the
+mountains
+<span class="pagebreak" title="738">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_738" id="Page_738"></a>
+of Angot and Woggerat to form the Areequa, a large tributary
+to the Tacazz&egrave;. Mr Krapf’s route lay a little to the westward of Lake
+Assanghe, and considerably in this portion thereof to the west of the
+route of Alvaraez, who passed on the south side of Mount Ginnamora, from
+whence the streams descended to the south-east.</p>
+
+<p>Lake Haik is a fine sheet of water about forty-five miles in
+circumference, with an island near the north-west corner, and an outlet
+in the west, which runs to the Berkona. On the east and the south sides
+it is surrounded with high mountains. Mount Ambassel or Amba Israel, the
+celebrated mountain in Geshen where the younger branches of the royal
+family of Abyssinia were imprisoned in early times, is a little to the
+north of Lake Haik, and beyond the Mille. It runs north and south, in
+length about twelve or thirteen miles, and is exceedingly high and
+steep, the sides thereof being almost perpendicular. Mr Krapf, amongst
+the most considerable rivers which he passed in this quarter, mentions
+the Ala, which he states runs to, and is lost in, the deserts of the
+country of Adel. This is important, and this river is no doubt the Wali
+of Bruce, which he mentions (vol. iii. p. 248) as the scene of a
+remarkable engagement between the sovereigns of Abyssinia and Adel in
+1576, during the reign of the Abyssinian king Sertza Denghel. The
+Abyssinian army descended from Angot, and crossing the Wali, a
+considerable river, cut off the army of Adel from Aussa, drove a portion
+thereof into the stream, where they were drowned, while the remainder
+flying crossed the stream lower down, and thus effected their escape to
+Aussa. This confirms in a remarkable manner the position of this river,
+and would almost go to establish the fact that it cannot unite with Lake
+Aussa, the termination of the Hawash.</p>
+
+<p>At the Ala Mr Krapf states that he was then seven days’ journey from
+Aussa. Aussa, according to Bruce, or rather the capital of Aussa, was in
+former times situated on a rock on the bank of the river Hawash. It is
+called Aussa Gurel in the old Portuguese maps, and is no doubt the Aussa
+Guraiel of Major Harris, laid down on the Arabic map which he obtained
+from a native of that place. When low, the termination of the Hawash may
+be said to form three lakes; but during the rainy season the land is
+flooded round to a great extent, the circumference of the lake then
+extending to 120 geographical miles. When the waters retire they leave,
+like the Nile in Egypt, a quantity of fine mud or slime, which,
+cultivated as it immediately is, produces abundant crops, and on this
+account the valley of Aussa is, and always has been, the granary of
+Adel. From the southern boundary of the lake to the place where the
+Hawash finally extricates itself from the mountainous ranges, the
+distance is about five days’ journey, or from sixty to seventy miles.
+The length of the fine valley of Aussa is about one hundred miles.</p>
+
+<p>From the summit of the chain which separates the waters which flow
+south-east to Adel, and north-west to the Tacazz&egrave;, Mr Krapf says, that
+looking over Lasta to the towering snow-clad peaks of Samen or Simien,
+the whole country had the appearance of the raging waves of the sea in a
+terrible tempest. The soil around the upper branches of the Tacazz&egrave; is
+very good, especially in Wofila, Boora, and Enderta, adjoining the fine
+river Tyana; but it is only indifferently cultivated, owing to the
+perpetual wars and feuds amongst the chieftains and tribes in these
+parts, and the bad and unsettled governments which now exist in Tigre,
+and, in fact, in all Abyssinia. Travelling in these parts is difficult
+and insecure, owing to the plundering dispositions of the people, and
+the rapacity of the chiefs, who live beyond the control of any
+commanding or great sovereign power. At Gatera Mr Krapf was robbed of
+every thing that he had by the ferocious Woollo-Galla chief, <i>Adara
+Bille</i>, from whose clutches he escaped with some difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>But time and space forbids me going more at length into the interesting
+journeys of these late eastern travellers, amongst which those of Major
+Harris is certainly the most important. He has accurately determined,
+and been the first to determine, the longitude and latitude of Tajoura,
+Lake Assal or the Salt Lake, and Ankobar,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="739">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_739" id="Page_739"></a>
+&amp;c., and thus given correct
+starting points from which to regulate the bearings and distances of the
+other very interesting places in the interior. The bay of Tajoura
+affords good anchorage; but the best point to start for the interior is
+Zeila, the route thence to Shoa running along the edges of the watered
+and more cultivated districts.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the travellers who visited this quarter of Africa lately is Dr
+T. C. Beke. He, however, went over the same ground as the others in his
+journey from Tajoura to Ankobar, (Messrs Krapf and Isenberg had preceded
+him a considerable time;) therefore his letters and communications, so
+far as yet known, contain little that is new. The only portion connected
+with Shoa which the others had not visited, is about thirty-five miles
+of the lower course of the Jimma, near its junction with the Abay, where
+the latter stream is about 600 feet broad, and from three to five feet
+deep. His subsequent travels in this part of Africa were confined to
+Gojam, Damot, and part of Agow Medre, and to the source of the Nile; but
+except being more minute in minor details regarding these provinces and
+their numerous small streams and rivers, they add little to the
+information given by Bruce. Still his journey, when given to the world,
+may supply us with some interesting particulars regarding what he
+actually saw.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Beke travelled individually for information; but, in aid of his
+laudable enterprise, received some pecuniary assistance from the African
+Civilization Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Being a member
+of the former society, and while engaged in constructing the maps for
+the journals of the Church Missionary Society in the summer of last
+year&mdash;not for personal gain, but solely to benefit Africa&mdash;the
+communications and maps which from time to time came from Dr Beke to
+that society, were readily put into my hands to use, where they could be
+used, to advance the cause of Africa. Amongst the maps there was one of
+the countries to the south of the Abay, including Enarea, Kaffa, and
+Gingiro, constructed at and sent from Yaush in Gojam, September 6, 1842,
+together with some of the authorities on which it had been made. In that
+map the whole of the rivers, even to the south of Enarea and Kaffa, the
+Gojob, (as the Doctor writes it,) the Omo, the Kibbee or Gibe, the
+Dedhasa, and Baro, are all made, though rising beyond, that is, to the
+south of Gingiro and to the south and south-east of Kaffa and Woreta,
+(Woreta is placed to the south of Kaffa,) to run north-westward into the
+Abay. In fact, the Gojob is represented on that map to be the parent
+stream of the Bahr-el-Azreek or Blue River, and quite a distinct stream
+from the Abay, which it is made to join by the Toumat, having from the
+south-east received in its middle course the Geba, the Gibe, the
+Dedhasa, and the Baro, and from the south-west the Omo or Abo. The whole
+delineation, a copy of which I preserved, presented a mass so contrary
+to all other authorities, ancient and modern, that to rectify or reduce
+it to order was found impracticable, or where attempted only tended to
+lead into error.</p>
+
+<p>The error of bringing such an influx of water as the rivers mentioned,
+and so delineated, would bring to the Blue Nile, is evident from the
+fact, that this river at Senaar in the dry season is, according to
+Bruce, only about the size of the Thames at Richmond. His words are
+specific and emphatic, (Vol. vii. App. p. 89)&mdash;“The Nile at Babosch is
+like, or greater than the Thames at Richmond”&mdash;“has fine white sand on
+its banks”&mdash;“the water is clear, and in some places not more than two
+feet deep.” Dumbaro (or Tzamburo, as the Doctor calls it in the map
+alluded to) is laid down between eight degrees and nine degrees north
+latitude, and west of Wallega; Tuftee is placed more to the north on the
+river designated the Blue River, and Gobo still further north upon it,
+in fact adjoining to its junction with the Abay. Doko is not noticed on
+the map.</p>
+
+<p>The intelligent native Abyssinian Gregorius, without referring to
+numerous other credible, early, and also modern authorities, determines
+this important point quite differently and accurately; for he assured
+Ludolf, (<span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1650, see <i>Ludolf</i>, p. 38,) that all those rivers that
+are upon the borders of Ethiopia, in the countries of
+<span class="pagebreak" title="740">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_740" id="Page_740"></a>
+ “Cambat, Gurague,
+Enarea, Zandera, Wed, Waci, Gaci, and some others,” do not flow into the
+Nile or any of his tributaries, but “enter the sea, every one in his
+distinct region,” that is, the Indian ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Since his return to England Dr Beke has, I have reason to believe, found
+out his great error; and will alter the course of all these rivers in
+Enarea and Kaffa, and bend their courses to the south-east and south.<a name="FNanchor_B_29" id="FNanchor_B_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_29" class="fnnum">B</a></p>
+
+<p>With these observations I proceed to a more important portion of my
+subject; namely, the position and capabilities of Africa, as these
+connect themselves with the present position and prospects of the
+British Tropical possessions, and the position and prospects of the
+Tropical possessions of other powers.</p>
+
+<p>The support of the power and the maintenance of the political
+preponderance of Great Britain in the scale of nations, depend upon
+colonial possessions. To render colonies most efficient, and most
+advantageous for her general interests, it is indispensably necessary
+that these should be planted in the Tropical world, the productions of
+which ever have been, are, and ever will be, eagerly sought after by the
+civilized nations of the temperate zones.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest modern French statesmen, Talleyrand, understood and
+recommended this fact to his master. In his celebrated memorial
+addressed to Bonaparte in 1801, speaking specially of England and her
+colonies, he says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Her navy and her commerce are at present all her trust. France may
+add Italy and Germany to her dominions with less detriment to Great
+Britain then will follow the acquisition of a navy and the
+extension of her trade. Whatever gives colonies to France supplies
+her with ships, sailors, manufactures, and husbandmen. Victories by
+land can only give her mutinous subjects, who, instead of
+augmenting the national force by their riches or numbers,
+contribute only to disperse and enfeeble that force; but the growth
+of colonies supplies her with zealous citizens, and the increase of
+real wealth; and increase of effective numbers is the certain
+consequence.”</p>
+
+<p>“What could Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, combining their
+strength, do against England? They might assemble in millions on
+the shores of the Channel, but <span class="smcap">there</span> would be the limits of their
+enmity. Without ships to carry them over, and without experienced
+mariners to navigate these ships, Britain would only deride the
+pompous preparation. The moment we leave the shore her fleets are
+ready to pounce upon us, to disperse and to destroy our ineffectual
+armaments. There lies her security; in her insular situation and
+her navy consists her impregnable defence. Her navy is in every
+respect the offspring of her trade. To rob her of that, therefore,
+is to <span class="smcap">beat down</span> her <span class="smcap">last wall, and to fill up her last
+moat</span>. To gain it to ourselves is to enable us to take advantage of
+her deserted and defenceless borders, and to complete the
+humiliation of our only remaining competitor.”</p></div>
+
+<p>These are correct opinions, and merit the constant and most serious
+attention of every British statesman. The increased cultivation and
+prosperity of foreign Tropical possessions is become so great, and is
+advancing so rapidly the power and the resources of other nations, that
+these are embarrassing this country in all her commercial relations, in
+her pecuniary resources, and in all her political relations and
+negotiations.</p>
+
+<p>During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence
+as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the
+most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the
+command of the productions of the torrid zone, and the advantageous
+commerce which that afforded, gave to Great Britain the power and the
+resources which enabled her to meet, to combat, and to overcome, her
+numerous and reckless enemies in every battle-field,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="741">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_741" id="Page_741"></a>
+whether by sea or
+by land, throughout the world. In her the world saw realized the fabled
+giant of antiquity. With her hundred hands she grasped her foes in every
+region under heaven, and crushed them with resistless energy.</p>
+
+<p>Who, it may be asked, manned those fleets which bore the flag, and the
+fame, and the power, of England over every sea and into every land&mdash;who
+swept fleets from the sea, as at Aboukir, and navies from the ocean, as
+at Trafalgar?</p>
+
+<p>It may pointedly and safely be stated&mdash;the seamen supplied by the
+colonial trade, and chiefly by the West Indian colonial trade of Great
+Britain. About 2000 seamen, for example, were every year drawn into the
+West Indian trade of the Clyde from the herring fisheries on the west
+coast of Scotland, and just as regularly transferred from that colonial
+trade into British men-of-war, such men being the best seamen that they
+had, because they were men accustomed to every climate from the arctic
+circle to the equator.</p>
+
+<p>In the event of any future war, men of this description will more than
+ever be wanted; because the torrid regions are become more populous and
+more powerful, either in themselves or as connected with great nations
+in the temperate zones, and consequently the sphere of European
+conflicts will be more extended in them.</p>
+
+<p>The world, especially Europe and America, is vastly improved since 1815.
+Great Britain must look at and attend to this. She must march and act
+accordingly. The world will not wait for her if she chooses to stand
+still; on the contrary, other nations will “go ahead,” and leave her
+behind to repent of her folly.</p>
+
+<p>“England,” said her greatest warrior, “cannot have a little war;”
+neither can she exist as a little nation.</p>
+
+<p>The natives of the torrid zone can only labour in the cultivation of the
+soil of that zone. In no other zone can the special productions of the
+torrid zone be produced in perfection.</p>
+
+<p>There now remains no portion of the tropical world where <i>labour can be
+had on the spot</i>, and whereon Great Britain can so conveniently and
+safely plant her foot, in order to accomplish the desirable
+object&mdash;extensive Tropical cultivation&mdash;but Tropical Africa. Every other
+part is occupied by independent nations, or by people that may and will
+soon become independent.</p>
+
+<p>British capital and knowledge will abundantly furnish the means to
+cultivate her rich fields. This is the only rational and lasting way to
+instruct and to enlighten her people, and to keep them enlightened,
+civilized, and industrious. By adopting this course also, that British
+capital, both commercial and manufacturing, which in one way or other
+finds its way, and which will continue to find its way, especially while
+money is so cheap in this country, into foreign possessions to assist
+the slave trade and to support slavery&mdash;will be turned to support the
+cause of freedom in Africa, and at the same time to increase instead of
+tending to diminish the trade and the power of this country.</p>
+
+<p>The principle which Great Britain has adopted in her future agricultural
+relations with the Tropical world is, that colonial produce must be
+produced, and that it can be produced in that region cheaper by free
+African and East Indian labour than by slave labour. This great
+principle she cannot deviate from, nor attempt to revoke.</p>
+
+<p>If the foreign slave trade be not extinguished, and the cultivation of
+the Tropical territories of other powers opposed and checked by British
+Tropical cultivation, then the interests and the power of such states
+will rise into a preponderance over those of Great Britain; and the
+power and influence of the latter will cease to be felt, feared, and
+respected, amongst the civilized and powerful nations of this world.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization and peace can only be brought round in Africa by the
+extension of cultivation, accompanied by the introduction of true
+religion. Commerce will doubtless prove a powerful auxiliary; but to
+render it so, and to raise commerce to any permanent or beneficial
+extent, cultivation upon an extensive scale must precede commerce in
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>It is, therefore, <i>within</i> Africa, and by African hands and African
+exertions chiefly, that the slave trade can
+<span class="pagebreak" title="742">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_742" id="Page_742"></a>
+be destroyed. It is <span class="smcap">in</span>
+Africa, not <span class="smcap">out</span> of Africa, that Africans, generally speaking, can and
+must be enlightened and civilized. Teach and show her rulers and her
+people, that they can obtain, and that white men will give them, more
+for the productions of their soil than for the hands which can produce
+these&mdash;and the work is done. All other steps are futile, can only be
+mischievous and delusive, and terminate in disappointment and defeat. To
+eradicate the slave trade will not eradicate the passions which gave it
+birth.</p>
+
+<p>In attempting to extinguish the African slave trade and to benefit
+Africa, Great Britain has, in one shape or other, expended during the
+last thirty-six years above &pound;20,000,000; yet, instead of that traffic
+being destroyed, it has, as regards the possessions of foreign powers,
+been trebled, and is now as great as ever, while Africa has received no
+advantage whatever. Since 1808, about 3,500,000 slaves have been
+transported from Africa to the Brazils and Cuba. The productions of what
+is technically denominated colonial Tropical produce has, in
+consequence, been increased from &pound;15,000,000 to &pound;60,000,000 annually,
+augmented in part, it is true, from the natural increase of nearly one
+million slaves more in the United States of America.</p>
+
+<p>In abolishing slavery in the West Indies, Great Britain has besides
+expended above &pound;20,000,000; still that measure has hitherto been so
+little successful, that &pound;100,000,000 of fixed capital additional,
+invested in these colonies, stand on the brink of destruction; while, in
+addition to the former sums, the people of Great Britain have, from the
+enhanced price of produce, paid during the last six or seven years
+&pound;10,000,00 more, and which has gone chiefly, if not wholly, into the
+pockets of the negro labourers in excessive high wages, the giant evil
+which afflicts the West Indies.</p>
+
+<p>When the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies was carried
+amidst feeling without judgment, the nation was so ready to pay
+&pound;20,000,000, and the West Indians, especially those in England, so
+anxious to receive it, each considering that act all that was requisite
+to be done, that neither party ever thought for a moment of what foreign
+nations had done, were doing, and would do, in consequence. The warnings
+and advice of local knowledge were scouted in England, till these evils,
+which prudence might and ought to have prevented, now stare all parties
+in the face with a strength that puzzles the wisest and appals the
+boldest.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of supplying her own wants with Tropical produce, and next
+nearly all Europe, as she formerly did, it is the fact that, in some of
+the most important articles, she has barely sufficient to supply her own
+wants; while the whole of her colonial possessions, east, west, north,
+and south, are at this moment supplied with&mdash;and, as regards the article
+of sugar, are consuming&mdash;foreign slave produce, brought direct, or,
+refined in bond, exported and sold in the colonies at a rate as cheap,
+if not really cheaper, than British muscovado, the produce of these
+colonies.</p>
+
+<p>Such a state of things cannot continue, nor ought it any longer to be
+permitted to continue, without adopting an effectual remedy.</p>
+
+<p>The extent of the power and the interests which are arrayed against each
+other, in this serious conflict, must be minutely considered to be
+properly understood in a commercial and in a political point of view.
+Unless this is done the magnitude of the danger, and the assistance
+which is necessary to be given, and the exertions which are requisite in
+order to bring the contest to a successful issue, cannot be properly
+appreciated or correctly understood.</p>
+
+<p>The value of what is technically called colonial produce at present
+produced in the British colonial possessions, the East Indies included,
+is about &pound;10,000,000 yearly, from a capital invested to the extent of
+&pound;150,000,000. The trade thus created employs 800 ships, 300,000 tons,
+and 17,000 seamen yearly. This is the yearly value of the property and
+produce of the British Tropical agricultural trade, now dependent upon
+free labour.</p>
+
+<p>Against this we have opposed, in the western world alone, nearly
+&pound;60,000,000 of agricultural produce, exportable and exported yearly,
+requiring a trade in returns equal to
+<span class="pagebreak" title="743">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_743" id="Page_743"></a>
+&pound;56,000,000, and a proportionate
+number of ships’ tonnage and seamen. In the trade with Cuba and Port
+Rico alone, the United States have 1600 vessels employed yearly,
+(230,000 tons of shipping,) making numerous and speedy voyages, and from
+which trade only, these states, in case of emergency, could man and
+maintain from twenty to thirty sail of the line.</p>
+
+<p>On the part of foreign nations there has, since 1808, been &pound;800,000,000
+of fixed capital created in slaves, and in cultivation wholly dependent
+upon the labour of slaves. On the other hand, there stands on the part
+of Great Britain, altogether and only, about &pound;130,000,000 (deducting the
+value paid for the slaves) vested in Tropical cultivation, and formerly
+dependent upon slave labour, and which has in part been swept away,
+while the remainder is in danger of being so.</p>
+
+<p>Let us have recourse to a few returns and figures, in order to show what
+is going on, especially by slave-labour in other countries, as compared
+with British possessions, in three articles of colonial produce, namely,
+sugar, (reducing the foreign clayed sugar into muscovado to make the
+comparison just,) coffee, and cotton; and as regards a few foreign
+countries only, nearly three-fourths of which produce, be it observed,
+has been created within the last thirty years.</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table summary="Figures for sugar in 1842, coffee in 1842 and cotton in 1840">
+<tr><td colspan="5" class="smcap center">Sugar&mdash;1842.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center"><i>British possessions.</i></td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td colspan="2" class="center"><i>Foreign possessions.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="toright">cwts.</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td colspan="2" class="toright">cwts.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>West Indies,</td><td class="number">2,508,552</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Cuba,</td><td class="number">5,800,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>East Indies,</td><td class="number">940,452</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Brazils,</td><td class="number">2,400,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Mauritius, (1841,)</td><td class="number">544,767</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Java,</td><td class="number">1,105,757</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="toright">Total,</td><td class="number bt" >3,993,771</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Louisiana,</td><td class="number">1,400,000</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td></td><td class="number"> </td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="toright">Total,</td><td class="number bt" >10,705,757</td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="5" class="smcap  center">Coffee&mdash;1842.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="toright">lbs.</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td colspan="2" class="toright">lbs.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>West Indies,</td><td class="number">9,186,555</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Java,</td><td class="number">134,842,715</td></tr>
+<tr><td>East Indies,</td><td class="number">18,206,448</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Brazils,</td><td class="number">135,000,800</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="toright">Total,</td><td class="number bt" >27,393,003</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Cuba,</td><td class="number">33,589,325</td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td class="number"></td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Venezuela,</td><td class="number">34,000,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td class="number"></td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="toright">Total,</td><td class="number bt" >337,432,840</td></tr>
+
+
+
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="5" class="smcap  center">Cotton&mdash;1840.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="toright">lbs.</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td colspan="2" class="toright">lbs.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>West Indies,</td><td class="number">427,529</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>United States,</td><td class="number">790,479,275</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>East Indies,</td><td class="number">77,015,917</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Java,</td><td class="number">165,504,800</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>To China from do.,</td><td class="number">60,000,000</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td>Brazils,</td><td class="number">25,222,828</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="toright">Total,</td><td class="number bt" >137,443,446</td>
+     <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="toright">Total,</td><td class="number bt" >981,206,903</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The above figures require only to be glanced at, to learn the increased
+wealth and productions of foreign nations, in comparison with the
+portion which England has in the trade and value of such articles, now
+become absolutely necessary for the manufactures, the luxuries, and the
+necessaries of life amongst the civilized nations of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In the enormous property and traffic thus created in foreign
+possessions, by the continuance and extension of the slave trade,
+British merchants and manufacturers are interested in the cause of their
+lawful trade to a great extent. The remainder is divided amongst the
+great civilized nations of the world, maintaining in each very
+extensive, very wealthy, very powerful, and, as opposed to Great
+Britain, very formidable commercial and political rival interests.</p>
+
+<p>Further, it is the very extensive and profitable markets which the
+above-mentioned yearly creation of property gives to the manufacturers
+of foreign countries, that have raised foreign manufactures to their
+present importance, and which enables these,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="744">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_744" id="Page_744"></a>
+in numerous instances, to
+oppose and to rival our own.</p>
+
+<p>The odds, therefore, in agricultural and commercial capital and
+interest, and consequently in political power and influence, arrayed
+against the British Tropical possessions are very fearful&mdash;<span class="smcap">six to one</span>.</p>
+
+<p>This is a most serious but correct state of things. Alarming as it is to
+contemplate, still it must be looked at, and looked at with firmness;
+for even yet it may be considered without terror or alarm.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle, both national and colonial, is clearly therefore most
+important, and the stake at issue incalculably great.</p>
+
+<p>It is by the assistance of African free labour, and by the judicious and
+just application thereof, both in Africa and in the West Indian
+colonies, that the victory of free labour over slave labour, freedom
+over slavery, can be achieved and maintained.</p>
+
+<p>The abundant population of Africa, properly directed, and a small
+portion gradually taken from judiciously selected districts of that
+continent, and under proper regulations, will be found sufficient to
+cultivate, not only her own fertile fields, but also to supply in
+adequate numbers free labourers to maintain the cultivation of the
+British West Indian colonies. It must always be borne in mind, that in
+the maintenance of cultivation, civilization, and industry, in those
+possessions, the cultivation, industry, and civilization of Africa
+depend. <i>The cause of both is henceforth the same, and cannot, and ought
+not, and must not be separated.</i> Whatever sources the West Indian
+colonies may and must look to for immediate relief, it is in civilized
+and enlightened Africa that they can only depend for a future and
+permanent support. Abandon this principle and this course, and the error
+committed will, at an early day, be fatal and final.</p>
+
+<p>Yet if the labour of Africa is continued to be abstracted to any
+considerable extent by Europeans, and from any points except from free
+European settlements in Africa, in order to cultivate other quarters of
+the world, all hope of improving the condition of Africa is at an end;
+because the abstraction of such labour can only be obtained by the
+continuation of internal slavery and a slave trade within Africa;
+because labour, if generally abstracted from Africa as heretofore,
+whether in freemen or slaves, will tend to enhance the cost of that
+which remains to such an extent, as will render it all but impossible
+for any industrious capitalist, whether European or native, to extend
+and maintain successfully cultivation in Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Had the 9,000,000 of slaves which, from first to last, have been torn
+from Africa to cultivate America, been employed in their native land,
+supported by European (British) capital, and guided by British
+intelligence, how much more beneficial and secure than it is, would
+every thing have been to Africa, to England, and to the world?</p>
+
+<p>Europe has been acting wrong: let her not continue in error; and, at the
+same time, let England meet and grapple with the question with enlarged
+and liberal views&mdash;views that look to future times and future
+circumstances&mdash;views such as England ought to entertain, and such as
+Great Britain only can yet see carried into effect.</p>
+
+<p>We first established cultivation in the West Indies by a population not
+natives of the soil, but which required to be imported from another and
+distant quarter of the globe. This, politically and commercially
+speaking, was a great error; but it has been committed, and it would be
+a greater error to leave those people, now free British subjects, and
+the large British capital there vested, to decay, misery, and general
+deterioration. They must be supported, and it is fortunate that they can
+be supported, through their present difficulties, without inflicting a
+grievous wrong on Africa, by taking her children from her by wholesale
+to cultivate distant and foreign lands.</p>
+
+<p>If European nations generally adopt the system of transporting labourers
+as freemen from Africa, then Africa would continue to be as much
+distressed, tortured, and oppressed, as ever she has been; while with
+the great strength of slave labour which those vast and fertile
+countries, Brazils, Cuba, &amp;c., possess, they would, by the unlimited
+introduction of
+<span class="pagebreak" title="745">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_745" id="Page_745"></a>
+people called free from Africa, but which, once got
+into their power, they could coerce to labour for stated hire, overwhelm
+by increased production all the British colonies both in the west and in
+the east.</p>
+
+<p>Such abstraction of the African population from their country, would
+give a fearful impulse to an internal slave trade in Africa. The
+unfeeling chiefs on the coast, the most profligate, debased, and
+ferocious of mankind, would by fraud, force, or purchase, in the
+character of emigration agents, drag as many to the coast as they
+pleased and might be wanted; and while they did not actually sell, nor
+the European, technically speaking, buy, the people so brought from
+interior parts, these chiefs, by simply fixing high port charges and
+fiscal regulations for revenue purposes, would obtain from the transfer
+of the people&mdash;a transfer which these people could not resist or
+oppose&mdash;a much higher income than they before received from the <i>bona
+fide</i> sale of slaves; and with which income they could, and they would,
+purchase European articles from European traders, to enable them to
+furnish additional and future supplies.</p>
+
+<p>In this way, millions after millions of Africans&mdash;for millions after
+millions would most unquestionably be demanded&mdash;would certainly be
+carried away. The poor creatures, unable to pay their own passage, would
+no more be their own masters from the moment they got on board the
+foreign ship, than if they were really slaves.</p>
+
+<p>Such a traffic as this on the part of foreign nations, Great Britain
+could neither denounce nor oppose while she herself resorted to a
+similar course. In one way only she could reasonably resist and oppose
+it; namely, by urging that she only took people from her own African
+settlements, which are free, to her West Indian settlements, which are
+free also; while foreign nations, such as Brazils, had no possessions of
+any kind on the coast of Africa, and at the same time retained slavery
+in their dominions. Great Britain could only urge this plea in
+opposition to such proceedings on the part of other powers; but would
+such reasoning, however proper and just, be admitted or listened to? I
+do not think that it would. The consequences of the adoption of such a
+course by the nation alluded to, or by any other European power which
+has Tropical colonies, (France, Spain, Denmark, and Holland have,) will
+prove fatal to the best interests of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Already the people in the Brazils have begun to moot the question&mdash;that
+they ought in sincerity to put an end to the African slave trade, and in
+lieu thereof to bring labourers from Africa as free people. The supply
+of such that will be required, both to maintain the present numbers of
+the black population and to extend cultivation in that country, will
+certainly be great and lasting. The disparity of the sexes in Brazils is
+undoubtedly great. In Cuba it is in the proportion of 275,000 males to
+150,000 females, and, amongst the whole, the number of young persons is
+small. To keep up the population only in these countries will probably
+require 130,000 people from Africa yearly; while interest will lead the
+agricultural capitalist in those countries to bring only effective
+labourers, and these as a matter of course chiefly males; which will
+tend to perpetuate the evils arising from the inequality of the sexes,
+and thus continue, to a period the most remote, the demand from Africa,
+and consequently a continued expense, equal perhaps to &pound;30 each, for
+every effective free labourer brought from that continent.</p>
+
+<p>It is thus obvious that African immigration in any shape, and to any
+nation, is a most serious matter. Unless the subject is considered in
+all its bearings, with reference not only to the present but to future
+times, and above all with reference to the steps which France, Portugal,
+or any other European power, may take in Africa, and also with reference
+to the steps which Great Britain may or may not take with regard to that
+great continent&mdash;most embarrassing results must follow; while, on the
+steps which may be taken by other nations, the British colonial
+interests henceforward depend.</p>
+
+<p>There remains but one certain and efficient way to prevent fatal evils
+and destructive results, and that is the simple, and ready, and rational
+course; namely, to oppose free labour <i>within</i> Africa, and the West
+Indies and the East Indies, to African labour, whether free or bond,
+abstracted from her soil and carried by foreign nations to distant parts
+of the globe. In
+<span class="pagebreak" title="746">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_746" id="Page_746"></a>
+Africa, where the soil, the climate, the productions
+are equal and the same, <i>one-sixth</i> part of the capital in labour would
+obtain labour equally efficient, nay more efficient, because removing
+Africans from their own country, either as slaves or freemen, even to
+other Tropical climates, must be attended with considerable risk and
+loss.</p>
+
+<p>Produce, supplied cheaper from Africa than it can be obtained from the
+places above alluded to, would speedily and completely terminate, not
+only the foreign African slave trade, but the slave trade and slavery in
+Africa itself. This is the only safe, secure, and certain way to
+accomplish the great object. It is safe because it is just; it is secure
+because it is profitable to all concerned, the giver as well as the
+receiver of the boon.</p>
+
+<p>It is neither prudent, patriotic, nor safe, to attempt to confine the
+productions of colonial commodities to the present British Tropical
+possessions; while the production of these in other countries and places
+will be increased by the capital and industry of other nations, and even
+by British capital and skill, more especially while capital cannot find
+room for profitable employment in England. During the war, Great Britain
+exported to the continent of Europe colonial produce to the extent of
+five millions yearly; and which in every case, but especially in bad
+seasons, when large supplies of continental grain were necessary for the
+food of her population, always secured a large balance of trade in her
+favour, and which would again be the case if she adopts the course here
+pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>Adopting the course recommended, Great Britain at an early day would be
+able to supply, not only her own extensive markets, both home and
+colonial, with sugar, coffee, cotton, and dye-stuffs, &amp;c. &amp;c., but, in
+every other market of the world, she would come in for a large share of
+the external traffic. Her ships and her seamen would carry, both to her
+own and to foreign markets, the productions raised by British subjects
+and British capital, instead of carrying from foreign port to foreign
+port, as her ships and her seamen do at this moment, the productions
+raised by foreign people, capital, and industry. Great additional wealth
+would thus be drawn to this country; Tropical produce of every
+description would be obtained at a reasonable, yet remunerating rate;
+now, extensive, and profitable markets would be opened up to our
+manufactures. They would become and remain prosperous; and all classes
+of the community would be benefited and relieved. Prosperity would
+increase the power of the people to consume; increased consumption would
+produce increased revenue; and the government would be relieved from
+unceasing applications for relief, which, under existing circumstances,
+they have it not in their power to give.</p>
+
+<p>The point under consideration also, important as it is, becomes still
+more important when the fact is considered, that if Great Britain does
+not set about the work to raise that produce in Africa, and command the
+trade proceeding from it, other nations most assuredly will; when she
+will lose, not only the advantages which that cultivation and trade
+would give her, but that trade also which she at present holds with her
+own colonies; for it is plain that the proceedings of foreign countries,
+such as have been adverted to, both in Africa, America, and other
+places, would cover the British colonies with poverty and ruin.</p>
+
+<p>The geographical position of Africa is peculiarly favourable for
+commerce with all other countries, and especially with Great Britain and
+her vast and varied possessions. Africa, or rather Tropical Africa, is
+equally distant from America, and Europe, and the most civilized parts
+of Asia, besides her proximity to Arabia, and, by means of the Red Sea,
+with Egypt and the Mediterranean. Africa, whether we look to the Cape of
+Good Hope or the Red Sea, is the impregnable halfway house to India&mdash;the
+quarter to make good the loss of an Indian empire. She has numerous good
+harbours, many navigable rivers, a most fruitful soil, valuable
+productions of every kind, known in every other quarter of the Tropical
+world, besides some peculiarly her own; and a climate and a country,
+take it all in all, equal, if not superior, to any other Tropical
+quarter of the world in point of salubrity. Her population are indeed
+ignorant and debased; but generally speaking, and especially over large
+portions of her surface, they are even more active, and intelligent, and
+industrious, than the Indians of America, or the people in some parts of
+<span class="pagebreak" title="747">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_747" id="Page_747"></a>
+Asia are, or than the population of Europe was, before the arms of Rome
+coerced and civilized them. Why, then, is Africa overlooked and
+neglected?</p>
+
+<p>Let us attend to the following facts. They are, both in a political and
+commercial point of view, of great importance, as showing the progress
+of the opinions and efforts of foreign nations as directed towards
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The great energies of France are, it is well known, at present strongly
+directed to the more important points of Tropical Africa, for the
+purpose of extending colonization, cultivation, and commerce therein, in
+order that she may thereby obtain supplies of colonial produce from the
+application of her own capital, and at the same time, and by this
+measure, to raise up a more extensive commercial marine, and
+consequently a more powerful and commanding navy.</p>
+
+<p>Under such circumstances, the real question to be solved is&mdash;Shall Great
+Britain secure and keep, as she may do, the superiority in Tropical
+cultivation, commerce, and influence? or, Shall foreign countries be
+suffered to acquire this supremacy, not only as regards themselves
+specifically, but even to the extent of supplying British markets with
+the produce of their fields, their labour, and their capital, to the
+abandonment and destruction of her own?</p>
+
+<p>This is the true state of the case; and the result is a vital question
+as regards the future power and resources of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>France is already securely placed at the mouth of the Senegal, and at
+Goree, extending her influence eastward and north-eastward from both
+places. She has a settlement at Albreda, on the Gambia, a short distance
+above St Mary’s, and which commands that river. She has just formed a
+settlement close by Cape Palmas, and another at the mouth of the Gaboon,
+and a third by this time near the chief mouth of the Niger, in the Bight
+of Benin. She has fixed herself at Massuah and Buro, on the west shore
+of the Red Sea, commanding the inlets into Abyssinia. She is
+endeavouring to fix her flag at Brava and the mouth of the Jub; and she
+has just taken permanent possession of the important island of Johanna,
+situated in the centre of the northern outlet of the Mozambique channel,
+by which she acquires the command of that important channel. Her active
+agents are placed in Southern Abyssinia, and are traversing the borders
+of the Great Bahr-el-Abiad; while the northern shores of Africa will
+speedily be her own.</p>
+
+<p>Spain has planted herself in the island of Fernando Po, which commands
+all the outlets of the Niger, and the rivers from Cameroons to the
+equator; and from which she can readily obtain at any time any number of
+people from the adjacent coasts for her West Indian possessions, either
+as slaves or freemen.</p>
+
+<p>About six years ago, the government of Portugal appointed a commission
+to enquire into the state and condition of her once fine and still
+important colonies in Tropical Africa, and to report upon the best
+course to adopt to render them beneficial to the mother country. They
+have reported and wisely recommended, that Portuguese knowledge and
+capital should, as far as possible, be again sent to Africa, in order to
+instruct, enlighten, and cultivate these valuable possessions; and
+instead of allowing, as heretofore, labour in slaves to be abstracted
+from Africa, that native labourers should be retained and employed in
+Africa itself; and further, that it should to the utmost be aided and
+directed by European skill, capital, and labour. Thus, fourteen degrees
+of latitude on the east coast, and twenty degrees of latitude on the
+west coast, will, at an early day, be set free from the slave trade.
+From these points the Brazil markets were chiefly supplied with slaves;
+but Brazils being now separated from Portugal, the latter has and can
+have no interest in allowing the former to carry on the slave trade from
+her African dominions, but quite the reverse.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope changed the
+course of eastern commerce. The exertions of Portugal in the manner
+proposed, will now, and most certainly and severely, affect Tropical
+productions and commerce in every market. In this case, England ought to
+encourage and support Portugal, and, by following her footsteps in other
+eligible parts of Africa, share in the advantages which such a state of
+things, and the cultivation and improvement of Africa, is certain to
+produce.</p>
+
+<p>The Iman of Muscat, the sovereign
+<span class="pagebreak" title="748">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_748" id="Page_748"></a>
+of Zanzibar, has lately put an end to
+the slave trade in his dominions in Africa, extending northwards from
+the Portuguese boundary eight degrees of latitude on the eastern coast.
+His envoy, who was lately in England, was so delighted with the
+treatment which he received, and with all that he heard and saw here,
+that he has influenced his master to carry out sincerely the views and
+objects recommended by England. I have in my possession a most
+interesting account of the country, extending into the interior of
+Africa, from the coast opposite Zanzibar all the way to the great lake
+Maravi. The country is intersected with noble rivers, one especially
+which issues out of the lake; is generally healthy and well cultivated,
+especially as the lake is approached. The population are generally of
+Arabian descent, industrious, and clothed. A wide field, therefore, for
+commercial operations is open in this quarter.</p>
+
+<p>The powerful sovereign of Dahomey has agreed to abolish the slave trade.
+Independent of his considerable dominions, his fine country was one of
+the greatest high-roads for the slave caravans from the interior. He has
+received, welcomed, and encouraged the Wesleyan missionaries lately sent
+to that quarter. The missionaries from this society, and also one from
+the Church Missionary Society, have penetrated to Abekuta, a town
+containing 40,000 inhabitants, and about 106 miles north-east of Lagos,
+and north of Benin. The country, immediately after quitting the coast,
+becomes most fertile, pleasant, and healthy, as all that country to the
+north of the Formosa is well known to be. The population are eager for
+instruction; they are comparatively industrious and civilized; they
+manufacture all their necessary agricultural implements, bits for
+bridles, hoes, &amp;c., from their own iron; they tan their own leather, and
+manufacture therefrom saddles, bridles, shoes, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>The great sovereign of Ashantee has also received with royal honours,
+and welcomed, the ministers of the gospel, encouraged them, and listened
+to them in the most gratifying manner. The Almamy of Teembo&mdash;a state
+which commands the fine districts around the Niger in its early course,
+and the roads from populous interior parts on the east to the western
+coast&mdash;has lately evinced the strongest desire to extend cultivation and
+commerce in lieu of the slave trade, and to have a ready communication
+with Europeans, and especially with the English. In other portions of
+Africa important movements are also going on, most gratifying to the
+friends of humanity and religion.</p>
+
+<p>The United States of America, as a nation, is about to incorporate with
+her dominions the whole coast of Africa on Cape Palmas to the borders of
+the Gallinas&mdash;a fertile and healthy part of that continent, and wherein
+several settlements have of late years been made by the free people of
+colour from those states. This effected, there will hardly remain a spot
+of any consequence in Tropical Africa worth looking after for Great
+Britain to plant her foot, either for the purpose of obtaining labourers
+for her West Indian colonies, or to extend agriculture and commerce with
+Africa. The present British Tropical African possessions have been, and
+are, very badly selected for any one of the purposes alluded to, or for
+extending political power and influence in Africa. Still much more may
+be made of them than has ever hitherto been done.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a still higher and more important consideration as regards
+Africa alone&mdash;the eternal salvation of her people. This consideration is
+addressed to the rulers of a Christian nation. The appeal cannot fall on
+deaf ears. The debt which Great Britain owes to Africa, it is
+undeniable, is incalculably great. The sooner it is put in course of
+liquidation the better. To spread Christianity throughout Africa can
+only atone for the past. Our duty as Christians, and our interests as
+men, call on us to undertake the work. It is the cause, the safety, the
+improvement, and the salvation of a large portion of the human race; it
+is the cause of our country, the cause of our colonies, the cause of
+truth, the cause of justice, the cause of Christianity, the cause and
+the pleading of a Christian nation&mdash;and a cause like this cannot plead
+in vain.</p>
+
+<p>To secure these important objects no great or immediate expenditure is
+necessary; nay, if properly gone about, a saving in the present African
+expenditure may be effected.</p>
+
+<p class="smcap signature">James Macqueen.</p>
+<p class="datelineleft"><span class="smcap">London</span>, <i>3d May 1844</i>.
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_28" id="Footnote_A_28"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_28">A</a></span> This bend is represented in a map constructed in Paris, and
+said to be from information obtained in a second voyage; but no such
+bend is indicated in the journal of the original voyage by Captain
+Selim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_29" id="Footnote_B_29"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_B_29">B</a></span> Under date Yaush, September 21, 1842, Dr Beke states the
+curious and important fact, that the people of Enarea and Kaffa
+communicate with the west coast of Africa, and that one of the articles
+of merchandise brought from that coast to these places was salt.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="749">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_749" id="Page_749"></a>
+
+NARRATION OF CERTAIN UNCOMMON THINGS THAT DID FORMERLY HAPPEN TO ME,<br />
+HERBERT WILLIS, B.D.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It had pleased Heaven in the year 1672, when I had finished my studies
+in Magdalen College, Oxford, whereof I was a Demy, and had taken my
+degree of bachelor of arts in the preceding term, to visit me with so
+severe an affliction of fever, which many took at first for the
+commencement of the small-pox, that I was recommended by the physicians,
+when the malady had abated, to return to my father’s house and recover
+my strength by diet and exercise. This I was fain to do; and having
+hired a small horse of Master John Nayler in the corn market, to take me
+as far as to the mansion of a gentleman, an ancient friend of my
+father’s, who had a house near unto Reading in Berkshire, and in those
+troubled times, when no man knew whereunto things might turn from day to
+day, did keep himself much retired. I bade adieu to the university with
+a light heart but a weakened habit of body, and turned my horse’s head
+to the south. I performed the journey without accident in one day; but
+the exertion thereof had so exhausted my strength, that Mr Waller,
+(which was the name of my father’s friend, and of kin to the famous poet
+Edmund Waller, Esquire, who hath been ever in such favour with our
+governors and kings,) perceiving I was nigh discomfited, did press me to
+go to my chamber without delay. He was otherwise very gracious in his
+reception of me, and professed great amity to me, as being the son of
+his fast friend and companion; but yet I marked, as it were, a cloud
+that lay obscure behind his external professions, as if he was uneasy in
+his mind, and was not altogether pleased with having a stranger within
+his gates. Howbeit I thanked him very heartily for his hospitality, and
+betook myself to the chamber that was assigned for my repose. It was a
+pretty, small room, whereof I greatly admired the fashion; and the
+furnishing thereof was extreme gay, for the bed hangings were of bright
+crimson silk, and on a table was placed a mirror of true Venetian glass.
+Also, there were chests of mahogany wood, and other luxurious devices,
+which my weariness did not hinder me from observing; but finally I was
+overcome by my weakness, and I threw myself on the bed without removing
+my apparel, and sustained as I believe, though I have no certain
+warranty thereof, an access of deliquium or fainting. When I did recover
+my senses after this interval of suspended faculty, (whether proceeding
+from sleep or the other cause above designated,) I lay for many minutes
+revolving various circumstances in my mind. I resolved, if by any means
+my bodily powers were thereunto sufficient, to depart on the morrow, and
+borrow one of Mr Waller’s horses to convey me on my way, for I was
+uneasy to be thought an intruder; but when I had settled upon this in my
+mind, a new incident occurred which altered the current of my thoughts,
+for I perceived a slight noise at the door of my chamber as of one
+stealthily turning the handle, and I lay, without making any motion, to
+watch whereunto this proceeding would tend. The door was put gently
+open, and a figure did enter the room, so disguised with fantastical
+apparel, that I was much put to it to guess what the issue would be. It
+was of a woman, tall and majestical, with a red turbaund round her head,
+and over her shoulders a shawl much bedizened with needlework. Her gown
+was of green cloth, and I was made aware by the sound, as she passed
+along the floor, that the heels of her shoes were more than commonly
+high. With this apparition, of which I took only a very rapid
+observation through my half-closed eyelids, I was greatly astonished;
+for she was an exact resemblance to those bold Egyptian queans who were
+at first called Bohemians, but are nothing better than thieves and
+vagabonds, if indeed they be not the chosen people of the prince of
+darkness himself. She looked carefully all round the room, and after
+opening one of the drawers of mahogany wood, and taking something
+<span class="pagebreak" title="750">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_750" id="Page_750"></a>
+therefrom which I could not discern, she approached to the side of my
+bed, and looked earnestly upon me as I lay. I could not keep up the
+delusion any longer, and opened my eyes. She continued gazing
+steadfastly upon me without alteration of her countenance or uttering
+any word, whether of apology or explanation; and I was so held in by the
+lustre of her large eyes, and the fixed rigidity of her features, that
+for some time I was unable to give utterance to my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>“Woman,” I said at last, “what want you with me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your help, if you will be gracious to poor mourners such as we.”</p>
+
+<p>I interrogated her much and curiously as to what service she required at
+my hands; for I had a scrupulosity to promise any thing to one whose
+external made me think her a disciple of Mahomet, as those gipsies are
+said to be. After much hesitating, she could not conceal from me that
+she was in this disguise for some special and extraordinary purpose;
+nevertheless, she condescended on no particulars of her state or
+condition; but when I finally promised to satisfy her demand, if it
+might be done by a Christian gentleman, and a poor candidate for the
+holy ministry, she cautioned me not to be startled by whatever I should
+see, and beckoned me to follow her&mdash;the which I did in no easy frame of
+mind. Opening a little door which I had not seen when I took observation
+of the apartment, she disappeared down two or three steps, where I
+pursued the slight sound of her footfall; for there was great darkness,
+so that I could see nothing. We went, as I conjectured, through several
+passages of some length, till finally she paused; and knocked very
+gently three times at a door. The door was speedily opened; and in
+answer to a question of my guide, whether godly Mr Lees was yet arrived,
+a voice answered that he was there, and expecting us with impatience.
+When I passed through the door, I found myself in a small chamber, dimly
+lighted by one small lamp, which was placed upon a table by the side of
+a bed; and when I looked more fixedly I thought I perceived the figure
+of a person stretched on the bed, but lying so fixed and still, that I
+marvelled whether it was alive or dead. At the foot of the bed stood a
+venerable old man, in the dress of a clergyman of our holy church, with
+a book open in his hand, and my strange guide led me up to where he was
+standing, and whispered to him, but so that I could hear her words,
+“This gentleman hath promised to assist us in this matter.”</p>
+
+<p>But hereupon I interposed with a few words to the same revered divine.
+“Sir,” I said, “I would be informed wherefore I am summoned hither, and
+in what my assistance is needful?”</p>
+
+<p>“He hath not then been previously informed?” he said to the Egyptian;
+and receiving some sign of negation from her, he closed the book, and
+leading me apart into a corner of the apartment, discovered the matter
+in a very pious and edifying manner.</p>
+
+<p>“It is to be godfather in the holy rite of baptism, to one whom it is
+our duty, as Christian men, to rescue from the dangerous condition of
+worse than unregenerate heathenism.”</p>
+
+<p>“The child of that Egyptian woman?” I asked; but he said, “No. She who
+is now disguised in that attire is no Egyptian, but a true Samaritan,
+who hath been the means of working much good in the evil times past, and
+is likely to be a useful instrument in the troubled times yet to come.
+If this dissolute court, and Popish heir-presumptive, do proceed in
+their attempts to overthrow our pure Reformed church, depend on it,
+young man, that that woman will not be found wanting in the hour of
+trial. But for the matter in hand, will you be godfather to the person
+now to be received into the ark?”</p>
+
+<p>I told him I could not burden my conscience with so great and important
+duties, without some assurance that I should be able to fulfil them.
+Whereto he replied, that such scrupulosities, however praiseworthy in
+calmer tines, ought now to yield to the paramount consideration of
+saving a soul alive.</p>
+
+<p>A faint voice, proceeding from the bed, was here heard mournfully asking
+if the ceremony was now to begin, for death was near at hand.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="751">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_751" id="Page_751"></a>
+I went up to the bed and saw the face of a pale dying woman, whose
+eyes, albeit they encountered mine, had no sense of sight in them, for
+the shadows of the Great King were already settled upon her countenance.
+“Begin then,” I said to the clergyman; and on a motion from him, the
+woman who had conducted me went out, and shortly returned, leading by
+the hand a child of two, or haply three years of age, exceeding
+beautiful to look on, and dressed in the same style of outlandish
+apparel as her conductor. I had little time to look attentively at her,
+for her hand was put into mine, while the other was held by the
+Egyptian, (as I still call her, notwithstanding I knew she was a devout
+woman,) and another person, whom I guessed to be an attendant on the
+sick lady, stationed herself near; whereupon the clergyman commenced
+from our book of common prayer the form of baptism. The lady seemed to
+acquire strength at the sound of his low solemn voice, and half raised
+herself in the bed, and looked anxiously towards where we were; when the
+name was given, which was Lucy Hesseltine, she stretched herself back on
+her pillow with a faint smile. The ceremony was soon over, and the
+Egyptian took the new Christian to the side of the bed, and whispered in
+the lady’s ear, “Jessica, the child is now one of the Christian flock;
+she prays your blessing.” She waited for an answer, during which time
+the clergyman took me apart, and had again entered into discourse. But
+the Egyptian came to us. “Hush!” she said, “the ways of God are
+inscrutable; our friend is gone to her account.” Hereupon she hurried me
+through the same passages by which we had come, and bidding me God-speed
+at the hidden door of my chamber, told me to keep what I had seen a
+secret from all men, yea, if possible, to forget it myself, as there
+might be danger in having it spread abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Tormented with many thoughts, and uneasy at the great risk I ran of
+bringing guilt on my own soul by having made sponsorial promises which I
+could not execute, I rested but indifferently that night. The next day I
+pursued my journey home in the manner I had proposed, and was glad to
+avoid the chance of being interrogated by Mr Waller as to what had
+occurred. In a short time my good constitution and home restored me to
+my former strength, and the memory of that strange incident grew more
+faint as other things came to pass which made deeper impressions on my
+heart and mind. Among these is not to be forgotten the death of my
+father, which happened on the 14th of June in the following year,
+<i>videlicet</i> 1673; and the goodness of the lord bishop of Oxford in
+giving me priests’ orders on my college Demyship, whereby I was enabled
+to present myself to this living, and hold it, having at that time
+attained the canonical age. My courtship also and marriage, which befell
+in the year 1674, had great effect in obliterating past transactions. I
+was married on Thursday, the 24th day of June.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>(Here several pages are omitted as irrelevant, containing family
+incidents for some years.)</p>
+
+<p>Howbeit things did not prosper with us so much as we did expect; for the
+payers of tithes were a stiff-necked generation, as were the Jews of
+old, and withheld their offerings from the priest at the very time when
+Providence sent a plentiful supply of mouths to which the offerings
+would have been of use. Charles was our only son, and was now in his
+third year&mdash;the two girls, Henrietta and Sophia, were six and seven&mdash;my
+eldest girl was nine years past, and I had named her, in commemoration
+of my father’s ancient friend, by the prenomen of Waller. It hath been
+remarked by many wise men of old, and also by our present good bishop,
+that industry and honesty are the two Herculeses that will push the
+heaviest waggon through the mire; and more particularly so, if the
+waggoner aids also by putting his shoulder to the wheel. And easy was it
+to see, that the wheel of the domestic plaustrum&mdash;wherein, after the
+manner of that ancient Parthians, I included all my family, from the
+full beauty of my excellent wife to the sun-lighted hair of my prattling
+little Charles, (the which reminds me of those beautiful lines which are
+contained in a translation of the <i>Iliad</i> of
+<span class="pagebreak" title="752">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_752" id="Page_752"></a>
+Homer by Mr Hobbes,
+descriptive of the young Astyanax in his mother Andromache’s arm&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“And like a star upon her bosom lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">His beautiful and shining golden head”)&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was easy, I say, to see, that with such an additional number of
+passengers, the domestic plaustrum would sink deeper and deeper in the
+miry ways of the world. And consultations many and long did my excellent
+wife and I hold over the darkening prospect of our future life. At last
+she bethought her of going to take counsel of her near friend and most
+kind godfather, Mr William Snowton of Wilts, which was a managing man
+for many of the nobility, and much renowned for probity and skilful
+discernment. He was steward on many great estates, and gave plentiful
+satisfaction to his employers, without neglecting his own interest,
+which is a thing that does always go with the other, namely, a care for
+your master’s affairs; for how shall a man pretend to devote his time
+and services to another man’s estate, and take no heed for himself? The
+thing is contra the nature of man, and the assertion thereof is fit only
+for false patriots and other evil men. It was with much weariness of
+heart and anxious tribulation that I parted from that excellent woman,
+even for so short a period of time; but Master George Sprowles of this
+parish having it in mind to travel into the village where the said Mr
+William Snowton kept his abode, I availed myself of his friendly offer
+to conduct my wife thither upon a pillion; and thereupon having sent
+forward her luggage two days before by a heavy waggon which journeyeth
+through Sarum, I took leave of the excellent woman, commending her
+heartily unto the care of Providence and Master George, which
+(Providence I mean) will not let a sparrow fall to the ground, much less
+the mother of a family, which moreover was riding on a strong
+sure-footed horse, which also was bred in our parish, and did sometimes
+pasture on the glebe. It was the first time we had been separated since
+our wedding-day. I took little Charles into my room that night, and did
+carefully survey the other children before I went to rest. They did all
+sleep soundly, and some indeed did wear a smile upon their innocent
+faces as I looked upon them, and I thought it was, perhaps, the
+reflection of the prayers which their mother, I well knew, was pouring
+out for them at that hour. That was on a Tuesday, and as the distance
+was nearly sixty miles, I could not hear of her safe arrival till the
+return of Master George, which could not be till the following Monday;
+not being minded, (for he was a devout man, and had imbibed his father’s
+likings in his youth, which was a champion for the late Man,) and would
+rather have done a murder on a Thursday than have travelled on the
+Sabbath-day. “Better break heads,” he was used to say, “than break the
+Sabbath.” I did always find him, the father I mean, a sour hand at a
+bargain; and when he was used to drive me hard upon his tithes and
+agistments, I could fancy he took me for one of the Amalekites, or one
+of the Egyptians, whom he thought it a meritorious Christian deed to
+spoil. The Monday came at last, and Master George Sprowles, before he
+rode to his own home, trotted his horse up our church avenue, and
+delivered into my hands a packet of writing carefully sealed with a
+seal, whereof the device was a true-love knot. Great was my delight and
+great my anxiety to read what was written therein, and all that evening
+I pored over the manuscript, on which she had bestowed great pains, and
+crossed all the t’s without missing one. But it is never an easy task to
+decipher a woman’s meaning, particularly when not addicted to
+penmanship; and although my excellent wife had attended a penman’s
+instructions, and had acquired the reputation, in her native place, of
+being an accomplished clerk, still, since her marriage, she had applied
+her genius to the making of tarts and other confections, rather than to
+the parts of scholarship, and it was difficult for me to make out the
+significance of her epistle in its whole extent. Howbeit, it was a
+wonderful effort of calligraphy, considering she had only had two days
+wherein to compose and write it, and she had been so little used to this
+manner of communication,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="753">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_753" id="Page_753"></a>
+and it consisted of three whole sides of a
+large sheet of paper. She said therein that Mr Snowton was a father unto
+her in his affection and urbanity, and that he highly approved the
+motion for us to make provision of the meat that perishes, seeing it is
+indispensable for young children and also for adults; and that he had
+already bethought him of a way wherein he might be serviceable to
+us&mdash;viz. in procuring for me certain youth of the upper kinds, to be by
+me instructed in the learned tongues, and such other branches as I had
+proficiency in; and, in addition thereto, he said, that peradventure he
+might obtain a similar charge for my excellent wife in superintending
+the perfectionment of certain young ladies of his acquaintance in
+samplers, and millinery, and cookery, and such other of the fine and
+useful arts as she was known to excel in; and he subjoined thereto, that
+the charges for each pupil would be so large, being only those of
+consideration which he recommended unto me, that a few years would be
+sufficient wherein to consolidate portions for all my children. Such,
+with some misgivings touching my own interpretation, did I make out to
+be the substance of my excellent wife’s letter; and I rejoiced greatly
+that such an opening was made for me, by the which I might attain to
+such eminence of estate that I might place my Charles in the first ranks
+of the law, yea, might live to see him raised to the fulness of temporal
+grandeur, and sitting, as Lord High Keeper, among the peers and princes
+of the land, with a crown of pure gold upon his head. But there was no
+crown but a heavenly one, that fadeth not nor groweth dim, that could
+have added a fresh beauty to the fair head of my Charles. But the
+sweetest part of her missive was contained in the <i>post scriptum</i>.
+Therein she said, and in this I could not be wrong, that Mr Snowton had
+undertaken to forward her in his light wheeled cart, by reason of the
+conveniency it would be of to her in the transportation of herself and
+luggage, and also of Miss Alice Snowton, of Mr Snowton’s kindred, a
+young lady which he had adopted, (being the only child of his only
+brother, Mr Richard Snowton, deceased,) and advised my wife to accept
+the care of her as a beginning, and for the charges of the same he would
+be answerable for fifty golden Caroluses at Ladyday and Michaelmas. A
+hundred Caroluses each year! My heart bounded with joy. Great were my
+preparations for the reception of my new inmate, and busy were we all
+from my busy Waller down to Charles. He with much riotousness did
+superintend all, and rejoiced greatly at the noise caused by the
+hammering, and taking down and putting up of bed-hangings, and did in no
+slight measure add thereto by strange outbreaks of riotous mirth, such
+as whooping and screaming; causing confusion, at the same time, by
+various demonstrations of his enjoyments, such as throwing nails against
+the windows, beating on the floor with the poker, and occasionally
+interrupting our operations by tumbling down stairs, and causing us for
+a moment to believe him killed outright, or at least maimed for life.
+But there is a special providence over happy children; and save that he
+fell on one occasion into the bucket of soap and water, wherewith a
+domestic was scowering the chintz room floor, and suffered some
+inconvenience from the hotness thereof, he escaped in a manner truly
+miraculous from any accident affecting life or limb. When the time drew
+near in the which I expected the return of my excellent wife, I took all
+the children to the upper part of the church field which faces the
+high-road, upon which the large stones have recently been laid down, in
+the manner of a causeway, but which, at that period, was left to the
+natural hardness, or rather softness, of the soil, and was, in
+consequence thereof, dangerous to travel on by reason of the ruts and
+hollows; to that portion, I say, of the church field I conveyed all my
+little ones, to give the gratulations necessary on such an occasion to
+their excellent mother. The spot whereon we were stationed commanded a
+view of the hill which superimpends our village, and we were therefore
+gratified to think that we should have an early view of the expected
+travellers; and many quarrels and soft reconcilements did take place
+between my younger ones, upon
+<span class="pagebreak" title="754">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_754" id="Page_754"></a>
+the point of who would be the first to
+see their approach. In the midst of these sweet contentions, whilst I
+was in the undignified and scarcely clerical act of carrying little
+Charles upon my shoulder, having decorated his head with my
+broad-brimmed hat, in order to enable him&mdash;vain imagination, which
+pleased the boy’s heart&mdash;to see over and beyond the hill, there did
+pass, in all her wonted state and dignity, with two outriders in the
+Mallerden livery, two palfreniers at her side, and four mounted
+serving-men behind, the ancient Lady Mallerden, which was so famous an
+upholder of our venerated church in the evil days through which it so
+happily passed; and with no little perturbation of mind, and great
+confusion of face, did I see the look of astonishment, not to say
+disdain, with which she regarded my position; more particularly as
+little Charles, elevated, as I have said, upon my shoulders, with his
+legs on each side of my neck, did lift up the professional hat, which
+did entirely absorb his countenance, with great courtesy, and made a
+most grave and ceremonious obeisance unto the lofty lady. She pursued
+her path, returning the salutation with a kind of smile, and at the same
+easy ambling pace as was her wont, proceeded up the hill. Just as she
+reached the summit thereof our eyes were gladdened with the sight, so
+long desired, of the light equipage on two wheels of the kind Mr
+Snowton, containing my excellent wife and her young charge, and also
+various boxes of uncommon size, in which were laid great store of bodily
+adornment for both the ladies; as was more fully seen thereafter, on the
+opening of the boxes, by reason of Mr Snowton having privily conveyed
+into them various changes of apparel for the use of my excellent wife,
+as also for each of the three girls. To Charles he also sent the image
+of an ass, which, by touching a certain string, did open its mouth and
+wave its ears in a manner most curious to behold, wherewith the infant
+was infinitely delighted, as was I, without enquiring at that time into
+the exquisite mechanism whereby the extraordinary demonstrations were
+produced. But in the course of little more than a month he was led, by
+his enquiring turn of mind, to pry into the mystery; and in the pursuit
+of knowledge&mdash;laudable surely in a person of his years, and
+demonstrative of astonishing sagacity and research&mdash;he did take the
+animal entirely to pieces, and saw the inward parts thereof. The great
+lady, with all the retinue, stopped short as she encountered with my
+excellent wife at the top of the hill, and did most courteously make
+tender enquiries of her state of health, and also of her plans&mdash;whereof
+she seemed some little instructed&mdash;and expressed her satisfaction
+therein, and did make many sweet speeches to her, and also to the pupil,
+and trusted that she would be good and dutiful, and an earnest and
+affectionate daughter of the Church of England. To all which my
+excellent wife replied in fitting terms, and Alice Snowton&mdash;so was she
+named&mdash;made promise so to do, God being her helper and I her teacher;
+and thereupon the great lady bended her head with smiles, and rode on.
+When they got down to where we stood in the church field, the flush of
+modesty, and perhaps of pride, at being spoken to in such friendly guise
+by the haughty Lady Mallerden, had not yet left the cheek of my
+excellent wife, upon which I impressed a kiss of true love, and held up
+little Charles as high as I could, to enable him to do likewise, which
+he did, with a pretty set speech which I had taught him, in gratulation
+of her return. Alice Snowton also did blush, and held out her cheek,
+whereon I pressed my lip, with fervent prayers for her advance in
+holiness and virtue, and also in useful learning, under my excellent
+wife’s instructions. She was a short girl, not much taller than my
+Waller, though she seemed to be three or even four years more advanced
+in age. She was a sweet engaging child of thirteen, and I loved her as
+one of my flock from the moment I saw her, as in duty bound. My children
+were divided between joy at seeing their excellent mother, and wonder at
+the stranger. But a short period wore off both these sentiments of the
+human mind, or rather the outward manifestation of them; and I will
+venture to assert that the quietude of night, and the clearness of the
+starry heavens,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="755">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_755" id="Page_755"></a>
+fell on no happier household on that evening than the
+parsonage of Welding. And next day it was the same; and next, and next,
+and a great succession of happy, useful days. Alice was a dear girl, and
+we loved her as our own; and she loved Charles above all, and was his
+friend, his nurse, his playfellow. Their gambols were beautiful to
+behold; and, to complete the good work which was so well begun, good Mr
+Snowton did send to my care, at the same remuneration, two young
+gentlemen of tender years, Master Walter Mannering and Master John
+Carey&mdash;the elder of them being eight and the other seven; and, as if
+fortune never tired of raining down on us her golden favours, the great
+Lady Mallerden herself did use her interest on my behalf, and obtained
+for me the charge of a relative of her noble house&mdash;the honourable
+Master Fitzoswald, of illustrious lineage in the north, of the age of
+nine years. But doubtless, as the philosopher has remarked, there is no
+sweet without its bitter, or, as the poet has said, “no rose without its
+thorn,” or, better perhaps, as another great poet of antiquity has
+clothed the sentiment&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;“Medio de fonte leporum<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Surgit amari aliquid;”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>for it was made an express stipulation of the latter office&mdash;namely, the
+charge of the honourable young gentleman, being the second son of the
+noble Earl Fitzoswald, in Yorkshire&mdash;that the great Lady Mallerden
+should have joint superintendence of his studies with me, and the
+direction of his conduct, and also his religious education. And this was
+a sore drawback to the pleasure I experienced, for I knew her to be
+proud and haughty beyond most women, or even men; and also that she was
+of so active and inquisitive a turn of mind, that she would endeavour to
+obtain all power and authority unto herself, whereto I determined by no
+means to submit. Two hundred golden guineas was the <i>honorarium</i> per
+annum for his education; and my excellent wife, who was addicted, like
+the most of her sex, to dreams and omens, did very often have a vision
+in the night, of the Right Hon. the Earl Fitzoswald presenting me to a
+great office in the church&mdash;yea, even a seat among the right reverend
+the lord bishops of the Upper House of Parliament. Nor were portents and
+auguries wanting, such as this&mdash;which made an uncommon impression on my
+excellent wife’s mind&mdash;<i>videlicet</i>, it chanced that Alice Snowton did
+make a hat of paper, to be placed on Charles’s head when he was more
+than usually naughty, to be called the fool’s-cap out of derision; but
+this same paper hat, which was of a fantastic shape, being conical and
+high, the boy with scissors did dexterously mutilate and nearly destroy,
+and, coming quietly behind me when I was meditating the future with my
+excellent wife, he placed it on my head; and, to all our eyes, there was
+no mistaking the shape into which, fortuitously, and with no view or
+knowledge of such emblems, he had cut the paper-cap. It was evidently a
+mitre, and nothing else! But this, and various other concurring
+incidents, I pass over, having frequently rebuked my excellent wife for
+thinking more highly of such matters than she ought to think.</p>
+
+<p>The course pursued in our studies was the following, which I
+particularly write down, having had great experience in that sort, and
+considering it may be useful, if perchance this account should fall into
+the hands of any who follow the honourable and noble calling of
+educating the rising generation. The <i>Colloquies</i> of Corderius, as also
+the <i>Fables</i> of &AElig;sopus, with those also of Ph&aelig;drus his Roman
+continuator....</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>(Many pages are here omitted as irrelevant.)</p>
+
+<p>... And my excellent wife, after much entreaty, consented thereto.
+Accordingly, on the very next Sunday, the great Lady Mallerden attended
+at my house after church, and did closely question, not only the young
+gentlemen on the principles of their faith, but also Alice Snowton, and
+did, above all, clearly and emphatically point out to them the
+iniquities of the great Popish delusion; and exhorted them, whatever
+might be their future fate or condition, to hold fast by the pure
+Reformed church. And so much did my eldest daughter, who was now a great
+tall girl of twelve
+<span class="pagebreak" title="756">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_756" id="Page_756"></a>
+years of age, win upon the heart of the great lady,
+that she invited her to come up for several days and reside with her at
+Mallerden Court, which was a great honour to my daughter, invitations
+not being extended to any to enter that noble mansion under the degree
+of nobility. Nor did her beneficence end here; for she did ask Alice
+Snowton, who was now a fine young woman of fifteen or thereby, to be her
+guest at the same time. Alice was not so stout in proportion to her
+years as my Waller; but there was a certain gracefulness about her when
+she moved, and a sweet smile when she spoke, which was very gainful on
+the affections, as Charles could testify; for he loved her, and made no
+secret thereof, better than any of his sisters, and also, I really and
+unfeignedly believe, better than that excellent woman his mother. And so
+great was the impression made on the great lady by my Waller’s
+cleverness and excellent manner of conducting herself, that, on her
+return at the end of three days, a letter, in the noble lady’s own land,
+bore testimony to her satisfaction, and a request, or rather a command,
+was laid on me, to send her, under charge as she expressed it, of Alice
+Snowton, to the Court for a longer period the following week. And such
+was the mutual happiness of the noble lady, and of that young girl, (my
+Waller, I mean,) who could now write a beautiful flowing hand, and spell
+with uncommon accuracy and expedition, that erelong it was an arranged
+thing, that three days in each week were spent by the two children at
+Mallerden Court; and a horse at last, on every Wednesday, was in waiting
+to convey them, on a double pillion, to the stately mansion.</p>
+
+<p>I have not alluded to the state of public affairs, of which I was far
+from cognizant, saving that the writhings and strugglings which this
+tortured realm did make, shook also the little parsonage of Welding. We
+heard, at remote intervals of time, rumours of dangers and difficulties
+hanging over this church and nation; but were little alarmed thereat,
+putting faith in the bill of exclusion, and the honour of our most
+gracious and religious lord the king. Nor did I anticipate great harm
+even if the Duke of York, in the absence of lawful posterity of his
+brother, should get upon the throne, trusting in the truth of his royal
+word, and the manifold declarations of favour and amicableness to the
+church, which he from time to time put forth. But &AElig;sopus hath it, when
+bulls fight in a marsh the frogs are crushed to death. It was on the
+tenth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1685, I was busy with my
+dear friends, the youths under my charge, in the Campus Martius, (which
+was a level space of ground in one of the glebe fields by the side of
+the river, whereon we performed our exercises of running, jumping,
+wrestling, and other athletic exercitations,) when we were startled by
+the hearing the sound of many horses galloping up the hill above the
+village; and looking over the hedge on to the road, we saw a cavalier
+going very fast on a fine black horse, which had fire in its eyes and
+nostrils, as the poet says, followed by a goodly train of serving-men,
+all well mounted, and proceeding at the same rate. We went on with our
+games for an hour or two, when all at once I was peremptorily sent for
+to go to my house without delay; and accordingly I hurried homewards,
+much marvelling what the summons could portend. I went into my study,
+and sitting in my arm-chair I saw the great Lady Mallerden; but she was
+so deep in thought, that for some minutes she kept me standing, and
+waiting her commands. At last she started to herself, and ordered me to
+be seated, and in her rapid glancing manner began to speak&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“I have been visited by my son, who rode post haste from London to tell
+me the king was dead. He has been dead four days.”</p>
+
+<p>I was astonished and much saddened at the news.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry&mdash;yes&mdash;but there is no time for sorrow,” said the noble lady; “we
+must be up and doing. We are betrayed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did your son, the noble Viscount Mallerden, tell you this?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is one of the betrayers&mdash;know you not what manner of man he
+is?&mdash;Then I will tell you.” And here a strange light flashed from her
+eyes, and her lips became compressed till all the colour
+disappeared&mdash;“He is a
+<span class="pagebreak" title="757">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_757" id="Page_757"></a>
+viper that stung me once&mdash;and would sting me
+again if I took him to my bosom, and laid it open for his poisonous
+tooth. I tell you the Lord Mallerden is a godless, hopeless, faithless,
+man&mdash;bound hand and foot to the footstool of the despotic, cruel
+monster&mdash;the Jesuit who has now his foot upon the English throne. He is
+a Papist, fiercer, bitterer, crueller, because he has no belief neither
+in priest nor pope&mdash;but he is ambitious, reckless, base, a courtier. He
+prideth himself in his shame, and says he has openly professed. It is to
+please the hypocritical master he serves. And he boasts that our late
+king&mdash;defender of the faith&mdash;was shrived on his deathbed by a Popish
+friar.”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot believe it, my lady.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are a good man&mdash;a good simple man, Master Willis,” she said; and
+although the words of her designation were above my deserts, seeing that
+simplicity and goodness are the great ornaments of the Christian
+character, still the tone in which she spoke did not pertake of the
+nature of a compliment, and I bowed, but made no observation in reply.</p>
+
+<p>“But it needs men of other minds in these awful times which I see
+approaching&mdash;men of firmness, men of boldness&mdash;yea, who can shed blood
+and shudder not; for great things are at stake.”</p>
+
+<p>“I trust not, my lady&mdash;albeit the shedding of blood”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“I know, is generally condemned; yet be there texts which make it
+imperative, and I think I foresee that the occasion for giving them
+forth is at hand. All means in their power they will try; yes, though
+James of York has been but four days a king, he had already made
+perquisition for such as may be useful to him, not in settling the crown
+upon his head, but in carrying off this people and kingdom, a bound
+sacrifice to the blind idol which he worshippeth at Rome. You know not
+the history of that man; no, nor of my son. Alas! that a mother’s lips
+should utter such words about her own flesh and blood! The one of them I
+tell you is a bigot, a pursuer, a persecutor&mdash;the other a sensualist, a
+Gallio, a tool. For many years he has never beheld his mother’s face; he
+married in his youth; he injured, deserted, yea, he killed his wife&mdash;not
+with his own hand or with the dagger, but by the surer weapons of
+hatred, neglect, unkindness. And she died. He has but one child; that
+child was left in charge of my honoured and loving daughter, the Lady
+Pevensey of Notts, and hath been brought up in a Christian manner; but
+now, he&mdash;this man of Belial&mdash;wishes to get this infant in his own hands;
+nay, he boldly has made a demand of her custody both on me and Pevensey,
+my daughter. We will not surrender her; he is now great and powerful.
+The king will back his efforts with all the weight of the crown; and we
+have considered, if we could confide the persecuted dove to the hands of
+some assured friend&mdash;some true son of our holy church&mdash;some steady,
+firm-hearted, strong-nerved man, who in such cause would set lord and
+king at defiance”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Here she paused, and looked upon me with her eyes dilated, and her
+nostrils panting with some great thought which was within her; and I
+availed myself of the pause to say&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, my lady! if you did mean me for such charge, I confess my
+deficiency for such a lofty office; for I do feel in me no stirrings of
+an ambitious spirit. Sufficient is it for me to take care of the
+innocent flock committed to my care, in the performance of which charge
+I have the approbation of my own heart, and also, I make bold to hope
+it, of your ladyship, seeing that I have instructed them in the true
+principles both of faith and practice; and although there are
+shortcomings in them all, by reason the answers in the Catechism are not
+adapted to the capacities of the younger ones, especially of Charles,
+(who, notwithstanding, has abilities and apprehensions above his years,)
+yet are they all embued with faithful doctrine, from Alice Snowton,
+which is the most advanced in stature, to the honourable Master
+Fitzoswald, which is somewhat deficient in growth, being only three
+inches taller than my little Charles.”</p>
+
+<p>The great lady looked at me while I spoke, and made no answer for long
+time. At last she said with a sort of smile, which at the same
+<span class="pagebreak" title="758">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_758" id="Page_758"></a>
+time was
+not hilarious or jocular in its nature&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps ’tis better as it is. There is a providence in all things, and
+our plans and proposals are all overruled for the best&mdash;for which may
+God be praised! Therefore I will press you no more on the subject of the
+guardianship of my grandchild. But Mallerden will move heaven and earth
+to get her into his power&mdash;yes, though he has neglected her so long,
+never caring to see her since her childhood; yet now, when he sees
+’twill gain him the treasurership of the royal household to sell the
+greatest heiress and noblest blood in England to the Papists, he will
+make traffic of his own child, and marry her to some prayer-mumbler to a
+wooden doll. Let us save her, good sir&mdash;but I forgot. No&mdash;I will save
+her myself. I, that have steered her through so many quicksands, will
+not let her make shipwreck at last. I will guard her like the apple of
+my eye, and possess my soul in patience until this tyranny be overpast.”
+And so ended the interview, during which my heart was tossed to and fro
+with the utmost agitation, and my whole frame so troubled that I various
+times lost all mastery of myself, and only saw before me a great black
+gulf of ruin, into which some invisible power was pushing me and all my
+little ones. Great, therefore, was my delight, and sweet the relief to
+my soul, when the great lady left me unconnected with her quarrels. For,
+in the crash of such contending powers, there was no chance of escape
+for such a weak instrument as I was; and fervent were my hopes, and deep
+my prayers, that the perils and evils prognosticated by the religious
+fears of my great protectress might be turned aside, and all good
+subject and sincere churchmen left each under his own vine and his own
+fig-tree, with nobody to make them afraid. But vain are the hopes of
+men. We read in no long time in all men’s looks the fate we were
+condemned to; for it seemed as if a great cloud, filled with God’s
+wrath, was spread out over this realm of England, and the faces of all
+men grew dark. We heard the name of Jeffreys whispered in corners, and
+trembled as if it had been a witch’s spell to make our blood into water.
+The great lady kept herself much in solitude in the ancient Court, and
+saw not even her favourite companion, my daughter Waller, for many
+months; but did ever write affectionate letters to her, and sent
+presents of rich fruits, and other delectations in which the young take
+pleasure. There was much riding to and fro of couriers, but whither, or
+whence, she did never tell, and it was not my province to enquire; but
+at last an order came for me to send up my Waller and her friend to the
+mansion. And at evening they were conveyed on horseback as before; but
+on this occasion their escort was not Master Wilkinson the under butler,
+but no less a person than my lady’s kinsman, the senior brother of my
+honourable pupil, the honourable Master Fitzoswald of Yorkshire, a
+stately young cavalier as could be seen, strong and tall, and his style
+and title was the Lord Viscount Lessingholm&mdash;being the eldest son and
+heir to that ancient earldom. He was an amiable and pleasant gentleman,
+full of courtesies and kindness, and particularly pleased with the
+newfangled fashion of a handsome cap which formed the headpiece of my
+excellent wife. He said also many handsome things about the brightness
+of my Waller’s eyes, and assured my excellent wife that he saw so
+promising an outsprout of talent in my Charles, that he doubted not to
+see him one of the judges of the realm, if so be he applied his
+intellectuals to the bar. He was also extreme civil to Alice Snowton,
+which answered his civilities in like manner; and seldom in so short a
+space as half an hour has any person made so favourable an impression as
+he did, particularly on his brother, by reason of his bestowing on him a
+large Spanish doubloon, and promising him a delicate coloured maneged
+horse immediately on his return to Yorkshire. It is a pleasant sight to
+see (and reflected some credit on my ministration of the moralities in
+this particular instance) the disinterested love of brethren, one
+towards another, and I failed not to ascertain that the Lord Lessingholm
+had been boarded in the house of an exemplary divine, to wit, Mr Savage
+of Corpus Christi College, Oxford&mdash;a fact which I think it proper to
+mention
+<span class="pagebreak" title="759">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_759" id="Page_759"></a>
+to the honour of that eloquent member of our church&mdash;inasmuch
+as any man might be proud of having had the training up in the way he
+should go, of so excellent and praiseworthy a youth.</p>
+
+<p>It was many days before my young ones came back, (I would be understood
+to include in this Alice Snowton, whom I looked upon with the tenderness
+of a father and the pride of a teacher all in one;) and when they
+returned to me, I thought I perceived that they were both more sorrowful
+than of wont. Alice (and my Waller also) looked oppressed with some
+secret that weight upon their hearts, and I was fearful the great lady
+had made them partakers of her cares in the matter of her son and her
+grandchild. Yet did I not think such a thing possible as that either of
+them should have been taken into her confidence on so high and momentous
+a concernment, by reason of my Waller being so young, though thoughtful
+and considerate, and also fuller grown than persons much more advanced
+in life; and Alice Snowton was of so playful and gentle a disposition,
+that she seemed unfitted for the depository of any secret, unless those
+more strictly appertaining to her youth and sex, and moreover was a
+stranger to this part of the country, being of a respectable family, as
+I have observed, in Wilts&mdash;namely, a brother of Mr Snowton, my kind
+patron and friend. I called them into my study, after my labours were
+over with the other pupils, and I said to them&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Dear children, ill would it become me to pry into the secrets of my
+honoured lady, the Lady Mallerden; yet may there arise occasions wherein
+it is needful for one in my situation, (parent to the one of you, and
+<i>in loco parentis</i> to the other,) to make perquisition into matters of
+weight and importance to your well-being, even at the risk of appearing
+inquisitive into other peoples’ affairs. Answer me, therefore, Alice, my
+dear child, has the Lady Mallerden instructed you in any portion of her
+family story?”</p>
+
+<p>“She has in some degree, Sir,” said Alice Snowton, “but not deeply.”</p>
+
+<p>“You know of her disagreement on certain weighty points with her son,
+the Lord Viscount, and how that he is a wicked man, seeking to break
+into the pasture of the Lord, and tear down the hedges and destroy the
+boundaries thereof; and that in this view he is minded to get his
+daughter into his power, to use her as an instrument towards his
+temporal elevation?”</p>
+
+<p>“Something of all this we have heard, but not much,” said Alice Snowton.</p>
+
+<p>“And furthermore, I must tell you that overtures were made to me to aid
+and assist in the resistance to be offered to this man of sin, and I
+did, for deep and wholesome reasons, refuse my assent thereto, and in
+this refusal I meant you, my children, to be included; therefore,
+whatever propositions may be made to you, to hear, or know, or receive,
+or in any manner aid, in the concealment of the Lord Viscount’s
+daughter&mdash;which is at present in charge of an honourable lady in the
+north&mdash;I charge you, refuse them; they may bring ruin on an unambitious
+and humble household, and in no case can do good. We must fear God ever,
+and honour the king while he is entrusted with the sword of power; and
+family arrangements we must leave to the strong hands and able head of
+the great Lady Mallerden herself. In this caution I know I fulfil the
+intentions of my honoured friend, your esteemed uncle, Mr William
+Snowton, which is concerned with too many noble families to desire to
+get into enmity with any&mdash;and therefore be grateful for all the kindness
+you experience from my honoured lady; but if perchance she brings her
+grandchild to the Court, and wishes to make you of her intimates, inform
+me thereof; and greatly as it would be to be regretted, I would break
+off the custom of your visits to the noble house, for even that honour
+may be too dearly purchased by the enmity of powerful and unscrupulous
+men&mdash;if with sceptres in their hands, so much the more to be held in
+awe.” And I ended with &AElig;sopus his fable of the frogs and bulls. This
+discourse (whereof I had prepared the heads in the course of the
+morning) I delivered with the full force of my elocution, and afterwards
+I dismissed them, leaving to my excellent wife the duty of enlarging on
+the same topic, and also of giving such advice to Alice, which
+<span class="pagebreak" title="760">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_760" id="Page_760"></a>
+was now
+a full grown young woman, and very fair to look on, in respect of the
+young cavaliers she might see at the great house, particularly the noble
+lord, the Lord Lessingholm. Such advice I considered useless in regard
+to my Waller, she being only about fourteen years of age, but in other
+respects a fair and womanly creature to see; for her waist was nearly
+twice as large as Alice Snowton’s, and her shoulders also, and in weight
+she would have been greatly an overmatch; and certes, putting aside all
+parental fondness, which we know to be such a beautifier of one’s own
+kindred as to make the crow a more lovely animal than the dove, (in the
+eyes of the parent crow,) I will confess that in my estimation, and also
+in that of my excellent wife, there was no comparison between the two
+fair maidens, either in respect of fulness of growth or redness of
+complexion, the advantage being, in both these respects, on the side of
+the junior. Some sentiment of this sort I saw at the time must have
+possessed the honourable breast of the Viscount Lessingholm; for
+although he made much profession of visiting at the parsonage for the
+sake of seeing his juvenile brother, still there were certain looks and
+tokens whereby I was clearly persuaded that the magnet was of a
+different kind; and whereas it would have been vain and ambitious in me
+to lift my eyes so high, in view of matrimonial proposals, as to nearly
+the topmost branch in the peerage of England, (the Earls Fitzoswald
+being known to have been barons of renown at the period of the Norman
+Conquest;) still it would ill have become me to prevent my daughter from
+gathering golden apples if they fell at her feet, because they had grown
+on such a lofty bough of the tree; and I will therefore confess, that it
+was with no little gratification I saw the unfoldings of a pure and
+virtuous disposition in the honourable young nobleman. And I will
+further state, that it seemed as if his presence when he came, (and that
+was often, nay, sometimes twice in one day,) did make holiday in the
+whole house; and Charles was by no means backward in his
+friendship&mdash;receiving the fishing-rods presented unto him by the right
+honourable with so winning an eagerness, and pressing Alice (his
+constant friend) to go with him and the noble donor with so much zeal to
+the brook, therein to try the virtues of the gift, that I found it
+impossible to refuse permission; and therefore did those three often
+consume valuable hours, (yet also I hope not altogether
+wasted)&mdash;<i>videlicet</i>, Alice and Charles, and the honourable Viscount&mdash;in
+endeavouring to catch the finny tribe, yet seldom with much success. But
+whatever was the result of their industry&mdash;yea, though it was but a
+minnow&mdash;it was brought and presented to my Waller by the honourable
+hands of the young man, with so loving an air, that it was easy to
+behold how gladly he would have consented, if she had been the companion
+of their sports, if by any means Charles could have been persuaded to
+have exchanged Alice Snowton for her. But the very mention of such an
+idea did throw the child into such wrathful indignation, that the right
+honourable was fain to bestow on him whole handfuls of sugar-plums, and
+promise that Alice should not be left behind. So fared the time away;
+and at last I began to hope that the fears of the great lady were
+unfounded, and that nothing would occur to trouble her repose. The
+manner of living had been resumed again, with the difference that, on
+the days the young maidens did not visit the noble mansion, the
+honourable viscount was, as it were, domiciled in the parsonage; and I
+perceived that, by this arrangement, the great lady was highly pleased;
+perhaps because the presence of a kinsman, a courageous gentleman, gave
+her some security against the rudenesses she seemed to be afraid of on
+the part of her own son&mdash;a grievous state of human affairs when the
+fifth commandment is not held in honour, and reducing us below the level
+of puppy-dogs and kittens, to whom that commandment, along with the rest
+of the decalogue, is totally unknown. Sundry times I did observe
+symptoms of alarm; and care did write a sad story of mental suffering on
+the brow of the great lady, which was a person of the magnanimity of an
+ancient matron, and bore up in a
+<span class="pagebreak" title="761">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_761" id="Page_761"></a>
+manner surprising to behold in one who
+stood, as it were, with one hand upon her coffin, while her other
+stretched backward through the shadow of fourscore years to touch her
+cradle. And ever, from time to time, couriers came to the noble mansion,
+while others flew in various directions on swift horses at utmost speed;
+and looking up into that lofty atmosphere, we saw clouds and ominous
+signs of coming storms, before we could hear the voice of the thunder.
+And once a royal messenger (called a pursuivant-at-arms) came down in
+person, and carried the great lady to London, and there she stayed many
+days, and was threatened with many things and great punishments, yea,
+even to be tried by the Lord Jeffreys for high treason, in resisting the
+king’s order to deliver up her grandchild to its natural guardian&mdash;which
+was its father, the Viscount Mallerden, now created by royal favour
+Marquis of Danfield. But even this last danger she scorned; and after
+months of confinement near the royal court, her enemies gave up
+persecuting her for that season, and at last she came back to Mallerden
+Court. In the meanwhile, we went on in a quiet and comfortable manner in
+the parsonage&mdash;the Viscount Lessingholm frequently with us, (almost as
+if he were a pupil of the house;) and on one or two occasions we had a
+visit for an evening from my honoured friend, Mr William Snowton of
+Wilts. He was pleased to use great commendations, both of my excellent
+wife and me, for the mode in which we attended to the mind and manners
+of his niece, the culinary and other accomplishments, and the rational
+education wherein he saw her advanced. He never stayed later than
+day-dawn on the following morning, and kept himself reserved, as one
+used to the intimacy of the great, and not liking to make his news
+patent to humble people such as we; and he would on no account open his
+mouth on the quarrels of our great lady and her son, the new Marquis of
+Danfield, but kept the conversation in equable channels of everyday
+matters, and expounded how my glebe lands might be made to yield a
+greater store of provision by newer modes of cultivation&mdash;the which I
+considered, however, a tampering with Providence, which gives to every
+field its increase, and no more. But by this time my glebe was not the
+only land on which I could plant my foot and say, Lo, thou art mine! for
+I had so prospered in the five years during which I had held a ladder
+for my pupils to the tree of knowledge, that much golden fruit had
+fallen to my share, (being kicked down, as it were, by their climbing
+among the branches;) so that I had purchased the fee simple of the
+estate of my friend, Master George Sprowles, who had taken some alarm at
+the state of public affairs, and gone away over the seas to the
+plantation called, I think, Massachusets, in the great American
+continent.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the beginning of October 1688, that another call was made on
+the great lady to make her appearance within a month from that time in
+the city of London, to give a final answer for her contumacy in refusing
+obedience to the King and the lord high Treasurer. I felt in hopes the
+object of their search (namely, the young maiden his daughter, for it
+was bruited they rummaged to find her out in all directions) was safe
+with some foreign friends which the great lady possessed in the republic
+of Holland, where the Prince of Orange was then the chief magistrate;
+but of this I had no certain assurance. For some days no preparations
+were made at the noble mansion for so momentous a journey; but at length
+there were great signs of something being in prospect. First of all, the
+Viscount Lessingholm rode up from Yorkshire, whither he had been gone
+three weeks, attended by near a score of fine dressed serving-men, and
+took up his abode at Mallerden Court; then came sundry others of the
+great lady’s kinsfolk, attended also by their servants in stately
+liveries; and we did expect that the proud imperial-minded lady was to
+go up with such great escort as should impress the king with a just
+estimate of her power and dignity. With this expectation we kept to
+ourselves ready to see the noble procession when it should start on its
+way; but far other things were in store for me, and an instrument called
+a pea-spitter,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="762">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_762" id="Page_762"></a>
+wherewith Charles had provided himself for the purpose
+of saluting various of the serving-men as they passed, was rendered
+useless. It was on the first day of November that the Lord Viscount
+Lessingholm, (who had conveyed the young maidens, <i>videlicet</i> Alice
+Snowton and my Waller, to the Court on the previous day,) did ride post
+haste up to my door, making his large grey horse jump over the gate at
+the end of the walk, as if he had been Perseus flying on his winged
+steed to the rescue of Andromede, (as the same is so elegantly described
+in the ancient poet,) and did summon me to go that moment to the noble
+mansion on matter of the highest import. Much marvelling, and greatly
+out of breath, I followed the noble gentleman’s motions as rapidly as
+was beseeming one of my responsible situation, in regard to the
+spiritual ministrations in the parish, while in sight of any of my
+flock; for nothing detracts more from the dignity of the apostolical
+character than rapid motions&mdash;such as running, or jumping, or an
+unordered style of apparel, without hatband or cassock. When out of the
+village street, I put (as the vulgar phrase expresses it) my best foot
+foremost, and enacted the part of a running serving-man in the track of
+my noble conductor; and finally I arrived, in such state as may be
+conceived, at the entrance-hall of the noble mansion. In the court-yard
+were numerous serving-men mounted in silent gravity, and ranged around
+the wall. Each man was wrapped up in a dark-coloured cloak; and
+underneath it I saw, depending from each, the clear polished extremity
+of a steel sword-sheath. They did bear their reins tightened, and their
+heels ornamented with spurs, as if ready to spring forth at a word, and
+great tribulation came over my soul. Howbeit I mounted the grand
+staircase, and, following the western corridor, I opened the door of the
+green-damask withdrawing-room, and found myself in the middle of a large
+and silent company. There were, perhaps, a dozen persons there
+assembled&mdash;motionless in their chairs; and at the further end of the
+apartment sat the great lady in whispered conversation with a tall dark
+gentleman of mature years, say fifty or thereabouts, and with a wave of
+her hand, having instructed me to be seated, she pursued her colloquies
+in the same under tones as before. When I had placed myself in a chair,
+and was in somewhat recovering my breath, which much hurrying and the
+surprising scene I saw had greatly impaired, a hand was laid upon my
+shoulder, and I turned round, and, sitting in the next chair to me, I
+beheld my honoured friend Mr William Snowton of Wilts.</p>
+
+<p>“Good Master Willis,” he said, “you little expected to see me here, I do
+well believe; but it was but lately I was summoned.”</p>
+
+<p>“And know you wherefore we are here assembled?” I enquired.</p>
+
+<p>“Somewhat I know, but not all. The persons here be men of great power,
+some of them being those by whom I am employed in managing their worldly
+affairs, and shortly we shall hear what is determined on.”</p>
+
+<p>“On what subject do they mean to consult us? I shall be ready,” said I,
+“to give what advice may be needed, if peradventure it suits with my
+sacred calling.”</p>
+
+<p>“I fear they will hardly consult a person of your holy profession,” said
+Mr Snowton with a sober kind of smile. “It is of life or death we are
+now to take our choice.”</p>
+
+<p>A great fear fell upon me, as a great shadow falls upon the earth before
+a thunder storm. “What mean ye?” I whispered. “There is no shedding of
+blood.”</p>
+
+<p>“There will be <i>much</i> shedding of blood, good Master Willis; yea, the
+rivers in England will run red with the same, unless some higher power
+interferes to deliver us.”</p>
+
+<p>“And wherefore am I summoned to such fearful conference? I am no man of
+blood. I meddle not with lofty matters. I”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But here I was interrupted by Mr Snowton in a low grave tone. “Then you
+have not heard that the wicked man of sin, the false Papist, the Marquis
+of Danfield, hath discovered his child?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I have not been informed thereof. And hath he gained possession of
+her?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, nor shall not!” and hereupon he frowned a great frown, and let his
+<span class="pagebreak" title="763">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_763" id="Page_763"></a>
+sword-sheath strike heavily upon the floor. All the company looked
+sharply round; but seeing it was by hazard, they took no notice of what
+occurred.</p>
+
+<p>“And where, then, is the maiden bestowed?” I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>“In this house; you shall see her soon.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what have I to do with these matters? They are above my
+concernment!” I exclaimed, in great anguish of mind.</p>
+
+<p>“You have to unite her in the holy bands of wedlock.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, that is clearly impossible! Where, I pray thee, is the license?”</p>
+
+<p>“All that has been cared for by means of a true bishop of our church.
+There can be no scruple on canonical grounds; and if there be hesitation
+in obeying the Lady Mallerden’s orders, (provided she finally takes up
+her mind to deliver the same,) I would not answer for the recusant’s
+life, no, not for an hour.”</p>
+
+<p>“But wherefore in such secrecy, with such haste?” I said, in dreadful
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>“Because we know that the father slept at Oxford last night with store
+of troops, and that he will be here this night with a royal warrant to
+enforce his right to the bestowal of his child; and he hath already
+promised her to the leader of the malignant Papists.”</p>
+
+<p>“And are we here to resist the king’s soldiers and the mandate of the
+king?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yea, to the death!” he said, and sank into gloomy thoughts and said no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>I looked around among the assembly, and recognized no other faces that I
+knew, and in a short space the great lady, having finished her colloquy
+with her next neighbour, rose up and said&mdash;“My lords, I believe ye be
+all of kin to this house, and the other gentlemen be its friends&mdash;a
+falling house, as represented by a feeble woman of fourscore years and
+five. Yet in the greatness of the cause, may we securely expect a gift
+of strength even to so frail an instrument as I am. I have consulted
+with you all, and finally have taken counsel with my kind cousin and
+sweet friend, the Earl of Fitzoswald, now at my side, and he hath agreed
+to what I have proposed. It now, then, but remains to carry our project
+into effect; and for that purpose I have summoned hither a good man and
+excellent divine, Master Willis of this neighbourhood, to be efficacious
+in that behalf.”</p>
+
+<p>I started up, and said in great agitation&mdash;“Oh, my lady!”&mdash;but had not
+proceeded further when I was broken in upon by a voice of thunder&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Silence, I say! What, is it for the frailness of a reed like you that
+such noble enterprise must perish? Make no remonstrance, sir, but do
+what is needed, or”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Although the great lady did not finish her words, I felt an assurance
+steal like ice over my soul that my hours were numbered if I hesitated,
+and I bowed low, while Mr William Snowton did privily pull me down into
+my seat by the hinder parts of my cassock.</p>
+
+<p>“You&mdash;you, Master Willis, of all men, should least oppose this godly
+step. For the noise thereof will sound unto the ends of the earth, and
+make the old Antichrist on his seven hills quake and tremble, and shake
+the pitiful spirit of the apostate of Whitehall. Say I not well, my
+lords?”</p>
+
+<p>“You say well,” ran round the room in a murmur of consent.</p>
+
+<p>“And you&mdash;you, Master Willis,” she went on, “least of all, should object
+to keep a lamb within the true fold&mdash;yea, a lamb which you did see with
+your own eyes introduced into the same. Remember you nought of godly
+Master Waller’s in Berkshire, or of the scene you saw in a certain
+chamber, where the baptismal waters were poured forth, and murmured like
+a pleasant fountain in the dying ears of a devout Christian woman?”</p>
+
+<p>I was so held back with awe that I said not a word, and she went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, if good Master Lees had yet been spared, we should not have asked
+for the ministry of trembling and unwilling hands like yours! And now,
+my lords&mdash;and you, kind gentlemen, my plan as arranged with good Lord
+Fitzoswald is this:&mdash;I give my grandchild’s hand where her heart has
+long been bestowed; I then go with her through lanes and byways; under
+good escort, to the city of Exeter, where erelong we shall cast in our
+lot
+<span class="pagebreak" title="764">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_764" id="Page_764"></a>
+with certain friends. The bridegroom shall see nought of his bride
+till happier days arrive, except at this altar; and you shall go
+directly to your respective stations, and be ready at the first blowing
+of the horns before which the walls of this Jericho are to fall. In the
+next chamber I have made preparation for the ceremony, and in a few
+minutes, when I have arranged me for the journey, I will summon you.”</p>
+
+<p>Something of this I heard&mdash;the sense namely forced its way into my
+brain; but I was confused and panic-stricken. The whole sad scene
+enacted so many years before, at the house of good Master Waller, on my
+way home from Oxford, came back upon my heart, and I marvelled at the
+method whereby the great lady had acquired a knowledge of the secret. I
+was deep sunk in these cogitations when the door of the inner library
+was at last thrown open, and such light flashed upon us from the
+multitude of candles, which were illuminated in all parts of the
+chamber, that my eyes were for some time dazzled. When I came to myself
+I looked, and at a table under the eastern window, on which was spread
+out a golden-clasped prayer-book, opened at the form of solemnization of
+matrimony, I saw, along with two young men of about his own age, (all
+girt with swords, and booted and spurred,) the right honourable the
+Viscount Lessingholm, which I at once concluded was acting as
+bridegroom’s man to one of the other youths. The company, which had been
+assembled in the withdrawing-room, placed themselves gravely, as if some
+solemn matter was in hand, at the side of the table; and I took my place
+by a motion from the Earl Fitzoswald, and laid my hand upon the
+prayer-book, as ready to begin. The door at the other end of the room,
+which leadeth to the outer staircase, was opened, and there came
+noiselessly in a tall woman, dressed in the same fantastical apparel,
+like the apparel of the Bohemians or gipsies, which I remembered so well
+on the fatal night of the christening; and, when she cast her eyes on
+me, I could not have thought an hour had passed since that time, and I
+recognised in her, with awe and wonderment, the features of the great
+lady, the Lady Mallerden herself. In each hand she led a young person,
+in her left my daughter Waller, and I will not deny that at the sight my
+heart leapt up with strange but not unpleasing emotion, as, remembering
+the habitudes of the noble Viscount Lessingholm, I thought there was a
+possibility of a double wedding; and in her other hand, dressed as for a
+journey, with close fitting riding-coat, and a round hat with sable
+feathers upon her head, she conducted Alice Snowton, the which looked
+uncommon lovely, though by no means so healthy or stout-looking as her
+other companion&mdash;<i>videlicet</i>, my Waller. They walked up to the place
+whereat we stood, and the Lord Viscount springing forward, did give his
+hand to Alice Snowton, and did not let it go for some time; but looked
+upon her with such soft endearing looks that she held down her head, and
+a red blush appeared upon her cheek, as if thereupon there had been
+reflected the shadow of a rose. For it was not of the deep tinge which
+formed the ornament of the complexion of my Waller.</p>
+
+<p>“This is no time for useless dalliance,” said the great lady; “let us to
+work. By no other means can we root out for ever the hopes of our
+enemies.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where then, madam,” I said, “is the bride?&mdash;and who, I pray you, is the
+bridegroom?”</p>
+
+<p>“The bridegroom is the Viscount Lessingholm. This maiden is the bride.”</p>
+
+<p>“But Alice Snowton, my lady. I did think it was your honourable
+grandchild who was to be united to this noble gentleman.”</p>
+
+<p>“And so it is&mdash;and so it is! She is Alice Snowton no longer. Our good
+friend, Master Snowton, the steward on my daughter Pevensey’s Wiltshire
+manor, was good enough to adopt her as his niece; and for her better
+concealment we placed her in the charge of a person whose character for
+meekness and simplicity was too notorious to raise suspicion of his
+being concerned in such a plot. Even to herself, till lately, her
+parentage was unknown, as Master Snowton kept well the secret.”</p>
+
+<p>“And one other question,” I said;
+<span class="pagebreak" title="765">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_765" id="Page_765"></a>
+ “the child to whom I became bound as
+godfather?”</p>
+
+<p>“’Tis the same. This is the poor Lucy Hesseltine, whose orphanship you
+witnessed in that lone and yet comfortable death.”</p>
+
+<p>The lady Lucy Hesseltine, or rather Alice Snowton, for by that name I
+loved her best, did throw her arms about my neck, and kissed my cheek,
+and said I had been a kind godfather to her, yea, had been a father to
+her, and my excellent wife a mother. At this my heart was much moved,
+and I saw tears come to the eyes of several of the bystanders, but no
+tear came to the eyes of the great lady herself.</p>
+
+<p>“Let this be enough,” she said. “Let us finish what we have yet to do.”</p>
+
+<p>And thereupon, all being ready and in their due places, I began; but
+when I came to the question&mdash;“Lucy Hesseltine, wilt thou have this man
+to be thy lawful husband?”&mdash;a sudden noise in the court-yard under the
+window made me pause; but the great lady commanded me with a frown to go
+on, and I concluded the question, and received in reply a sweet but
+audible “yes.” But the noise was again repeated, and the assistants
+sprang to their feet, for it was the sound of the sharp shooting off of
+pistols.</p>
+
+<p>“Stir not for your lives till the ceremony is over!” cried the great
+lady; and I hurried with trembling lips over the remainder of the
+service. A loud voice in the yard was heard amid the trampling of much
+horse. “In the king’s name, surrender!” the voice said. “We have a
+warrant here, and soldiers!”</p>
+
+<p>“For as much as Frederick and Lucy Hesseltine,” (I said as calmly as I
+could, though with my heart quaking within me) “have consented together
+in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this
+company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other,
+and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by
+joining of hands&mdash;I pronounce that they be man and wife together!”</p>
+
+<p>“Now then, my lords and gentlemen,” cried the great lady, springing to
+her feet, “to the defence! We are witnesses of this marriage, and
+clashing swords must play the wedding peel. If need be, fear not in such
+quarrel to do your best; yea, to the shedding of blood! Though the blood
+were my son’s, it were well shed in such a holy cause. Now then, Lucy,
+come! Guard the front entrance but an hour, and we shall be beyond
+pursuit.”</p>
+
+<p>And so saying she glided rapidly, with the nearly fainting bride,
+towards the hidden stairs, while Viscount Lessingholm rushed rapidly
+with drawn sword down the grand flight, and sprang on his grey horse. In
+the confusion my Waller had disappeared, and in great agonies of fear I
+slipped into the court-yard. Oh, what a sight met my eyes! There were
+several men lying dead, which had been shot or otherwise killed, and
+their horses were galloping hither and thither with loose reins and
+stirrups flapping; other men were groaning, and writhing in great pains,
+tearing the ground with bleeding hands, and dragging themselves, if such
+were possible, away from the <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i>. Meanwhile, horsemen drawn up on
+either side were doing battle with sword and pistol; and the trampling
+and noise of the shouting, the groans and deep execrations, all
+resounding at once in that atmosphere of smoke and approaching night,
+were fearful to listen to, and I bethought me of some way of escape. I
+slipped within the piazza of the servants’ court, and made my way
+towards the gate; but here the battle raged the fiercest, the noble
+Viscount Lessingholm being determined to keep it closed, and the furious
+Marquis resolute to force it open, whereby an accession of men might
+come to him which were shut out on the other side&mdash;the warder of the
+door having only admitted the marquis himself, and about fifty of the
+king’s dragoons. The retainers which I had seen on my entrance amounted
+to seventy or more; and seeing they had most of them been soldiers, yea,
+some which had grizzled locks, having been among the shouters at Dunbar,
+and on many fields besides, under the cruel eye of the ferocious Oliver
+himself, they did cry “Ha, ha! at the spear of the rider, and smelt the
+battle afar off.” The Marquis of Danfield did spur his black war-horse,
+with his sword poised high in air
+<span class="pagebreak" title="766">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_766" id="Page_766"></a>
+towards the noble Viscount of
+Lessingholm, and with fierce cries the noble viscount raised also his
+sword, and was in act to strike the undefended head of his assailant.
+“Stop, Frederick!” cried a voice, which proceeded from the Earl
+Fitzoswald; “it is Danfield himself!” whereupon the young gentleman did
+ward off the blow aimed at him by the marquis, and passed on. All this I
+saw ere I gave up hopes of getting out by the gate; but seeing this was
+hopeless, I pursued my way back again, with intent to get out by one of
+the postern windows, and hurry homeward across the fields; and having
+opened a window near unto the buttery, I hung by my hands, and then
+shutting my eyes and commending my soul to Heaven, I let go, and dropt
+safely down upon the greensward. But ere I could recover myself
+sufficiently, I was set upon as if I had been an armed enemy, by a large
+number of mounted men, which were of the company of the marquis, whereby
+I saw that the house was surrounded, and feared the great lady and Alice
+(I would say the Viscountess Lessingholm) were intercepted in their
+retreat. Howbeit, I gave myself up prisoner, by reason of various blows
+with the flats of sabres, and sundry monitions to surrender or die. I
+was led in great fear to the front of the court, and brought before a
+proud, fierce-browed commander, which interrogated me “of all that was
+going on, and whether the Lady Lucy Mallerden was in the Court?” Whereto
+I answered, that I was so overcome with terror that I knew little of
+what I had seen, and, with regard to the noble lady, I was persuaded she
+was not within the walls. “If you answer me,” he said, “truly, and tell
+me what road she has taken, I will send you away in safety, and secure
+you his majesty’s pardon for any thing you may have done against his
+crown and dignity; but if you refuse, I will assuredly hang you on the
+court-yard gate the moment we gain possession thereof. Now, say which
+way went they?” I was sore put to it, for it was like betraying innocent
+blood to tell these savage men the course my godchild pursued in her
+escape; and yet to tell an untruth was repugnant to my nature, and I
+said to the captain, “It is a hard matter for me to point out where my
+friends are fleeing unto.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you’ll be hung as high as Haman at daybreak; so you can take your
+choice,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“If I direct you unto the place whereunto she is gone,” I said, “it will
+be a hard matter to find her.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s our business, not yours. Tell us where it is.”</p>
+
+<p>“For, suppose she were in hiding in a city, a large busy place like
+Bristol, and waited for a conveyance to a foreign land”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“In Bristol! Oho, say no more! Ensign Morley, take ten of the best
+mounted of the troop and scour the northern roads towards Bristol. You
+will overtake them ere they are far advanced.”</p>
+
+<p>“I pray you, captain,” I said, “to observe&mdash;I have not told you she is
+gone towards Bristol.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know you haven’t,” he said smiling, “I will bear witness you have
+kept her secret well; but here we are about to enter the Court, for the
+firing is finished. The rebels will be on gibbets within twenty-four
+hours, every one.”</p>
+
+<p>But there was no sign of the gate being opened. Contrariwise there did
+appear, in the dimness of the evening-sky, certain dark caps above the
+outside wall, which I did recognize as being worn by the serving-men of
+the great lady’s friends; and while we were yet talking a flight of
+bullets passed close over our heads, and three or four of the troopers
+fell off dead men, leaving their saddles empty and their horses
+masterless.</p>
+
+<p>“Draw close my men,” cried the captain, “right wheel;” and setting his
+men an example, he did gallop with what speed he might from the
+propinquity of the wall. As for myself, I was in some sort relieved by
+the knowledge that the noble mansion still continued in possession of
+the Viscount Lessingholm; and comforting myself with the assurance that
+no evil could befall my daughter Waller while under his protection, I
+did contrive to seize by the bridle one of the dragoons’ horses, (a
+stout black horse, which, being never claimed, did do my farming work
+for fifteen years,) and,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="767">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_767" id="Page_767"></a>
+climbing up into the saddle, betook me home to
+inform my excellent wife of all these dreadful events. All next day, and
+all the next&mdash;yea, for three whole days&mdash;I stayed in my quiet home,
+receiving information quietly by means of a note brought to me by my
+servants, that the mansion still held out, that Waller was quite safe,
+and that, provided no artillery was brought to bear against them, that
+they could hold out <i>till the time came</i>. What was the meaning of the
+latter phraseology, I did not know; but considering it desirable at that
+period to cut down certain trees on my recently purchased estate, I
+proceeded with Thomas Hodge the carpenter, and various other artificers
+of my parishioners, (all being friends and dependents of the great
+lady,) and with saws and other instruments did level the whole row of
+very large oaks and elm trees which bordered the only high-road from
+Oxford; and, by some strange accident, all the trees did fall exactly
+across the same, and made it utterly impossible to move thereupon with
+cart or waggon; so that it was much to be suspected that the guns, which
+we heard were ordered to come up from Wallingford, could by no means get
+over the obstruction. It is also to be observed that Master George
+Railsworth, the mason, who had contracted to repair the strong bridge
+over our stream, did take this opportunity of taking down two of the
+arches of the same, and could find no sufficient assistance to enable
+him to restore them, which made the road impassable for horse or man. On
+the following day, namely, the fifth day of November, we heard that all
+the king’s soldiers were suddenly ordered from all parts up to London,
+and that the Marquis of Danfield had been left to his imprisonment in
+Mallerden Court. Whereupon I bethought me it would be safe to venture up
+once more, and bring my daughter Waller to the securer custody of my
+excellent wife. Next morning, at early dawn, I accordingly did go up,
+and was admitted, after a short parley, by the gate-keeper, which had a
+helmet on his head and a sword in his hand. Speedily I was in the arms
+of my daughter Waller, who looked as happy as if none of these scenes
+had been transacted before her eyes; and moreover did refuse, in very
+positive terms, to leave the Court till her dear friend Alice&mdash;I would
+say the Lady Lucy&mdash;returned. I reasoned with her, and reprimanded her,
+and showed her in what a fearful state of danger we all were, by reason
+of the rebellion we had been guilty of against his majesty the king.
+Whereupon the child did only laugh, and told me, “Here she would abide
+until the time came.” And with this enigmatical expression I was fain to
+be content; for she would vouchsafe me no other. And, corroborative of
+all which, she said, she relied on the assurances made unto her to that
+effect by Sir Walter Ouseley, one of the young gentlemen which had acted
+as bridegroom’s man to the noble Viscount Lessingholm, and was now in
+the Court as his lieutenant in the defence of the same. A goodly young
+gentleman he was, and fair to look upon, and extraordinary kind to me,
+soothing my fears, and encouraging me to hope for better things than
+those my terrors made me anticipate. I enquired of the behavings of the
+Marquis of Danfield, and learned to my surprise that it was expected
+that before this day was over, if he did receive a courier, as was
+thought, from the Lord Churchill, one of the king’s favourite officers,
+he would withdraw all his objections to the marriage, and rather be an
+encourager and advocate of the same. In these discourses the time passed
+away, and about three of the clock, after we had dined in the great
+hall, we were looking out from the battlements and saw a dust on the
+western road.</p>
+
+<p>“It is Churchill’s letter,” said the noble Viscount Lessingholm, “and he
+has kept his promise for once.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is too much dust for only one courier’s heels&mdash;there be twenty in
+company at least,” replied Sir Walter Ouseley, which had the arm of my
+Waller closely locked in his.</p>
+
+<p>“There may be a surprise intended,” cried the noble viscount. “Hoist the
+flag, man the walls, treble the watchers, and sound for the men into the
+yard.”</p>
+
+<p>We of the peaceful professions&mdash;<i>videlicet</i>, my daughter Waller and
+I&mdash;did descend from the bartizan, and
+<span class="pagebreak" title="768">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_768" id="Page_768"></a>
+betook ourselves to the great
+withdrawing room, to wait for the result of the approach. We had not
+waited long when the door opened, and no other than the great lady
+herself, and my loved and lovely godchild, the Viscountess Lessingholm,
+came into the apartment. The great lady was now appareled as became her
+rank, having discarded those Bohemian habiliments which were her
+disguise in times of danger. Oh! it was a great sight to behold, the
+meeting between the Lady Lucy and my daughter Waller; but when hurried
+steps sounded on the stairs, and the door opened, and the noble viscount
+rushed into her arms, it was impossible to keep from tears. My feeble
+pen can venture on no such lofty flights of description, and therefore I
+will not attempt it. Meanwhile, in the outer court, great shouting was
+heard. Sir Walter Ouseley came up to us, and announced that the Marquis
+of Danfield “presented his respects to his noble mother, and
+congratulated her on the glorious news.”</p>
+
+<p>“I knew how it would be,” she said, “with base natures such as his and
+Churchill’s. We accept their assistance, but despise the instrument. He
+will now be fierce against his benefactor, (who, though a bad king, was
+tender to his friends,) and bitterer against his faith than if he had
+never been either a courtier or a bigot. I receive his congratulations,
+Sir Walter Ouseley, but I decline an interview for some time to come.”</p>
+
+<p>“He desired me also, my lady,” said Sir Walter, “to convey his blessing
+to the bride, and his tender love to his new son, the Viscount
+Lessingholm.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, let them not reject it. The blessing even of such a father has
+its value. But we must now make preparation, for the celebration of the
+happy nuptials, in a style fitting the rank of the parties. The prince
+is pleased with what we have done”&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The young man, Sir Walter Ouseley, who had been whispering in my ear,
+here broke in on the great lady’s speech.</p>
+
+<p>“If it would please you, madam, at the same time, to permit two others
+to be happy, I have obtained Master Willis’s consent thereto, and also
+the consent of this fair maiden.”</p>
+
+<p>The viscountess took Waller in her arms, and kissed her cheek, and the
+great lady smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“I knew not, Sir Walter Ouseley, that you were so perfect a soldier as
+to sustain an attack and lay siege at the same time; but since in both
+you have been successful, I give you my hearty good wishes. And so, dear
+friends and true supporters, let us be thankful for the great
+deliverance wrought for this land and nation, as well as for ourselves.
+Our defender, the noble William, landed three days ago at Torbay, and is
+now in Hampton Court. The king has taken flight, never to be restored.
+Therefore, God save the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the props
+and ornaments of a true Protestant throne!”</p>
+
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="769">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_769" id="Page_769"></a>
+BEAU BRUMMELL.<a name="FNanchor_A_30" id="FNanchor_A_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_30" class="fnnum">A</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>All things change; ours is the age of masses and classes, the last was
+the age of individuals. Half a dozen remarkable men then represented the
+London world, in politics, poetry, bon-mots, dining out, and gaming.
+Pitt and Fox, the Dukes of Queensberry and Norfolk, Sheridan and General
+Scott, were the substitutes for mankind in the great metropolis. George
+Brummell was the last of the beaus. The flame of beauism was expiring;
+but it flamed in its socket brighter than ever, and Beau Brummell made a
+more conspicuous figure in the supreme <i>bon-ton</i> of elegant absurdity,
+than any or all his predecessors. The only permanent beau on earth is
+the American savage. The Indians, who have been lately exhibiting their
+back-wood deformities in our island at shilling a-head, were prodigious
+dressers; Greek taste might probably have dissented from their
+principles of costume, but there could be no doubt of the study of their
+decoration. Their <i>coiffeur</i> might not altogether supersede either the
+Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been
+twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron
+Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious
+tailoring, as the most <i>recherch&eacute;</i> suit that ever turned a “middling
+man” into a figure for Bond Street.</p>
+
+<p>But the charm which is the very soul of European fashion, is scorned by
+the Indian. Change&mdash;the “Cynthia of the minute,” the morning thought and
+midnight dream of the dilettanti in human drapery&mdash;has no captivation
+for the red man. He may like variety in his scalps or his squaws; but
+not a feather, not a stripe of yellow on one cheek, or of green on
+another, exhibits a sign of the common mutabilities of man. He struts in
+the plumes which his fathers wore, is attired in the same nether
+garments, exhibits the same head-gear, and decorates his physiognomy
+with the sane proportion of white-wash, red-lead, bear’s-grease, and
+Prussian blue.</p>
+
+<p>Beauism, in England, scarcely goes farther back than the days of Charles
+II. It may be said that Elizabeth had her beaux; but the true beau being
+an existence of which no man living can discover the use, and which is,
+in fact, wholly useless except to his tailor and the caricaturists, the
+chevaliers of the time of Queen Bess are not entitled to the honour of
+the name. Raleigh, no doubt, was a good dresser; but then he could write
+and fight, and was good for something. Leicester is recorded as a superb
+dresser; but then he dabbled in statesmanship, war, and love-making, and
+of course had not much time on his hands. The Sedleys, Rochesters, and
+their compeers, had too much actual occupation, good and bad, to be
+fairly ranked among those gossamery ornaments of mankind; they were idle
+enough in their hearts for the purpose, but their lives were <i>not</i>
+shadows, their sole object was <i>not</i> self. They were more nice about
+swords than snuff-boxes and, if they were spendthrifts, their profusion
+was not limited to a diamond ring or a Perigord pie. They loved, hated,
+read, wrote, frolicked and fought; they could frown as well as smile,
+and see the eccentricity of their own follies as well as enjoy them. But
+the true beau is a <i>beau-ideal</i>, an abstraction substantialized only by
+the scissors, a concentrated essence of frivolity, infinitely sensitive
+to his own indulgence, chill as the poles to the indulgence of all
+others; prodigal to his own appetites, never suffering a shilling to
+escape for the behoof of others; magnanimously mean, ridiculously wise,
+and contemptibly clever; selfishness is the secret, the spring, and the
+principle of, <i>par excellence</i>, the beau.</p>
+
+<p>In the brief introduction prefixed to the “Life,” some of those
+individuals who approached closest to perfection of old times are
+mentioned.
+<span class="pagebreak" title="770">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_770" id="Page_770"></a>
+One of those was Sir George Hewitt, on whom Etheridge, the
+comic writer, sketched his Sir Fopling Flutter. This beau found a place
+in poetry as well as in prose,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Had it not better been than thus to roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To stay, and tie the cravat-string at home?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To strut, look big, strike pantaloon, and swear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Hewitt&mdash;D&mdash;&mdash;me, There’s no action here?”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Wilson followed. He was a personage who first established the fashion of
+living by one’s wits. Returning from the army in Flanders with forty
+shillings in his pocket, he suddenly started into high life in the most
+dashing style, eclipsed every body by his equipage, stud, table, and
+dress. As he was not known at the gaming-table, conjecture was busy on
+the subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have
+commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds.
+Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the
+latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier
+through his body.</p>
+
+<p>The next on the list is Beau Fielding. He was intended for the bar, but
+intending himself for nothing, his pursuit was fashion. He set up a
+showy equipage, went to court, and led the life of “a man about town.”
+He was remarkably handsome, attracted the notice of Charles II., and
+reigned as the monarch of beauism. He was rapidly ruined, but repaired
+his fortune by marrying an heiress. She died; and the beau was duped by
+an Englishwoman, whom he married under the idea that she was a Madame
+Delaune, a widow of great wealth. Finding out the deception, he cast her
+off, and married the Duchess of Cleveland, though in her sixty-first
+year. For this marriage he was prosecuted, and found guilty of bigamy.
+He then became reconciled to his former wife, and died, in 1712, at the
+age of sixty-one. He was the Orlando of the <i>Tatler</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Beau Edgeworth lives only in the record of Steele, in the 246th number
+of the <i>Tatler</i>, as a “very handsome youth who frequented the
+coffeehouses about Charing-Cross, and wore a very pretty ribbon with a
+cross of jewels on his breast.” Beau Nash completes the list of the
+ancient heroes, dying in 1761, at the age of eighty-eight&mdash;a man of
+singular success in his frivolous style; made for a master of the
+ceremonies, the model of all sovereigns of water-drinking places; absurd
+and ingenious, silly and shrewd, avaricious and extravagant. He
+<i>created</i> Bath; he taught decency to “bucks,” civility to card-players,
+care to prodigals, and caution to Irishmen! Bath has never seen his like
+again. In English high life, birth is every thing or nothing. Men of the
+lowest extraction generally start up, and range the streets arm-in-arm
+with the highest. Middle life alone is prohibited to make its approach;
+the line of demarcation there is like the gulf of Curtius, not to be
+filled up, and is growing wider and wider every day. The line of George
+Brummell is like that of the Gothic kings&mdash;without a pedigree; like that
+of the Indian rajahs&mdash;is lost in the clouds of antiquity; and like that
+of Romulus&mdash;puzzles the sagacious with rumours of original irregularity
+of descent. But the most probable existing conjecture is, that his
+grandfather was a confectioner in Bury Street, St James’s. We care not a
+straw about the matter, though the biographer is evidently uneasy on the
+subject, doubts the trade, and seems to think that he has thrown a shade
+of suspicion, a sort of exculpatory veil over this fatal rumour, by
+proving that this grandfather and his wife were both buried, as is shown
+by a stone, still to be seen by the curious, in St James’s church-yard.
+We were not before aware that Christian burial was forbidden to
+confectioners. The biographer further adds the convincing evidence of
+gentility, that this grandfather was buried within a few feet of the
+well-known ribald, Tom Durfey. Scepticism must now hang down its head,
+and fly the field.</p>
+
+<p>We come to a less misty and remote period. In the house of this
+ancestor, who (<i>proh dedecus!</i>) let lodgings, lived Charles Jenkinson,
+then holding some nondescript office under government. We still want a
+history of that singularly dexterous, shy, silent,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="771">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_771" id="Page_771"></a>
+and successful man;
+who, like Jupiter in Homer, did more by a nod than others by a
+harangue&mdash;made more as a scene-shifter than any actor on the stage of
+Westminster&mdash;continually crept on, while whole generations of highfliers
+dropped and died; and at length, like a worm at the bottom of a pool,
+started up to the surface, put on wings, and fluttered in the sunshine,
+Earl of Liverpool! The loss of such a biography is a positive injury to
+all students of the art of rising. Jenkinson was struck by the neatness
+of the autograph in which “Apartments to be Let” was displayed on the
+door; and probably, conscious that the “art of letting” was the true
+test of talents, made the young writer his amanuensis, and finally
+obtained for him a clerkship in the treasury. He was next in connexion
+with Lord North for the twelve years of that witty and blundering
+nobleman’s unhappy administration, and enjoyed no less than <i>three
+offices</i>, by which he netted L.2500 a-year. He was abused a good deal by
+the party-ink of his time; but the salary enabled him to bear spattering
+to any amount, and probably only increased Lord North’s sympathy for his
+fellow-sufferer, until that noble lord was suffocated in the public
+mire.</p>
+
+<p>But after the crush of the minister, the man felt that his day was done;
+and he retired to “domestic virtue” as it is termed, took a good house
+in the country, enjoyed himself, and in 1794 died, leaving two sons and
+a daughter, and L.65,000 among them.</p>
+
+<p>George Bryan Brummell, the second son, was born in June 1778. The
+biographer observes characteristically, that the beau avoided the topic
+of his genealogical tree with a sacred mystery. It appears that he
+avoided with equal caution all mention of the startling fact, that one
+of his Christian names was <i>Bryan</i>. It never escaped his lips; it never
+slipped into his signature; it was never suffered to “come between the
+wind and his nobility.” If it had by any unhappy chance transpired, he
+must have fainted on the spot, have fled from society, and hid his
+discomfiture in</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Deserts where no men abide.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Brummell was a dandy by instinct, a good dresser by the force of
+original genius; a first-rate tyer of cravats on the <i>in</i>voluntary
+principle. When a boy at Eton, in 1790, he acquired his first
+distinction not by “longs and shorts,” but by the singular nicety of his
+stock with a gold buckle, the smart cut of his coat, and his finished
+study of manners. Others might see glory only through hexameters and
+pentameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket;
+with him the colour of his coat and the cut of his waistcoat were the
+materials of fame. Fellows and provosts of Eton might seem to others the
+“magnificoes” of mankind&mdash;the colossal figures which overtopped the age
+by their elevation, or eclipsed it by their splendour&mdash;the “dii majorum
+gentium,” who sat on the pinnacle of the modern Olympus; but Brummell
+saw nothing great but his tailor&mdash;nothing worthy of respect among the
+human arts but the art of cutting out a coat&mdash;and nothing fit to ensure
+human fame with posterity but the power to create and to bequeath a new
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>But the name of dandy was of later date; the age had not attained
+sufficient elegance for so polished a title; it was still buck or
+macaroni; the latter having been the legacy of the semi-barbarian age
+which preceded the eighteenth century. Brummell was called Buck Brummell
+when an urchin at Eton&mdash;a preliminary evidence of the honours which
+awaited him in a generation fitter to reward his skill and acknowledge
+his superiority. Dandy was a thing yet to come, but which, in his
+instance, was sure to come.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“The force of title could no further go&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ‘dandy was the heirloom of the beau.’”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet even in boyhood the sly and subtle style, the Brummellism of his
+after years, began to exhibit itself. A party of the boys having
+quarreled with the boatmen of the Thames, had fallen on one who had
+rendered himself obnoxious, and were about to throw him into the river.
+Brummell, who never took part in those affrays, but happened to pass by
+at the time, said, “My good fellows, don’t throw him into the river;
+for, as the man is in
+<span class="pagebreak" title="772">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_772" id="Page_772"></a>
+a high state of perspiration, it amounts to a
+certainty that he will catch cold.” The boys burst into laughter, and
+let their enemy run for his life.</p>
+
+<p>At Eton, however, he was a general favourite for his pleasantry, the
+gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had
+attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year
+in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment
+which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to
+Oriel, and there commenced that cutting system of which he so soon
+became the acknowledged master. He cut an old Eton acquaintance simply
+because he had entered at an inferior college, and discontinued visiting
+another because he had invited him to meet two students of a hall which
+he was pleased to consider obnoxious. In his studies he affected to
+despise college distinctions, but yet wrote for the Newdigate prize, and
+produced the second best poem. But his violation of college rules was
+systematic and contemptuous. He always ordered his horse at hall time,
+was the author of half the squibs, turned a tame jack-daw with a band on
+into the quadrangle to burlesque the master, and treated all proctors’
+and other penalties with contempt. Such, at least, is the character
+given him by Mr Lister in Granby.</p>
+
+<p>But he was now to commence a new career. In 1794 he was gazetted to a
+cornetcy in the Tenth Hussars, the gift of its colonel the Prince of
+Wales. Brummell’s own account of this origin of his court connexions is,
+that when a boy at Eton he had been presented to the Prince, and that
+his subsequent intimacy grew out of the Prince’s notice on that
+occasion. But a friend of his told the biographer that the Prince,
+hearing of the young Etonian as a second Selwyn, had asked him to his
+table, and given him the commission to attach him to his service. This
+was a remarkable distinction, and in any other hands would have been a
+card of fortune. He was then but sixteen; he was introduced at once into
+the highest society of fashion; and he was the favourite companion of a
+prince who required to be amused, delighted in originality, and was fond
+of having the handsomest and pleasantest men of the age in his regiment.</p>
+
+<p>Brummell, though an elegant appendage to the corps, was too much about
+the person of the Prince to be a diligent officer. The result was, that
+he was often late on parade, and did not always know his own troop.
+However, he evaded the latter difficulty in general, by a contrivance
+peculiarly his own. One of his men had a large blue-tinged nose.
+Whenever Brummell arrived late, he galloped between the squadrons till
+he saw the blue nose. There he reined up, and felt secure. Once,
+however, it happened unfortunately that during his absence there was
+some change made in the squadrons, and the place of the blue nose was
+shifted. Brummel, on coming up late as usual, galloped in search of his
+beacon, and having found his old friend he reined up. “Mr Brummell,”
+cried the colonel, “you are with the wrong troop.” “No, no,” said
+Brummell, confirming himself by the sight of the blue nose, and adding
+in a lower tone&mdash;“I know better than that; a pretty thing, indeed, if I
+did not know my own troop!”</p>
+
+<p>His promotion was rapid; for he obtained a troop within three years,
+being captain in 1796. Yet within two years he threw up his commission.
+The ground of this singular absurdity is scarcely worth enquiring into.
+He was evidently too idle for any thing which required any degree of
+regularity. The command of a troop requires some degree of attention
+from the idlest. He had the prospect of competence from his father’s
+wealth; and his absolute abhorrence of all exertion was probably his
+chief prompter in throwing away the remarkable advantages of his
+position&mdash;a position from which the exertion of a moderate degree of
+intellectual vigour, or even of physical activity, might have raised him
+to high rank in either the state or the army.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, various readings of his resignation have been given; some
+referred it to his being obliged to wear hair-powder, which was then
+ceasing to be fashionable; others, more probably, to an original love
+for doing nothing. The reason which he himself assigned, was comic and
+characteristic. It was his disgust at
+<span class="pagebreak" title="773">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_773" id="Page_773"></a>
+the idea of being quartered, for
+however short a time, in a manufacturing town. An order arrived one
+evening for the hussars to move to Manchester. Next morning early he
+waited on the Prince, who, expressing surprise at a visit at such an
+hour from him, was answered&mdash;“The fact is, your royal highness, I have
+heard that we are ordered to Manchester. Now, you must be aware how
+disagreeable this would be to <i>me</i>; I really could not go. <i>Think!
+Manchester!</i> Besides, you would not be there. I have therefore, with
+your permission, determined to sell out.”&mdash;“Oh, by all means, Brummell!”
+said the Prince; “do as you please.” And thus he stripped himself of the
+highest opportunity in the most showy of all professions before he was
+twenty-one.</p>
+
+<p>He now commenced what is called the bachelor life of England; he took a
+house in Chesterfield Street, May Fair; gave small but exquisite
+dinners; invited men of rank, and even the Prince, to his table; and
+avoiding extravagance&mdash;for he seldom played, and kept only a pair of
+horses&mdash;established himself as a refined voluptuary.</p>
+
+<p>Yet for this condition his means, though considerable, if aided by a
+profession, were obviously inadequate. His fortune amounted only to
+L.30,000, though to this something must be added for the sale of his
+troop. His only resources thenceforth must be play, or an opulent
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Nature and art had been favourable to him; his exterior, though not
+distinguished, was graceful, and his countenance, though not handsome,
+was intelligent. He possessed in a certain degree the general
+accomplishments, and exactly in the degree, which produce a flattering
+reception in society. He was a tolerable musician, he used his pencil
+with tolerable skill, and he wrote tolerable verses; more would have
+been worse than useless. He dressed admirably, and, as his <i>cheval de
+battaile</i>, he talked with a keenness of observation and a dexterity of
+language, scarcely less rare than wit, and still more exciting among the
+exhausted minds, and in the vapid phraseology, of fashion.</p>
+
+<p>His person was well formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study.
+But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to
+suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting
+display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly
+strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing
+himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter;
+while to the more knowing in the affairs of costume, it betrays
+instantly the secret that the exhibitor is simply a walking placard for
+a tailor struggling for employment, and supplying the performer on the
+occasion with a wardrobe for the purpose. Brummell’s dress was finished
+with perfect skill, but without the slightest attempt at exaggeration.
+Plain Hessian boots and pantaloons, or top boots and buckskins, which
+were then more the fashion than they are now; a blue coat, and a buff
+coloured waistcoat&mdash;for he somewhat leaned to Foxite politics for
+form’s-sake, however he despised all politics as unworthy of a man born
+to give the tone to fashion&mdash;was his morning dress. In the evening, he
+appeared in a blue coat and white waistcoat, black pantaloons closely
+fitting, and buttoning tight to the ankle, striped silk stockings, and
+opera hat. We may thus observe how much Brummell went <i>before</i> his age;
+for while he thus originated a dress which no modern refinement has yet
+exceeded, and which contained all that is <i>de bon ton</i> in modern
+equipment, he was living in the midst of a generation almost studiously
+barbarian&mdash;the Foxite imitators of the French republicans&mdash;where every
+man’s principle was measured by the closeness of his approach to
+savagery; and nothing but the War interposed to prevent the
+<i>sans-culottism</i> alike of the body and the mind.</p>
+
+<p>Brummell, though not possessing the patronage of a secretary of state,
+had the power of making men’s fortunes. His principal tailors were
+Schweitzer and Davidson of Cork street, Weston, and Meyer of Conduit
+street. Those names have since disappeared, but their memory is dear to
+dandyism; and many a superannuated man of elegance will give “the
+passing tribute of a sigh” to the incomparable neatness of their
+<span class="pagebreak" title="774">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_774" id="Page_774"></a>
+ “fit,”
+and the unrivaled taste of their scissors. Schweitzer and Meyer worked
+for the Prince, and the latter was in some degree a royal favourite, and
+one of the household. He was a man of genius at his needle; an inventor,
+who even occasionally disputed the palm of originality with Brummell
+himself. The point is not yet settled to whom was due the happy
+conception of the trouser opening at the ankle and closed by buttons.
+Brummell laid his claim openly, at least to its improvement; while
+Meyer, admitting the elegance given to it by the tact of Brummell,
+persisted in asserting his right to the invention. Yet if, as was said
+of gunpowder and printing, the true inventor is the man who first brings
+the discovery into renown, the honour is here Brummell’s, for he was the
+first who <i>established</i> the trouser in the Bond street world.</p>
+
+<p>The Prince, at this period, cultivated dress with an ardour which
+threatened to dethrone Brummell himself, and his wardrobe was calculated
+to have cost L.100,000. But his royal highness had one obstacle to
+encounter which ultimately drove him from the field, and restricted all
+his future chances of distinction to wigs; he began to grow corpulent. A
+scarcely less formidable evil arose in his quarreling with Brummell. In
+the course of hostilities, the Prince pronounced the beau a tailor’s
+block, fit for nothing but to hang clothes on; while the retaliation
+came in the shape of a caricature, in which a pair of leather breeches
+is exhibited lashed up between the bed-posts, and an enormously fat man,
+lifted up to them, is making a desperate struggle to get his limbs
+properly seated in their capacity: another operation of a still more
+difficult nature, the making the waistband meet, still threatening to
+defy all exertion.</p>
+
+<p>Brummell’s style was in fact simplicity, but simplicity of the most
+studied kind. Lord Byron defined it, “a certain exquisite propriety of
+dress.” “<i>No</i> perfumes,” the Beau used to say, “but fine linen, plenty
+of it, and <i>country</i> washing.” His opinion on this subject, however,
+changed considerably in after time; for he used perfumes, and attributed
+a characteristic importance to their use. Meeting a gentleman at a ball
+with whom he conversed for a while, some of the party enquired the
+stranger’s name. “Can’t possibly tell,” was the Beau’s answer. “But he
+is evidently a gentleman&mdash;his perfumes are good.” He objected to country
+gentlemen being introduced into Watier’s, on the ground “that their
+boots always smelt of horse-dung and bad blacking.”</p>
+
+<p>His taste in matters of <i>virtu</i> was one of the sources of his profusion;
+but it always had a reference to himself. He evidently preferred a
+snuff-box which he could display in his hand, to a Raphael which he
+could exhibit only on his wall. His snuff-boxes were numerous and
+costly. But even in taking snuff he had his style: he always opened the
+box with <i>one</i> hand, the left. The Prince imitated him in this <i>tour de
+grace</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A fashion always becomes more fashionable as it becomes more ridiculous.
+People cling to it as they pet a monkey, for its deformity. The high
+head-dresses of France, which must have been a burden, made the tour of
+Europe, and endured through a century. The high heels, which almost
+wholly precluded safe walking, lasted their century. The use of powder
+was universal until it was driven out of France by republicanism, and
+out of England by famine. The flour used by the British army alone for
+whitening their heads was calculated to amount to the annual provision
+for 50,000 people. Snuff had been universally in use from the middle of
+the seventeenth century; and the sums spent on this filthy and foolish
+indulgence, the time wasted on it, and the injury done to health, if
+they could all have been thrown into the common form of money, would
+have paid the national debt of England. The common people have their
+full share in this general absurdity. The gin drunk in England and Wales
+annually amounts to nearly twenty millions of pounds sterling; a sum
+which would pay all the poor rates three times over, and, turned to any
+public purpose, might cover the land with great institutions&mdash;the
+principal result of this enormous expenditure now being to fill the
+population with vice, misery, and madness.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="775">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_775" id="Page_775"></a>
+In the matter of coats Brummell had but one rival, the Prince, whose
+rank of course gave him a general advantage, yet whose taste was clearly
+held as inferior by the royal <i>artistes</i> themselves. A baronet, who went
+to Schweitzer’s to get himself equipped in the first style, asked him
+what cloth he recommended. “Why, sir,” was the answer, “the Prince wears
+superfine, and Mr Brummell the Bath coating. Suppose, sir, we say Bath
+coating; I think Mr Brummell has a trifle the preference.” Brummell’s
+connexion with the Prince, his former rank in the hussars, and his own
+agreeable manners, introduced him to the intercourse of the principal
+nobility. In the intervals of his visits to the Prince at Brighton, he
+visited Belvoir, Chatsworth, Woburn, &amp;c. But he was absolutely <i>once</i> in
+town in the month of November, as is proved by the following note from
+Woburn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap"> “My dear Brummell</span>,&mdash;By some accident, which I am unable to account
+for, your letter of Wednesday did not reach me till Wednesday. I
+make it a rule never to lend my box; but you have the <i>entr&eacute;e
+libre</i> whenever you wish to go there, as I informed the boxkeeper
+last year. I hope Beauvais and you will do great execution at
+Up-Park. I shall probably be there shortly after you.&mdash;Ever yours
+sincerely,</p>
+
+<p class="signature smcap"> “Bedford.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Belvoir he was <i>l’ami de la famille</i>, and at Cheveley, another seat
+of the Duke of Rutland’s, his rooms were as sacred as the Duke of
+York’s, who was a frequent visitor there. On the Duke of Rutland’s
+coming of age, in 1799, great rejoicings took place at Belvoir, and
+Brummell was one of the distinguished party there, among whom were the
+Prince of Wales, the late Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Lorn, and the
+other chief fashionable people of the day. This <i>f&ecirc;te</i> was memorable,
+for it was said to have cost L.60,000. Brummell was not altogether
+effeminate; he could both shoot and ride, but he liked neither: he was
+never a Melton man. He said that he could not bear to have his tops and
+leathers splashed by the greasy galloping farmers. The Duke of Rutland
+raised a corps of volunteers on the renewal of the war in 1803; and as
+Brummell had been a soldier the duke gave him a majority. In the course
+of the general inspections of the volunteer corps, an officer was sent
+from the Horse Guards to review the duke’s regiment, the major being in
+command. On the day of the inspection every one was on parade except the
+major-commandant. Where is Major Brummell, was the indignant enquiry? He
+was not to be found. The inspection went on. When it was near its close,
+Brummell was soon coming full gallop across the country in the uniform
+of the Belvoir Hunt, terribly splashed. He apologized for himself by
+saying, that having left Belvoir quite early, he had expected to be on
+the parade in time, the meet being close at hand. However, his favourite
+hunter had landed him in a ditch, where, having been dreadfully shaken
+by the fall, he had been lying for an hour. But the general was
+inexorable, and Brummell used to give the worthy officer’s speech in the
+following style&mdash;“Sir, this conduct is wholly inexcusable. If I remember
+right, sir, you once had the honour of holding a captain’s commission
+under his royal highness the Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent himself,
+sir! Now, sir, I tell you; I tell you sir, that I should be wanting in a
+proper zeal for the honour of the service; I should be wanting, sir, if
+I did not this very evening report this disgraceful neglect of orders to
+the commander-in-chief, as well as the state in which you present
+yourself in front of your regiment; and this shall be done, sir. You may
+retire, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>All this was very solemn and astounding; but Brummell’s presence of mind
+was not often astounded. He had scarcely walked his horse a few paces
+from the spot, when he returned, and said in a subdued tone&mdash;“Excuse me,
+general; but, in my anxiety to explain this most unfortunate business, I
+forgot to deliver a message from the Duke of Rutland. It was to request
+the honour of your company at dinner.” The culprit and the
+disciplinarian grinned together; the general coughed, and cleared his
+throat sufficiently to express his thanks in these words&mdash;“Ah! why,
+really I feel and am very much obliged to his grace. Pray, Major
+Brummell, tell the duke I shall be most happy;” and melodiously
+<span class="pagebreak" title="776">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_776" id="Page_776"></a>
+raising
+his voice, (for the Beau had turned his horse once more towards
+Belvoir,) “Major Brummell, as to this little affair, I am sure no man
+can regret it more than you do. Assure his grace that I shall have great
+pleasure in accepting his very kind invitation;” and they parted amid a
+shower of smiles. But Brummell had yet but half completed his
+performance; for the invitation was extempore, and he must gallop to
+Belvoir to acquaint the duke of the guest he was to receive on that day.</p>
+
+<p>Brummell always appeared at the cover side, admirably dressed in a white
+cravat and white tops, which latter either he, or Robinson his valet,
+introduced, and which eventually superseded the brown ones. The subtlety
+of Brummell’s sneers, which made him so highly amusing to the first rank
+of society, made him an object of alarm if not of respect to others. “Do
+you see that gentleman near the door?” said a woman of rank to her
+daughter, who had been brought for the first time to Almack’s. “Yes! Who
+is he?” replied the young lady. “A person, my dear, who will probably
+come and speak to us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to
+give him a favourable impression of you, for he is the celebrated Mr
+Brummell.” The <i>debutante</i> was the daughter of a duke. It has been said
+that Madame de Stael considered herself as having failed to attract his
+approval, and that she spoke of it as the greatest <i>malheur</i> which had
+occurred to her during her stay in London, the next in point of calamity
+being that the Prince had not called on her in person. The Beau
+perfectly knew his own value. In reply to a nobleman who charged him
+with involving his son in a gaming transaction, he said&mdash;“Really I did
+my best for the young man; I gave him my arm all the way from White’s to
+Watier’s.” However, there can be no doubt that he was very often
+intolerably impudent; and, as impudence is always vulgar, he was guilty
+of vulgarity. Dining at a gentleman’s house in Hampshire, where the
+champagne did not happen to suit his taste, he refused his glass when
+the servant came to help him a second time, with&mdash;“No, thank you, I
+don’t drink cider!” The following anecdote is rather better known.
+“Where were you yesterday, Brummell?” said one of his club friends. “I
+think,” said he, “I dined in the city.” “What! you dined in the city?”
+said his friend. “Yes, the man wished me to bring him into notice, and I
+desired him to give a dinner, to which I invited Alvanley, Mills,
+Pierrepoint, and some others.” “All went off well, of course?” said the
+friend. “Oh yes! perfectly, except one <i>mal-&agrave;-apropos</i>: the fellow who
+gave the dinner had actually the assurance to seat himself at the
+table.”</p>
+
+<p>Dining at a large party at the house of an opulent but young member of
+London society, he asked the loan of his carriage to take him to Lady
+Jersey’s that evening. “I am going there,” said his entertainer, “and
+will be happy to take you.” “Still, there is a difficulty,” said
+Brummell in his most delicate tone. “You do not mean to get up behind,
+that would not be quite right in your own carriage; and yet, how would
+it do for me to be seen in the same carriage with you?” Brummell’s
+manner probably laughed off impertinences of this order; for, given
+without their colouring from nature, they would have justified an angry
+reply. But he seems never to have involved himself in personal quarrel.
+He was intact and intangible. Yet he, too, had his mortifications. One
+night, in going to Lady Dungannon’s, he was actually obliged to make use
+of a hackney coach. He got out of it at an unobserved distance from the
+door, and made his way up her ladyship’s crowded staircase, conceiving
+that he had escaped all evidence of his humiliation; however, this was
+not to be. As he was entering the drawing-room a servant touched his
+arm, and to his amazement and horror whispered&mdash;“Beg pardon, sir,
+perhaps you are not aware of it, that there is a straw sticking to your
+shoe.” His style found imitations in the public prints, and one
+sufficiently characteristic thus set forth the merits of a new patent
+carriage step:&mdash;“There is an art in every thing; and whatever is worthy
+of being learned, cannot be unworthy of a teacher.” Such was the logical
+argument of the professor of the art of stepping in and out of a
+carriage, who represented himself as much
+<span class="pagebreak" title="777">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_777" id="Page_777"></a>
+patronised by the sublime
+Beau Brummell, whose deprecation of those horrid coach steps he would
+repeat with great delight:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“Mr Brummell,” he used to say, “considered the sedan was the only
+vehicle for a gentleman, it having no steps; and he invariably had
+his own chair, which was lined with white satin quilted, had down
+squabs, and a white sheepskin rug at the bottom, brought to the
+door of his dressing-room, on that account always on the
+ground-floor, from whence it was transferred with its owner to the
+foot of the staircase of the house that he condescended to visit.
+Mr Brummell has told me,” continued the professor, “that to enter a
+coach was torture to him. ‘Conceive,’ said he, ‘the horror of
+sitting in a carriage with an iron apparatus, afflicted with the
+dreadful thought, the cruel apprehension, of having one’s leg
+crushed by the machinery. Why are not the steps made to fold
+<i>outside</i>? The only detraction from the luxury of a <i>vis &agrave; vis</i>, is
+the double distress! for <i>both</i> legs&mdash;excruciating idea!’”</p></div>
+
+<p>Brummell’s first reform was the neckcloth. Even his reform has passed
+away; such is the transitory nature of all human achievements. But the
+art of neckcloths was once more than a dubious title to renown in the
+world of Bond Street. The politics of the time were disorderly; and the
+dress of politicians had become as disorderly as their principles. The
+fortunes of Whiggism, too, had run low; and the velvet coat and
+embroidered waistcoat, the costly buckles and gold buttons of better
+days, were heavier drains on the decreasing revenues of the party than
+could be long sustained with impunity. Fox had already assumed the
+sloven&mdash;the whole faction followed; and the ghosts of the old
+oppositionists, in their tie wigs and silver-laced coats, would have
+been horrified by the sight of the shock-headed, leather-breeched, and
+booted generation who howled and harangued on the left side of the
+Speaker’s chair from 1789 to 1806. All was <i>canaille</i>. Fox could
+scarcely have been more shabby, had he been the representative of a
+population of bankrupts. The remainder of the party might have been
+supposed, without any remarkable stretch of imagination, to have emerged
+from the workhouse. All was sincere squalidness, patriotic
+pauperism&mdash;the <i>un</i>washing principle. One of the cleverest caricatures
+of that cleverest of caricaturists, the Scotchman Gilray, was his sketch
+of the Whigs preparing for their first levee after the Foxite accession
+on the death of Pitt. The title was, “<i>Making decent!</i>” The whole of the
+new ministry were exhibited in all the confusion of throwing off their
+rags, and putting on their new clothing. There stood Sheridan,
+half-smothered in the novel attempt to put on a clean shirt. In another
+corner Fox, Grey, and Lord Moira, straining to peep into the same
+shaving-glass, were all three making awkward efforts to use the
+long-forgotten razor. Others were gazing at themselves in a sort of
+savage wonder at the strangeness of new washed faces. Some <i>sans
+culottes</i> were struggling to get into breeches; and others, whose feet
+were accustomed to the ventilation of shoes which let their toes
+through, were pondering over the embarrassment of shoes impervious to
+the air. The minor apparatus of court costume scattered round on the
+chairs, the bags and swords, the buckles and gloves, were stared at by
+the groups with the wonder and perplexity of an American Indian.</p>
+
+<p>Into this irregular state of things Brummell made his first stride in
+the spirit of a renovator. The prevailing cravat of the time was
+certainly deplorable. Let us give it in the words of history:&mdash;“It was
+without stiffening of any kind, and bagged out in front, <i>rucking</i> up to
+the front in a roll.” (We do not precisely comprehend this expression,
+whose <i>precision</i>, however, we by no means venture to doubt.) Brummell
+boldly met this calamity, by slightly starching the too flexible
+material&mdash;a change in which, as his biographer with due seriousness and
+truth observes&mdash;“a reasoning mind must acknowledge there is not much
+objectionable.”</p>
+
+<p>Imitators, of course, always exceed their model, and the cravat adopted
+by the dandies soon became <i>excessively</i> starched; the test being that
+of raising three parts of their length by one corner without bending.
+Yet Brummell, though he adhered to the happy medium, and was moderate in
+his starch, was rigorous in his tie. If his cravat did not correspond to
+his
+<span class="pagebreak" title="778">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_778" id="Page_778"></a>
+wishes in its first arrangement, it was instantly cast aside. His
+valet was seen one morning leaving his chamber with an armful of tumbled
+cravats, and on being asked the cause, solemnly replied, “These are our
+<i>failures</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Perfection is slow in all instances; but talent and diligence are sure
+to advance. Brummell’s “tie” became speedily the admiration of the <i>beau
+monde</i>. The manner in which this dexterous operation was accomplished
+was perfectly his own, and deserves to be recorded for the benefit of
+posterity.</p>
+
+<p>The collar, which was always fixed to his shirt, was so large, that,
+before being folded down, it completely hid his head and face, and the
+neckcloth was at least a foot in height. The first <i>coup d’archet</i> was
+made with the shirt-collar, which he folded down to its proper size; but
+the delicate part of the performance was still to come. Brummell
+“standing before the glass, with his chin raised towards the ceiling,
+now, by the gentle and gradual declension of his lower jaw, creased the
+cravat to reasonable dimensions; the form of each succeeding crease
+being perfected with the shirt which he had just discarded.” We were not
+aware of the nicety which was demanded to complete the folds of this
+superior swathing; but, after this development, who shall pronounce a
+dandy idle?</p>
+
+<p>Brummell was as critical on the dress of others as he was <i>recherch&eacute;</i> in
+his own, and this care he extended to all ranks. He was once walking up
+St James’s Street, arm-in-arm with a young nobleman whom he condescended
+to patronize. The Beau suddenly asked him, “what he called <i>those
+things</i> on his feet.”&mdash;“Why, shoes.”&mdash;“Shoes are they?” said Brummell
+doubtfully, and stooping to look at them; “I thought they were
+slippers?”</p>
+
+<p>The late Duke of Bedford asked him his opinion of a new coat. “Turn
+round,” said Mr Beau. When the examination was concluded in front and
+rear, the Beau, feeling the lapel delicately with his finger and thumb,
+asked in a most pathetic manner, “Bedford, do you call this <i>thing</i> a
+coat?”</p>
+
+<p>Somebody told him, among a knot of loungers at White’s, “Brummell, your
+brother William is in town. Is he not coming here?”&mdash;“Yes,” was the
+reply, “in a day or two; but I have recommended him to walk the <i>back
+streets</i> till his new clothes come home.”</p>
+
+<p>Practical jokes are essentially vulgar, and apt to be hazardous besides;
+two reasons which should have prevented their performance by an
+individual whose object was to be the standard of elegance, and whose
+object at no time was to expose himself to the rougher remonstrances of
+mankind; but the following piece of sportiveness was at least amusing.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting an old <i>emigr&eacute;</i> marquis at the seat of some noble friend, and
+probably finding the Frenchman a bore, he revenged himself by mixing
+some finely powdered sugar in his hair-powder. On the old Frenchman’s
+coming into the breakfast-room next morning, highly powdered as usual,
+the flies, attracted by the scent of the sugar, instantly gathered round
+him. He had scarcely begun his breakfast, when every fly in the room was
+busy on his head. The unfortunate marquis was forced to lay down his
+knife and fork, and take out his pocket-handkerchief to repel these
+troublesome assailants, but they came thicker and thicker. The victim
+now rose from his seat and changed his position; but all was in
+vain&mdash;the flies followed in fresh clusters. In despair he hurried to the
+window; but every fly lingering there was instantly buzzing and
+tickling. The marquis, feverish with vexation and surprise, threw up the
+window. This unlucky measure produced only a general invasion by all the
+host of flies sunning themselves on the lawn. The astonishment and
+amusement of the guests were excessive. Brummell alone never smiled. At
+last M. le Marquis gave way in agony, and, clapping his hands on his
+head, and followed by a cloud of flies, rushed out of the room. The
+secret was then divulged, and all was laughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Poodle B&mdash;g,” so well known in the world of fashion, owed his
+<i>soubriquet</i> to Brummell. B&mdash;g was fond of letting his hair, which was
+light-coloured, curl round his forehead. He was one day driving in his
+curricle, with a poodle by his side. The Beau hailed him with&mdash;“Ah,
+B&mdash;g, how do you do?&mdash;A <i>family</i> vehicle, I see.”</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="779">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_779" id="Page_779"></a>
+Some of those oddities of expression are almost too well known now for
+effect; but they must have sparkled prodigiously among the exhausted
+circles of his West-end day.</p>
+
+<p>“You seem to have caught cold, Brummell,” said a lounging visitor on
+hearing him cough. “Yes&mdash;I got out of my carriage yesterday, coming from
+the Pavilion, and the wretch of an innkeeper put me into the coffee-room
+with a damp stranger.”</p>
+
+<p>In a stormy August&mdash;“Brummell, did any one ever see such a summer
+day?”&mdash;“Yes, <i>I</i> did, last winter.”</p>
+
+<p>On returning from a country mansion, of which he happened to disapprove,
+he defined it “An exceedingly good house for stopping a <i>single</i> night
+in.”</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, the biographer has given a tolerable selection of
+Brummell’s <i>hits</i>, some of which, however, were so intolerably
+impertinent, that he must have either thoroughly “known his man,” or he
+must have smoothed down their severity by some remarkable tone of voice
+or pleasantry of visage. Without those palliations, it is not easy to
+comprehend his occasional rudeness even to friends. One day, standing
+and speaking at the carriage-door of a lady, she expressed her surprise
+at his throwing away his time on so quiet and unfashionable a
+person.&mdash;“My dear friend, don’t mention it: there is <i>no one to see
+us</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>But his admiration for the sex must have often brought him close on the
+edge of serious inconvenience. Once, at the house of a nobleman, he
+requested a moment’s interview in the library, and then and there
+communicated the formidable intelligence, “that he must immediately
+leave the house&mdash;on that day.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, you intended to stay a month,” said his hospitable entertainer.</p>
+
+<p>“True&mdash;but I must be gone&mdash;I feel I am in love with your countess.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, my dear sir, I can’t help that. I was in love with her myself
+twenty years ago,” said the good-humoured husband. “But is she in love
+with you?”</p>
+
+<p>The Beau cast down his eyes, and, in all the modesty of impudence, said
+faintly, “I believe she is.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! that alters the case. I shall send for your post-horses. Good
+morning.”</p>
+
+<p>His life was flirtation, a matter which could not be indulged in
+matrimony, and he therefore never married. Yet once he went so far as to
+elope with a young person of rank from a ball: the pair were, however,
+immediately overtaken. The affair was, of course, the talk of the clubs.
+But Brummell had his own way of wearing the willow. “On the whole,” said
+he, “I consider I have reason to congratulate myself. I lately heard
+from her favourite maid that her ladyship had been seen&mdash;<i>to drink
+beer</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Beau’s letters at this period are given; but they are not
+fortunate specimens of his taste: even in writing to women they are
+quaint, affected, and approaching to that unpardonable crime, dulness.
+His letters written in his wane of life, and under the realities of
+suffering, are much more striking, contain some pathetic and even some
+powerful language, and show that fashion and his own follies had
+obscured a mind of natural talent, if not of original tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>The following letter we look upon as quite sufficient to have excluded
+him from the recollections of any Lady Jane on earth, if she happened to
+know the difference between coxcombry and common feeling:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Lady Jane</span>,&mdash;With the miniature, it seems, I am not to be
+trusted even for two <i>pitiful</i> hours. My own memory must be then my
+only <i>disconsolate</i> expedient to obtain a resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>“As I am unwilling to merit the imputation of committing myself by
+too flagrant a liberty in retaining your glove, which you
+charitably sent at my head yesterday, as you would have extended an
+<i>eleemosynary sixpence</i> to the <i>supplicating hat</i> of a mendicant, I
+restore it to you. And, allow me to assure you, that I have too
+much regard and respect for you, and too little practical vanity
+myself, (whatever appearances may be against me,) to have
+entertained, for one <i>treacherous</i> instant, the impertinent
+intention to defraud you of it. You are angry, perhaps irreparably
+incensed against me for this <i>petty larceny</i>. I have no defence to
+offer in mitigation but that of <i>frenzy</i>. But you know that you are
+an <i>angel</i> visiting these sublunary spheres, and therefore your
+first quality should be that of mercy. Yet you are sometimes
+wayward and volatile in your <i>seraphic</i> disposition. Though
+<span class="pagebreak" title="780">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_780" id="Page_780"></a>
+you
+have no wings yet you have weapons, and those are resentment and
+estrangement from me.&mdash;With sentiments of the deepest
+<i>compunction</i>, I am always your <i>miserable slave</i>,</p>
+
+<p class="signature smcap">“George Brummell.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>We have not a doubt that he perused this toilsome performance a dozen
+times before he folded it up, advanced to his mirror to see how so
+brilliant a correspondent must look after so astonishing a production,
+moved round the room in a minuet step; and, when he sent it away at
+last, followed it with a sigh at the burial of so much renown in a
+woman’s escritoire, and a regret that it could not be stereotyped to
+make its progress round the world. And yet, as it appeared that the lady
+had thrown the glove at him, and even lent him her miniature, it would
+be difficult to discover any ground for her wrath or his compunction.
+Both were evidently equally imaginary.</p>
+
+<p>The Beau always regarded the city as a <i>terra incognita</i>. A merchant
+once asked him to dine there. Brummell gave him a look of intense
+enquiry. The merchant pressed him. “Well,” said the Beau, (who probably
+had excellent reasons for non-resistance to the man of money;) “well, if
+it <i>must</i> be&mdash;but you must first promise faithfully <i>never</i> to say a
+word on the subject.”</p>
+
+<p>A visitor, full of the importance of a tour in the north of England,
+asked him which of the lakes he preferred. “I can’t possibly remember,”
+was the reply; “they are a great way from St James’s Street, and I don’t
+think they are spoken of in the clubs.” The visitor urged the question.
+“Robinson,” said the Beau, turning in obvious distress to his valet,
+“Robinson, pray tell this gentleman which of the lakes I
+preferred.”&mdash;“Windermere, sir, I think it was,” said the valet. “Well,”
+added Brummell, “probably you are in the right, Robinson. It may have
+been. Pray, sir, will Windermere do?”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder, Brummell, you take the trouble of driving to the barracks of
+the 10th with four horses. It certainly looks rather superb,” said one
+of the officers. “Why, I dare say it does; but that is not <i>the</i> point.
+What could I do, when my French valet, the best dresser of hair in the
+universe, gave me warning that he must leave me to myself, unless I gave
+up the vulgarity of posting with <i>two</i>?”</p>
+
+<p>We come, in the course of this goodly history, to the second great event
+of the Beau’s life&mdash;the first being his introduction to Carlton House.
+The second was his being turned out of it. Brummell always denied, and
+with some indignation, the story of “Wales, ring the bell!”&mdash;a version
+which he justly declared to be “positively vulgar,” and therefore, with
+due respect for his own sense of elegance, absolutely impossible for
+<i>him</i>. He gave the more rational explanation, that he had taken the part
+of lady who was presumed to be the rival of Mrs Fitzherbert, and had
+been rash enough even to make some remarks on Mrs Fitzherbert’s <i>en bon
+point</i>, a matter of course never to be forgiven by a belle. This
+extended to a “declining love” between him and the Prince, whose foible
+was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore
+denominated “Big Ben,” the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton
+House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one
+of his satires on the Prince’s letter of February the 13th, 1812, to the
+Duke of York, in which he <i>cut</i> the Whigs, thus parodies that celebrated
+“sentence of banishment:”&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“Neither have I resentments, nor wish there should come ill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mortal, except, now I think on’t, Beau Brummell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who threaten’d, last year, in a super-fine passion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To cut <i>me</i>, and bring the old king into fashion.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Brummell now, since the sword was drawn, resolved to throw away the
+sheath, and his hits were keen and “damaging,” as those things are now
+termed. In this style he said to little Colonel M’Mahon, the Prince’s
+secretary&mdash;“I made him, and I shall unmake him.”</p>
+
+<p>The “fat friend” hit was more pungent in reality than in its usual form.
+The Prince, walking down St James’s Street with Lord Moira, and seeing
+Brummell approaching arm-in-arm with a man of rank, determined to show
+the openness of the quarrel, stopped and spoke to the noble lord with an
+apparent unconsciousness of
+<span class="pagebreak" title="781">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_781" id="Page_781"></a>
+ever having seen the Beau before. The
+moment he was turning away, Brummell asked, in his most distinct voice,
+“Pray, <i>who</i> is your <i>fat</i> friend?” Nothing could be more dexterously
+impudent; for it repaid the Prince’s pretended want of recognition
+precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where
+he was known to be most thin-skinned.</p>
+
+<p>It is sufficiently remarkable, that the alienation of the Prince from
+Brummell scarcely affected his popularity with the patrician world, or
+his reception by the Duke and Duchess of York. He was a frequent guest
+at Oatlands, and seems to have amused the duke by his pleasantry, and
+cultivated the taste of the duchess by writing her epigrams, and making
+her presents of little dogs. The Duke of York, though not much gifted
+with the faculty of making jests, greatly enjoyed them in others. He was
+a good-humoured, easy-mannered man, wholly without affectation of any
+kind; well-intentioned, with some sagacity&mdash;mingled, however, with a
+good deal of that abruptness which belonged to all the Brunswicks; and
+though unfortunate in his domestic conduct, a matter on which it would
+do no service to the reader to enlarge, yet a brave soldier, and a
+zealous and most useful commander-in-chief at the Horse Guards. He, too,
+could say good things now and then. One day at Oatlands, as he was
+mounting his horse to ride to town, seeing a poor woman driven from the
+door, he asked the servant what she was. “A beggar, your royal highness:
+nothing but a soldier’s wife.”&mdash;“Nothing but a soldier’s wife! And pray,
+sir, what is your mistress?” Of course, the poor woman was called back
+and relieved.</p>
+
+<p>Still Brummell continued in high life, and was one of the four who gave
+the memorable <i>f&ecirc;te</i> at the Argyll Rooms in July 1813, in consequence of
+having won a considerable sum at hazard. The other three were, Sir Henry
+Mildmay, Pierrepoint, and Lord Alvanley. The difficulty was, whether or
+not to invite the Prince, who had quarrelled with Mildmay as well as
+with Brummell. In this solemn affair Pierrepoint sounded the Prince, and
+ascertained that he would accept the invitation if it were proposed to
+him. When the Prince arrived, and was of course received by the four
+givers of the <i>f&ecirc;te</i>, he shook hands with Alvanley and Pierrepoint, but
+took no notice whatever of the others. Brummell was indignant, and, at
+the close of the night, would not attend the Prince to his carriage.
+This was observed, and the Prince’s remark on it next day was&mdash;“Had
+Brummell taken the cut I gave him last night good-humouredly, I should
+have renewed my intimacy with him.” How that was to be done, however,
+without lying down to be kicked, it would be difficult to discover.
+Brummell however, on this occasion, was undoubtedly as much in the right
+as the Prince was in the wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Brummell, in conformity to the habits of the time, and the proprieties
+of his caste, was of course a gambler, and of course was rapidly ruined;
+but we have no knowledge that he went through the whole career, and
+turned swindler. One night he was playing with Combe, who united the
+three characters of a lover of play, a brewer, and an alderman. It was
+at Brookes’s, and in the year of his mayoralty. “Come, Mash Tub, what do
+you set?” said the Beau. “Twenty-five guineas,” was the answer. The Beau
+won, and won the same sum twelve times running. Then, putting the cash
+in his pocket, said with a low bow, “Thank you, alderman; for this, I’ll
+always patronize your porter.”&mdash;“Very well, sir,” said Combe dryly, “I
+only wish every other blackguard in London would do the same.”</p>
+
+<p>At this time play ran high at the clubs. A baronet now living was said
+to have lost at Watier’s L.10,000 at one sitting, at <i>ecart&eacute;</i>. In 1814,
+Brummell lost not only all his winnings, but “an unfortunate L.10,000,”
+as he expressed it, the last that he had at his bankers. Brummell was
+now ruined; and, to prevent the possibility of his recovery at any
+future period, he raised money at ruinous interest, and finally made his
+escape to Calais. Still, when every thing else forsook him, his odd way
+of telling his own story remained. “He said,” observed one of his
+friends at Caen, when talking about his altered circumstances, “that, up
+to a particular
+<span class="pagebreak" title="782">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_782" id="Page_782"></a>
+period of his life, every thing prospered with him, and
+that he attributed this good luck to the possession of a silver sixpence
+with a hole in it, which somebody had given him some years before, with
+an injunction to take good care of it, as every thing would go well with
+him so long as he kept it, and everything the contrary if he happened to
+lose it.” And so it turned out; for having at length, in an evil hour,
+given it by mistake to a hackney coachman, a complete reverse of his
+affairs took place, and one misfortune followed another until he was
+obliged to fly. On his being asked why he did not advertise a reward for
+it, he answered&mdash;“I did; and twenty people came with sixpences with
+holes in them for the reward, but not <i>my</i> sixpence.” “And you never
+heard any more of it?” “No,” he replied; “no doubt that rascal
+Rothschild, or some of that set, have got hold of it.” But the Beau’s
+retreat from London was still to be characteristic. As it had become
+expedient that he must make his escape without <i>eclat</i>, on the day of
+his intended retreat he dined coolly at his club, and finished his
+London performances by sending from the table a note to his friend
+Scrope Davies, couched in the following prompt and expressive form:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My Dear Scrope</span>,&mdash;Lend me two hundred pounds: the banks are shut,
+and all my money is in the 3 per cents. It shall be repaid
+to-morrow morning.&mdash;Yours, <span class="smcap">George Brummell.</span>”</p></div>
+
+<p>The answer was equally prompt and expressive&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My Dear George</span>,&mdash;It is very unfortunate, but all <i>my</i> money is in
+the 3 per cents.&mdash;Yours, <span class="smcap">S. Davies</span>.”</p></div>
+
+<p>Such is the story;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">“I cannot tell how the truth may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I tell the tale as ’twas told to me.”<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nothing daunted, the Beau went to the opera, allowed himself to be seen
+about the house, then quickly retiring, stepped into a friend’s chaise
+and met his own carriage, which waited for him a short distance from
+town. Travelling all night with four horses, he reached Dover by
+morning, hired a vessel to carry him over, and soon left England and his
+creditors behind. He was instantly pursued; but the chase stopped on
+reaching the sea. Debtors could not then be followed to France, and
+Brummell was secure.</p>
+
+<p>The little, rude, and thoroughly comfortless town of Calais was now to
+be the place of residence, for nearly the rest of his life, to a man
+accustomed to the highest luxuries of London life, trained to the
+keenest sensibility of London enjoyment, and utterly absorbed in London
+objects of every kind. Ovid’s banishment among the Thracians could
+scarcely be a more formidable change of position. Yet Brummell’s
+pleasantry did not desert him even in Calais. On some passing friend’s
+remark on the annoyance of living in such a place&mdash;“Pray,” said the
+Beau, “is it not a general opinion that a gentleman might manage to
+spend his time pleasantly enough <i>between</i> London and Paris?”</p>
+
+<p>At Calais he took apartments at the house of one Leleux, an old
+bookseller, which he fitted up to his own taste; and on which, as if
+adversity had no power to teach him common prudence, he expended the
+greater part of the 25,000 francs which, by some still problematical
+means, he had contrived to carry away with him. This was little short of
+madness; but it was a madness which he had been practising for the last
+dozen years, and habit had now rendered ruin familiar to him. At length
+a little gleam of hope shone across his fortunes. George IV. arrived at
+Calais on his way to Hanover. The Duke d’Angoul&ecirc;me came from Paris to
+receive his Majesty, and Calais was all in a tumult of loyalty. The
+reports of Brummell’s conduct on this important arrival, of the King’s
+notice of him, and of the royal liberality in consequence, were of every
+shape and shade of invention. But all of them, except the mere
+circumstance of the King’s pronouncing his name, seem to have been
+utterly false. Brummell, mingling in the crowd which cheered his Majesty
+in his progress, was observed by the King, who audibly said, “Good
+heavens, Brummell!” But the recognition proceeded no further. The Beau
+sent his valet, who was a renowned maker of punch, to exhibit his talent
+in that art at the royal entertainment, and also sent a present of some
+excellent maraschino. But no result followed. The King was said to have
+transmitted to him a
+<span class="pagebreak" title="783">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_783" id="Page_783"></a>
+hundred pound note; but even this is unluckily
+apocryphal. Leleux, his landlord, thus gives the version. The English
+consul at Calais came to Mr Brummell late one evening, and intimated
+that the King was out of snuff, saying, as he took up one of the boxes
+lying on his table, “Give me one of yours.”&mdash;“With all my heart,” was
+the reply; “but not that box, for if the King saw it I should never have
+it again”&mdash;implying that there was some story attached to it. On
+reaching the theatre the consul presented the snuff, and the King
+turning, said, “Why, sir, where did you get your snuff? There is only
+one person that I know that can mix snuff in this way!”&mdash;“It is some of
+Mr Brummell’s, your Majesty,” replied the consul. The next day the King
+left Calais; and, as he seated himself in the carriage, he said to Sir
+Arthur Paget, who commanded the yacht that brought him over, “I leave
+Calais, and have not seen Brummell.” From this his biographer infers
+that he had received neither money nor message, and his landlord is of
+the same opinion. But slight as those circumstances are, it seems
+obvious that George IV. had a forgiving heart towards the Beau
+notwithstanding all his impertinences, that he would have been glad to
+forgive him, and that he would, in all probability, have made some
+provision for his old favourite if Brummell had exhibited any signs of
+repentance. On the other hand, Brummell was a man of spirit, and no man
+ought to put himself in the way of being treated contemptuously even by
+royalty; but it seems strange that, with all his adroitness, he should
+not have hit upon a middle way. There could have been no great
+difficulty in ascertaining whether the King would receive him, in
+sending a respectful message, in offering his loyal congratulations on
+the King’s arrival, or even in expressing his regret at his long
+alienation from a Prince to whom he had been once indebted for so many
+favours, and who certainly never harboured resentment against man.
+Brummell evidently repented his tardiness on this occasion; for he made
+up his mind to make a more direct experiment when the King should visit
+the town-hall on his return. But opportunities once thrown away are
+seldom regained. The king on his return did not visit the town-hall, but
+hurried on board, and the last chance of reconciliation was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Yet during his long residence in Calais, the liberality of his own
+connexions in England enabled him to show a good face to poverty. He
+paid his bills punctually whenever the remittance came, and was
+charitable to the mendicants who, probably for the last thousand years,
+have made Calais their headquarters. The general name for him was the
+<i>Roi de Calais</i>. An anecdote of his pleasantry in almsgiving reached the
+public ear. A French beggar asked him for a two-sous piece. “I don’t
+know the coin,” said Brummell, “never having had one; but I suppose you
+mean a franc. There, take it.” His former celebrity had also spread far
+and wide among the population. A couple of English workmen in one of the
+factories of the town, one day followed a gentleman who had a
+considerable resemblance to Brummell. He heard one of them say to the
+other, “Now, I’ll bet you a pot that’s him.” Shortly after, one of them
+strolled up to him, with, “Beg pardon, sir&mdash;hope no offence, but we two
+have got a bet&mdash;now, a’n’t you George Ring the Bell?” Brummell’s habits
+of flirtation did not desert him in France; and in one instance he paid
+such marked attention to a young English lady, that a friend was deputed
+to enquire his purposes. Here Brummell’s knowledge of every body did him
+good service. The deputy on this occasion having once figured as the
+head of a veterinary hospital, or some such thing, but being then in the
+commissariat,&mdash;“Why, Vulcan!” exclaimed Brummell, “what a humbug you
+must be to come and lecture me on such a subject! You, who were for two
+years at hide-and-seek to save yourself from being shot by Sir T. S. for
+running off with one of his daughters.” “Dear me,” said the astonished
+friend, “you have touched a painful chord; I will have no more to do
+with this business.” The business died a natural death.</p>
+
+<p>His dressing-table was <i>recherch&eacute;</i>. Its <i>batterie de toilette</i> was
+curious, complete, and of silver; one part of it being a spitting-dish,
+he always declaring that “it was impossible to
+<span class="pagebreak" title="784">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_784" id="Page_784"></a>
+<i>spit in clay</i>.” His
+“making up” every morning occupied two hours. When he first arrived in
+Caen he carried a cane, but often exchanged it for a brown silk
+umbrella, which was always protected by a silk case of remarkable
+accuracy of fit&mdash;the handle surmounted by an ivory head of George the
+Fourth, in well-curled wig and gracious smile. In the street he <i>never</i>
+took off his hat to any one, not even to a lady; for it would have been
+difficult to replace it in the same position, it having been put on with
+peculiar care. We finish by stating, that he always had the <i>soles</i> of
+his boots blackened as well as the upper leathers; his reason for this
+being, that, in the usual negligence of human nature, he never could be
+sure that the polish on the <i>edge</i> of the sole would be accurately
+produced, unless the whole underwent the operation. He occasionally
+polished a single boot himself, to show how perfection on this point was
+to be obtained. Clogs, so indispensable in the dirt of an unpaved French
+street, he always abhorred; yet, under cover of night, he <i>could</i>, now
+and then, condescend to wear them. “Theft,” as the biographer observes,
+“in Sparta was a crime&mdash;but only when it was <i>discovered</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>But after this life of fantasy and frivolity, on which so much
+cleverness was thrown away, the unfortunate Beau finished his career
+miserably. On his application to the Foreign Office, representing his
+wish to be removed to any other consulate where he might serve more
+effectually, and of course with a better income; the former part of his
+letter was made the ground of abolishing the consulate, while the latter
+received no answer. We say nothing of this measure, any further than
+that it had the effect of utter ruin on poor Brummell. The total loss of
+his intellect followed; he was reduced to absolute beggary, and finally
+spent his last miserable hours in an hospital for lunatic mendicants.
+Surely it could not have been difficult, in the enormous patronage of
+office, to have found some relief for the necessities of a man whose
+official character was unimpeached; who had been expressly put into
+government employ by ministers for the sake of preserving him from
+penury; who had been the companion, the <i>friend</i> of princes and nobles;
+and whose faults were not an atom more flagrant than those of every man
+of fashion in his time. But he was now utterly ruined and wretched. Some
+strong applications were made to his former friends by a Mr Armstrong, a
+merchant of Caen, who seems to have constantly acted a most humane part
+to him, and occasional donations were sent. A couple of hundred pounds
+were even remitted from the Foreign Office; and, by the exertions of
+Lord Alvanley and the present Duke of Beaufort, who never deserted him,
+and this is much to the honour of both, a kind of small annuity was paid
+to him. But he was already overwhelmed with debt, for his income from
+the consulate netted him but L.80 a-year, the other L.320 being in the
+hands of the banker, his creditor; and it seems probable that his
+destitution deprived him of his senses after a period of wretchedness
+and even of rags. Broken-hearted and in despair, concluding with
+hopeless imbecility, this man of taste and talent, for he possessed both
+in no common degree, was left to die in the hands of strangers&mdash;no
+slight reproach to the cruel insensibility of those who, wallowing in
+wealth, and fluttering from year to year through the round of fashion,
+suffered their former associate, nay their envied example, to perish in
+his living charnel. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Caen,
+under a stone with this inscription:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+            In<br />
+        Memory of<br />
+    <span class="smcap">George Brummell, Esq</span>.,<br />
+   who departed this life<br />
+  On the 29th of March 1840.<br />
+      Aged 62 years.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Mr Jesse deserves credit for his two volumes. There is a good deal in
+them which has no direct reference to Brummell; but he has collected
+probably all that could be known. The books are <i>very</i> readable, the
+anecdotes pleasantly told, the style is lively, and frequently shows
+that the biographer could adopt the thought as well as the language of
+his hero. At all events he has given us the detail of a character of
+whom every body had heard something, and every body wished to hear more.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_30" id="Footnote_A_30"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_30">A</a></span> <i>The Life of George Brummell, Esq.</i> By Captain Jesse. 2
+volumes.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="785">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_785" id="Page_785"></a>
+THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE GREEK STATE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i15">“Say why<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That ancient story of Prometheus chain’d?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vulture&mdash;the inexhaustible repast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Tantalus entail’d upon his race,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fictions in form, but in their substance truths&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tremendous truths!&mdash;familiar to the men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of long past times; nor obsolete in ours.”&mdash;<i>Excursion.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>In an article on the bankruptcy of the Greek kingdom, (No. <span class="smcap">CCCXXXV.</span>,
+September 1843,) we gave an account of the financial condition of the
+new state; and we ventured to suggest that a revolution was unavoidable.
+That revolution occurred even sooner than we expected; for our number
+had hardly reached Athens ere King Otho was compelled to summon a
+national assembly to aid him in framing the long promised constitution.</p>
+
+<p>As our former number explained the immediate causes of the discontent in
+Greece, we shall now furnish our readers with a description of the
+revolution, of its results, and of the great difficulties which still
+oppose serious barriers to the formation of an independent <i>kingdom</i> in
+Greece. The late revolution was distinguished by an open rebellion of
+the army; and as a rebellion, in which the troops have been covered with
+decorations, and have received a gratification of some months’ pay, is
+not the era from which we should wish to date the civil liberty and
+national prosperity of a monarchy founded by Great Britain, France, and
+Russia, we shall use great delicacy in describing the movement, and
+record no fact which we cannot substantiate by legal or documentary
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed when we in Edinburgh were informed of the
+approaching storm in Greece, that the people of the country were without
+anxiety. The <i>Morning Post</i>, (23d September 1843,) which has generally
+contained very accurate information from Athens, published a letter
+written from that city on the 5th September. This Athenian correspondent
+declared “that the Greeks have so fully made up their minds to put an
+end to the Bavarian dynasty, as to be resolved not even to accept a
+constitution at the hands of the king. They declare that they will
+abstain from all outrage and personal violence; and that they only
+desire the embarkation of King Otho and his German followers, who shall
+be free to leave the country without the slightest injury.”</p>
+
+<p>We solicit the attention of her majesty’s ministers to these memorable
+words, written before the revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The danger, in short, was visible to every body but King Otho, his
+German camarilla, and his renegade Greek ministers. At this time Kalergy
+was inspector of the cavalry. He had always expressed his
+dissatisfaction with the system of Bavarian favouritism in the army; and
+his gallant and disinterested conduct during the war against the Turks,
+rendered him universally popular. Infinitely more of a gentleman and a
+man of the world than any of the court faction, it is said that he was
+viewed with feelings of personal as well as political aversion. It
+happened that, about a week before the revolution, the king reviewed the
+garrison of Athens, and in the order of the day which followed this
+review, General Kalergy was noticed in such a way that he felt himself
+deeply insulted. A Bavarian, Captain Hess, then marshal of the palace,
+was supposed to be the author of this document. As the attack on Kalergy
+was evidently caused by his political conduct, the whole Greek army took
+his part, and the cry was raised that the Bavarians must be driven out
+of Greece.</p>
+
+<p>The prominent part which General Kalergy has taken in the late
+revolution, and the romantic incidents of his life, induce us to offer
+our readers a short sketch of his earlier career. We have known him in
+circumstances when intercourse ensures intimacy; for we have sat
+together round the same watch-fires, on the mountains of Argolis and
+Attica. To
+<span class="pagebreak" title="786">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_786" id="Page_786"></a>
+parody the words of Anastasius, we saw him achieve his first
+deed of prowess, and we were present when he heard his first praises.
+Hastings’s lips have long been silenced by death, but the music of his
+applause still rings in our ears.</p>
+
+<p>Demetrius Kalergy is descended from a Cretan family, whose name is
+famous in the annals of Candia. He was born in Russia, and was studying
+in Germany when the Greeks took up arms against the Turks. His elder
+brothers, Nicolas and Manolis, having resolved to join the cause of
+their countrymen, repaired to Marseilles, where, with the assistance of
+their uncle, a man of great wealth in Russia, they freighted a vessel,
+and purchased a small train of artillery, consisting of sixteen guns,
+and a considerable supply of muskets and ammunition. Demetrius, though
+then only fifteen years of age, could not be restrained from joining
+them, and the three brothers arrived in Greece together. The young
+Kalergy soon gave proofs of courage and military talents. His second
+brother, Manolis, was killed during the siege of Athens; but the eldest,
+Nicolas, a man who unites the accomplishments of a court to the
+sincerest feelings of patriotism, still resides in Greece, universally
+respected. During the Bavarian sway he took no part in political
+affairs; but he was elected a member of the national assembly, which has
+just terminated its labours in preparing the constitution.</p>
+
+<p>Demetrius Kalergy was first entrusted with an independent command in
+1824, when the Peloponnesian chiefs and primates, Kolokotroni, Londos,
+Notaras, Deliyani, Zaimi, and Sessini, endeavoured to divide the Morea
+into a number of small principalities, of which they expected to secure
+the revenues for themselves. In spite of Kalergy’s youth, he was ordered
+to take the field against the first corps of the rebels that had acted
+in open hostility to the existing government. With his usual promptitude
+and decision, he attacked Panos Kolokotroni, the son of the old Klepht,
+and Sta&iuml;kos, a Moreote captain of some reputation, in the plain of
+Tripolitza, where they were posted for the despicable purpose of
+intercepting the trains of mules laden with merchandise for the supply
+of the shops of Tripolitza, then the great market of all the central
+parts of the Morea.</p>
+
+<p>The affair was really brilliant. The rebels were encamped on a low hill,
+and, not expecting that Kalergy would depart from the usual practice of
+carrying on a long series of skirmishes, they had paid no attention to
+their position. The attack opened in the usual way by a fierce fire at a
+very long distance; but Kalergy, on perceiving the careless arrangements
+of his enemy, soon induced his troops to creep up pretty close to the
+Moreotes, when he suddenly jumped up, and shouted to his followers, “The
+shortest way is the best. Follow me!” and rushed forward. His whole band
+was within the hostile lines in an instant. The manœuvre was so
+unexpected, that few of the rebels fired; many were loading their
+muskets, and none had time to draw their swords or yatagans. About 170
+were slain, and, if report may be trusted, one of the rebel chiefs was
+struck down by Kalergy, and the other taken prisoner after receiving a
+wound in personal combat with the young hero. The faction of the Moreote
+barons, as these greedy plunderers of the Greek shopkeepers would fain
+have been called, was dissolved by this unexpected victory. Many laid
+down their arms, and made peace with the government.</p>
+
+<p>General Kalergy was afterwards present in the town of Navarin when it
+was besieged by Ibrahim Pasha, and marched out with his band when the
+place capitulated. This defeat, though he had only held a subordinate
+command, afflicted him greatly, and he looked round for some means of
+avenging his country’s loss on the Turks. He resolved at last to
+endeavour to make a diversion by recommencing the war in Crete; but
+without a strong fortress to secure the ammunition and supplies
+necessary for prosecuting a series of irregular attacks, it was evident
+that nothing important could be effected. In this difficulty, Kalergy
+determined to attack the impregnable island-fortress of Grabusa, as it
+was known that the strength of the place had induced the Turks to leave
+it with a very small garrison. Kalergy
+<span class="pagebreak" title="787">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_787" id="Page_787"></a>
+having learned that the greater
+part of this garrison was absent during the day, disguised a few of his
+men in Turkish dresses, and appeared on the beach at the point from
+which the soldiers of the garrison crossed to this island Gibraltar. The
+commander of Grabusa ordered the boat to transport them over as usual,
+and the Greeks entered the fort before the mistake was discovered. The
+place was in vain attacked by all the forces of Mohammed Ali; the Greeks
+kept possession of it to the end of the war. The sagacity and courage
+displayed by Kalergy in this affair placed him in the rank of the ablest
+of the Greek chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>When General Gordon (whose excellent history of the Greek revolution we
+recommend to our readers<a name="FNanchor_A_31" id="FNanchor_A_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_31" class="fnnum">A</a>) attempted to relieve Athens, then besieged
+by Kutayhi, (Reschid Pasha,) Kalergy and Makriyani commanded divisions
+of the troops which occupied the Pir&aelig;us. Subsequently, when Lord
+Cochrane and General Church endeavoured to force the Turkish lines,
+Kalergy was one of the officers who commanded the advanced division. In
+the engagement which ensued, his adventures afford an illustration of
+the singular vicissitudes of Eastern warfare. The Greek troops landed at
+Cape Kolias during the night, and pushed forward to within a mile and a
+half of the Turkish lines, where they formed a slight intrenchment on
+some undulating hills. They threw up some ill-constructed tambouria, (as
+the redoubts used in Turkish warfare are termed,) and of these some
+remains are still visible. A ravine descending from the lower slopes of
+Hymettus ran in front of this position, deep enough to shelter the
+Turkish cavalry, and enable them to approach without exposing themselves
+to the Greek artillery. This movement of the Turks was distinctly seen
+from the Greek camp at the Pir&aelig;us, and the approaching attack on the
+advanced posts of the army was waited for in breathless anxiety. The map
+of the plain of Athens is sufficiently familiar to most of our readers
+to enable then to picture to themselves the scene which ensued with
+perfect accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>The Greek troops destined for the relief of Athens amounted to about
+3000 men, and of these about 600 were posted far in advance of their
+companions, in three small redoubts. The main body drawn up in a long
+line remained inactive with the artillery, and a smaller corps as a
+rear-guard seemed destined to communicate with the fleet of Lord
+Cochrane at Cape Kolias. At the Pir&aelig;us, about 700 men were scattered
+about in all the disorder of an Eastern encampment, without making the
+slightest attempt to distract the attention of the Turkish troops. The
+French General Gueheneuc and the Bavarian General Heideck, both
+witnessed the battle.</p>
+
+<p>The Turkish cavalry, to the number of about 700, having formed in the
+ravine, rode slowly up towards the brow of the hill on which the
+tambouria of the Cretans, the Suliots, and the regular regiment were
+placed. As soon as their appearance on the crest of the ridge exposed
+them to the fire of the Greeks, they galloped forward. The fire of the
+Greeks, however, seemed almost without effect, yet the Turks turned and
+galloped down the hill into the shelter of the ravine. In a short time
+they repeated their attack with a determination, which showed that the
+preceding attempt had been only a feint to enable them to examine the
+ground. As they approached this time very near the intrenchments, the
+fire of the Greeks proved more effectual than on the former occasion,
+and several of the Delhis, horse and man, rolled on the ground. Again
+the Turks fled to conceal themselves in the ravine, and prepared for
+another attack by dividing their force into three divisions, one of
+which ascended and another descended the ravine, while the third
+prepared to renew the assault in the old direction. The vizier Kutayhi
+himself moved forward to encourage his troops, and it became evident
+that a desperate struggle would now be
+<span class="pagebreak" title="788">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_788" id="Page_788"></a>
+made to carry the Greek
+position, where the few troops who held it were left unsupported.</p>
+
+<p>The Turkish cavalry soon rushed on the Greeks, assailing their position
+in front and flanks; and, in spite of their fire, forced the horses over
+the low intrenchments into the midst of the enemy.<a name="FNanchor_B_32" id="FNanchor_B_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_32" class="fnnum">B</a> For the space of
+hardly three minutes pistol shots and sabre cuts fell so thick, that
+friends and foes were in equal danger. Of the Greeks engaged not one had
+turned to flee, and but few were taken alive. The loss of the Turks was,
+however, but trifling&mdash;about a dozen men and from fifteen to twenty
+horses.</p>
+
+<p>The centre of the Greek army, on beholding the destruction of the
+advanced guard, showed little determination; it wavered for a minute,
+and then turned and fled towards the shore in utter confusion,
+abandoning all its artillery to the Turks. The Delhis soon overtook
+their flying enemies, and riding amongst them, coolly shot down and
+sabred those whose splendid arms and dresses excited their cupidity. The
+artillery itself was turned on the fugitives, who had left the
+ammunition undestroyed as well as the guns unspiked. But our concern
+with the battle of the 6th May 1827, is at present confined to following
+the fortunes of Kalergy. He was one of the prisoners. His leg had been
+broken by a rifle-ball as the Turks entered the tambouri of the Cretans,
+and as he received an additional sabre cut on the arm, he lay helpless
+on the ground, where his youthful appearance and splendid arms caught
+the eye of an Albanian bey, who ordered him to be secured and taken care
+of as his own prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after the battle, the prisoners were all brought out
+before the tent of Kutayhi, who was encamped at Patissia, very near the
+site of the house subsequently built by Sir Pulteney Malcolm. George
+Drakos, a Suliot chief, had killed himself during the night; and the
+Pasha, in consequence, ordered all the survivors to be beheaded,
+wishing, probably, to afford Europe a specimen of Ottoman economy and
+humanity, by thus saving the lives of these Greeks from themselves. Two
+hundred and fifty were executed, when Kalergy, unable to walk, was
+carried into the circle of Turkish officers witnessing the execution, on
+the back of a sturdy Albanian baker. Kutayhi calmly ordered his instant
+execution; but the prisoner having informed his captor that he would pay
+100,000 piastres for his ransom; the Albanian bey stepped forward and
+maintained his right to his prisoner so stoutly, that the Pasha, whose
+army was in arrears, and whose military chest was empty, found himself
+compelled to yield. As a memento of their meeting, however, he ordered
+one of Kalergy’s ears to be cut off. The ransom was quickly paid, and
+Kalergy returned to Poros, where it was some time before he recovered
+from his wounds.</p>
+
+<p>Capodistrias on his arrival in Greece named Kalergy his aide-de-camp,
+and as he was much attached to the president, he was entrusted with the
+command of the cavalry sent against Poros and Nisi, when those places
+took up arms against the arbitrary and tyrannical conduct of
+Capodistrias. We are not inclined to apologize for the disorders which
+the Greek cavalry then committed; they were unpardonable even during the
+excitement of a civil war.</p>
+
+<p>The marriage of Kalergy was as romantic as the rest of his career. Two
+chiefs, both of the family of Notaras, (one of the few Greek families
+which can boast of territorial influence dating from the times of the
+Byzantine empire,) had involved the province of Corinth in civil war, in
+order to secure the hand of a young heiress. The lady, however, having
+escaped from the scene of action, conferred her hand on Kalergy, whose
+fame as a soldier far eclipsed that of the two rivals.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the Bavarians arrived in Greece, they commenced persecuting
+Kalergy. An unfounded charge of treason was brought against him; but he
+was honourably acquitted by a court-martial, of which our country-man,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="789">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_789" id="Page_789"></a>
+General Gordon of Cairness, was the president; and from that period
+down to the publication of the order of the day, last September, he has
+been constantly an object of Bavarian hatred.</p>
+
+<p>About twenty-four hours before the revolution of the 15th of September
+broke out, the court of Greece received some information concerning the
+extent and nature of the plot, and orders were given by King Otho to
+hold a council of his trusted advisers. The Bavarians Hess and Graff,
+and the Greeks Rizos, Privilegios, Dzinos, and John the son of Philip,
+(for one of the courtly councillors of the house of Wittelspach rejoices
+in this primitive cognomen,) met, and decided on the establishment of a
+court-martial to try and shoot every man taken in arms. Orders were
+immediately prepared for the arrest of upwards of forty persons.</p>
+
+<p>A good deal has been said about the revolution as having been a mere
+military movement. This, however, is not a correct view of the matter,
+either with reference to the state of parties, or to the intensity of
+the national feeling at the time. Sir Robert Inglis most justly observed
+in Parliament&mdash;“That revolution in Greece had been prepared during years
+of intolerable despotism, and the soldiery merely shared in, and did not
+by any means lead, the proceedings of the great body of the nation.” The
+fact is, that a plot for seizing the king and sending him to Trieste,
+had been formed by the Philorthodox or Russian party, in the early part
+of 1843; but the party, from some distrust of its own strength, and from
+the increasing unpopularity of King Otho, was induced to admit a few of
+the most determined of the constitutionalists into the plot, without
+intending to entrust them with the whole of the plan. The rising was at
+last fixed for the month of September. This occurred in consequence of
+the universal outcry raised by the Greeks, on finding that the
+representations of Great Britain in favour of the long-promised
+constitution, and the warnings which Sir Robert Peel threw out on the
+discussion of Greek affairs on Mr Cochrane’s motion, were utterly
+neglected by King Otho. This indignation was reduced to despair when it
+was known that Mr Tricoupis, on his recall from London, had assured the
+king that the English cabinet was so determined to maintain the <i>statu
+quo</i>, that the constitutional party would meet with no countenance from
+England. Every party in Greece then prepared for action, and entered
+into negotiations, in which the opinions of the constitutionalists
+prevailed, because they were actively supported by the great body of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>In order to prevent the country from becoming a scene of anarchy, in
+case a civil war proved unavoidable, it was necessary to employ all the
+regular authorities who could be induced to join the national cause, in
+their actual functions, without any reference to party feelings. This
+was done; and the fact that it was so, proves the intenseness of the
+public feeling. The constitutional party decided that the recognition of
+Greece as a constitutional state, and the immediate convocation of a
+national assembly, were to be the demands made on King Otho. The Russian
+party allowed these two questions to be first mooted in the firm
+persuasion that the king would be induced by his own pride, his despotic
+principles, and the mistaken views of several of the foreign ministers
+at Athens, to refuse these demands; and, in that case, the throne would
+infallibly have been declared vacant.</p>
+
+<p>About midnight, on the 14th of September, the <i>gendarmes</i> were ordered
+to surround the house of General Makriyani, an officer of irregulars on
+half-pay, and to arrest him on a charge of treason. On approaching the
+house they were warned off; but pressing forward they were fired on, and
+one <i>gendarme</i> was killed and one or two wounded. In consequence of the
+alarm given by the minister of war, for the purpose of supporting the
+arrests to be made, the garrison was all in readiness. In the mean time
+the greater part of the officers had been admitted into the secret, that
+a general movement of all Greece was to be made that night, and that
+their duty would be to maintain the strictest order and enforce the
+severest discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Kalergy, therefore, as soon as he
+<span class="pagebreak" title="790">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_790" id="Page_790"></a>
+was informed that the movement had
+been made to arrest Makriyani, assembled all the officers, and, in a few
+words, declared to them that the moment for saving their country from
+the Bavarian yoke had arrived; and that they must now, if they wished to
+be free, call on the king to adopt a constitutional system of
+government. The importance of this step, which Kalergy adopted with his
+usual decision, can only be understood when it is recollected, that
+there existed a strong party determined to avail itself of every
+opportunity of driving King Otho from the throne. Had Kalergy,
+therefore, delayed pledging the officers and the army to the
+constitution, or allowed them to march out of their barracks before
+making the constitution the rallying word of the revolution, there can
+be no doubt that the agents of the Russian and Philorthodox parties
+would have raised the cry of “Death to the Bavarians! down with the
+tyrant!” Kalergy, however, put the garrison in motion amidst shouts of
+<i>Long live the constitution</i>; and as the cavalry moved from their
+barracks, these shouts were echoed enthusiastically by the citizens who
+were waiting anxiously without.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Kalergy had taken the command he marched all the troops to
+the square before the palace. Two squadrons of cavalry, two battalions
+of infantry, a company of Greek irregulars, and a number of half-pay
+officers and pensioners, were soon drawn up under King Otho’s windows.
+His monstrous palace had begun to produce its effects. Strong patrols
+were detached to preserve order in the town, and to compel the
+<i>gendarmes</i> to retire to their quarters. Makriyani, on being relieved
+from his blockade, repaired to the square, collecting on the way as
+large a body of armed citizens as he was able.</p>
+
+<p>The king had been waiting at one of the windows of the palace in great
+anxiety to witness the arrest of Makriyani; and on seeing the shots
+fired from the house, and the suspension of the attack by the
+<i>gendarmes</i>, he had dispatched a Bavarian aide-de-camp, named
+Steinsdorff, to order the artillery to the palace. The young and
+inexperienced Bavarian returned without the guns; but assured his
+Majesty that they would soon arrive. In the mean time, the whole
+garrison appeared in the square, and was ranged opposite the palace: the
+king, however, expected that the arrival of the artillery would change
+their disposition. In a short time, the guns came galloping up; but to
+the utter dismay of King Otho, they were ranged in battery against the
+palace, while the artillerymen, as soon as the manœuvre was executed,
+gave a loud shout of “long live the constitution.”</p>
+
+<p>His Majesty, after a long period of profound silence, appeared at a
+window of the lower story of the palace, attended by the Bavarian
+captain, Hess&mdash;the most unpopular man in Greece, unless Dzinos, the
+agent in the celebrated cases of judicial torture, could dispute with
+him that “bad eminence.” One of the servants of the court called for
+General Kalergy in a loud voice; and when he approached the window the
+king asked&mdash;“What is the meaning of this disturbance? What am I to
+understand by this parade of the garrison?” To this Kalergy replied, in
+a loud and clear voice, “The people of Greece and the army desire that
+your Majesty will redeem the promise that the country should be governed
+constitutionally.” King Otho then said, “Retire to your quarters; I
+shall consult with my ministers, with the council of state, and the
+ambassadors of the three protecting powers, and inform you of my
+determination.” This appeared to the audience to be acting the absolute
+sovereign rather too strongly under the circumstances, and a slight
+movement of the officers, who overheard the king’s words, was conveyed
+like lightning to the troops, so that the king received a distinct reply
+from the whole army in a sudden clang of sabres and noise of arms.
+Kalergy, however, immediately replied in the same distinct tone in which
+he had before spoken&mdash;“Sire, neither the garrison of Athens, nor the
+people will quit this spot, until your Majesty’s decisions on the
+proposals of the council of state, which will be immediately laid before
+you, is known.” At this moment Captain Hess put himself forward beside
+the king, and said&mdash;“Colonel Kalergy; that is not the way in which it
+becomes you to
+<span class="pagebreak" title="791">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_791" id="Page_791"></a>
+speak to his Majesty.” But to this ill-timed lesson in
+politeness Kalergy replied sharply&mdash;“Draw your head back, sir: you and
+such as you have brought the king and the country into their present
+unfortunate circumstances. You ought to be ashamed of your conduct.” The
+Bavarian hero at these words disappeared; and this was the last occasion
+in which this champion of Bavarianism appeared in a public character.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, Count Metaxas, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Church, and
+Major-General Londos, members of the council of state, who had been in
+the square with the troops, were engaged preparing the council for its
+share in the revolution. At the meeting which took place, Spiro Milios,
+the commandant of the military school, and an active member of the
+Russian party, was present as a representative of the army. It was
+evident that the council of state comprised three parties. One was
+willing to support King Otho and the actual system. This party included
+Kondouriotis, the president; Tricoupis, the late minister in London; and
+a German Greek named Theocharis. Another party was eager to drive King
+Otho from the throne, in order to proceed to the nomination of a regency
+preparatory to the choice of an orthodox prince. We are not sure that
+any individual is now anxious to identify his name with this party. The
+third party made the demand for a constitution their primary object; and
+as this party was led by Metaxas, Londos, Church, Palamidhis, and
+Mansolas, it was soon joined by the majority.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was long, and it is said that the conduct of the members was
+much more disorderly than that of the people and the troops in the
+square; but at last, a proclamation and an oath were drawn up, by which
+the council of state, the army, and the people, all pledged themselves
+to support the constitution. A committee consisting of Metaxas, Londos,
+and Palamidhis, was also charged to prepare an address to the king,
+recommending his majesty to convoke a national assembly, in order to
+prepare a constitution for the state; at the same time they invited his
+majesty to appoint new ministers, and in the list presented they of
+course took care to insert their own names. As soon as this business was
+terminated, the council dispatched a deputation to wait on his majesty,
+consisting of the president and five members, who were to obtain the
+king’s consent.</p>
+
+<p>The conduct of King Otho on receiving this deputation was neither wise
+nor firm. He delayed returning any answer for two hours, and attempted
+to open a negotiation with the council of state, by means of one of the
+members of the camarilla. The delay excited some distrust even among the
+best disposed in the square, and the report was spread that the king was
+endeavouring to communicate with the <i>corps diplomatique</i>, in order to
+create a diversion. At this very time a train of carriages suddenly
+appeared at the gates of the palace, and the ministers of the three
+protecting powers&mdash;Sir Edmund Lyons, Mr Katakazy, and Mr Piscatory,
+accompanied by General Prokesch d’Osten, and Mr Brassier de St Simon,
+the representatives of Austria and Prussia&mdash;requested to be admitted to
+see the king. General Kalergy, however, declared that he had orders to
+refuse all entry to the palace, until his majesty had terminated his
+conference with the deputation of the council of state; and repeated, in
+the presence of the ministers of Austria and Prussia, the assurance he
+had given at an early hour of the morning to Sir Edmund Lyons, Mr
+Katakazy, and Mr Piscatory, that the greatest respect would be shown to
+the person of his majesty. Mr Katakazy, the <i>doyen</i> of the <i>corps
+diplomatique</i>, satisfied that any parade of foreign interference could
+only increase the difficulties of the king’s position, accepted the
+answer of Kalergy and began to withdraw. The representatives of the
+powers which had never protected Greece, deemed the moment favourable
+for a display of a little independent diplomacy, and accordingly the
+Prussian minister asked Kalergy in a tone, neither mild nor low, if he
+durst refuse to admit him to see his majesty. To this Kalergy, who was
+extremely anxious to avoid any dispute with the foreign ministers at
+such a moment, politely replied that he was compelled to refuse
+<span class="pagebreak" title="792">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_792" id="Page_792"></a>
+even
+the minister of Prussia. Mr Brassier, however, returned to the charge
+aided by his Austrian colleague; but as the Greeks place all Germans in
+the category of Bavarians, they gave some manifestations of their
+dislike to any German interference, which could not be otherwise than
+displeasing to the Prussian, who addressed Kalergy in a very rough tone.
+His words were lost to the spectators, but they were supported by
+General Prokesch d’Osten with a good deal of gesticulation. The patience
+of Kalergy gave way under these repeated attacks, and he turned to Mr
+Brassier, saying&mdash;“Monsieur le ministre, you are generally unlucky in
+your advice, and I am afraid his majesty has heard too much of it
+lately.”</p>
+
+<p>The thrust was a home one, and the Prussian minister, rather
+discomposed, addressed himself to Sir Edmund Lyons, who, while waiting
+till his carriage drew up, had been quietly contemplating the scene, and
+said&mdash;“Colonel Kalergy is insolent; but he only repeats what he has
+heard in the drawing-rooms of Athens.” Sir Edmund Lyons replied&mdash;“I do
+not see, Mr Brassier, how that makes your case better,” and withdrew to
+his carriage, leaving Austria and Prussia to battle out their dispute
+with Greece in the presence of the mob. The spectators considered the
+scene a very amusing one, for they laughed heartily as the <i>corps
+diplomatique</i> retired; but, if all the reports current in diplomatic
+circles be true, Mr Katakazy, the <i>doyen</i> of the Athenian diplomatists,
+was made to suffer severely for his prudent conduct; for it is said that
+his recall took place because he did not support with energy the foolish
+attempt of his enterprising colleagues. It is certain that any very
+violent support given to any feeling, in direct hostility to the
+national cause at the time, could hardly have failed to vacate the
+throne, or at least to push the people on to commit some disorders, of
+which the Russian court, and the friends of despotism at Vienna and
+Berlin, might have taken advantage.</p>
+
+<p>The king, finding at last that there was no hope of his deriving any
+assistance from without, signed the ordinances appointing a new
+ministery, and convoking a national assembly. The troops, after having
+remained more than thirteen hours under arms, were marched back to their
+barracks, as if from a review; and every thing at Athens followed its
+usual course. Thus was a revolution effected in the form of government
+in Greece without any interruption in the civil government&mdash;without the
+tribunals’ ceasing to administer justice for a single day&mdash;without the
+shops’ remaining closed beyond the usual hours, or the mercantile
+affairs of the country undergoing the slightest suspension. Such a
+people must surely be fit for a constitution.</p>
+
+<p>The national assembly has now met, and terminated its labours; and
+Greece is in possession of a constitution made by Greeks. In three
+months the first representative chamber will meet. It will consist of
+about 120 members. The senate, which is to consist of members named by
+the king for life, cannot exceed one-half the number of the
+representatives elected by the people. Faults may be found with some of
+the details of the constitution; but, on the whole, it must be regarded
+as a very favourable specimen of the political knowledge of the Greeks;
+and the manner in which the different articles were discussed, and the
+care with which every proposal and amendment were examined, gave all
+those who witnessed the debates a very high opinion of the legislative
+capacity of the people.</p>
+
+<p>The form of the Greek government, as a constitutional monarchy, may now
+be considered as settled. We shall therefore proceed to examine the
+difficulties, of a social and political nature, which still obstruct the
+advancement of the nation, and render its prosperity problematical. Some
+of our statements may appear almost paradoxical to travellers, whose
+hasty glance at distant countries enables them to come to rather more
+positive conclusions than those who devote years to study the same
+subject. We shall, however, strive to expose our facts in such a way as
+to show that we state the plain truth, nothing but the truth, and, as
+far as our subject carries us, the whole truth.</p>
+
+<p>That Greece has not hitherto improved, either in her wealth, population,
+<span class="pagebreak" title="793">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_793" id="Page_793"></a>
+or civilization, as fast as the energy of her people led her friends to
+expect would be the case after she was freed from the Turks, is
+universally admitted. The great bar to improvement exists in an evil
+rooted in the present frame of social life, but fortunately one which
+good and just government would gradually remove. In Greece there is no
+clear and definite idea of the sacred right of property in land. The god
+Terminus is held in no respect. No Greek, from the highest to the
+lowest, understands the meaning of that absolute right of property
+“which,” as Blackstone says, “consists in the free use, enjoyment, and
+disposal by every Englishman of all his acquisitions, without control or
+diminution, save only by the laws of the land.”</p>
+
+<p>The appropriation of Mr Finlay’s land by King Otho, without measurement,
+valuation, or payment, to make a garden for his palace&mdash;the formation of
+a great road leading to the French minister’s house, by the municipality
+of Athens, without indemnifying the owners of the land, though a road
+sufficiently good already existed&mdash;and the confiscation of half the
+estates purchased by foreigners from the Turks by Maurocordatos, when
+Minister of Finance under the Bavarian Regency, in a ministerial
+circular deciding on rights of property, are mere trifling examples of
+the universal spirit. When Maurocordatos wrote his memorable
+declaration, “that every spot where wild herbs, fit for the pasturage of
+cattle, grow, is national property, and that the Greek government
+recognises no individual property in the soil except the exclusive right
+of cultivation,” he only, in deference to the Bavarian policy of the
+time, which wished to copy Mohammed Ali’s administration in Egypt,
+caricatured a misconception of the right of property equally strong in
+every Greek, whether he be the oppressor or the oppressed. Even the late
+National Assembly has not thought it necessary to correct any of the
+invasions of private property by the preceding despotism. Individuals,
+almost ruined by the plunder of their land, have not even received the
+offer of an indemnity, though the justice of their claims is not
+denied.<a name="FNanchor_C_33" id="FNanchor_C_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_33" class="fnnum">C</a></p>
+
+<p>The origin of this national obtuseness of mind on a question of
+interest, is to be found in the system of taxing the land. A Greek
+really views land somewhat as English labourers view game. The owner of
+the soil is absolute proprietor only during those months in which he is
+engaged in the labours of preparing the land and sowing the seed. As
+soon as the harvest time arrives, he ceases to be master of his estate,
+and sinks into the condition of a serf of the revenue officer, or of the
+farmer of the land revenue. It is true, that the government tax only
+amounts to a tenth of the gross produce of the soil; but, in virtue of
+this right to a tenth, government assumes the entire direction of all
+the agricultural operations relating to the crops, and the cultivator’s
+nine-tenths (for it is really a misnomer to call him proprietor) become
+a mere adjunct of the government tenth.</p>
+
+<p>Many of our readers, who are unacquainted with Eastern life, may suppose
+that we colour our picture too strongly. In order, therefore, to divest
+our statement of all ornament, we shall describe the whole of the events
+of an agricultural year. Our classic readers will then comprehend
+practically how the vulture could feast on the perpetually growing heart
+of Prometheus&mdash;why Tantalus tempted the gods by murdering Pelops&mdash;and
+they will see that the calamities of the Theban race are an allegorical
+representation of the inevitable fate which awaits a people groaning
+under the system of taxation now in force in Greece.</p>
+
+<p>The tenths in Greece are usually farmed to speculators, and, as the
+collection is a matter of difficulty, extraordinary powers are conferred
+on the farmers; hence it happens, that the social position of the
+cultivators and the farmers is one of constant hostility. If the
+cultivator has it in his power, he cheats the farmer of the
+<span class="pagebreak" title="794">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_794" id="Page_794"></a>
+revenue,
+and if the farmer is able to do so he cheats the cultivator. The result
+is, that probably not one individual in the Greek kingdom really pays
+the exact tenth of the produce of his land. A few of the most active
+rogues contrive to cheat the farmers of the revenue; but these
+gentlemen, in virtue of the great powers with which the law invests
+them, contrive to cheat the greater part of the proprietors. As soon as
+the grain is ripe, the cultivator is compelled to address himself to the
+tax-farmer for permission to cut his crop; but as the farmer must keep a
+very sharp look-out after his interest, he only grants such permissions
+as accord with the arrangements he may have established for watching the
+cultivators at the smallest possible expense to himself, making the
+over-ripeness of the crop of the majority a very secondary
+consideration. It happens, consequently, that in Greece two-thirds of
+the grain are not gathered until it is over-ripe, and the loss is
+consequently very great.</p>
+
+<p>When the grain is cut, it must be carried to a certain number of
+authorized threshing-floors collected together, in order that the tax
+farmer may take every possible care to secure his tenth. To these
+threshing-floors the whole grain of a district must be transported from
+the fields in the straw, though the straw may be wanted as fodder for
+cattle at the very spot from which it is taken, and will require to be
+carried back a very great distance. An immense loss of grain and labour
+is sustained by this regulation; but it is a glorious season for the
+donkeys;&mdash;long trains of these animals, lively under their heavy loads
+of sheaves, may be seen galloping one after the other, each endeavouring
+to seize a mouthful from his neighbour. The roads are strewed with grain
+and the broken-hearted cultivators follow, cursing man and beast.</p>
+
+<p>The grain is at last collected in immense stacks round the
+threshing-floors&mdash;a cultivator perched on the top of each stack,
+defending it from the attacks of man and beast; and a tax-gatherer,
+seated with his pipe cross-legged in the middle of the circle, is
+watching the manœuvres of the cultivators. No person who has not
+examined the subject with attention can imagine the scenes of fraud and
+violence which a Greek harvest produces. The grain is usually kept piled
+round the threshing-floors under various pretexts, for at least two
+months, unless the cultivator pay the farmer an additional sum, to
+facilitate the housing of his crops. Even in the vicinity of Athens, the
+operations of the wheat and barley harvest generally occupy the
+exclusive attention of the agricultural population for three months. The
+grain is trodden out by cattle; and a Greek who bought a winnowing
+machine at Athens, was not allowed to make use of it, as the farmers of
+the revenue contended that the introduction of such instruments would
+facilitate frauds.</p>
+
+<p>The farmers of the tenths likewise increase the evils of this ruinous
+system, by throwing every difficulty in the way of the cultivators, in
+order to compel them to consent to pay for each facility they may
+require. We have known regular contracts entered into with the
+peasantry, by which they agreed to pay from 3 to 5 per cent more than
+the legal tenth. We believe no honest man ever paid less than from 12 to
+13 per cent on his crop, even in the neighbourhood of the capital. It
+may be supposed that some redress can be obtained, in cases of gross
+oppression, by applying to the courts of law; but this is not the case.
+A special tribunal, consisting of administrative officers of the Crown,
+and municipal authorities, and from which lawyers have been always
+carefully excluded, is appointed to judge summarily all cases relating
+to the tenths. The infamous conduct of these administrative tribunals
+excited general discontent, and an article has been inserted in the
+constitution abolishing them, and sending all the pending cases to the
+ordinary courts of law. Government, however, defended them to the last,
+and even pressed for decisions down to the very hour in which King Otho
+took his oath to the constitution. There is here, however, some ground
+for consolation; for it is clear that the Greek ministers fear the
+ordinary administration of justice as being above their control.</p>
+
+<p>It is needless to say, that under such laws the improvement of
+agriculture in Greece is impossible. No
+<span class="pagebreak" title="795">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_795" id="Page_795"></a>
+green crops can be grown with
+profit at any distance from a large town. The tenth of garden produce
+and green crops being generally valued and paid for in money, the
+disputes concerning the valuation, and the impossibility of obtaining
+any redress, in case of injustice, have induced the cultivators to give
+up such cultivation. We have known proprietors pay half the value of a
+crop of potatoes as the value of the tenth; and in one case, on our
+asking the farmer of the tenths, who after all was not a bad fellow at
+heart, though he wished to make his farming of the revenues turn out a
+good speculation in his hands, what he would recommend a proprietor to
+do in order not to lose money by cultivating potatoes; he looked grave,
+and after a few moments’ thought, candidly replied&mdash;“Never to plant them
+as long as the present law remains in force!” Vineyards which have been
+planted with care, and cultivated for eight years, have been lately
+abandoned, as the high valuation of their produce renders them
+unprofitable. The only agriculture which can be pursued in Greece
+without loss, is that in which only the simplest and rudest methods of
+cultivation are followed. The land only yields a rent when it is in the
+immediate vicinity of a large market, or when it is of the richest
+quality; the employment of capital in improvements only opens new
+channels for the extortions of the farmers of the revenue. No money can
+be safely invested on mortgage in such a country, and no loans by the
+Three Allied powers to the Government, no national bank, no manufactory
+of beet-root sugar, no model farms, and no schools of agriculture can
+introduce prosperity into a country taxed in such a manner.</p>
+
+<p>We do not intend to discuss any plan for ameliorating the condition of
+the Greeks; but we can easily point out what it is necessary for them to
+do before they can, by any possibility, better their condition. The
+system of selling the tenths must be abolished; for a government so
+inefficient as to be unable to collect them by its own officers, is
+incompetent to perform the functions for which it was created, and ought
+to be destroyed. The owners of the land must be rendered the real
+masters of their property. They must be allowed to reap their crops when
+they are ripe, and to thresh their grain when and where they please.
+Until this is the case, we can assure the Three Protecting Powers, they
+count without the people if they suppose that they have established a
+permanent monarchy in Greece. We do not hesitate to say that the royal
+dignity, even with the support of England and France, is not worth ten
+years’ purchase until this is accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>Every traveller who visits Greece declaims against the number of
+coffee-houses throughout the country, and the hosts of idle people with
+which they are filled. But nothing else can be expected in a country
+where the system of agriculture keeps the cultivators idle for three
+months annually, and deprives the proprietor of all profit from his
+land. Under such circumstances the demand for labour becomes extremely
+irregular. Many of the lower classes turn brigands and plunder their
+neighbours; the educated and higher classes turn government <i>employ&eacute;s</i>
+and plunder the country. This evil has arrived at an alarming pitch; the
+Greek army contains almost as many officers as privates; the navy has
+officers enough to man a fleet twice as large as that which Greece
+possesses, for she has three admirals, a hundred and fifty captains, and
+two hundred and seventy commanders. It has been in vain pressed on every
+successive administration, that a list of the army, navy, and civil
+<i>employ&eacute;s</i> ought to be published, in order to put an end to the shameful
+system of jobbing which has always existed. No minister would, however,
+adopt a principle which would so effectually have put an end to his own
+arbitrary power of quartering his friends and relations on the public.
+The loans of the three powers might be doubled to-morrow, and it is
+evident that, unless all the population of Greece were made pensioners,
+no surplus would be found to employ for any public improvement.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed the national revenues of the Greek kingdom, as of old those of
+Athens and Rome, seem to be considered the property of that body of
+<span class="pagebreak" title="796">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_796" id="Page_796"></a>
+citizens who pursue no useful occupation, and possess no taxable
+property; while the unlucky proprietors are viewed as a species of
+serfs, existing to supply a revenue to the state. This political
+principle has been exemplified in a decree of the late national
+assembly, excluding every Greek or foreigner from public employment who
+happens not to be a born subject of the new kingdom, or who did not take
+part in the war against the Turks before the end of 1827, and perhaps
+even more strongly in a very unconstitutional private vote of a
+committee of the whole house, giving 800 drachmas to each member&mdash;this
+vote being in direct violation of one of the articles of the
+constitution, which requires that all grants of money should originate
+from the crown. We do not deny the necessity of allowing the deputies
+this small grant; many of them were poor, and their conduct had been
+disinterested; but we are bound to complain of the slightest infraction
+of constitutional principles by those who frame a constitution.</p>
+
+<p>The length of this article compels us to leave a few observations we
+desire to make on the municipal government of the Greeks, and on the
+state of education, and of their judicial and ecclesiastical affairs, to
+another opportunity. The late debates in the House of Commons, and the
+able statement which Sir Robert Peel gave of the principles of our
+policy with regard to Greece, render it unnecessary for us to say one
+word on that subject. We can assure our readers that the policy of our
+present ministers has been applauded by every party in Greece, except
+the Philorthodox; and they, as they could find no fault, remained
+silent. We believe that no two governments ever acted more
+disinterestedly to a third than Great Britain end France have lately
+done to Greece, and that no ministers ever acted more fairly, in any
+international question, than Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot have done on
+the subject of the Greek revolution; but for this very reason we feel
+inclined to warn our countrymen against the leaven of old principles,
+which still exists in the palace at Athens. Let us judge of the new
+government of Greece by its acts, and let Great Britain and France
+remember that they are not looked on without some suspicion.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="translit" title="Enesti gar p&ocirc;s touto t&ecirc; tyrannidi">Ἔνεστι γάρ πως τοῦτο τῇ τυραννίδι</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><span class="translit" title="Nos&ecirc;ma, tois philoisi m&ecirc; pepoithenai">Νόσημα τοῖς φίλοισι μὴ πεποιθέναι</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_31" id="Footnote_A_31"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_A_31">A</a></span> 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1832.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_32" id="Footnote_B_32"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_B_32">B</a></span> The tambouria are always constructed with the ditch in the
+inside, in order that they may afford a better cover from artillery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_33" id="Footnote_C_33"></a><span class="label"><a href="#FNanchor_C_33">C</a></span> One English sufferer has for several years vainly attacked
+the king for justice, even with the assistance of the English Minister
+in Greece and the Foreign Office at home.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2>
+<span class="pagebreak" title="797">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_797" id="Page_797"></a>
+INDEX TO VOL. LV.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_A" name="IX_A"></a>
+Aborigines of New Holland, the, 193.</li>
+
+<li>Achilles Tatius, account of his romance of Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Actual condition of the Greek state, the, <a href="#Page_785">785</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Aden, the British position of, 272.</li>
+
+<li>Adventures in Texas.&mdash;No. III. the Struggle, 18.</li>
+
+<li>Adventures of Clitophon and Leucippe, the, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Africa, ignorance of the interior of, 269.</li>
+
+<li>Africa&mdash;the Slave Trade&mdash;and Tropical Colonies, <a href="#Page_730">730</a>
+<ul class="IX">
+
+  <li>various expeditions to explore, <a href="#Page_731">731</a></li>
+
+  <li>its principal rivers, and countries watered by them, <a href="#Page_734">734</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Agriculture, causes of the decline of, in the Roman empire, 391.</li>
+
+<li>Ameer Ali, a Thug, account of, 326.</li>
+
+<li>Ameers of Scinde, case of the, 580.</li>
+
+<li>Anti-corn-law League, measures of the, 121.</li>
+
+<li>Ancient Greek romances&mdash;Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Arabs of Cordova, sketch of the history of the, 431.</li>
+
+<li>Australia, statistics of the various colonies of, 184.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_B" name="IX_B"></a>
+Banking in Australia, on, 186.</li>
+
+<li>Banking-House, the, a history in three part. Part III. Chap. I., Symptoms of rottenness, 50
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Chap. II., A meeting, 56</li>
+  <li>Chap. III., A chapter of loans, 61</li>
+  <li>Chap. IV., A dissolution of partnership, 65</li>
+  <li>Chap. V., The crisis, 69</li>
+  <li>Chap. VI., The crash, 75</li>
+  <li>Chap. VII., The vicarage, 79.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Beau Brummell, Jesse’s memoirs of, reviewed, <a href="#Page_769">769</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Beauclerk, Topham, 182.</li>
+
+<li>Beke, Dr. T. C., his travels in Africa, <a href="#Page_740">740</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Belfront castle, a retrospective review, 334.</li>
+
+<li>Benton, Mr, on the treaty of Washington, 112.</li>
+
+<li>Bewailment from Bath, a, or Poor Old Maids, 199.</li>
+
+<li>Bristol, the Earl of, 180.</li>
+
+<li>British fleet, the, 462.</li>
+
+<li>Brummell, Jesse’s memoirs of, reviewed, <a href="#Page_769">769</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Bumbo Khan, sketch of, 223.</li>
+
+<li>Bundelcund, Colonel Davidson’s travels in, 325.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_C" name="IX_C"></a>
+Canadian insurgents, trials of the, 3.</li>
+
+<li>Catholicism, effects of in Ireland, 520.</li>
+
+<li>Chartists, state trials of the, in 1842, 5.</li>
+
+<li>Cheap labour and cheap bread, connection of, 125.</li>
+
+<li>Chudleigh, Miss, career of, 180.</li>
+
+<li>Church of Scotland, the secession from the, 221.</li>
+
+<li>Churkaree, town of, 327.</li>
+
+<li>Circulating libraries, on, 556.</li>
+
+<li>Circulating medium of Great Britain, amount of the, 388.</li>
+
+<li>Clitophon and Leucippe, account of the romance of, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Cobden, Mr, on the effects of corn-law repeal, 125.</li>
+
+<li>Colonies, importance of, to England, <a href="#Page_740">740</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Columbus, a poem, by B. Simmons, <a href="#Page_687">687</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Conservatism, advance of, since the passing of the reform bill, 103
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>as exhibited by the general elections, 104.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Cordova, history of the Moorish kingdom of, 431.</li>
+
+<li>Corn-law, the new, and its effects, 116.</li>
+
+<li>Corn-laws, on the, 385
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>viewed in connexion with the manufacturing distress, 105</li>
+  <li>effects of their repeal on wages, &amp;c., 125.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Corn question, letter from Lemuel Gulliver on the, 98
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Sir Robert Peel on the, 106.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Crime, the increase of, 533
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>table of it since 1805, 534</li>
+  <li>not attributable to its surer detection by a more efficient police, 535</li>
+  <li>nor to defects in the law, 540</li>
+  <li>nor to deficiency in education, 541</li>
+  <li>its diminution in India and France, 538.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Cry from Ireland, review of the, 638.</li>
+
+<li>Customs revenue, improvement of the, since the new tariff, 114.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_D" name="IX_D"></a>
+Davidson’s travels in India, review of, 321.</li>
+
+<li>Delta, lines by, on the snow, 617.</li>
+
+<li>Dhacca, account of the city of, 331.</li>
+
+<li>Difficulties of the present government on its accession, the, 108.</li>
+
+<li>Diligence, the, a leaf on a journal, <a href="#Page_692">692</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Disruption of the Scottish church, the, 221.</li>
+
+<li>Dublin state trials, the, 1.</li>
+
+<li>Duelling in Germany, 555.</li>
+
+<li>Dumas, Alexander; thrush-hunting, a <span class="pagebreak" title="798">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_798" id="Page_798"></a>tale by, 150
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>extracts from his work on Italy, 347</li>
+  <li>and from his Rhine and Rhinelanders, 546.</li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_E" name="IX_E"></a>
+Education, statistics of, with reference to crime, 541.</li>
+
+<li>Elections, results of the, since 1832, 104.</li>
+
+<li>Ellenborough, Lord, his Indian policy, 113.</li>
+
+<li>Emigration to Australia, letter on, 184
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>from Africa, on, <a href="#Page_745">745</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>England, efforts made by, in favour of free trade, 261.</li>
+
+<li>Ethiopia, Harris’s Highlands of, reviewed, 269.</li>
+
+<li>Europe, diminution of, British exports to, 263.</li>
+
+<li>Eusebius, letter to, on sitting for a portrait, 243.</li>
+
+<li>Exports, diminution of, to Europe, 263.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_F" name="IX_F"></a>
+Fairies’ Sabbath, the, a tradition of Upper Lusatia, <a href="#Page_665">665</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Fireman’s Song, the, 101.</li>
+
+<li>Foreign policy of the government, the, 111.</li>
+
+<li>France, increased commercial restrictions of, 261
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>statistics of crime in, 538.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Freethinker, the, a tale, 593.</li>
+
+<li>Free trade and protection, on, 259
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>efforts made by England to introduce free trade, 261</li>
+  <li>protective system pursued by France, Germany, &amp;c., <i>ib.</i></li>
+  <li>true principles of, 268. No. II.</li>
+  <li>The corn-laws, 385</li>
+  <li>failure of the reciprocity system, <i>ib.</i></li>
+  <li>comparison of a young and old state as to manufacturing and agricultural productiveness, 386</li>
+  <li>effects of free trade on the Roman empire, 391</li>
+  <li>impracticability of that system, 396</li>
+  <li>and its inexpediency, 397.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Frost and others, the trials of, 4.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_G" name="IX_G"></a>
+Gama, circumnavigation of Africa, by, 271.</li>
+
+<li>General elections, results of the, since 1832, 104.</li>
+
+<li>Germany Customs League, the, 262.</li>
+
+<li>Germany, Dumas in, 546.</li>
+
+<li>Gil Blas, on the authorship of, <a href="#Page_698">698</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Glum, Tabitha, letter from, 199.</li>
+
+<li>Goethe, lines to, 380.</li>
+
+<li>Gopal, a Hindu robber, account of, 326.</li>
+
+<li>Government, position and prospects of the, 103.</li>
+
+<li>Greece, the actual condition of, <a href="#Page_785">785</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Greek romances, the ancient: Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Gulliver, letter from, on the corn question, 98.</li>
+
+<li>Gunnings, career of the, 176.</li>
+
+<li>Gwalior, history and present state of, 579.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_H" name="IX_H"></a>
+Hackman, murder of Miss Ray, by, 178.</li>
+
+<li>Harris’s Highlands of Ethiopia, review of, 269
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>notices of it, <a href="#Page_730">730</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Hawash river, the, 277.</li>
+
+<li>Henley, orator, notices of, 171.</li>
+
+<li>Heretic, the, a novel translated from the Russian of Laj&eacute;tchnikoff, review of, 133.</li>
+
+<li>Hervey, Captain, 180.</li>
+
+<li>High life in the last century, 164.</li>
+
+<li>Hill’s Fifty days on board a Slave vessel, review of, 425.</li>
+
+<li>Home policy of the government, the, 110.</li>
+
+<li>Hurdwar, account of the fair of, 324.</li>
+
+<li>Huskisson, Mr, first attempts to introduce the free trade system, 262.</li>
+
+<li>Hydrabad, battle at, 580.</li>
+
+<li>Hymn of a hermit, the, 382.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_I" name="IX_I"></a>
+Imprisonment and transportation&mdash;No. I.; the increase of crime, 533.</li>
+
+<li>Increase of crime, the, since 1808, 534
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>not attributable to greater number of detections, 535</li>
+  <li>nor to defect in the law, 540</li>
+  <li>nor to deficiency of education, 541.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>India, Colonel Davidson’s travels in, review of, 321
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>diminution of crime in, 538.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Indian affairs, Gwalior, 579.</li>
+
+<li>Ireland, its present position, and effects of the government measures on, 127
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>its present state, and policy of ministers, 518</li>
+  <li>objections brought against the ministerial measures, 519</li>
+  <li>defence of them, 524</li>
+  <li>the landlord and tenant question, 638.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Irish state trials, the, 1.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_J" name="IX_J"></a>
+J. S., poems by; the Olympic Jupiter, 378
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>a Roman idyl, 379</li>
+  <li>Goethe, 380</li>
+  <li>hymn of a hermit, 382</li>
+  <li>the luckless lover, 383.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Jervis, Sir John, career of, 465.</li>
+
+<li>Jesse’s Memoirs and Correspondence of George Selwyn, review of, 164
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>of George Brummell, <a href="#Page_769">769</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_K" name="IX_K"></a>
+Kalergy, General, sketch of the life of, <a href="#Page_785">785</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Kieff, a poem, translated from the Russian of Iv&aacute;n Kozl&oacute;ff, by T. B. Shaw, 80.</li>
+
+<li>Kingston, the Duchess of, 180.</li>
+
+<li>Krapf, Mr, notices of his mission to Africa, <a href="#Page_730">730</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_L" name="IX_L"></a>
+Labour, gradual reduction in the cost of, in Great Britain, 125.</li>
+
+<li>Lahore, revolution at, 581.</li>
+
+<li>Laj&eacute;tchnikoff, the Heretic by, reviewed, 133.</li>
+
+<li>Lanarkshire, statistics of crime in, and its police, 537, 539.</li>
+
+<li>Land of slaves, the, a poem, 257.</li>
+
+<li>Landlord and tenant question in Ireland, the, 638.</li>
+
+<li>Larresse on Portrait Painting, extracts from, 246.</li>
+
+<li><span class="pagebreak" title="799">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_799" id="Page_799"></a>Law, administration of the, in India, 333.</li>
+
+<li>Lazzaroni of Naples, anecdotes of the, 354.</li>
+
+<li>League, measures of the, 121.</li>
+
+<li>Lemuel Gulliver, letter from, to the editor, 98.</li>
+
+<li>Le Sage not the author of Gil Blas, <a href="#Page_698">698</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Letter from an exiled contributor, 184.</li>
+
+<li>Literature, the monster misery of, 556.</li>
+
+<li>Llorente, M. on the authorship of Gil Blas, <a href="#Page_698">698</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Lorgnon; a word or two of the opera-tive classes by, 292.</li>
+
+<li>Love in the wilderness. Chap. I., 621
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Chap. II., 624</li>
+  <li>Chap. III., 627</li>
+  <li>Chap. IV., 631</li>
+  <li>Chap. V., 635.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Luckless lover, the, a poem, 383.</li>
+
+<li>Lusatia, traditions and tales of; No. I., the Fairies’ Sabbath, <a href="#Page_665">665</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_M" name="IX_M"></a>
+Mahratta war, origin, &amp;c., of the, 584.</li>
+
+<li>Manufacturing distress, Sir Robert Peel on the causes of the, 105.</li>
+
+<li>Marston, or, Memoirs of a Statesman. Part VII., 81
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Part VIII., 202</li>
+  <li>Part IX., 362</li>
+  <li>Part X., 483</li>
+  <li>Part XI., 561.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Meeanee, battle of, 580.</li>
+
+<li>Melbourne in Australia, letter from, with account of the colony, &amp;c., 184.</li>
+
+<li>Memoirs of a Statesman&mdash;<i>see</i> Marston.</li>
+
+<li>Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, review of, 462.</li>
+
+<li>Mexico, two nights in, 449.</li>
+
+<li>Michael Kalliphournas, a tale, <a href="#Page_725">725</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Monster misery of literature, the, 556.</li>
+
+<li>Monmouthshire rioters, trial of the, 4.</li>
+
+<li>Moslem histories of Spain; the Arabs of Cordova, 431.</li>
+
+<li>My friend; a poem, 256.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_N" name="IX_N"></a>
+Naples, account of, by Dumas, 347.</li>
+
+<li>Narration of certain uncommon things that did formerly happen to me, Herbert Willis, B. D., <a href="#Page_749">749</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Nelson, notices of the early services of, 477.</li>
+
+<li>New art of printing, by a designing devil, 45.</li>
+
+<li>News from an exiled contributor, a letter from New Holland, 184.</li>
+
+<li>Non-intrusionists, secession of the, from church of Scotland, 221.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_O" name="IX_O"></a>
+O’Connell and others, trial of, 1
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>his trial in 1831, 3</li>
+  <li>his present trial and demeanour during it, 7</li>
+  <li>his probable policy in agitating for Repeal, 128.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>O’Connor, Fergus, state prosecutions of, 6.</li>
+
+<li>Olympic Jupiter, the, a poem, 378.</li>
+
+<li>Opera-tive classes, a word or two of the, 292.</li>
+
+<li>Oude, a sporting excursion to, 329.</li>
+
+<li>Oxford, trial of, 5.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_P" name="IX_P"></a>
+Peel, Sir Robert, on the progress of Conservatism, 103, 104
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>on the causes of the manufacturing distress, 105</li>
+  <li>defence of his conduct on the corn-law question, 107.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Phenicians, circumnavigation of Africa by the, 271.</li>
+
+<li>Pirates of Segna, the, a tale of Venice and the Adriatic. Part I. Chap. I., The Studio, 299
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Chap. II., The Cavern, 303</li>
+  <li>Chap. III., The Jewels, 310</li>
+  <li>Chap. IV., The Ball, 316.</li>
+  <li>Part II. Chap. I., The Battle of the Bridge, 401</li>
+  <li>Chap. II., The Picture, 409</li>
+  <li>Chap. III., The Pirates, 415</li>
+  <li>Chap. IV., The Recognition, 421.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Poetry:&mdash;Kieff, from the Russian of Kozl&oacute;ff, 80
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>The Proclamation, 100</li>
+  <li>the Fireman’s Song, 101</li>
+  <li>The Prophecy of the Twelve Tribes, 196</li>
+  <li>My Friend, 256</li>
+  <li>The Land of Slaves, 257</li>
+  <li>the Priest’s Burial, <i>ib.</i></li>
+  <li>Prudence, 258</li>
+  <li>The Olympic Jupiter, 378</li>
+  <li>A Roman Idyl, 379</li>
+  <li>Goethe, 380</li>
+  <li>Hymn of a Hermit, 382</li>
+  <li>The Luckless Lover, 383</li>
+  <li>The Snow, by Delta, 617</li>
+  <li>Columbus, by B. Simmons, <a href="#Page_687">687</a></li>
+  <li>To Swallows on the eve of departure, by the same, <a href="#Page_690">690</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Police, repugnance to assessment for, 536.</li>
+
+<li>Poor old maids, a bewailment from Bath, 199.</li>
+
+<li>Porter, Mr, on the decrease of our European exports, 263.</li>
+
+<li>Portrait painting, in a letter to Eusebius, 213.</li>
+
+<li>Portugal, restrictive commercial system adopted by, 262.</li>
+
+<li>Portuguese, circumnavigation of Africa by the, 271.</li>
+
+<li>Position and Prospects of the government, on the: its position on the secession of the Whigs, 103
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>advance of Conservatism since the passing of the Reform Bill, <i>ib.</i></li>
+  <li>the manufacturing distress, 105</li>
+  <li>the sugar and corn question, 106</li>
+  <li>difficulties with which it had to contend, 108</li>
+  <li>its home policy, and what it has done, 110</li>
+  <li>its foreign policy, 111</li>
+  <li>the new tariff and corn-law, 113</li>
+  <li>results of its measures in the revival of trade, tranquillity, &amp;c., 120</li>
+  <li>its measures with reference to Ireland, 127.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Priest’s burial, the, a poem, 257.</li>
+
+<li>Printing, the new art of, by a designing devil, 45.</li>
+
+<li>Proclamation, the, 100.</li>
+
+<li>Prophecy of the twelve tribes, the, poem, 196.</li>
+
+<li>Prosecution, the State, 1.</li>
+
+<li>Prudence, a poem, 258.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_R" name="IX_R"></a>
+Rampore, city of, 322.</li>
+
+<li>Ray, Miss, murder of, by Hackman, 178.</li>
+
+<li><span class="pagebreak" title="800">&nbsp;</span><a name="Page_800" id="Page_800"></a>Rebeccaites, trials of the, 6.</li>
+
+<li>Reciprocity system, effect of, in diminishing the exports to Europe, 263
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>failure of the, 385.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Repeal agitation, the, 128.</li>
+
+<li>Revenue, improvement of the, 114.</li>
+
+<li>Reviews: the Heretic, 133
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>George Selwyn and his contemporaries, 164</li>
+  <li>Harris’s Highlands of Ethiopia, 269</li>
+  <li>Davidson’s Travels in India, 321</li>
+  <li>Hill’s Fifty days on board a Slave Ship, 425</li>
+  <li>Tucker’s Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, 462</li>
+  <li>Cry from Ireland, 638</li>
+  <li>Jesse’s memoirs of Beau Brummell, <a href="#Page_769">769</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Rhine, the, and Rhinelanders, 546.</li>
+
+<li>Rigby, Richard, notices of, 172.</li>
+
+<li>Roman empire, effects of free trade on the, 391.</li>
+
+<li>Roman Idyl, a, 379.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_S" name="IX_S"></a>
+Sahela Selassee, King of Abyssinia, British mission to, 282.</li>
+
+<li>St Vincent, Earl, Tucker’s Memoirs of, reviewed, 462.</li>
+
+<li>Sandwich, Lord, notices of, 177.</li>
+
+<li>Scinde, subjugation of, by the British, 580.</li>
+
+<li>Segna, Pirates of&mdash;<i>see</i> Pirates.</li>
+
+<li>Selim, Captain, expedition under, to explore Central Africa, <a href="#Page_731">731</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Selwyn and his contemporaries, review of, 164.</li>
+
+<li>Shaw, T. B., translation of Kieff, a poem, from the Russian by, 80
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>review of his translation of the Heretic, 133.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Shoa, mission to the kingdom of, 275.</li>
+
+<li>Simmons, B., poems by:&mdash;Columbus, <a href="#Page_687">687</a>
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>To swallows on the eve of departure, <a href="#Page_690">690</a>.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Sindiah, history of the house of, 582.</li>
+
+<li>Sitting for a portrait, on, in a letter to Eusebius, 243.</li>
+
+<li>Slave trade, the, 425, <a href="#Page_730">730</a>, <a href="#Page_741">741</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Sliding scale, effects of the, 119.</li>
+
+<li>Snow, the, a poem by Delta, 617.</li>
+
+<li>Song of the Fireman, the, 101.</li>
+
+<li>Southern Mexico, two nights in, 449.</li>
+
+<li>Spain, condition of, under the Arabs of Cordova, 431.</li>
+
+<li>Speculation in grain, diminution of, under the new corn law, 118.</li>
+
+<li>State prosecutions, comparison of, in ancient and modern times, 1
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>that of O’Connell in 1831, 3</li>
+  <li>those of the Canadian insurgents, <i>ib.</i></li>
+  <li>of the Monmouthshire rioters, 4</li>
+  <li>of Oxford, 5</li>
+  <li>of the Chartists in 1842, <i>ib.</i></li>
+  <li>of the Welsh rioters, 6</li>
+  <li>the present, of O’Connell and others, for conspiracy, 7.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Statesman, memoirs of a&mdash;<i>see</i> Marston.</li>
+
+<li>Struggle in Texas, the, 18.</li>
+
+<li>Sugar question, Sir Robert Peel on the, 106.</li>
+
+<li>Swallows on the eve of departure, address to, by B. Simmons, <a href="#Page_690">690</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_T" name="IX_T"></a>
+Tariff, the new, and its results, 113.</li>
+
+<li>Tatius, Achilles, account of his romance, Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.</li>
+
+<li>Texas, adventures in. No. III.; the struggle, 18.</li>
+
+<li>Thrush-hunting, a tale; by Alexander Dumas, 150.</li>
+
+<li>Traditions and tales of Upper Lusatia. No. I., The Fairies’ Sabbath, <a href="#Page_665">665</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Tropical colonies, on, <a href="#Page_730">730</a>, <a href="#Page_741">741</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Tucker’s Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, review of, 462.</li>
+
+<li>Twelve tribes, prophecy of the, a poem, 196.</li>
+
+<li>Two nights in Southern Mexico, a fragment from the journal of an American
+  traveller, 449.</li>
+
+<li>Two patrons, the, a tale. Chapter I., 500
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Chap. II., 503</li>
+  <li>Chap. III., 505</li>
+  <li>Chap. IV., 509</li>
+  <li>Chap. V., 511</li>
+  <li>Chap. VI., 514</li>
+  <li>Chap. VII., 515.</li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_V" name="IX_V"></a>
+Vardarelli, account of the, 358.</li>
+
+
+</ul>
+
+
+<ul class="IX"><li><a id="IX_W" name="IX_W"></a>
+Wages, gradual reduction of, in Great Britain, 125.</li>
+
+<li>Washington, the treaty of, 112.</li>
+
+<li>Welsh rioters, trial of the, 6.</li>
+
+<li>Who wrote Gil Blas? <a href="#Page_698">698</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Wiggins’ Cry from Ireland, review of, 638.</li>
+
+<li>William, John, letter from, to the editor, 184.</li>
+
+<li>Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 174
+<ul class="IX">
+  <li>Gilly, 175.</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Willis, Herbert, B. D., narration of, <a href="#Page_749">749</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Word or two of the opera-tive classes, a, 292.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<p class="center gap">END OF VOL. LV.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center biggap"><i>Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul’s Work.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine -
+Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844, by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55,
+No. 344, June, 1844, 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 - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2007 [EBook #23529]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Louise Pryor
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+{Transcriber's note: Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious
+misprints have been corrected, but in general the original spelling has
+been retained. Accents in the French and Spanish passages are
+inconsistent, and have not been standardised. Greek phrases have been
+transliterated, and are enclosed in + signs +eis Athenas+.}
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+NO. CCCXLIV.    JUNE, 1844.     VOL. LV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. NO. I. THE FAIRIES'
+    SABBATH,                                                     665
+
+  COLUMBUS. (A PRINT AFTER A PICTURE BY PARMEGGIANO.)
+    BY B. SIMMONS,                                               687
+
+  TO SWALLOWS ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE. BY THE SAME,              690
+
+  THE DILIGENCE. A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL,                          692
+
+  WHO WROTE GIL BLAS?                                            698
+
+  MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS,                                         725
+
+  AFRICA--SLAVE TRADE--TROPICAL COLONIES,                        731
+
+  NARRATION OF CERTAIN UNCOMMON THINGS THAT DID
+    FORMERLY HAPPEN TO ME, HERBERT WILLIS, B.D.                  749
+
+  BEAU BRUMMELL,                                                 769
+
+  THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE GREEK STATE,                       785
+
+  INDEX,                                                         797
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  EDINBURGH:
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
+  AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.
+
+_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
+
+SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
+
+PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+No CCCXLIV.     JUNE, 1844.     VOL. LV.
+
+
+
+
+TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.
+
+No. I.
+
+THE FAIRIES' SABBATH.
+
+
+WHAT is a fairy?
+
+READ!
+
+["_A Wood near Athens.--Enter a Fairy on one side, and Puck on the
+other._{A}]
+
+      "_Puck._ How now, Spirit! whither wander you?
+
+      _Fairy._ Over hill, over dale,
+          Thorough bush, thorough brier,
+      Over park, over pale,
+          Thorough flood, thorough fire,
+      I do wander ever where,
+      Swifter than the moones sphere;
+      And I serve the Fairy Queen,
+      To dew her orbs upon the green:
+      The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
+      In their gold coats spots you see;
+      Those be rubies, fairy favours,
+      In those freckles live their savours:
+    I must go seek some dewdrops here,
+    And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
+    Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll begone;
+    Our queen and all our elves come here anon.
+
+    _Puck._ The King doth keep his revels here to-night;
+    Take heed, the queen come not within his sight.
+    For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
+    Because that she, as her attendant, hath
+    A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
+    She never had so sweet a changeling.
+    And jealous Oberon would have the child
+    Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild:
+    But she, perforce, withholds the loved boy:
+    Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy:
+    And now they never meet in grove, or green,
+    By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
+    But they do square; that all their elves, for fear,
+    Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."
+
+And there, then, they are!--The blithe and lithe, bright and fine
+darlings of your early-bewitched and for ever-enamoured fancy! There
+they are! The King and the Queen, and the Two royal Courts of shadowy,
+gorgeous, remote, and cloud-walled Elf-land: The fairies of the vision
+once wafted, "by moon or star light," upon the "creeping murmur" of the
+Avon!--THE FAIRIES IN ENGLAND! YOUR fairies!
+
+Nevertheless you, from of old, are discreet. And you mistrust
+information which discountenances itself, by borrowing the magical robe
+of verse! Or you misdoubt this medley of our English blood, which in the
+lapse of ages must, as you deem, have confounded, upon the soil, the
+confluent streams of primitively distinct superstitions! Or your
+suspicious inquisition rebels against this insular banishment of ours,
+which, sequestering us from the common mind of the world, may, as you
+augur, have perverted, into an excessive individuality of growth, our
+mythological beliefs: Or--Southwards then!
+
+One good stride over salt water lands you amongst a people, who, from
+the old, have kept THEMSELVES TO THEMSELVES; whose warm, bold,
+_thorough_-loyal hearts hereditarily believe, after the love and
+reverence owed from the children's children to the fathers' fathers.
+Here are--for good and for ill--and from a sure hand:--"THE FAIRIES IN
+LOWER BRITANNY; _alio nomine_--THE KORRIGANS."
+
+"Like these holy virgins, (the Gallicenae or Barrigenae of Mela,) our
+Korrigans predict the future. They know the skill of healing incurable
+maladies with particular charms; which they impart, it is affirmed, to
+magicians that are their friends. Ingenious Proteuses, they take the
+shape of any animal at their pleasure. In the twinkling of an eye they
+whisk from one end of the world to the other. Annually, with returning
+spring, they celebrate a high nocturnal festivity. A tablecloth, white
+as the driven snow, is spread upon the greensward, by the margin of a
+fountain. It is covered with the most delicious viands; in the midst
+sparkles a crystal goblet, which sheds such a splendour as serves in the
+stead of torches. At the close of the repast, this goblet goes round
+from hand to hand; it holds a miraculous beverage, one drop of which, it
+is averred, would make omniscient, like the Almighty. At any least
+breath or stir of human kind, all vanishes.
+
+"In truth, it is near fountains that the Korrigans are oftenest met
+with; especially near such as rise in the neighbourhood of _dolmens_.{B}
+For in the sequestered spots whence the Virgin Mary, who is held for
+their chief foe, has not yet driven them, they still preside over the
+fountains. Our traditions bestow upon them a strong passion for music,
+with sweet voices; but do not, like those of the Germanic nations, make
+dancers of them. The popular songs of all countries frequently depict
+them combing their fine fair hair, which they seem daintily to cherish.
+Their stature is that of the other European fairies: they are not above
+two feet in height. Their shape, exquisitely proportioned, is as airy,
+slight, and pellucid as that of the wasp. They have no other dress than
+a white veil, which they wrap around their body. Seen by night, they are
+very beautiful: in the daytime, you perceive that their hair is
+grey--that their eyes are red--that their face is wrinkled. Accordingly,
+they begin to show themselves only at the shut of eve; and they loathe
+the light. _Every thing about them denotes fallen intelligences._ The
+Breton peasants maintain that _they are high princesses, who, because
+they would not embrace Christianity when the apostles came to preach in
+Armorica, were stricken by the curse of God_. The Welsh recognise in
+them, souls of Druids doomed to penance. This coincidence is remarkable.
+
+"They are universally believed to feel a vehement hatred for the
+clergy, and for our holy religion, which has confounded them with the
+spirits of darkness--a grand motive, as it appears, of displeasure and
+offence to them. The sight of a surplice, _the sound of bells_, scares
+them away. The popular tales of all Europe would, meanwhile, tend to
+support the church, in viewing them as maleficent genii. As in Britanny;
+the blast of their breath is mortal in Wales, in Ireland, in Scotland,
+and in Prussia. They cast weirds.{C} Whosoever has muddied the waters of
+their spring, or caught them combing their hair, or counting their
+treasures beside their _dolmen_, (for they there keep, it is believed,
+concealed mines of gold and of diamonds,) almost inevitably dies;
+especially should the misencounter fall upon a Saturday, which day, holy
+to the Virgin Mother, is inauspicious for their kind,"{D} &c. &c. &c.
+
+Here, in the stead of the joyously-sociable monarchal hive, you behold a
+republic of solitarily-dwelling, and not unconditionally beautiful,
+naiads! No dancing! And a stature, prodigiously disqualifying for the
+asylum of an acorn cup! You are unsatisfied. Shakspeare has indeed
+vividly portrayed one curiously-featured species, and M. De la
+Villemarque another, of the air-made inscrutable beings evoked by your
+question; but your question, from the beginning, struck at the GENERIC
+notion in its purified logical shape--at the definition, then--of the
+thing, a fairy.
+
+Sir _Walter Scott_,{E} writing--the first in time of all men who have
+written--at large and scientifically upon the fairies of Western Europe,
+steps into disquisition by a description, duly loose for leaving his own
+foot unentangled. "The general idea of SPIRITS, of A LIMITED POWER AND
+SUBORDINATE NATURE, DWELLING AMONG THE WOODS AND MOUNTAINS, is perhaps
+common to all nations."
+
+A little _too_ loose, peradventure!
+
+Dr James Grimm, heroically bent upon rescuing from the throat of
+oblivion and from the tooth of scepticism, to his own TEUTONS--yet
+heathen--a faith outreaching and outsoaring the gross definite
+cognisances of this fleshly eye and hand, sets apart one--profoundly
+read and thought--chapter, to WIGHTS AND ELVES.{F}
+
+These terms, WIGHT and ELF, are presented by Dr Grimm as being, after a
+rough way, synonymous; and you have above seen another Germanic
+writer--a native of Warwickshire--take ELF for equivalent, or nearly so,
+with FAIRY.
+
+Of his many-natured Teutonic _wights and elves_, then, but with glances
+darted around, northwards and westwards, and southwards and eastwards,
+Dr Grimm begins with speaking thus:--
+
+"From the _deified_ and _half-divine_ natures [investigated by this
+author in several of his antecedent chapters] _a whole order of other
+beings_ is especially herein distinguished, that whilst the former
+either proceed of mankind, or seek human intercourse, these form a
+segregated society--one might say, a peculiar kingdom of their own--and
+are only, by accident or the pressure of circumstances, moved to
+converse with men. Something superhuman, approximating them to the gods,
+is mingled up in them: they possess power to help and to hurt man. They
+are however, at the same time, afraid of him, because they are not his
+bodily match. They appear either far below the human stature, or
+misshapen. Almost all of them enjoy the faculty of rendering themselves
+invisible."
+
+You turn away your head, exclaiming that the weighty words of our
+puissant teacher are, for your proficiency, somewhat bewildering, and
+for your exigency by much too--TEUTONIC.
+
+Have a care!
+
+However, "Westward Hoe!" Put the old Rhine between the master of living
+mythologists and yourself, and listen to Baron Walckenaer unlocking the
+fountains of the fairy belief, and showing how it streams, primarily
+through France, and secondarily through all remaining Western Europe.
+"If there is a specifically characterized superstition, it is that which
+regards _the fairies_: those _female genii_,{G} most frequently _without
+name_, without descent, without kin, who are incessantly busied
+subverting the order of nature, for the weal or the woe of mortals whom
+they love and favour _without a motive_, or, as causelessly, hate and
+persecute."{H}
+
+What, _female_ only? Where are Oberon and Puck? _Without a name?_ Where
+Titania?--Mab? _Without a motive?_ Where the godmother of the
+sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a
+distinct type in your own recollections, you guessingly pronounce the
+characterization of the perpetual secretary too----_French_. Driven
+back, disappointed on all sides, you turn round upon your difficulties,
+and manfully project beating out _a definition of your own_; to which
+end, glancing your eye back affectionately, and now, needle-like,
+northwards across the Channel, you "at one slight bound" once more find
+yourself at your own fireside, and on your table _The Midsummer Night's
+Dream_, open at the second scene of the first act.
+
+Inquirer whosoever! A problem lies large before us--complicated,
+abstruse even, yet--suitably to the subject--a delicate one! To hunt
+down an elusive word, and a more elusive notion! It is to find a set of
+determinings which, laid together, shall form a circle fitted to confine
+that inconfinable spirit--a Fairy; or, if you better like plain English,
+to find the terms needed for signifying, describing, expounding the
+Thought which, lurking as at the bottom of your mind, under a crowd of
+thoughts, rises up, in all circumstances, to meet and answer the
+name----a fairy; the Thought, which when all accidental and unessential
+attributes liable to be attracted to the fairy essence have been
+stripped away, remains; the _substrate_, absolute, essential, _generic_
+notion, therefore--a fairy; that Thought, which whencesoever acquired,
+and held howsoever, enables you to deal to your satisfaction with
+proposed fairies, acknowledging THIS one frankly;--THIS, but for a
+half-sister; shutting the door upon ANOTHER. You may distinguish these
+terms at your pleasure, by sundry denominations: for example, you may
+call them Elements of the notion--a fairy--or circumscriptive Lines of
+such a notion, or indispensable Fairy-marks, or elfin Criteria, or by
+any other name which you may happen to like as well or better; but when
+found, call them as you will, they must reveal in essence, the thing
+which we look for--the answer to the question with which we first
+started, and to which we have as yet found no satisfactory solution.
+
+As for the process of the finding. This notion is to be tracked after
+widely, and in intimate recesses; more hopefully, therefore, according
+to a planned campaign than a merely wild chance expatiation. The chase
+ranges over a material and an intellectual ground. Of either--a word.
+
+I. The _material_--is a _geographical_--region, and may be called,
+summarily--_The western half of Europe_. Let us regard it as laid out by
+languages at this day spoken. Here is a map, roughly sketched:--
+
+    A.--ABORIGINAL.
+
+  1. NORTH-WESTERN CELTS.--Ireland, Highlands of Scotland, and
+       the interjacent Isle of Man.
+
+  2. SOUTH-WESTERN CELTS.--Wales, Britanny, and the, till lately,
+       Celtic-speaking Cornwall.
+
+  3. NORTHERN GERMANS, or GERMANS BEYOND THE EIDER, or
+       SCANDINAVIANS.--Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland.
+
+  4. SOUTHERN GERMANS, or GERMANS BELOW THE EIDER, or
+       TEUTONS.--Netherlands, the German empire, Switzerland.
+
+    B.--LATIN SPEAKING.
+
+  1. ITALY.--Sicily.
+
+  2. SPAIN.
+
+  3. PORTUGAL.
+
+  4. Latin-speaking FRANCE, distinguishing Normandy.
+
+    C.--GERMAN AND LATIN MIXED.
+
+  1. ENGLAND.
+
+  2. SCOTTISH LOWLANDS.
+
+II. From all this tangible territory, we are to sweep up--what? An
+overlying _intellectual_ kingdom, _videlicet_--THE KINDS OF THE FAIRIES,
+rudely marked out, perhaps, as follows:--
+
+  1. The _community_ of the Fairies, monarchal or republican:--The
+       Fairy folk; Fairies proper.
+
+  2. The _solitary_ domestic serviceable Fairy.
+
+  3. In the mines, under the water; a Fairy folk.
+
+  4. The solitary water Fairy.
+
+  5. The Fairy-ancestress.
+
+  6. The Fairy, tutelary or persecuting, of the chivalrous metrical
+       romance.
+
+  7. The Fairy, tutelary or persecuting, now giving and now turning
+       destinies, of the fairy tale proper.
+
+We have then to ask what are the terms, marks, common traits, or by
+whatsoever name they are to be called, which are yielded by a comparison
+of such seven kinds. Something like the following eight will possibly
+arise:--
+
+  First, A FAIRY IS A SUBORDINATE SPIRIT.
+
+  Secondly, IS ATTRACTED TO THE SURFACE OF OUR PLANET.
+
+  Thirdly, AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND.
+
+  Fourthly, HAS A BODY.
+
+  Fifthly, IS ATTENUATE.
+
+  Sixthly, IS WITHOUT PROPER STATION AND FUNCTION IN THE GENERAL ECONOMY
+    OF THE UNIVERSE; OR IS MYTHOLOGICALLY DISPLACED.
+
+  Seventhly, IS ENDOWED WITH POWERS OF INTELLIGENCE AND OF AGENCY EXCELLING
+    HUMAN.
+
+  Eighthly, STANDS UNDER A DOOM.
+
+To these eight criteria, taken _in the nature of the thing enquired_,
+the reflective inquirer will perchance find himself led on to add two
+furnished from within himself, as that--
+
+First, Acknowledging, as in these latter days our more delicate
+psychologists have called upon us to do, the names FANCY and IMAGINATION
+as designating TWO faculties, the fairies belong rather to the FANCY.
+
+Secondly, Accepting for a legitimate thought, legitimately and
+cogently signified, the High Marriage which one of these finer
+Metaphysicians{I}--instructed no doubt by his personal
+experience--prophesies to his kind, between the "intellect of man" and
+"this goodly universe," we may say that, regularly, this marriage must
+have its antecedent possessing and agitating Love; that this love must,
+like all possessing agitated love, have its attendant Reverie. Now,
+might one venture to surmise that _this_ REVERIE breathes into the
+creating of a fairy?
+
+Does the jealous reader perchance miss in the above proposed eight
+several elements the UNITY OF NOTION, which he has all along seemed to
+feel in his own spirit and understanding? Let him at once conceive, as
+intensely joined, the two permanent characters of _tenuity_ and
+_mythological displacement_, and take this compound for the nucleus of
+the unity he seeks. About these two every other element will easily
+place itself. For a _soul_, he shall infuse into the whole, after in
+like manner inseparably blending them--FANCY, and that love-inspired
+REVERIE which won its way to us from Grassmere.
+
+And so take, reader, our answer to your question, "_What is a fairy?_"
+THIS IS A FAIRY. Are you still unsatisfied? Good. The field of
+investigation lies open before you, free and inviting. On, in your own
+strength, and Heaven speed you!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The eight or nine tales of sundry length, and exceedingly diversified
+matter, contained in the two little volumes of Herr Ernst Willkomm,{J}
+which have put us a-journeying to Fairy-land, have begun to produce
+before the literary world the living popular superstitions of a small
+and hidden mountainous district, by which _Cis Eidoran_ Germany leans
+upon Sclavonia: hidden, it would seem, for any thing like interesting
+knowledge, until this author began to write, from the visiting eye of
+even learned curiosity. Nor this without a sufficient reason; since the
+mountains do, of themselves, shut in their inhabitants, and, for a
+stranger, the temper of the rugged mountaineer, at once shy and mailing
+himself in defiance, is, like the soil, inaccessible. To Ernst Willkomm
+this hinderance was none. He discloses to us the heart of the country,
+and that of the people which have born him, which have bred him up; and
+he will, if he is encouraged, write on. Three of these tales, or of
+these traditions--for the titles, with this writer, appear to us
+exchangeable--regard the fairies properly so called. They are, "_The
+Priest's Well_," "_The Fairies' Sabbath_," here given, and "_The Fairy
+Tutor_," being the first, the third, and the seventh, of the entire
+present series. Upon these three tales the foregoing attempt at fixing
+the generic notion of a fairy was intended to bear. Should pretty Maud,
+the stone-mason's daughter, our heroine for to-day, find the favour in
+English eyes which her personal merit may well claim, the remaining two
+are not likely to be long withheld.
+
+The illustrations which shall now follow, drawn from distinguished
+authorities, aim at showing the consonancy of Herr Willkomm's pictures
+with authentic representations of Elfin superstition already known to
+the world. If, however, the criteria which have been proposed, have
+been rightfully deduced, the illustrations should as materially serve us
+in justifying these by proof.
+
+Amongst the numerous points of analogy which strikingly connect our tale
+with popular tales and traditions innumerable, _three_ are main to the
+structure of the tale itself. They may be very briefly described as--
+
+    I. The Heathenism of the Fairies.
+   II. Their need, thence arising.
+  III. Maud's ability to help them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I. The opinion, which sets the fairies in opposition to the established
+faith of all Christendom, is widely diffused. To the _Breton_ peasant,
+as M. de la Villemarque has above informed us, his Korrigan is a heathen
+princess, doomed to a long sorrow for obstinately refusing the message
+of salvation.
+
+The brothers Grimm, speaking of the fairies in _Ireland_, say that "they
+are angels cast out from heaven, who have not fallen as low as hell; but
+in great fear and uncertainty about their future state, doubt,
+themselves, whether they shall obtain mercy at the last day."{K}
+
+Of the fairies in _Scotland_, it is averred by the same learned and
+exact writers, that "they were originally angels dwelling in bliss, but
+who, because they suffered themselves to be seduced by the archfiend,
+were hurled down from heaven in innumerable multitudes. They shall
+wander till the last day over mountains and lakes. They know not how
+their sentence will run--whether they shall be saved or damned; but
+dread the worst."
+
+Tales, in many parts of Europe, which represent the fairies as
+exceedingly solicitous about their salvation, and as _inquiring of
+priests_ and others concerning their own spiritual prospects, for the
+most part with an unfavourable answer, tend to fix upon them a
+reproachful affinity with the spirits of darkness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+II. That the powerful fairies, who have appeared to us, from childhood
+upwards, as irresistible dispensers of good and evil to our kind, should
+_need aid_ of any sort from us, is an unexpected feature of the fairy
+lore, which breaks by degrees upon the zealous and advancing inquirer.
+
+The two excellent brothers Grimm, in the most elaborate and
+comprehensive collection,{L} probably, of national traditions that
+Europe possesses, have furnished us with various instances. We select a
+very few. In the following graceful Alpine pastoral, the need of human
+help attaches to an exigency of life or death:--
+
+
+GERMAN TRADITIONS.
+
+No. CCXX. _The Queen of the Snakes._
+
+"A herd maiden found upon the fell a sick snake lying and almost
+famished. Compassionately she held down to it her pitcher of milk. The
+snake licked greedily, and was visibly revived. The girl went on her
+way; and it presently happened that her lover sued for her, but was too
+poor for the proud wealthy father, who tauntingly dismissed him till the
+day when he too should be master of as large herds as the old herdsman.
+From this time forwards had the old herdsman no luck more, but sheer
+misfortune. Report ran that a fiery dragon was seen passing o' nights
+over his grounds; and his substance decayed. The poor swain was now as
+rich, and again sued for his beloved, whom he obtained. Upon the
+wedding-day a snake came gliding into the room, upon whose coiled tail
+there sat a beautiful damsel, who said that it was she to whom formerly
+the kind herd maid had, in strait of hunger, given her milk, and, out
+of gratitude, she took her brilliant crown from her head, and cast it
+into the bride's lap. Thereupon she vanished; but the young couple
+throve in their housekeeping greatly, and were soon well at ease in the
+world."
+
+Since fairies, like ourselves, are mortal, TWO LIVES may be understood
+as at stake in the following:--
+
+
+No. LXVIII. _The Lady of Alvensleben._
+
+"Some hundred years ago, there lived at Calb, in the Werder, an aged
+lady of the house of Alvensleben, who feared God, was gracious to the
+people, and willingly disposed to render any one a service: especially
+she did assist the burgesses' wives in difficult travail of childbirth,
+and was, in such cases, of all desired and highly esteemed. Now,
+therefore, there did happen in wise following:--
+
+"In the night season there came a damsel to the castle gate, who knocked
+and distressfully called, beseeching that it should not mislike her, if
+possible, forthwith to arise, and to accompany her from the town, where
+there lay a good woman in travail of child, because the last hour and
+uttermost peril was already upon her, and her mistress wist no help for
+her life. The noblewoman said, 'It is very midnight; all the town gates
+be shut and well barred: how shall we make us forth?' The damsel
+rejoined that the gate was ready open, she should come forth only, (but
+beware, as do some add, in the place whither she should be conducted, to
+eat or to drink any thing, or to touch that should be proffered her.)
+Thereupon did the lady rise from her bed, dressed her, came down, and
+went along with the damsel which had knocked. The town gate she found
+open, and as they came further into a field was there a fair way which
+led right into a hillside. The hill stood open, and although she did
+well perceive that the thing was darksome, she resolved to go still on,
+unalarmed, until she arrived at last where was a _little wifikin_ that
+lay on the bed, in great pains of travail. But the noble lady gave her
+succour, (by the report of some, _she needed no more than lay her hand
+upon her body_,) and a little baby was born to the light of day.
+
+"When she had yielded her aid, desire took her to return from out the
+hill, home; she took leave of the sick woman, (without having any thing
+touched of the meats and liquors that were offered her,) and the former
+damsel anew joined her, and brought her back unharmed to the castle. At
+the gateway the damsel stood still, thanked her highly in her mistress's
+name, and drew off from her finger a golden ring, which she presented to
+the noblewoman with these words, 'Have this dear pledge in right heedful
+keeping, and let it not part from you and from your house. They of
+Alvensleben will flourish so long as they possess this ring. Should it
+ever leave them, the whole race must become extinct.' Herewith vanished
+the damsel.
+
+"It is said that the ring, at this day, is rightly and properly kept in
+the lineage, and for good assurance deposited at Lubeck. But others,
+that it was, at the dividing of the house into two branches, diligently
+parted in two. Others yet, that the one half has been melted, since when
+it goes ill with that branch: the other half stays with the other branch
+at Zichtow. The story moreover goes, that the benevolent lady was a
+married woman. When she upon the morrow told her husband the tale of
+that had betid her in the night, he would not believe her, until she
+said, 'Forsooth, then, an' ye will not trow me, take only the key of yon
+room from the table: there lieth, I dare warrant, the ring.' Which was
+exactly so. It is marvellous the gifts that men have received of the
+fairies."
+
+The most touching by far of the traditions at our disposal for
+illustrating at once the dependence of the fairies upon man, and their
+anxiety concerning their souls' welfare, is one in which the
+all-important hope which we have said that they sometimes solicit from
+the grave and authorized lips of priests, appears as floating on the
+lightest breath of children. Our immediate author is James Grimm,
+speaking in his German _Mythology_ of the water spirit. The tradition
+itself is from Sweden, where this mythological being, the solitary
+water fairy, bears the name of "The _Neck_."
+
+"Two lads were at play by the river side. The _Neck_ sate and touched
+his harp. The children called to him--
+
+"'Why sittest thou here, _Neck_, and playest? Thou wilt not go to
+heaven.' Then the _Neck_ began bitterly weeping, flung his harp away,
+and sank in the deep water. When the boys came home they told their
+father, who was a priest, what had happened. The father said--
+
+"'Ye have sinned towards the _Neck_. Go ye back, and give him promise of
+salvation.'
+
+"When they returned to the river, the _Neck_ sate upon the shore,
+mourning and weeping. The children said--
+
+"'Weep not so, thou _Neck_. Our father hath said, that thy Redeemer too
+liveth.'
+
+"Then the _Neck_ took joyfully his harp, and played sweetly until long
+after sundown."
+
+"I do not know," tenderly and profoundly suggests Dr Grimm, "that any
+where else in our traditions is as significantly expressed how NEEDY of
+the Christian belief the HEATHEN are, and how MILDLY it should approach
+them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+III. A few words shall here satisfy the claims of a widely-stretching
+subject. Is there _one_ order of spirits which, as the Baron Walckenaer
+has assured us, lavishes on chosen human heads love unattracted, and
+hate unprovoked? We must look well about us ere fixing the imputation.
+Spirits, upon the other hand, undoubtedly there are, and those of not a
+few orders, fairies of one or another description being amongst them,
+who exert, in the choice of their human favourites, a discrimination
+challenging no light regard.
+
+A host of traditions, liberally scattered over a field, of which,
+perhaps, Ireland is one extremity and China the other, now plainly and
+emphatically declare, and now, after a venturous interpretation, may be
+understood to point out, _simplicity of will_ and _kindness of heart_ as
+titles in the human being to the favour of the spirits. At times a
+brighter beam irradiates such titles, to which holiness, purity, and
+innocence, are seen to set their seal. We cull a few instances, warning
+the reader, that, although of our best, he will possibly find them a
+mere working upwards to the most perfect which we have it in our power
+to bring before him in the beautiful tale of Maud.
+
+Amongst the searchers who seem to have been roused into activity by the
+German traditions of the brothers Grimm, Ludwig Bechstein takes
+distinguished place for the diligence with which he has collected
+different districts of Germany. Our inquiry shall owe him the two
+following
+
+
+TRADITIONS OF THE GRABFELD.
+
+No. LVII. _The little Cherry-Tree upon Castle Raueneck._
+
+"There prevails, concerning the ruins of the old hill-castle Raueneck, a
+quite similar tradition to that which holds of the like named ruined
+strength near Baden, in Austria. There lies yet buried here a vast
+treasure, over which a spirit, debarred from repose, keeps watch,
+anxiously awaiting deliverance. But who is he that can and shall
+actually lift this treasure and free the spirit? Upon the wall there
+grows a cherry seedling that shall one day become a tree; and the tree
+shall be cut down, and out of it a cradle made. He that, being a
+Sunday's child, is rocked in this cradle, will grow up, but only
+provided that he have kept himself virginally pure and chaste, _at some
+noontide hour_ set free the spirit, lift the treasure, and become
+immeasurably rich; so as he shall be able to rebuild Castle Raueneck and
+all the demolished castles in the neighbourhood round. If the plant
+wither, or if a storm break it, then must the spirit again wait until
+once more a cherry stone, brought by a bird to the top of the lofty
+wall, shoot and put forth leaves, and haply grow to a tree."
+
+
+No. LXII. _The Hollow Stone._
+
+"In the wood near Altenstein there stands a high rock. The inhabitants
+of the neighbourhood say that this rock is hollow within, and filled
+with treasure in great store from the olden time. At certain seasons and
+hours, it is given _to Sunday children_ to find the rock doors open, or
+to open them with _the lucky flower_."
+
+The singular superstition of spiritual favour fixing itself upon the
+human child, consecrated, as it were, by the hallowed light upon which
+the eyes first open, will shortly return upon us in _The Fairies'
+Sabbath_.
+
+Lo! where, from the bountiful hand of the Brothers Grimm, fall two
+bright dewdrop of tradition upon the pure opening flower of childhood.
+
+
+GERMAN TRADITIONS.
+
+NO. CLIX. _The Treasure at Soest._
+
+"In the time of the Thirty Years' war, there was to be seen standing not
+far from the town of Soest, in Westphalia, an old ruin, of which the
+tradition ran that there was an iron trunk there, full of money, kept by
+a black dog and a bewitched maiden. The grandfathers and grandmothers
+Who are gone, used to tell that a strange nobleman shall one day arrive
+in the country, deliver the maiden, and open the chest with a fiery key.
+They said that divers itinerant scholars and exorcists had, within the
+memory of man, betaken themselves thither to dig, but been in so strange
+sort received and dismissed, that no one since further had list to the
+adventure, especially after their publishing that the treasure might be
+lifted of none who had once taken woman's milk. It was not long since a
+little girl from their village had led her few goats to feed about the
+very spot; one of which straying amongst the ruins, she had followed it.
+Within, in the castle court, was a damsel who questioned her what she
+did there: and when she was informed, pointing to a little basket of
+cherries, further said, 'It is good; therefore take of that thou see'st
+before thee, with thy goat and all, and go; and come not again, neither
+look behind, that a harm befall thee not.' Upon this the frightened
+child caught up seven cherries, and made her way in alarm out of the
+ruins. The cherries turned, in her hand, to money."
+
+
+NO. CLX. _The Welling Silver._
+
+"In February of the year 1605, in the reign of Henry Julius, Duke of
+Brunswick, at a mile's distance from Quedlinburg, where it is called _at
+the Dale_, it happened that a poor peasant sent his daughter into the
+next shaw to pick up sticks for fuel. The girl took for this use a
+larger basket upon her head, and a smaller in her hand; and when she had
+filled them both and was going home, a mannikin clad all in white came
+towards her, and asked:--
+
+"'What art carrying there?'
+
+"'Gathered sticks,' the girl made answer, 'for heating and cooking.'
+
+"'Empty the wood out,' said further the little manling, 'take thy basket
+and follow me. I shall show thee something that is better and more
+profitable than thy sticks.'
+
+"He then took her by the hand, and led her back again to a knoll, and
+showed her a place which might be of two ordinary tables' breadth of a
+fair pure silver, being smaller and larger coins of a moderate
+thickness, with a image stamped like a Virgin Mary, and all round an
+impress of exceedingly old writing. As the silver _welled up_, as it
+were, abundantly out of the ground, the little girl was terrified and
+drew back, neither would she empty out the sticks from her small
+hand-basket. Accordingly, the little man in white himself did so, filled
+the basket with the money, and gave it back to the little damsel with
+saying, 'That shall be better for thee than thy sticks.' She was
+confounded and took it; but upon the mannikin's requiring that she
+should likewise empty out her larger basket and take silver therein, she
+refused and said--'That she must carry fuel home too; for there were
+little children at home who must have a warm room, and there must be
+wood ready likewise for cooking.' This contented the manling, who said,
+'Well, then, go; take it all home,' and thereupon disappeared.
+
+"The girl carried the basket of silver home, and told what had happened
+to her. The boors now ran flocking with pickaxes and other tools, and
+would have their share of the treasure, but none of them was able to
+find the spot where the silver had welled out.
+
+"The Prince of Brunswick had a pound of the coined silver brought him,
+as did moreover a burgess of Halberstadt, N. Everkan, purchase the
+like."
+
+The quick-sighted reader will not easily have missed detecting the
+sudden effect produced upon the two spirits by THE TRUTHFUL
+RIGHT-MINDEDNESS OF THE TWO LITTLE GIRLS.
+
+Correspondingly, James Grimm, from surveying collectively the Teutonic
+traditions of bewitched or mysteriously hidden treasure, says--
+
+"To the lifting of the treasure is required _silence_ and _innocence_.
+* * * Innocent children's hands are able to lay hold upon it, as to draw
+the lot. * * * Who has viciously stained himself cannot approach it."{M}
+
+Two short instances more from the copious fraternal collection, and we
+have done. With a temper of pure childlike antiquity, they express in
+the persons of the dwarfs--_Teutonic approximative, fairies_--the
+sympathy of the spirits with unstained and innocent human manners; and
+may, if the traditions which exhibit the fairies under a cloud of sin
+and sorrow should have been felt by the reader as at all grating upon
+his old love of them, help to soothe and reconcile him by a soft gleam
+of illumination, here lingering as in a newly revealed Golden Age of his
+own.
+
+
+GERMAN TRADITIONS.
+
+No. CXLVII. _The Dwarfs upon the Tree._
+
+"In the summer, the dwarfs often came trooping from the cliffs down into
+the valley, and joined either with help, or as lookers-on at least, the
+human inhabitants at their work, especially the mowers, in hay-harvest.
+They, then and there, seated themselves at their ease and pleasantly,
+upon the long and thick arm of a maple in the embowering shade. But once
+there came certain evil-disposed persons, who, in the night, sawed the
+bough through, so that it held but weakly on to the trunk; and when the
+unsuspecting creatures, upon the morrow, settled themselves down upon
+it, the bough cracked in two, the dwarfs tumbled to the ground, were
+heartily laughed at, fell into violent anger, and cried aloud--
+
+    'O, how is the heaven high and long!
+    And falsehood waxen on earth so strong!
+    Here to-day, and for ever away!'
+
+They kept their word, and never again made their appearance in the
+country."
+
+
+No. CXLVIII. _The Dwarfs upon the Crag Stone._
+
+"It was the wont of the dwarflings to seat themselves upon a great crag
+stone, and from thence to watch the haymakers; but a few mischievous
+fellows kindled a fire upon the stone, made it red-hot, and swept away
+embers and ashes. Morning came, and with it the tiny folk, who burned
+themselves pitiably. They exclaimed in high anger--
+
+    'O wicked world! O wicked world!'
+
+cried vengeance, and vanished for evermore!"
+
+We have shown,--1. The Anti-christian character imputed by tradition to
+the fairies. 2. The occasional dependence of the more powerful spirits
+upon the less powerful human beings; and, 3. The strong affectionate
+leaning in the will of the spirits towards moral human excellence. Of
+the _ability_ which, in virtue of this excellence, the human creature
+possesses _to help_, Maud must, for the present, be permitted to stand
+for the sole, as she is beyond all comparison our best, example.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The book of Ernst Willkomm takes a position in strong contrast to the
+corresponding works due to the Brothers Grimm, and other great gatherers
+of legendary lore. He has a personal poetic interest in the tales which
+they have not. He presents himself as the expositor, not only of his
+native superstitions, but also, zealously, of the Upper Lusatian
+manners. Himself cradled amongst the mountains, he has drawn with
+infinite pains, and by slow degrees, as he best could, from the deep
+interior life of the people, their jealously withheld credences, and the
+traditions which are sacredly associated with every nook of their craggy
+district.
+
+"The tract of country," says Willkomm in his Preface, "the true
+Highlands of Upper Lusatia, called by the inhabitants themselves the
+Upper Country, to which the tales are native, is one very narrowly
+circumscribed. It amounts to scarcely ten square (German) miles. I have,
+however, selected it for my undertaking," he continues, "because it is
+intimately familiar to me; because the innermost character of the small
+population who inhabit it is confidentially known to me; because there
+is hardly a road or a path in the country which, on the darkest night, I
+could not find. Interesting, romantic, magnificent is the piece of earth
+which, at the confines of Bohemia, runs over hilly heights and lofty
+hill, tops on to the high mountain-chain. But still more interesting, I
+maintain with confidence, is the race of people."
+
+It may seem strange at first, that the wise and profound explorers whom
+we have so often had occasion to cite, the brothers Grimm, should have
+failed to present us with any traditions from a corner of ground around
+which they have so successfully laboured. We have hinted already at the
+sufficient reason of the blank. Willkomm tells us, that the rest of the
+world, which "the cabin'd cribb'd" Lusatian has himself learned to call
+"_o' th' outside_," has taken no cognisance of his beautiful hill
+country. Lusatia has a literature of her own, and no one is acquainted
+with it. "She had, and partly still has, her own, similar to the
+Imperial cities, exceeding free and energetic municipal constitution."
+But no one cares about it. Celebrated and learned historians, questioned
+by Willkomm on the subject, have acknowledged their ignorance in regard
+to the character and laws of its small people. A more cogent reason,
+however, lies nearer home, in the impenetrable reserve and
+self-insulation of the mountaineers themselves. Willkomm confesses that
+their coldness towards strangers is unparalleled; they have no
+confidence whatever in foreigners; "and let a Lusatian but suspect," he
+says, "that you come a-fishing to him, and to listen out his privacies;
+then may you," as we may render the Lusatian proverb, "'Lose yourself
+before you find his mushroom.'" He will communicate to strangers little
+of his manners and customs; of his superstitious practices, his sacredly
+guarded traditions, absolutely nothing. "He is unpliant,
+self-sequestered, coarse-grained; beyond all conception easy and
+phlegmatic."
+
+Every genuine people, however, is rough-handed; and Willkomm proceeds,
+after an ingenuous description of their defects, to vindicate the
+natural heart of his brother highlanders. "Let him amongst the gentle,"
+he proudly exclaims, "who desire to hear for once something novel,
+something right vigorous, sit down beside me. He need not fear that
+morals and decency will be cast out of doors. No, no! The people are
+thoroughly moral and chaste at heart, if they are somewhat coarse in
+expression;--ay, and tender withal. Their imagination glides as
+delighted along fragrant threads of gold, as it eagerly descends amongst
+the powers of darkness, amidst the dance of will-o'-the-wisps and
+horrible ghost-reels. They are, at once, a blunt, good-hearted,
+aboriginal stamp of men, with all the advantages and deficiencies
+appurtenant."
+
+The Lusatian traditions, brought to light in Germany by Ernst Willkomm,
+and now first made known to Englishmen in these pages, were collected by
+our author, as we have already observed, with difficulty and labour. A
+native only of the mountain district could obtain from the lips of the
+people their sacred and well-preserved lore, and even he not easily. The
+tales were narrated from time to time in the spinning-room, or in the
+so-called "_Hell_" of the boor or weaver, without any determinate
+connexion. The listener gathered mere fragments, and these not fully,
+when, thrown off his guard, he ventured to interrupt the speaker. Each
+narrator conceives his tale differently, and one individual is apt to
+garnish the experience of many, or what he has heard from others, with a
+little spice of his own invention. Further, the details of ten or twelve
+occurrences are associated with one single spot; all of which appear
+externally different, and yet internally are connected closely, "so that
+when comprehended in one whole picture, and not till then, they form
+what, in a strict and literary sense, we are accustomed to call a
+TRADITION or TALE. I, at least," adds Ernst Willkomm, "in such an
+upgathering of these disjointed tones of tradition, could only
+accomplish something that satisfied me by searching out the profound
+hidden meaning of the people's poesy: and I have at last gone no further
+than attempting to compose these detached fragments of tradition,
+Lusatianwise and popularwise, from the people's own telling, into a
+whole. Upon this scheme only could alike the poetical worth of the
+tales, and the portraiture of the race, be rescued and rightly secured."
+
+That the traditions have been rescued and maintained in their purity and
+truth; coloured, no doubt, in the telling, and that unavoidably, under
+the pencil of their educated renderer--we have every reason to believe
+from internal evidences. Maintaining their own originality, they
+correspond in the main to the traditions which come to us from almost
+every known country on the globe, concurring to attest the intimate and
+necessary relation of the human soul with what would seem to be the
+remnants of an ancient and universal mythology. They bear upon their
+front the minute impress of reality, not to be mistaken, and beyond the
+mere invention of the poet. They are a valuable addition to the common
+stock. The style of Willkomm is clear, and to the point; almost always,
+as he says, in characterizing the speech of his own Upper Lusatians,
+"hitting the nail upon the head." It breathes of his own mountain air,
+and possesses a charm, a vigour, and freshness, which we fear that we
+shall endeavour in vain to transfer to the following version:--
+
+
+THE FAIRIES' SABBATH.
+
+"Children born of a Sunday, and bastards, inherit the gift, denied to
+other human beings, of beholding spirits, of talking with them, and, if
+opportunity befriend, of right intimately communing with them. This was
+a truth experienced by pretty Maud, the stone-mason's only daughter,
+who, a hundred years ago or so, led, at the foot of the mountain-ridge
+yonder, a quiet home-loving life. Maud was born, of all days in the
+year, upon Easter Sunday, which is said to be a truly lucky day for a
+mortal not otherwise heavily burdened with earthly blessings. In this
+last respect, Maud had no reasonable cause of complaint; for her father,
+by the labour of his hands, painfully earned just as much as went to a
+frugal housekeeping, and the mother kept the little family in order; so
+that things looked always neat and clean enough in the abode of the
+stone-mason.
+
+"All Sunday's children are very wise, and, if they are maidens, always
+uncommonly beautiful. Maud was, as a child, admired by every body; nay,
+it once went so far, as that a rich and beautiful, but very
+sickly-looking, lady of quality, who was travelling over the mountain in
+a fine carriage, tried hard to coax the poor mother out of her pretty
+Maud with a large sum of gold. When the maiden had fairly stepped out of
+child's shoes, and was obliged to seek employment away from home, there
+was a mighty ado. It was for all the world as if a fairy was going
+through the place, when Maud, early in the morning, strolled along the
+banks of the murmuring stream on her road to a wealthy weaver's. The
+young fellows saluted the fair one as they greeted no other. No one
+ventured, however, to accost her with unseemly speeches--a kind of
+thing, by the way, that young men at all times are very prone to. Maud
+was treated by every one like a saint. Maidens even, her equals in
+years, prized her highly; and in no way envied her the general
+admiration. This might be founded in the behaviour itself of Maud. More
+forward to oblige, to do good offices, more sweetly behaved, was no one.
+And then she had such a grace with it all, so innocent an eye, that when
+you looked into it, heaven itself seemed to shine out upon you. In
+short, whoever spoke with Maud, or might walk a few steps with her, that
+man was for the whole day another and a happier creature, and whatever
+he undertook prospered with him.
+
+"It would have been strange indeed had such a maiden lacked suitors, or
+not very early found a sympathizing heart. Now, as for the suitors,
+there was no dearth of them, Heaven knows! for there were youngsters of
+the queerest fashion. Many without manners, though right well to look
+at; others wealthy, but without heart or soul; and others again ready to
+burst with rage, if any one but touched his hat to the beautiful
+Matilda. To all such, the innocent child had not a word to say; for she
+knew well enough, that scant blessing waits on marriages of such a make.
+There was but one young fellow who could be said to please her
+thoroughly, and he was neither rich nor singularly handsome. She had
+become acquainted with him at the weaver's, where he, like herself, went
+daily to work. Albert was industrious, well-behaved, and spoke so
+sensibly and right-heartedly, that Maud ever listened to him with
+delight. Truth to tell, he simply put her own feelings into words. A
+very little time passed, before she engaged herself secretly to Albert;
+and all would have gone on happily and well with them, had the two
+lovers but possessed just money enough to scrape a few matters together,
+and to set up housekeeping. But both were poor--poor as church mice;
+and, just for that reason, the father of Maud did not look very
+favourably upon the settled love-affair of his daughter. He would have
+been better satisfied if the silly thing, as he called her, had given
+her hand to one of the rich suitors, who would have given their ears to
+please her. Since, however, once for all, the mischief was done, he,
+like a good man, determined to cause his only child no heartache, and
+let matters get on as they might. One condition only he insisted
+upon--which was, that Maud should for the future work under her father's
+roof; Albert, meanwhile, having leave every evening to pay his visits
+there. In this arrangement the two lovers cordially acquiesced; for,
+young as they were, they could well afford a little waiting. Meantime,
+it must be their endeavour, by incessant labour and careful economy, to
+save up as much as they needed for setting themselves up in their humble
+dwelling. So they lived on from day to day in quiet content. And so, no
+doubt, many days, and many, would have glided by, had not a singular
+occurrence disturbed the profound tranquillity. This was the way of
+it:--
+
+"Maud's father, the stone-mason, found it too much for him, with his
+heavy work and all, when, at noon, he had the long journey to make
+between the stone quarry and his own home. Besides, the fine stone-dust
+had brought on an inflammation of the eyes, so that he was obliged to
+avoid the glare of the sun: no easy thing for him to do, since his road
+homeward lay over a green high hill, upon which the sun beat
+scorchingly: wherefore, also, the people have given it the name of the
+Sun's hill. It was made, in consequence, Maud's duty to take daily her
+father's homely dinner to the stone quarry--a road which, although
+toilsome, was by no means disagreeable to her; inasmuch as Albert often
+found means to get leave of absence, and then always escorted her a part
+of the way.
+
+"Over the Sun's hill nobody went willingly alone, either by day or by
+night; for the tale ran, that to many persons wondrous things had
+happened. Some had even caught, they said, their death-sickness there.
+True it is, any more definite report was not easily obtained. Only so
+much had Maud heard from her mother, that the GOOD PEOPLE were said, a
+very, very long time ago, to have vanished into the green hill; just
+when, in all the places around, so many churches had sprung up, and the
+sound of bells rang over mountain and wood. These reports
+notwithstanding, Maud, unconscious of evil, took her daily walk over the
+Sun's hill, where indeed no one ever encountered her; so that the
+splendid landscape looked often desolate and awful in the hot midday's
+glow.{N} For this reason it was always a great relief to her, when, from
+the top of the steep hill, she saw Albert ascending towards her. She
+then felt herself more secure, and went with better spirits forward. It
+was near Whitsuntide--the father sickly and more peevish than ever, and
+work bringing in no supply; for provisions had risen fearfully in price
+in consequence of the previous unusually hard winter. Now, as often as
+Maud brought the dinner to her father, he complained bitterly, and
+reproached her harshly for her folly; so that the poor child was almost
+heartbroken, pined, and led a melancholy life.
+
+"She most deeply felt her trouble, when at noon she took her lonely
+journey along the desolate path that led to the quarry. Then she often
+shed the bitterest tears, and prayed to God to show her an outlet, and
+to have pity on their poverty.
+
+"One day--it was just a week to Whitsun-eve--it happened that as she
+went upon her way, silently and in sorrow, and in vain looked for the
+beloved figure of Albert, she suddenly heard such a marvellously clear
+sound of a bell that she stood still to hearken. It was upon the mid
+summit of the Sun's hill; the air perfectly calm, and around, far and
+near, not a creature to be seen. From the distant hamlet in the valley
+clinked only the sharp tones of the whetting scythe. Maud believed that
+she had had a ringing in her ears, and walked on. The singular sound was
+repeated, resembling the tone exactly of a small silver bell.
+
+"'How strange it is!' said the maiden to herself, casting her eyes upon
+the ground; and in the soft moss, right at her feet, she perceived
+something glistening like a fragment of blue glass. She stooped and
+picked up what in colour and shape resembled a blue harebell, or, as it
+is called, _Fairy's hat_; only, where the stalk should have been, there
+was a so small and elegantly-wrought little silver bell, that Maud could
+not help laughing outright.
+
+"'Bless me!' she exclaimed, 'who can have made that comical thing?' and
+thereupon she shook the flower, and the wee little bell began to sound
+so prodigiously clear, that the poor damsel let it fall, affrighted.
+
+"'What are thy commands?' asked immediately a slender bright voice.
+Before her stood a delicate creature, not higher than her hand; but of a
+symmetry of person that was perfectly astonishing. His small expressive
+head, round which a grove of curls, like crisped sunbeams, played, was
+just of a size, that the flower with the wondrous bell served it for a
+covering. For Maud saw how he put on the sparkling hat with much
+gravity, and at the same time, very knowingly, giving himself a right
+bold and dandy appearance.
+
+"'What are you then?' asked Maud trembling.
+
+"The little fellow made a smart bow, 'Thy servant, with thy good leave,'
+replied the strange being. 'I and my people have known thee a long time.
+We have heard thy complainings; and because thou hast a kind heart, and
+lovest the flowers, and dost not wantonly pull them to pieces, am I
+charged to do thee a pleasure, provided thou wilt do the like for me and
+my people.'
+
+"'Indeed! you pretty little original!' answered Maud, 'who are thy
+people? I'----
+
+"'Hush!' interrupted the little one, with a repelling gesture of the
+hand and a very impressive contraction of the brow. 'These are questions
+which I cannot answer, and, what is more, cannot suffer. It is not civil
+to put questions of the WHENCE and the WHAT. If thou wilt trust me, and
+I should think that I have the air of a proper gentleman, then resolve
+without delay whether thou wilt do me a pleasure for a reasonable
+compensation.'
+
+"'Dear little sir!' replied Maud, overcome, 'I am not mistrustful, but
+so beset and afflicted that I really do not know how I am to understand
+this strange business. Do not make sport of me, good child; or, if thou
+art a spirit, I beseech thee have compassion on me, and let me go my way
+in peace. My father is waiting for me. His little bit of dinner is
+drying in the heat of the sun.'
+
+"'Silly prattle!' interrupted the little one. 'Thy old father lies under
+the rock side, and snores till the fern leaves waggle over him. The good
+man's dinner will not take much harm. However, that thou mayest see how
+good and honourable my intentions are, take thou my little cap. Be it
+the pledge which I shall redeem from thee with a compensation. Only
+resolve quickly now whether thou wilt trust me. My time is short.'
+
+"Maud hesitated still. She held the miraculous cap with its silver bell
+in her hand. The desire to get rid of the _uncanny_ creature the sooner
+the better, and also, perhaps, a particle of female curiosity wrung from
+her her consent.
+
+"'Good!' said the little one in great glee. 'Now, hear me! This day
+week, upon Whitsun-eve, as ye call it, do thou come here in the evening,
+as soon as the moon has mounted this green hill. Be not afraid; for only
+good will befall thee. As soon as thou hast reached this spot, ring with
+the little bell which I have given thee; and thou wilt not repent having
+been serviceable to the good people.'
+
+"Scarcely had the little man given Maud her direction, when the
+astonished maiden remarked that the ground before her feet flashed like
+molten gold, sunk deeper and deeper, and in this glowing gulf the
+extraordinary being vanished, like a silver star. The whole phenomenon
+lasted only a few seconds, then every thing was again at rest as before.
+The little bell-flower only assured Matilda that she did not dream, and
+that something unusual had really taken place.
+
+"Possessed with her feelings, she took her father his meal; and found
+him, in sooth, fast asleep under the wall of rock. Of her adventure she
+said nothing, but carried the pledge of the little man well secured in
+her bosom. And yet how was it possible for her to persevere in her
+silence? It is true, Maud knew not if the communication of the incident
+was permitted her. She put her trust, however, in the pledge; and, since
+she had not been commanded to silence, she hoped to be justified in
+making Albert acquainted with what had happened.
+
+"She did it with fear and trembling, and produced to her astonished
+lover, as witness, the flower which had withered in the warmth of her
+bosom. Singularly enough, let her shake it as often as she would, the
+little bell could not be made to ring.
+
+"'And you really mean to go?' asked Albert, when he had a little
+recovered from his surprise. 'I should like to see you! To get flirting
+with ghosts and hobgoblins, or whatever else the devils may be. No! go
+you don't. You will throw that stupid thing into the running stream.
+_There_ it won't hurt you; and upon that confounded Sun's hill you will
+please never to set foot more.'
+
+"'I have given my word, Albert; and I must keep my word let what will
+happen.'
+
+"'Very well,' said the youngster, 'that's enough! Then every thing's at
+an end between us--clean at an end!'
+
+"'How you take on now! For whom else, but for you, have I accepted this
+pledge? For whom else have I so long endured--so long borne my father's
+upbraidings? Dost thou think that, had I wished it, I could not long
+since have wedded? And is it my fault that I am a Sunday's child? Is it
+not said that all Sunday's children are born to good-luck? If you hinder
+me from keeping my word with this miraculous being--and the luck that is
+decreed me is meanwhile scattered to all the four winds--you may settle
+it with the spirit and face his anger; for I wash my hands in
+innocency.'
+
+"Maud began to cry, kissed the shrunken leaf, and hid it again in her
+bosom. Albert was not at ease. He was annoyed at the untoward encounter,
+a touch of jealousy disquieted and distressed his soul, and yet he
+could not say that the girl was in the wrong. At length he said,
+dispiritedly--
+
+"'Go through with your folly then. I will, however, be near you, and if
+the moon-spun rascal takes improper liberties, I will snap his neck,
+though mine too should crack for it.'
+
+"For the first time in his life, Albert parted with Maud in an
+ill-humour, and the poor girl herself passed a bad and restless night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Mother,' said Maud a few days afterwards, whilst she was getting the
+father's dinner ready for her, 'did you ever see a fairy?'
+
+"'God forbid, girl!' cried the worthy and somewhat timid woman, crossing
+herself. 'How came that into thy head? What hast thou to do with fairies
+and elves, dwarfs and wights? A good Christian has no business with such
+things of nothing, or worse.'
+
+"'Why, aunt Nelly was telling the other day such surprising stories of
+the people!' Matilda replied; 'but she did not drop a hint of our having
+reason to fear any harm from them. She even called them the GOOD
+PEOPLE.'
+
+"'Daughter!' the mother seriously rejoined, 'we call them so that they
+may do us no mischief. It is safer for us to leave them quite alone.'
+
+"'Can it be true, mother, that they have buried themselves under the
+Sun's hill, and keep house and home there? Aunt Nelly would have it that
+in the still of the night, by bright moonlight, you may hear them
+singing wonderful tunes.'
+
+"The mother fixed her eyes upon Maud, set the old man's morsel of food
+upon the hearth stone, and, taking her daughter by the hand, led her to
+the stove, and seated her upon the family bench.
+
+"'Listen!' she said, 'and take thou heed to my words. The good people,
+or the fairies, which is their proper name, although they do not like to
+be called so, do indeed live, though few have the gift of beholding
+them, in all the mountains and valleys round about. Very, very seldom,
+and only upon the most extraordinary occasions, do they ever show
+themselves. When they do, it betokens luck to him that sees them, and
+brings it, if he quietly fulfill their wishes. These are certainly often
+out of the way, just like the people, who are strange and
+incomprehensible enough. Thank Goodness, they never crossed my path! but
+your godmother Helen, she had many, many years ago, a curious adventure
+with the fairies.'
+
+"'Really, mother! Aunt Nelly spoken to the fairies! O pray, dear mother,
+tell me quickly and fully the whole story!'
+
+"'First run to the quarry, and take your father his dinner,' said the
+mother. 'I will try in the meanwhile to remember all about it; and if
+you will promise me to say not a word to any one--not even to your
+godmother, you shall hear what your aunt told me at that time.'
+
+"Maud very naturally promised every thing, took herself off, and was
+back again as quickly as possible. She did not loiter for a moment upon
+the road, did not even notice the signals which her Albert made as he
+came towards her from the distance. She could think only of her mother's
+story.
+
+"'Here I am again, mother!' she said breathless. 'I call that running! I
+should say that the king's trained runners could do no better. But now
+begin, dear mother. I will listen to you as if you were saying mass.'
+
+"'As well as I can remember,' proceeded the mother, 'the case of the
+fairies is a very singular one. Your godmother Helen disclosed to me, it
+is true, just the chief particulars only; but they were quite enough to
+let you understand something of the good people. They told her that,
+once in every fifty or a hundred years, they have a kind of church
+meeting, which from old time they call a Sabbath. For you must know,
+child, that the fairies are properly Jews,{O} right down old chaffering
+Jews, from _Olim's_ time.'{P}
+
+"'O bless me! Jews!' cried Maud, frightened out of her wits.
+
+"'Yes, yes, Jews and nothing else,' repeated the mother warmly; 'and
+that's the very reason why, up to this day, they are so given to
+trafficking in precious stones, pearls, gold, silver, and artful
+jewellery. And when they give themselves a holiday, they go running
+about above-ground, making presents to new-born babies if they are very
+lovely, and playing all kinds of odd pranks. According to your godmother
+Helen, the history of the fairies runs thus:--The whole people, and
+their name is LEGION, were formerly in heaven.'
+
+"'In heaven!' cried Maud, interrupting her mother, 'then why didn't the
+silly creatures stay there? Where else do they hope to be more snug and
+comfortable than in heaven! seated under the fur-cap of father Abraham!'
+
+"'How you prate!' said the mother, checking her. 'If you do not
+instantly tie up your tongue, and think more respectfully of the good
+people, I shall not tell you another syllable.'
+
+"'O pray! I will be quite quiet!'
+
+"'Very well. Then the fairies were a long while ago in heaven,'
+continued the mother. 'At that time they were part of the angelic host,
+were fine handsome people, went about in glittering robes, and sat at
+God's right hand. Now, it befell that the chief angel of all got
+dissatisfied with the old management of affairs in heaven, stirred up
+discontent, tampered with the half of all the angels, and tried, with
+their help, to thrust out the old rightful Master of heaven and earth
+from his bright throne. But it fared with him as it does with most
+rebels, and rightly should with all. Our Father, in his glory, got the
+better of Satan, took him by the hair of his head, and pitched him
+head-foremost out of heaven into the pit of darkness, and his whole
+sharkish band of retainers after him. Amongst these, however, a good
+many had given ear to his fine tales, and had followed him
+thoughtlessly, although they were not properly wicked at heart. They
+repented their hasty work, even whilst they were falling deeper and
+deeper into gloom. They put up a prayer of repentance to their Lord, and
+implored his forgiveness; and because God saw that they were not rotten
+at the core, he hearkened to their petition, and rescued them out of the
+claws of Satan. But since they were not worthy to be received into
+heaven again, the Lord banished them back to the earth, with leave given
+them to dwell either within it, or in upper air, upon the hills and
+rocks. You must know that, during their fall, a surprising change had
+gone on in the transgressors. They had kept their forms of
+light--dwindled in size, however, immensely. And since they could not
+now become men,{Q} and had fooled away their celestial bliss, the Lord
+granted them a clear field, with power, until the last day, to make
+themselves worthy by good deeds of being re-admitted into heaven. And
+thus they have their abodes all about the open hills and the meadow
+flats; and only once in every fifty or a hundred years, upon
+Whitsun-eve, are they permitted, in their own way, to keep the Sabbath.
+And then they can only do it by loading a truly good human being with
+the blessings of fortune. For thus only can they hope to expiate their
+great offence in the sight of Heaven.'
+
+"'And did godmother Helen hear this from the good people themselves?'
+asked Maud, as her mother ceased. 'Was she, then, lucky?'
+
+"'No,' said the mother, 'Nelly was not lucky, because she did not
+observe the commandment of the fairies.'
+
+"'Well, if one of the creatures came to me, and should lay a command
+upon me, I would keep a quiet tongue within my head, and do readily what
+he wished.'
+
+"'Foolish chatter!' said the mother chidingly. 'Thou dost offend the
+quiet people with thy empty babbling for they can hear every thing that
+human lips utter.'
+
+"Maud went singing to her work, and long mused upon her timid mother's
+narrative. What she had heard filled her with so eager a curiosity that
+she could scarcely wait for Whitsun-eve, although she took care to let
+no one observe it. From time to time she stole a glance at her
+bell-flower, tried to make it ring with shaking, but failed to bring, by
+any means, one sound from the delicate little bell.
+
+"With a longing dread, Maud saw the promised Whitsun-eve draw near. It
+was not easy to leave the parental roof at nightfall. The enamoured
+maiden, however, found a becoming excuse which placed a few hours at her
+disposal. She went her way with the fairy cap in her bosom, ascended the
+green summit of the Sun's hill, now glimmering in the moonlight, and
+drew from its hiding-place the pledge that had been entrusted to her. As
+if by a miracle, the little flower, touched by the moon's silvery glow,
+expanded in an instant. Almost spontaneously it began to oscillate in
+her hand, and shrill and clear the little bell rang, so that it
+resounded into the adjacent wood, whence a soft echo melodiously
+responded.
+
+"The voice of Albert, who with vigorous strides was ascending the hill
+to look close after the adventure of his beloved, reached her ear. But
+the senses of Matilda were engrossed by the fairies, and to his repeated
+calls she gave no answer. And she had good reason. For scarcely had the
+little bell rung, when a flash, like a sparkling snake, darted here and
+there upon the grass, and out of the quivering light there arose a small
+and exceedingly beautiful creature, whom Maud immediately recognised for
+the lord of the bell-flower. The little fellow was in Spanish costume.
+He wore a doublet of sky-blue butterflies' wings, over which dropped a
+magnificent lace collar woven of the gossamer. The delicate feet were
+covered with transparent shoes, made of dew-drops.
+
+"Maud stood mute with astonishment, as well at the tiny smallness of the
+fairy, as at his truly classical beauty. The little creature was, in his
+way, a perfect Adonis.
+
+"'Now, my trembler, art thou resolute to follow me?' whispered the fairy
+in a note that came to her like a note of the harmonicon. 'Restore me
+the pledge, for we have no time to lose.'
+
+"Maud gave back the bell-flower; the elf seized it in his little
+diaphanous alabaster floral hands, waved it three times round his
+dazzling head, so that the little bell sent a peal round the hills, and
+then threw it upon the ground. It dilated immediately, took the shape of
+a galley with masts and yards, although no larger than the moon's disk
+as we see it from the earth. In the same instant the elf sat in the
+little vessel, which trembled at every step, drew a rush from his
+girdle, and steered with it in the air.
+
+"'Now, come, step in!' he called to Maud.
+
+"'In that!' exclaimed the maiden astounded. 'Heaven love you, there's
+hardly room for my two feet! Besides, it will tear under me like a
+poppy-leaf, for I verily believe it is made of mere air.'
+
+"'Spare your remarks, Miss Pert!' returned the fairy, 'and step in. I
+pledge my honour, and will give up my hope of salvation, if this bark of
+our master's do not carry thee safely over half the earth ball in less
+than no time.'
+
+"It might be that Maud now stood under the mysterious power of a spell,
+or that she was urged by an invincible curiosity. Enough: she placed her
+feet in the quaking gondola, which swelled aloft like an air-balloon
+until it reached the maiden's shoulders. Now the ground sank away, and
+Matilda's senses failed her in the dizzy speed with which she was
+hurried down into the bowels of the earth. At this precise moment Albert
+reached the top of the hill. He had only the pleasure of looking after
+them, and hardly that; for it appeared to him as if every thing about
+him was immersed in a sea of azure so resplendently clear, that he was
+for several minutes robbed of his sight.
+
+"From the magical slumber into which the child had fallen during her
+descent into the kingdom of the fairies, she was awakened by a witching
+harmony of sounds. She opened her eyes, and observed, with not a little
+wonder, that she was lying upon a bed or mat, or whatsoever else it
+might be called, of costly emerald. Over her head nodded marvellous
+flowers of the most glowing colours; butterflies, of unseen splendour,
+flitted on cooling pinions around her couch, and fanned her with an air
+so sweet, so invigorating, that the maiden had never breathed before
+with such delight. But with all the magnificence, all the spirit and
+splendour, every thing was quite other than upon the sunny earth above.
+The flowers and herbs glittered indeed; but they seemed to be juiceless,
+and looked as if formed of crystal. Even the butterflies had a peculiar
+motion, like that of an involuntary sleepwalker. Only the harmonious
+strains, which now rang louder and louder, more and more ravishing, were
+so ecstatic, so inviting to joyous devotion, that Maud would fain have
+shouted aloud for joy; but she felt that she could not speak, could not
+cry out, and sight, touch, and hearing, were more alive than ever.
+
+"Thus she lay for some time motionless, pleasingly intent upon the
+nodding flowers, the swarming butterflies. At length the winged
+multitude dispersed, and two slender fairy-forms approached her bed and
+beckoned her to arise and follow them.
+
+"Maud arose; and the fairies, who hardly reached up to her knee, taking
+her between them, conducted her through a gate of mother-of-pearl into
+an illimitable space, through which throng of countless millions of
+elves confusedly moved. The converse of these semi-spirits sounded in
+the distance harmonious, like perfect music. Notwithstanding the immense
+multitude, there was nothing of tumult, nothing of uproar. They stood
+all in the finest concord, and bent, waving their flower-caps
+gracefully, towards the abashed, astonished maiden. It bewildered Maud
+to see that not only overhead arched a star-bespangled sky, but likewise
+underneath her feet the same solemn starry splendour was revealed, as if
+the slight fairy people walked, between two heavens, upon the milkwhite
+vapour which rolled on under them like clouds. Every fairy had on glass
+or crystal shoes, if that which they wore on their feet might be so
+called. It is, however, possible that the exquisitely made limbs of
+these perplexing beings only deluded the eyes of the poor girl with such
+an appearance.
+
+"Nearly in the middle of the immeasurable arena rose a temple of gold,
+silver, and precious stones, which, with its lofty pillars reaching to
+the sky, was emblazoned in so wondrous a light, that, notwithstanding
+the extreme refulgence, it did not dazzle. Within this, upon a
+ceaselessly revolving sun-orb, stood the most beautiful and tallest of
+the fairies. In her golden hair gleamed stars. Joy and ecstasy radiated
+like a glory from her lovely pale face, and vapoury raiment concealed,
+but as with a breath, her incomparable figure. Towards her pressed the
+innumerable host; for the sublime creature might be the priestess of the
+united elfin race. Maud was carried forwards with them, that she might
+be a witness of the singular worship that was here solemnized. Not a
+word was spoken, no hymn was sung; there was but a looking-up of
+supplication, of trustfulness, in which all the fairies, turning round
+upon their sparkling little feet, took part. After a few minutes a
+joyful expression in the countenance of the worshippers proclaimed the
+happy issue of the Sabbath. The stars of the upper sky shot down like
+silver spangles, and hung suspended in the luminous hair of the fairies,
+giving them the appearance of carrying dancing lights on their heads. A
+loud, melodious, strain of rejoicing thrilled through the vast room. The
+radiant structure heaved and sank. Overhead a verdurous canopy of leaves
+vaulted itself; the elves, entwining arms and legs, flew in a lightning
+whirl around the high priestess and the dazzled Maud, who, unawares, had
+come close upon the lovely fairy.
+
+"In a little while the slender body-chain of elves gave way; they
+grouped themselves into numberless rows; every one took off the star
+from his head, and, tripping up, deposited it at the feet of the
+priestess, where they at length all united in composing themselves into
+a great gold-bright sphere, exactly resembling that upon which the high,
+officiating fairy had been borne round in the temple.
+
+"The elfin now extended her hand to Maud and said--
+
+"'We thank thee for the readiness with which thou hast followed my
+messenger into this our hidden kingdom. Thou hast, by thy presence,
+prospered our Sabbath festival. Receive, for thy reward, the gratitude
+of all the fairies; and bear with thee this gift in remembrance of this
+day.'
+
+"So speaking, she plucked the coronal of stars from her hair, stretched
+it out with both her hands, and hung it upon the head and neck of
+Matilda.
+
+"'Whenever thou art in trouble,' she continued, 'think of the good
+people; pull one of these stars, throw it in the air by the light of the
+moon, and whatsoever thou wishest, provided it be lawful, shall be
+granted thee.'
+
+"Maud would have stammered forth her thanks, but she felt herself still
+powerless to speak. A kiss of the fairy upon her forehead was the signal
+for breaking up. The good people once more waved their caps. The gondola
+floated by, Maud mounted it, and, as quickly as she had descended, was
+lifted up upon the earth again.
+
+"'There!' said the little pilot fairy, tying the supple rudder about the
+wrist of Maud, 'that is my wedding gift to you and Albert. Give him the
+half of it if he pouts; and--have a care--no blabbing!'
+
+"With that the gondola dissolved like a cloud in the air. The fairy
+vanished; and Maud lay alone upon the fragrant dewy grass of the Sun's
+hill.
+
+"Still all-amazed at what had happened, and not yet come rightly to
+herself, she slowly rose, intending to go home. It was then she
+perceived Albert, who, with folded arms, was staring wildly and savagely
+into the wood below. Matilda coughed.
+
+"'Why where, in the name of all that is holy, have you been dancing to?'
+was the not very tender greeting of her lover. 'I saw you standing there
+as I came up the hill; and then lightning and streams of fire were all
+about me, and here I have been full five minutes, running about in all
+directions, without being able to find a trace of you.'
+
+"'Only five minutes!' exclaimed Maud; 'that is extraordinary!'
+
+"'Yes; and, no offence to you, not altogether right,' answered Albert.
+'Did I not beg of you to wait for me?'
+
+"'That you might wring the fairy's neck for him?' said the maiden,
+laughing. 'Set yourself at ease, Albert; it is much better as it is.'
+
+"'What is?' screamed the youngster.
+
+"'Never mind! It is all done now; and indeed, dear boy, we shall neither
+of us repent it. Come, let us go home.'
+
+"'O ho!--_dear boy!_--Mighty wise and patronizing truly!'
+
+"'Well, then, good Albert,' said Matilda coaxingly; 'only come away, and
+don't be angry. In four weeks we shall be married.'
+
+"'In fo--ur wee--eeks!' stuttered Albert.
+
+"'Yes, and in three, if you like it better,' prated the overjoyed Maud.
+'The good people,' she added, almost inaudibly, 'have enabled us to
+marry. Therefore behave pretty, be quiet, and don't quarrel--or
+else--'_every thing is at an end between us--clean at an end!_' Don't
+you know that I am a Sunday's child, and am under the especial
+protection of these kind, little, powerful creatures?'
+
+"The jealous youth followed the maiden with reluctance. Whilst he
+walked, murmuring in an under-tone at her side, he noticed by the light
+of the full moon something flickering in Matilda's hair. He examined it
+more closely, and then stood still.
+
+"'What new fashion do you call that?' he asked in a voice of chagrin.
+'The idea of hanging dried mushrooms in one's hair! If you will only
+walk with that finery by daylight down to the brook, the children will
+run after you, and point at you with their finger.'
+
+"'Mushrooms!' replied Maud. 'Why, where are your eyes again?'
+
+"'Well, I suppose you don't mean to call them silver crowns? Thank
+Heaven, my eyes are good enough yet to see the difference between dried
+funguses and coined money!'
+
+"'They are glittering stars, sir,' said Maud, short and decided.
+
+"'O indeed!' returned Albert. 'Well, then, the next time I would
+recommend you to select some that shine rather brighter.'
+
+"The lovers had, in the meanwhile, reached the hut of the stone-mason.
+Albert entered with Matilda. The father lay asleep by the stove. The
+mother turned her spinning-wheel.
+
+"'Good-evening, mother!" said Albert. 'Have the goodness to tell that
+conceited girl there, that her headgear is the most miserable that ever
+was seen.'
+
+"'What!' said the old lady wondering, and with a shake of the head.
+'Maud has no other gear that I see, but her own beautiful hair, which
+may God long preserve to her!'
+
+"Instead of giving any answer, Albert would have set the daughter before
+her mother's eyes. But Maud had already, in the doorway, pulled off the
+fairy's gift, and turned pale as she saw that she had actually worn
+dried mushrooms on a string, twisted of withered rushes. Albert observed
+her perplexity, and laughed. He bantered her, and snatched two or three
+mushrooms from the chain, to hoard up for future sport. This was the
+token of their reconciliation. Maud, although very calmly, assured her
+lover, over and over again, that within a month their nuptials should
+take place. That the tired old man might not be disturbed, Albert went
+home early; and Maud hastened to put carefully away, for a while, the
+very meagre-looking fairy gifts.
+
+"On the following morning, Albert was off betimes to his work. Putting
+on his jacket, he heard something chinking within. His surprise was
+naturally great, knowing that he had no money there. He dived at once
+into his pocket, and drew out two large old gold pieces. Then he
+suddenly remembered, that the evening before he had pocketed the
+mushrooms which he had snatched away from Maud, and the most extravagant
+joy possessed him. He forgot his work and every thing else; started off,
+and ran, as fast as his legs could carry him, to the house of the
+stone-mason.
+
+"Maud stood at the brook, before the door, washing her small white hands
+in the clear stream.
+
+"'Good-morrow, dear Maud, and a thousand blessings on thy sweet head!'
+cried Albert to her, as he came running. 'Look, look, how thy mushrooms
+have changed! If the others turn out as well, I am afraid that, after
+all, I must forgive that little shrimp that was so killingly polite to
+you!'
+
+"'Delightful! delightful!' exclaimed Matilda, gazing at the gold pieces.
+'Mine have not changed yet--but that doesn't matter; for in the night, a
+little rush band, with which the fairy steered me into his kingdom of
+wonders, has bloomed into precious pearls and brilliants, and two
+sparkling wreaths are now lying upstairs in my drawer.'
+
+"Joyful surprise choked Albert's words in his throat; but Maud drew him
+on, and displayed to him her glories from the fairy world.
+
+"'Let us leave nothing undone that may help our luck. Do you take the
+little wreath for the present. Such is the wish of the mysterious being,
+who required my attendance at the Fairies' Sabbath.'
+
+"Albert received the gift with a softened heart. He begged Maud's
+forgiveness of his fault; she granted it willingly, and before four
+weeks had passed by, the lovers were man and wife.
+
+"Of her adventure on Whitsun-eve, Maud never spoke. So much the more had
+her godmother Helen to say about it; for it was not difficult to guess
+that the fairies had had their prospering hand in the marriage of her
+godchild. The stone-mason now gave up his laborious calling. Albert
+became the master of a moderate property, which he diligently cultivated
+with his beloved Maud; and, as fair child after child was born to them,
+the happy mother laid upon the breast of each a shriveled leaf from the
+elfin chain, for so had her little guide counseled her, when she once,
+in a doubtful hour, had summoned him to her aid. Albert and Matilda
+reached a good old age; their children throve, and carefully preserved,
+like their parents, the gifts received from the subterranean folk, who
+continued their favour to them and to all their posterity."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} Midsummer Night's Dream.
+
+{B} DOLMEN; literally, _stone table_. Remarkable structures, learnedly
+ascribed to the Druids; unlearnedly, to the dwarfs and fairies; and
+numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat
+stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a
+rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition
+which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in
+the names given to many of them by the peasantry:--_Grotte aux fees_,
+_Roche aux fees_, &c.
+
+{C} WEIRDS. The French has--LOTS. "_Elles jettent des SORTS._" For
+justifying the translation, see the fine old Scottish ballad of KEMPION;
+or KEMP OWAYNE, at the beginning:--
+
+    "Come here, come here, ye _freely fede_, (i. e. _nobly born_,)
+    And lay your head low on my knee,
+    A heavier WEIRD I shall ye read
+    Than ever was read to gay ladye.
+
+    "I WEIRD ye to a fiery beast:
+    And released shall ye never be,
+    Till Kempion the kinges son
+    Come to the crag and thrice kiss thee!"
+
+{D} From the preface to the exceedingly interesting collection by M. Th.
+de la Villemarque, of the transmitted songs that are current amongst his
+Bas Breton countrymen.
+
+{E} Essay on _The Fairies of Popular Superstition_, in "The Minstrelsy
+of the Scottish Border."
+
+{F} Deutsche Mythologie, von Jacob Grimm. Chap. xiii. Ed. 1. 1835, and
+xvii. Ed. 2. 1843.
+
+{G} "_Ces genies femelles._"
+
+{H} From Walckenaer's Dissertation on the Origin of the Fairy Belief;
+last printed, in an abridged form, by Jacob, in his edition of the
+_Contes des Fees, par Perrault_, (Paris, 1842.)
+
+{I}                   "Paradise and groves
+    Elysian, fortunate fields--like those of old
+    Sought in the Atlantic main, why should they be
+    A history only of departed things,
+    Or a mere fiction of what never was?
+    For the discerning _Intellect of man,
+    When wedded to this goodly Universe
+    In love and holy passion_, shall find these
+    A simple produce of the common day.
+    I long before the blissful hour arrives
+    Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
+    Of this great consummation."
+
+WORDSWORTH. _Preface to the Excursion._
+
+{J} _SAGEN UND MAHRCHEN aus der Oberlausitz_. Nacherzahlt von _Ernst
+Willkomm_, Hanover, 1843.
+
+{K} IRISCHE ELFENMARCHEN: Uebersetzt von den Bruedern Grimm. Leipzig,
+1826. _Introduction._
+
+{L} DEUTSCHE SAGEN: Herausgegeben von den Bruedern Grimm. Berlin, 1816
+and 1818.
+
+{M} Grimm's German Mythology, p. 544.
+
+{N}                               "----his look
+    Drew audience and attention, STILL AS night
+    Or SUMMER'S NOONTIDE AIR."--_Paradise Lost. Book II._
+
+{O} The fairies themselves hardly can have imparted to godmother Helen
+the two irreconcilable derivations of their order: that they were Jews,
+and that they were fallen angels. But the poet DRAMATICALLY joins, upon
+the mother's lip, the two current traditions. With her, fallen angel and
+Jew are synonymous, as being both opposed to the faith of the cross.
+
+{P} Who is this unknown OLIM? Our old friend perchance, the Latin
+adverb, "_Olim_," _of yore_--gradually slipped from the mouths of
+scholars into the people's, and risen in dignity as it descended.
+
+{Q} _Sic._
+
+
+
+
+COLUMBUS.
+
+(_A Print after a Picture by Parmeggiano._)
+
+BY B. SIMMONS.
+
+
+    I.
+
+    RISE, VICTOR, from the festive board
+        Flush'd with triumphal wine,
+    And lifting high thy beaming sword,
+    Fired by the flattering Harper's chord,
+        Who hymns thee half divine.
+    Vow at the glutted shrine of Fate
+    That dark-red brand to consecrate!
+    Long, dread, and doubtful was the fray
+    That gives the stars thy name to-day.
+    But all is over; round thee now
+    Fame shouts, spoil pours, and captives bow,
+    No stormier joy can Earth impart,
+    Than thrills in lightning through thy heart.
+
+    II.
+
+    Gay LOVER, with the soft guitar,
+    Hie to the olive-woods afar,
+    And to thy friend, the listening brook,
+    Alone reveal that raptured look;
+    The maid so long in secret loved--
+    A parent's angry will removed--
+    This morning saw betrothed thine,
+        That Sire the pledge, consenting, blest,
+    Life bright as motes in golden wine,
+        Is dancing in thy breast.
+
+    III.
+
+    STATESMAN astute, the final hour
+    Arrives of long-contested Power;
+    Each crafty wile thine ends to aid,
+    Party and principle betray'd;
+    The subtle speech, the plan profound,
+    Pursued for years, success has crown'd;
+    To-night the Vote upon whose tongue,
+    The nicely-poised Division hung,
+    Was thine--beneath that placid brow
+    What feelings throb exulting now!
+    Thy rival falls;--on grandeur's base
+    Go shake the nations in his place!
+
+    IV.
+
+    FAME, LOVE, AMBITION! what are Ye,
+        With all your wasting passions' war,
+    To the great Strife that, like a sea,
+    O'erswept His soul tumultuously,
+        Whose face gleams on me like a star--
+    A star that gleams through murky clouds--
+    As here begirt by struggling crowds
+    A spell-bound Loiterer I stand,
+    Before a print-shop in the Strand?
+    What are your eager hopes and fears
+    Whose minutes wither men like years--
+    Your schemes defeated or fulfill'd,
+    To the emotions dread that thrill'd
+    _His_ frame on that October night,
+        When, watching by the lonely mast,
+    _He saw on shore the moving light_,
+    And felt, though darkness veil'd the sight,
+        The long-sought World was his at last?{A}
+
+    V.
+
+    How Fancy's boldest glances fail,
+        Contemplating each hurrying mood
+    Of thought that to that aspect pale
+        Sent up the heart's o'erboiling flood
+    Through that vast vigil, while his eyes
+    Watch'd till the slow reluctant skies
+    Should kindle, and the vision dread,
+    Of all his livelong years be read!
+    In youth, his faith-led spirit doom'd
+        Still to be baffled and betray'd,
+    His manhood's vigorous noon consumed
+        Ere Power bestow'd its niggard aid;
+    That morn of summer, dawning grey,{B}
+    When, from Huelva's humble bay,
+    He full of hope, before the gale
+    Turn'd on the hopeless World his sail,
+    And steer'd for seas untrack'd, unknown,
+    And westward still sail'd on--sail'd on--
+    Sail'd on till Ocean seem'd to be
+    All shoreless as Eternity,
+    Till, from its long-loved Star estranged,
+    At last the constant Needle changed,{C}
+    And fierce amid his murmuring crew
+    Prone terror into treason grew;
+    While on his tortured spirit rose,
+    More dire than portents, toils, or foes,
+    The awaiting World's loud jeers and scorn
+    Yell'd o'er his profitless Return;
+    No--none through that dark watch may trace
+        The feelings wild beneath whose swell,
+    As heaves the bark the billows' race,
+        His Being rose and fell!
+    Yet over doubt, and pride, and pain,
+    O'er all that flash'd through breast and brain,
+    As with those grand, immortal eyes
+        He stood--his heart on fire to know
+    When morning next illumed the skies,
+        What wonders in its light should glow--
+    O'er all one thought must, in that hour,
+    Have sway'd supreme--Power, conscious Power--
+    The lofty sense that Truths conceived,
+        And born of his own starry mind,
+    And foster'd into might, achieved
+        A new Creation for mankind!
+    And when from off that ocean calm
+        The Tropic's dusky curtain clear'd,
+    All those green shores and banks of balm
+        And rosy-tinted hills appear'd
+    Silent and bright as Eden, ere
+    Earth's breezes shook one blossom there--
+    Against that hour's proud tumult weigh'd,
+    LOVE, FAME, AMBITION, how ye fade!
+
+    VI.
+
+    Thou LUTHER of the darken'd Deep!
+    Nor less intrepid, too, than He
+    Whose courage broke EARTH'S bigot sleep
+    Whilst thine unbarr'd the SEA--
+    Like his, 'twas thy predestined fate
+    Against your grin benighted age,
+    With all its fiends of Fear and Hate,
+    War, single-handed war, to wage,
+    And live a conqueror, too, like him,
+    Till Time's expiring lights grow dim!
+    O, Hero of my boyish heart!
+    Ere from thy pictured looks I part,
+    My mind's maturer reverence now
+    In thoughts of thankfulness would bow
+    To the OMNISCIENT WILL that sent
+    Thee forth, its chosen instrument,
+    To teach us hope, when sin and care,
+        And the vile soilings that degrade
+    Our dust, would bid us most despair--
+        Hope, from each varied deed display'd
+    Along thy bold and wondrous story,
+        That shows how far one steadfast mind,
+    Serene in suffering as in glory,
+        May go to deify our kind.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} October 11, 1492.--"As the evening darkened, Columbus took his
+station on the top of the castle or cabin, on the high poop of his
+vessel. However he might carry a cheerful and confident countenance
+during the day, it was to him a time of the most painful anxiety; and
+now, when he was wrapped from observation by the shades of night, he
+maintained an intense and unremitting watch, ranging his eye along the
+dusky horizon in search of the most vague indications of land. Suddenly,
+about ten o'clock, _he thought he beheld a light glimmering at a
+distance_. Fearing that his eager hopes might deceive him, he called to
+Pedro Gutierrez, gentleman of the king's bedchamber, and enquired
+whether he saw a light in that direction; the latter replied in the
+affirmative. Columbus, yet doubtful whether it might not be some
+delusion of the fancy, called Rodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and made the
+same enquiry. By the time the latter had ascended the roundhouse, the
+light had disappeared. They saw it once or twice afterwards in sudden
+and passing gleams, as if it were a torch in the bark of a fisherman
+rising and sinking with the waves, or in the hand of some person on
+shore, borne up and down as he walked from house to house. So transient
+and uncertain were these gleams, that few attached any importance to
+them; Columbus, however, considered them as certain signs of land, and,
+moreover, that the land was inhabited."--IRVING'S _Columbus_, vol. i.
+
+{B} "It was on Friday, the 3d of August 1492, early in the morning, that
+Columbus set sail on his first voyage of discovery. He departed from the
+bar of Saltes, a small island in front of the town of Huelva, steering
+in a south-westerly direction," &c.--IRVING. He was about fifty-seven
+years old the year of the Discovery.
+
+{C} "On the 13th September, in the evening, being about two hundred
+leagues from the island of Ferro, he, for the first time, noticed the
+variation of the needle, a phenomenon which had never before been
+remarked. Struck with the circumstance, he observed it attentively for
+three days, and found that the variation increased as he advanced. It
+soon attracted the attention of the pilots, and filled them with
+consternation. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing as
+they advanced, and that they were entering another world subject to
+unknown influences."--_Ibid._
+
+
+
+
+TO SWALLOWS ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE.
+
+BY THE SAME.
+
+     "The day before V----'s departure for the last time from the
+     country--it was the 4th of August, one of the hottest days of the
+     season--as evening fell, he strolled with an old school-fellow
+     through the cool green avenues and leafy arcades of the
+     neighbouring park, where his friend amused him by pointing out to
+     his attention vast multitudes of Swallows that came swarming from
+     all directions to settle on the roofs and gables of the
+     manor-house. This they do for several days preparatory to their
+     departing, in one collected body, to more genial climates."--_MS.
+     Memoir._
+
+
+    I.
+
+        Joyous Birds! preparing
+          In the clear evening light
+        To leave our dwindled summer day
+          For latitudes more bright!
+            How gay must be your greeting,
+            By southern fountains meeting,
+    To miss no faithful wing of all that started in your flight!
+
+    II.
+
+        Every clime and season
+          Fresh gladness brings to you,
+        Howe'er remote your social throngs
+          Their varied path pursue;
+            No winds nor waves dissever--
+            No dusky veil'd FOR EVER,
+    Frowneth across your fearless way in the empyrean blue.{A}
+
+    III.
+
+        Mates and merry brothers
+          Were ye in Arctic hours,
+        Mottling the evening beam that sloped
+          Adown old Gothic towers!
+            As blythe that sunlight dancing
+            Will see your pinions' glancing
+    Scattering afar through Tropic groves the spicy bloom in showers!
+
+    IV.
+
+        Haunters of palaced wastes!{B}
+          From king-forlorn Versailles
+        To where, round gateless Thebes, the winds
+          Like monarch voices wail,
+            Your tribe capricious ranges,
+            Reckless of glory's changes;
+    Love makes for ye a merry home amid the ruins pale.
+
+    V.
+
+        Another day, and ye
+          From knosp and turret's brow
+        Shall, with your fleet of crowding wings,
+          Air's viewless billows plough,
+            With no keen-fang'd regretting
+            Our darken'd hill-sides quitting,
+    --Away in fond companionship as cheerily as now!
+
+    VI.
+
+        Woe for the Soul-endued--
+          The clay-enthralled Mind--
+        Leaving, unlike you, favour'd birds!
+          Its all--its all behind.
+            Woe for the exile mourning,
+            To banishment returning--
+    A mateless bird wide torn apart from country and from kind!
+
+    VII.
+
+        This moment blest as ye,
+          Beneath his own home-trees,
+        With friends and fellows girt around,
+          Up springs the western breeze,
+            Bringing the parting weather--
+            Shall all depart together?
+    Ah, no!--he goes a wretch alone upon the lonely seas.
+
+    VIII.
+
+        To him the mouldering tower--
+          The pillar'd waste, to him
+        A broken-hearted music make
+          Until his eyelids swim.
+            None heeds when he complaineth,
+            Nor where that brow he leaneth
+    A mother's lips shall bless no more sinking to slumber dim.
+
+    IX.
+
+        Winter shall wake to spring,
+          And 'mid the fragrant grass
+        The daffodil shall watch the rill
+          Like Beauty by her glass
+            But woe for him who pineth
+            Where the clear water shineth,
+    With no voice near to say--How sweet those April evenings pass!
+
+    X.
+
+        Then while through Nature's heart
+          Love freshly burns again,
+        Hither shall ye, plumed travellers,
+          Come trooping o'er the main;
+            The selfsame nook disclosing
+            Its nest for your reposing
+    That saw you revel years ago as you shall revel then.{C}
+
+    XI.
+
+        --Your human brother's lot!
+          A few short years are gone--
+        Back, back like you to early scenes--
+          Lo! at the threshold-stone,
+            Where ever in the gloaming
+            Home's angels watch'd his coming,
+    A stranger stands, and stares at him who sighing passes on.
+
+    XII.
+
+        Joy to the Travail-worn!
+          Omnific purpose lies
+        Even in his bale as in your bliss,
+          Careerers of the skies!
+            When sun and earth, that cherish'd
+            Your tribes, with you have perish'd,
+    A home is his where partings more shall never dim the eyes.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} "They all quit together; and fly for a time east or west, possibly
+in wait for stragglers not yet arrived from the interior--they then take
+directly to the south, and are soon lost sight of altogether for the
+allotted period of their absence. Their rapidity of flight is well
+known, and the 'murder-aiming eye' of the most experienced sportsman
+will seldom avail against the swallow; hence they themselves seldom fall
+a prey to the raptorial birds."--CUVIER, _edited by Griffiths_. Swallows
+are long-lived; they have been known to live a number of years in cages.
+
+{B} In the fanciful language of Chateaubriand, "This daughter of a king
+(the swallow) still seems attached to grandeur; she passes the summer
+amid the ruins of Versailles, and the winter among those of Thebes."
+
+{C} "However difficult to be credited, it seems to be ascertained beyond
+doubt, that the same pair which quitted their nest and the limited
+circle of their residence here, return to the very same nest again, and
+this for several successive years; in all probability for their whole
+lives"--_Griffiths'_ CUVIER.
+
+
+
+
+THE DILIGENCE.
+
+A LEAF FROM A JOURNAL.
+
+
+A diligence is as familiar to our countrymen as a stage-coach; and, as
+railroads flourish more amongst us than with our less commercial and
+enterprising neighbours, it is probable that, to many English
+travellers, it is even more familiar. There is no need, therefore, to
+describe the portentous vehicle. Suffice it to say, that, of the three
+compartments into which it is divided, I found myself lodged--not in the
+_coupee_ which looks out in front, and which has the appearance of a
+narrow post-chaise that has been flattened and compressed in the effort
+to incorporate it with the rest of the machine--nor in the _rotunde_
+behind, where one rides omnibus-fashion--but in the central compartment,
+the _interieur_, which answers to the veritable old English stage-coach,
+and carries six. I was one of the central occupants of this central
+division; for I had not been so fortunate as to secure a corner seat.
+Now, for the convenience of the luckless person who occupies this
+position, there depends from the roof of the coach, and hangs just
+before his face, a broad leathern strap, with a loop through which he
+can, if so disposed, place his arms; and, when his arms are thus slung
+up, he can further rest his head upon them or upon the strap, and so
+seek repose. Whether he finds the repose he seeks, is another matter.
+One half of the traveller swings like a parrot on his perch, the other
+half jolts on stationary--jolts over the eternal stones which pave the
+roads in France. Perhaps there are who can go to roost in this fashion.
+And if it is recorded of any one that he ever slept in this state of
+demi-suspension--all swing above, all shake below--I should like very
+much to know, in the next place, what sort of dreams he had. Did he
+fancy himself a griffin, or huge dragon, beating the air with his wings,
+and at the same time trotting furiously upon the ground? Or, in order to
+picture out his sensations, was he compelled to divide himself into two
+several creatures, and be at once the captured and half-strangled goose,
+with all its feathers outstretched in the air, and the wicked fox who is
+running away with it, at full speed, upon its back? As to myself, in no
+vain expectation of slumber, but merely for the sake of change of
+position, I frequently slung my arms in this loop, and leaning my head
+against the broad leathern strap, I listened to the gossip of my
+fellow-travellers, if there was any conversation stirring; or, if all
+was still, gave myself up to meditations upon my own schemes and
+projects.
+
+And here let me observe, that I have always found that a journey in a
+stage-coach is remarkably favourable to the production of good
+resolution and sage designs for the future; which I account for partly
+on the ground that they cannot, under such circumstances, demand to be
+carried into immediate execution, and therefore may be indulged in the
+more freely; and partly on this other ground, that one who has become a
+traveller has loosened himself from his old customary moorings, and so
+gives himself, as it were, a new starting-point in life, from which he
+may, if the spirit of delusion is still happily strong within him, draw
+a mathematically straight line in the given direction A B, to be the
+faithful index of his future career.
+
+What a generous sample of humanity it is that a well filled diligence
+carries out of the gates of Paris! The mountain of luggage upon the
+roof, consisting of boxes of all shapes and sizes, does not contain in
+its numerous _strata_ of stuffs, and implements, and garments, rags and
+fine linen, a greater variety of dead material, than does the threefold
+interior, with its complement of human beings, of living character and
+sentiment. As to the observation not unfrequently made, that Frenchmen
+have less variety of character than ourselves, it is one which seems to
+me to have little or no foundation. Something there doubtless is of
+national character, which pervades all classes and all classifications
+of men; and this colouring, seen diffused over the mass, makes us
+apprehend, at first view, that there is in the several parts a radical
+similarity which, in fact, does not exist. We have only to become a
+little more intimate with the men themselves, and this national
+colouring fades away; while the strong peculiarities resulting from
+social position, or individual temperament, stand out in sharp relief.
+And, in general, I will venture to say of national character--whatever
+people may be spoken of--that one may compare it to the colour which the
+sea bears at different times, or which different seas are said to be
+distinguished by: view the great surface at a distance, it is blue, or
+green, or grey; but take up a handful of the common element, and it is
+an undistinguishable portion of brackish water. It is French, or
+Flemish, or Spanish nature in the mass, and at a distance; looked at
+closer, and in the individual, there is little else than plain human
+nature to be seen.
+
+But I did not open my journal to philosophize upon national character;
+but to record, while it is still fresh in my memory, some part of the
+conversation to which I was, as I travelled along, of necessity, and
+whether willingly or unwillingly, a listener. To the left of me the
+corner seats were occupied by two Englishmen--would it be possible to
+enter into a diligence without meeting at least two of our dear
+compatriots? They were both men in the prime of life, in the full flush
+of health, and apparently of wealth, who, from allusions which they
+dropt, could evidently boast of being of good family, and what follows
+of course--of having received an university education; and whom some one
+of our northern counties probably reckoned amongst its most famous
+fox-hunters. All which hindered not, but that they proved themselves to
+belong to that class of English travellers who scamper about the
+Continent like so many big, boisterous, presumptuous school-boys, much
+to the annoyance of every one who meets them, and to the especial
+vexation of their fellow-countrymen, who are not, in general, whatever
+may be said to the contrary, an offensive or conceited race, and are by
+no means pleased that the name of Englishmen should be made a by-word
+and a term of contempt. Opposite to me sat a Frenchman, of rather formal
+and grave demeanour, and dressed somewhat precisely. He was placed in a
+similar position in the diligence to myself; he had, however, curled up
+his leathern strap, and fastened it to the roof. Apparently he did not
+think the posture to which it invited one of sufficient dignity; for
+during the whole journey, and even when asleep, I observed that he
+maintained a certain becomingness of posture. Beside me, to the right,
+sat a little lively Frenchwoman, not very young, and opposite to her,
+and consequently in front also of myself, was another lady, a person of
+extreme interest, who at once riveted the eye, and set the imagination
+at work. She was so young, so pale, so beautiful, so sad, and withal so
+exceeding gentle in her demeanour, that an artist who wished to portray
+Our Lady in her virgin purity and celestial beauty, would have been
+ravished with the model. She had taken off her bonnet for the
+convenience of travelling, and her dark brown hair hung curled round her
+neck in the same simple fashion it must have done when she was a child.
+She was dressed in mourning, and this enhanced the pallor of her
+countenance; ill-health and sorrow were also evidently portrayed upon
+her features; but there was so much of lustre in the complexion, and so
+much of light and intelligence in the eye, that the sense of beauty
+predominated over all. You could not have wished her more cheerful than
+she was. Her face was a melody which you cannot quarrel with for being
+sad--which you could not desire to be otherwise than sad--whose very
+charm it is that it has made the tone of sorrow ineffably sweet.
+
+Much I mused and conjectured what her history might be, and frequently I
+felt tempted to address myself in conversation to her; but still there
+was a tranquillity and repose in those long eyelashes which I feared to
+disturb. It was probable that she preferred her own reflections,
+melancholy as they might be, to any intercourse with others, and out of
+respect to this wish I remained silent. Not so, however, my
+fellow-traveller of her own sex, who, far from practising this
+forbearance, felt that she acted the kind and social part by engaging
+her in conversation. And so perhaps she did. For certainly, after some
+time, the beautiful and pensive girl became communicative, and I
+overheard the brief history of her sufferings, which I had felt so
+curious to know. It was indeed brief--it is not a three-volumed novel
+that one overhears in a stage-coach--but it had the charm of truth to
+recommend it. I had been lately reading Eugene Sue's romance, _The
+Mysteries of Paris_, and it gave an additional interest to remark, that
+the simple tale I was listening to from the lips of the living sufferer
+bore a resemblance to one of its most striking episodes.
+
+The shades of evening were closing round us, and the rest of the
+passengers seemed to be preparing themselves for slumber, as, leaning
+forward on my leathern supporter, I listened to the low sweet voice of
+the young stranger.
+
+"You are surprised," she said in answer to some remark made by her
+companion, "that one of our sex, so young and of so delicate health,
+should travel alone in the diligence; but I have no relative in Paris,
+and no friend on whose protection I could make a claim. I have lived
+there alone, or in something worse than solitude."
+
+Her companion, with a woman's quickness of eye, glanced at the rich
+toilette of the speaker. It was mourning, but mourning of the most
+costly description.
+
+"You think," she continued, replying to this glance, "that one whose
+toilette is costly ought not to be without friends; but mine has been
+for some time a singular condition. Wealth and a complete isolation from
+the world have been in my fate strangely combined. They married me"----
+
+"What! are you a married woman and so young?" exclaimed the lady who was
+addressed.
+
+"I have been; I am now a widow. It is for my husband that I wear this
+mourning. They took me from the convent where I was educated, and
+married me to a man whom I was permitted to see only once before the
+alliance was concluded. As I had been brought up with the idea that my
+father was to choose a husband for me, and as the Count D---- was both
+handsome and of agreeable manners, the only qualities on which I was
+supposed to have an opinion, there was no room for objection on my part.
+The marriage was speedily celebrated. My husband was wealthy. Of that my
+father had taken care to satisfy himself; perhaps it was the only point
+on which he was very solicitous. For I should tell you that my father,
+the only parent I have surviving, is one of those restless unquiet men
+who have no permanent abode, who delight in travelling from place to
+place, and who regard their children, if they have any, in the light
+only of cares and encumbrances. There is not a capital in Europe in
+which he has not resided, and scarcely a spot of any celebrity which he
+has not visited. It was therefore at the house of a maiden aunt--to whom
+I am now about to return--that I was married.
+
+"I spent the first years of my marriage, as young brides I believe
+generally do, in a sort of trouble of felicity. I did not know how to be
+sufficiently thankful to Heaven for the treasure I found myself the
+possessor of; such a sweetness of temper and such a tenderness of
+affection did my husband continually manifest towards me. After a short
+season of festivity, spent at the house of my aunt, we travelled
+together without any other companion towards Paris, where the Count had
+a residence elegantly fitted up to receive us. The journey itself was a
+new source of delight to one who had been hitherto shut up, with her
+instructress, in a convent. Never shall I forget the hilarity, the
+almost insupportable joy, with which the first part of this journey was
+performed. The sun shone out upon a beautiful landscape, and there was
+I, travelling alone with the one individual who had suddenly awoke and
+possessed himself of all my affections--travelling, too, with gay
+anticipations to the glorious city of Paris, of which I had heard so
+much, and in which I was to appear with all the envied advantages of
+wealth.
+
+"As we approached towards Paris, I noticed that my husband became more
+quiet and reserved. I attributed it to the fatigue of travelling, to
+which my own spirits began to succumb; and as the day was drawing to a
+close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest
+there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and
+impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the least symptom before,
+he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the
+speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became
+restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. It was
+now night. Leaning back in the carriage, and fixing my eye upon the full
+moon that was shining brightly upon us, I tried to quiet my own spirit,
+somewhat ruffled by this unexpected behaviour of my husband. I observed,
+after a short time, that _his_ eye also had become riveted on the same
+bright object; but not with any tranquillizing effect, for his
+countenance grew every minute more and more sombre. On a sudden he
+called aloud to the postilion to stop--threw open the carriage-door, and
+walked in a rapid pace down towards a river that for some time had
+accompanied our course. I sprang after him. I overtook, and grasped him
+as he was in the very act of plunging into the river. O my God! how I
+prayed, and wept, and struggled to prevent him from rushing into the
+stream. At length he sat down upon the bank of the river; he turned to
+me his wild and frenzied eye--he laughed--O Heaven! he was mad!
+
+"They had married me to a madman. Cured, or presumed to be cured, of
+his disorder, he had been permitted to return to society; and now his
+malady had broken out again. He who was to be my guide and protector,
+who was my only support, who took the place of parent, friend,
+instructor--he was a lunatic!
+
+"For three dreadful hours did I sit beside him on that bank--at
+night--with none to help me--restraining him by all means I could devise
+from renewed attempts to precipitate himself into the river. At last I
+succeeded in bringing him back to the carriage. For the rest of the
+journey he was quiet; but he was imbecile--his reason had deserted him.
+
+"We arrived at his house in Paris. A domestic assisted me in conducting
+him to his chamber; and from that time I, the young wife, who the other
+morning had conceived herself the happiest of beings, was transformed
+into the keeper of a maniac--of a helpless or a raving lunatic. I wrote
+to my father. He was on the point of setting out upon one of his
+rambling expeditions, and contented himself with appealing to the
+relatives of my husband, who, he maintained, were the proper persons to
+take charge of the lunatic. They, on the other hand, left him to the
+care of the new relations he had formed by a marriage, which had
+interfered with their expectations and claims upon his property. Thus
+was I left alone--a stranger in this great city of Paris, which was to
+have welcomed me with all its splendours, and festivities, and its
+brilliant society--my sole task to soothe and control a maniac husband.
+It was frightful. Scarcely could I venture to sleep an hour
+together--night or day--lest he should commit some outrage upon himself
+or on me. My health is irretrievably ruined. I should have utterly sunk
+under it; but, by God's good providence, the malady of my husband took a
+new direction. It appeared to prey less upon the brain, and more upon
+other vital parts of the constitution. He wasted away and died. I indeed
+live; but I, too, have wasted away, body and soul, for I have no health
+and no joy within me."
+
+Just at this time a low murmuring conversation between my two
+fellow-countrymen, at my left, broke out, much to my annoyance, into
+sudden exclamation.
+
+"By God! sir," cried one of them, "I thrashed him in the _Grande Place_,
+right before the hotel there--what's its name?--the first hotel in
+Petersburg. Yes, I had told the lout of a postilion, who had grazed my
+britska against the curbstone of every corner we had turned, that if he
+did it again I would _punish_ him; that is, I did not exactly _tell_
+him--for he understood no language but his miserable Russian, of which I
+could not speak a word--but I held out my fist in a significant manner,
+which neither man nor brute could mistake. Well, just as we turned into
+the _Grande Place_, the lubber grazed my wheel again. I jumped out of
+the carriage--I pulled him--boots and all--off his horse, and how I
+cuffed him! My friend Lord L---- was standing at the window of the
+hotel, looking out for my arrival, and was witness to this exploit. He
+was most dead with laughter when I came up to him."
+
+"I once," said his interlocutor, "thrashed an English postilion after
+the same fashion; but your Russian, with his enormous boots, must have
+afforded capital sport. When I travel I always look out for _fun_. What
+else is the use of travelling? I and young B----, whom you may remember
+at Oxford, were at a ball together at Brussels, and what do you think we
+did? We strewed cayenne pepper on the floor, and no sooner did the girls
+begin to dance than they began incontinently to sneeze. Ladies and
+gentlemen were curtsying, and bowing, and sneezing to one another in the
+most ludicrous manner conceivable."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! Excellent! By the way," rejoined the other, "talking of
+Brussels, do you know who has the glory of that famous joke practised
+there upon the statues in the park? They give the credit of it to the
+English, but on what ground, except the celebrity they have acquired in
+such feats, I could never learn."
+
+"I know nothing of it. What was it?"
+
+"Why, you see, amongst the statues in the little park at Brussels are a
+number of those busts without arms or shoulders. I cannot call to mind
+their technical name. First you have the head of a man, then a sort of
+decorated pillar instead of a body, and then again, at the bottom of the
+pillar, there protrude a couple of naked feet. They look part pillar and
+part man, with a touch of the mummy. Now, it is impossible to
+contemplate such a figure without being struck with the idea, how
+completely at the mercy of every passer-by are both its nose--which has
+no hand to defend it--and its naked toes, which cannot possibly move
+from their fixed position. One may tweak the one, and tread upon the
+other, with such manifest impunity. Some one in whom this idea, no
+doubt, wrought very powerfully, took hammer and chisel, and shied off
+the noses and the great toes of several of these mummy-statues. And
+pitiful enough they looked next morning."
+
+"Well, that was capital!"
+
+"And the best of it is, that even now, when the noses have been put on
+again, the figures look as odd as if they had none at all. The join is
+so manifest, and speaks so plainly of past mutilation, that no one can
+give to these creatures, let them exist as long as they will, the credit
+of wearing their own noses. The jest is immortal."
+
+The recital of this excellent piece of _fun_ was followed by another
+explosion of laughter. The Frenchman who sat opposite to me--a man, as I
+have said, of grave but urbane deportment, became curious to know what
+it was that our neighbours had been conversing about, and which had
+occasioned so much hilarity. He very politely expressed this wish to me.
+If it was not an indiscretion, he should like to partake, he said, in
+the wit that was flowing round him; adding, perhaps superfluously, that
+he did not understand English.
+
+"Monsieur, I am glad of it," I replied.
+
+Monsieur, who concluded from my answer that I was in a similar
+predicament with respect to the French language, bowed and remained
+silent.
+
+Here the conversation to my left ceased to flow, or subsided into its
+former murmuring channel, and I was again able to listen to my fair
+neighbours to the right. The lively dame who sat by my side had now the
+word; she was administering consolations and philosophy to the young
+widow.
+
+"At your age health," said she, "is not irretrievable, and, sweet madam,
+your good looks are left you. A touch of rouge upon your cheek, and you
+are quite an angel. And then you are free--you will one day travel back
+again to Paris with a better escort than you had before."
+
+And here she gave a sigh which prepared the hearer for the disclosure
+that was to follow.
+
+"Now I," she continued, "have been married, but, alas! am _not_ a widow.
+I have a husband standing out against me somewhere in the world. In the
+commercial language of my father, I wish I could cancel him."
+
+"What! he has deserted you?" said her fair companion, in a sympathizing
+tone.
+
+"You shall hear, my dear madam. My father, you must know, is a plain
+citizen. He did not charge himself with the task of looking out a
+husband for his girls; he followed what he called the English plan--let
+the girls look out for themselves, and contented himself with a _veto_
+upon the choice, if it should displease him. Now, Monsieur Lemaire was a
+perfect Adonis; he dressed, and danced, and talked to admiration; no man
+dressed, danced, or talked better; his mirth was inexhaustible--his
+good-humour unfailing."
+
+Well, thought I to myself, what is coming now? This lady, at all events,
+chose with her own eyes, and had her own time to choose in. Is her
+experience to prove, that the chance of securing a good husband is much
+the same, let him be chosen how he may?
+
+"No wonder, then," continued the lady, "that I accepted his proposal.
+The very thought of marrying him as paradise; and I _did_ marry him."
+
+"And so were really in paradise?" said the widow, with a gentle smile.
+
+"Yes, yes! it _was_ a paradise. It was a constant succession of
+amusements; theatre, balls, excursions--all enjoyed with the charming
+Lemaire. And he so happy, too! I thought he would have devoured me. We
+were verily in paradise for three months. At the end of which time he
+came one morning into the room swinging an empty purse in the air--'Now,
+I think,' said he with the same cheerful countenance that he usually
+wore, 'that I have proved my devotion to you in a remarkable manner.
+Another man would have thought it much if he had made some sacrifice to
+gain possession of you for life; I have spent every farthing I had in
+the world to possess you for three months. Oh, that those three months
+were to live over again! But every thing has its end.' And he tossed the
+empty purse in his hand.
+
+"I laughed at what I considered a very pleasant jest; for who did not
+know that M. Lemaire was a man of ample property? I laughed still more
+heartily as he went on to say, that a coach stood at the door to take me
+back to my father, and begged me not to keep the coachman waiting, as in
+that case the fellow would charge for time, and it had taken his last
+sou to pay his fare by distance. I clapped my hands in applause of my
+excellent comedian. But, gracious Heavens! it was all true! There stood
+the coach at the door, the fare paid to my father's house, and an empty
+purse was literally all that I now had to participate with the gay,
+wealthy, accomplished Lemaire."
+
+"What!" I exclaimed with rage and agony, as the truth broke upon me, "do
+you desert your wife?"
+
+"Desert my charming wife!" he replied. "Ask the hungry pauper, who turns
+his back upon the fragrant _restaurant_, if he deserts his dinner. You
+are as beautiful, as bright, as lovely as ever--you cannot think with
+what a sigh I quit you!"
+
+"But"----and I began a torrent of recrimination.
+
+"'But,' said he, interrupting me, 'I have not a sou. For you,' he
+continued, 'you are as charming as ever--you will win your way only the
+better in the world for this little experience. And as for me--I have
+been in Elysium for three months; and that is more than a host of your
+excellent prudent men can boast of, who plod on day after day only that
+they may continue plodding to the end of their lives. Adieu! my
+adorable--my angel that will now vanish from my sight!' And here, in
+spite of my struggles, he embraced me with the greatest ardour, and
+then, tearing himself away as if he only were the sufferer, he rushed
+out of the room. I have never seen him since."
+
+"And such men really exist!" said the young widow, moved to indignation.
+"For so short a season of pleasure he could deliberately compromise the
+whole of your future life."
+
+"Is it not horrible? His father, it seems, had left him a certain sum of
+money, and this was the scheme he had devised to draw from it the
+greatest advantage. _Mais, mon Dieu!_" added the lively Frenchwoman, "of
+what avail to afflict one's-self? Only if he would but die before I am
+an old woman! And then those three months"----
+
+Here the diligence suddenly stopped, and the conductor opening the door,
+invited us to step out and take some refreshment, and so put an end for
+the present to this medley conversation.
+
+
+
+
+WHO WROTE GIL BLAS?
+
+
+In the year 1783, Joseph Francisco De Isla, one of the most eminent of
+modern Spanish writers, published a Spanish translation of Gil Blas. In
+this work some events were suppressed, others altered, the diction was
+greatly modified, the topographical and chronological errors with which
+the French version abounded were allowed to remain, and the Spanish
+origin of that celebrated work was asserted on such slender grounds, and
+vindicated by such trifling arguments, as to throw considerable doubt on
+the fact in the opinion of all impartial judges. The French were not
+slow to seize upon so favourable an occasion to gratify their national
+vanity; and in 1818, M. le Comte Francois de Neufchateau, a member of
+the French Institute and an Ex-minister of the Interior, published a
+dissertation, in which, after a modest insinuation that the
+extraordinary merit of Gil Blas was a sufficient proof of its French
+origin, the feeble arguments of Padre Isla were triumphantly refuted,
+and the claims of Le Sage to the original conception of Gil Blas were
+asserted, to the complete satisfaction of all patriotic Frenchmen. Here
+the matter rested, till, in 1820, Don Juan Antonio Llorente drew up his
+reasons for holding the opinion of which Isla had been the unsuccessful
+advocate, and, with even punctilious courtesy, transmitted them before
+publication to M. Le Montey, by whose judgment in the matter he
+expressed his determination to abide. M. Le Montey referred the matter
+to two commissioners--one being M. Raynouard, a well-known and useful
+writer, the other M. Neufchateau, the author whom Llorente's work was
+intended to refute.
+
+This literary commission seems to have produced as little benefit to the
+public as if each of the members had been chosen by a political party,
+had received a salary varying from L1500 to L2000 a-year, and been sent
+into Ireland to report upon the condition of the people, or into Canada
+to discover why French republicans dislike the institutions of a Saxon
+monarchy. To be sure, the advantage is on the side of the French
+academicians; for, instead of sending forth a mass of confused,
+contradictory, and ill-written reports, based upon imperfect evidence,
+and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as
+Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente
+attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of
+the three French _savans_, to the impossibility of finding any thing to
+say, after the lapse of a year and a half publishes his arguments, and
+appeals to literary Europe as the judge "en dernier ressort" of this
+important controversy. Llorente, however, was too precipitate; for on
+the 8th of January 1822, M. de Neufchateau presented to the French
+Academy an answer to Llorente's observations, on which we shall
+presently remark.
+
+It is maintained by the ingenious writer, Llorente--whose arguments,
+with such additions and remarks as have occurred to us upon the subject,
+we propose to lay before our readers,
+
+1st, That Gil Blas and the Bachiller de Salamanca were originally one
+and the same romance.
+
+2dly, That the author of this romance was at any rate a Spaniard.
+
+3dly, That his name was Don Antonio de Solis y Ribadeneira, author of
+_Historia de la Conquista de Mejico_.
+
+4thly, That Le Sage turned the single romance into two; repeating in
+both the same stories slightly modified, and mixing them up with other
+translations from Spanish novels.
+
+As the main argument turns upon the originality of Le Sage considered as
+the author of Gil Blas, we shall first dispose in a very few words of
+the third proposition; and for this purpose we must beg our readers to
+take for granted, during a few moments, that Gil Blas was the work of a
+Spaniard, and to enquire, supposing that truth sufficiently established,
+who that Spaniard was.
+
+Llorente enumerates thirty-six eminent writers who flourished in 1655,
+the period when, as we shall presently see, the romance in question was
+written. Of these Don Louis de Guevarra, author of the Diablo Cojuelo,
+Francisco de Santos, Jose Pellicer, and Solis, are among the most
+distinguished. Llorente, however, puts all aside--and all, except
+Pellicer perhaps, for very sufficient reasons--determining that Solis
+alone united all the attributes and circumstances belonging to the
+writer of Gil Blas. The writer of Gil Blas was a Castilian--this may be
+inferred from his panegyric on Castilian wit, which he declares equal to
+that of Athens; he must have been a dramatic writer, from his repeated
+criticisms on the drama, and the keenness with which he sifts the merit
+of contemporary dramatic authors; he must have been a great master of
+narrative, and thoroughly acquainted with the habits and institutions of
+his age and country; he must have possessed the art of enlivening his
+story with caustic allusions, and with repartees; he must have been
+perfectly conversant with the intrigues of courtiers, and have acquired
+from his own experience, or the relation of others, an intimate
+knowledge of the private life of Olivarez, and the details of Philip
+IV.'s court. All these requisites are united in Solis:--he was born at
+Alcala de Henares, a city of Castile; he was one of the best dramatic
+writers of his day, the day of Calderon de la Barca. That he was a great
+historical writer, is proved by his _Conquista de Mejico_; his comedies
+prove his thorough knowledge of Spanish habits; and the retorts and
+quiddities of his Graciosos flash with as much wit as any that were ever
+uttered by those brilliant and fantastic denizens of the Spanish stage.
+He was a courtier; he was secretary to Oropezo, viceroy successively of
+Navarre and of Valencia, and was afterwards promoted by Philip IV. to be
+"Oficial de la Secretaria" of the first minister Don Louis de Haro, and
+was allowed, as an especial mark of royal favour, to dispose of his
+place in favour of his relation. This happened about the year
+1654--corresponding, as we shall see, exactly with the mission of the
+Marquis de Lionne. Afterwards he was appointed Cronista Mayor de las
+Indias, and wrote his famous history. These are the arguments in favour
+of Solis, which cannot be offered in behalf of any of his thirty-six
+competitors. It is therefore the opinion of Llorente that the honour of
+being the author of Gil Blas is due to him; and in this opinion,
+supposing the fact which we now proceed to investigate, that a Spaniard,
+and not Le Sage, was the author of the work, is made out to their
+satisfaction, our readers will probably acquiesce.
+
+The steps by which the argument that Gil Blas is taken from a Spanish
+manuscript proceeds, are few and direct. It abounds in facts and
+allusions which none but a Spaniard could know: this is the first step.
+It abounds in errors that no Spaniard could make--(by the way, this is
+much insisted upon by M. de Neufchateau, who does not seem to perceive
+that, taken together with the preceding proposition, it is fatal to his
+argument:) this is the second step, and leads us to the conclusion that
+the true theory of its origin must reconcile these apparent
+contradictions.
+
+A Spanish manuscript does account for this inconsistency, as it would
+furnish the transcriber with the most intimate knowledge of local
+habits, names, and usages; while at the same time it would not guard him
+against mistakes which negligence or haste, or the difficulty of
+deciphering a manuscript in a language with which the transcriber was by
+no means critically acquainted, must occasion. Still less would it guard
+him against errors which would almost inevitably arise from the
+insertion of other Spanish novels, or the endeavour to give the work a
+false claim to originality, by alluding to topics fashionable in the
+city and age when the work was copied.
+
+The method we propose to follow, is to place before the reader each
+division of the argument. We shall show a most intimate knowledge with
+Spanish life, clearly proving that the writer, whoever he is, is
+unconscious of any merit in painting scenes with which he was habitually
+familiar. Let any reader compare the facility of these unstudied
+allusions with the descriptions of a different age or time, even by the
+best writers of a different epoch and country, however accurate and
+dramatic they may be--with _Quentin Durward_ or _Ivanhoe_, for instance;
+or with Barante's _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_, and they will see
+the force of this remark. In spite of art, and ability, and antiquarian
+knowledge, it is evident that a resemblance is industriously sought in
+one case, and is spontaneous in the other; that it is looked upon as a
+matter of course, and not as a title to praise, by the first class of
+writers, while it is elaborately wrought out, as an artist's pretension
+to eminence, in the second. If Le Sage had been the original author of
+Gil Blas, he would have avoided the multiplication of circumstances,
+names, and dates; or if he had thought it necessary to intersperse his
+composition with them, he would have contented himself with such as were
+most general and notorious; the minute, circuitous, and oblique
+allusions, which it required patient examination to detect, and vast
+local knowledge to appreciate, could not have fallen within his plan.
+
+Secondly--We shall point out the mistakes, some of them really
+surprising even in a foreign writer, with regard to names, dates, and
+circumstances, oversetting every congruity which it was manifestly Le
+Sage's object to establish. We shall show that the Spanish novels
+inserted by him do not mix with the body of the work; and moreover we
+shall show that in one instance, where Le Sage hazarded an allusion to
+Parisian gossip, he betrayed the most profound ignorance of those very
+customs which, in other parts of the work passing under his name, are
+delineated with such truth of colouring, and Dutch minuteness of
+observation.
+
+If these two propositions be clearly established, we have a right to
+infer from them the existence of a Spanish manuscript, as on any other
+hypothesis the claims of an original writer would be clashing and
+contradictory.
+
+M. Neufchateau, as we have observed, reiterates the assertion that the
+errors of Gil Blas are such as no Spaniard could commit, leaving
+altogether unguarded against the goring horn of the dilemma which can
+only be parried by an answer to the question--how came it to pass that
+Le Sage could enumerate the names of upwards of twenty inconsiderable
+towns and villages, upwards of twenty families not of the first class;
+and in every page of his work represent, with the most punctilious
+fidelity, the manners of a country he never saw? Nay, how came it to
+pass that, instead of avoiding minute details, local circumstances, and
+the mention of particular facts, as he might easily have done, he
+accumulates all these opportunities of mistake and contradiction,
+descends to the most trifling facts, and interweaves them with the web
+of his narrative (conscious of ignorance, as, according to M.
+Neufchateau, he must have been) without effort and without design.
+
+Let us begin by laying before the readers the _pieces du proces_. First,
+we insert the description of Le Sage given by two French writers.
+
+     "Voici ce que disoit Voltaire a l'article de Le Sage, dans la
+     premiere edition du Siecle de Louis XIV.:--
+
+     "'Son roman de Gil Blas est demeure, parcequ'il y a du naturel.'
+
+     "Dans les editions suivantes du Siecle de Louis XIV., Voltaire
+     ajoute un fait qu'il se contente d'enoncer simplement, comme une
+     chose hors de doute; c'est que Gil Blas est pris entierement d'un
+     livre ecrit en Espagnol, et dont il cite ainsi le titre--La vidad
+     de lo Escudero Dom Marco d'Obrego--sans indiquer aucunement la
+     date, l'auteur, ni l'objet de cette vie de l'ecuyer Dom Marco
+     d'Obrego."
+
+     "Extrait du Nouveau Porte-feuille historique, poetique, et
+     litteraire de Bruzen de La Martiniere.
+
+     "'Baillet n'entendoit pas l'Espagnol. Au sujet de Louis Veles de
+     Guevarra, auteur Espagnol, dans ses jugements des savants sur les
+     poetes modernes, Sec. 1461, il dit: On a de lui plusieurs comedies qui
+     ont ete imprimees en diverses villes d'Espagne, et une piece
+     facetieuse, sous le titre El Diabolo Cojuelo, novella de la otra
+     vida: sur quoi M. de La Monnoye fait cette note. Comment un homme
+     qui fait tant le modeste et le reserve a-t-il pu ecrire un mot tel
+     que celui-la? Cette note n'est pas juste. Il semble que M. de La
+     Monnoye veuille taxer Baillet de n'avoir pas sontenu le caractere
+     de modestie, qu'il affectoit. Baillet ne faisoit pas le modeste, il
+     l'etoit veritablement par etat et par principe; et s'il eut entendu
+     le mot immodeste, ce mot lui auroit ete suspect; il eut eu recours
+     a l'original, ou il auroit trouve Diablo, et non Diabolo, Cojuelo
+     et non Cojudo, et auroit bien vite corrige la faute. Mais comme il
+     n'entendoit ni l'un ni l'autre de ces derniers mots, il lui fut
+     aise, en copiant ses extraits, de prendre un _el_ pour un _d_, et
+     de changer par cette legere difference Cojuelo, qui veut dire
+     boiteux, en Cojudo, qui signifie quelqu'un qui a de gros
+     testicules, et sobrino l'exprime encore plus grossierement en
+     Francois. M. de La Monnoye devoit moins s'arreter a l'immodestie de
+     l'epithete, qu'a la corruption du vrai titre le Guevarra."
+
+     "Au reste, c'est le meme ouvrage que M. La Sage nous a fait
+     connoitre sous le titre du Diable Boiteux; il l'a tourne, a sa
+     maniere, mais avec des differences si grandes que Guevarra ne se
+     reconnoitroit qu'a peine dans cette pretendue traduction. Par
+     exemple, le chapitre xix de la seconde partie contient une aventure
+     de D. Pablas, qui se trouve en original dans un livre imprime a
+     Madrid en 1729, (sic.) L'auteur des lectures amusantes, qui ne
+     s'est pas souvenu que M. Le Sage, en avoit insere une partie dans
+     son Diable Boiteux, l'a traduite de nouveau avec assez de liberte,
+     mais pourtant en s'ecartant moins de l'original, et l'a inseree
+     dans sa premiere partie a peu pres telle qu'elle se lit dans
+     l'original Espagnol. Mais M. Le Sage l'a traitee avec de grands
+     changements, c'est sa maniere d'embellir extremement tout ce qu'il
+     emprunte des Espagnols. C'est ainsi qu'il en a use envers Gil Blas,
+     dont il a fait un chef-d'oeuvre inimitable."--(Pages 336-339,
+     edition de 1757, dans les _Passetemps Politiques, Historiques, et
+     Critiques_, tome 11, in 12.)
+
+As an example of the accuracy with which Le Sage has imitated his
+originals, we quote the annexed passages from Marcos de Obregon--Page 3.
+
+     "En leyendo el villete, dixo al que le traia: Dezilde a vuestro
+     amo, que di goyo, que para cosas, que me inportan mucho gusto no me
+     suelo leuantar hasta las doze del dia: que porque quiere, que pare
+     matarme me leuante tan demanana? y boluiendose del otro lado, se
+     torno a dormir."
+
+         "Don Mathias prit le billet, l'ouvrit, et, apres l'avoir lu, dit
+         an valet de Don Lope. 'Mon enfant, je ne me leverois jamais avant
+         midi, quelque partie de plaisir qu'on me put proposer; juge si je
+         me leverai a six heures du matin pour me battre. Tu peux dire a
+         ton maitre que, s'il est encore a midi et demi dans l'endroit ou
+         il m'attend, nous nous y verons: va, lui porter cette reponse.' A
+         ces mots il s'enfonca dans son lit, et ne tarda guere a se
+         rendormir."
+
+     "No quereys que sieta ofensa hecha a un corderillo, como este? a
+     una paloma sin hiel, a un mocito tan humilde, y apazible que, aun
+     quexarse no sabe de una cosa tan mal hecha? cierto y quisiera ser
+     hombre en este punto para vegarle."
+
+         "'Pourquoi,' s'ecria-t-elle avec emportement--pourquoi ne
+         voulez-vous pas que je ressente vivement l'offense qu'on a fait a
+         ce petit agneau, a cette colombe sans fiel, qui ne se plaint
+         seulement pas de l'outrage qu'il a recu? Ah! que ne suis-je homme
+         en ce moment pour le venger!"
+
+After this we think we are fairly entitled to affirm, that Le Sage was
+not considered by his contemporaries as a man of original and creative
+genius; although he possessed, in an eminent degree, the power of
+appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was
+graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any
+one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and that he is entitled to
+the credit of an inventor, let him cite any single work written by Le
+Sage, except _Gil Blas_, in proof of his assertion. Of course _Gil Blas_
+is out of the question. Nothing could be more circular than an argument
+that Le Sage, because he possessed an inventive genius, might have
+written _Gil Blas_; and that because he might have written _Gil Blas_,
+he possessed an inventive genius. This being the case, let us examine
+his biography. Le Sage was born in 1668 at Sargan, a small town near
+Vannes in Bretagne; at twenty-seven he published a translation of
+Aristoenaetus; and declining, from his love of literature, the hopes of
+advancement, which, had he taken orders, were within his reach, he came
+to Paris, where he contracted an intimate friendship with the Abbe de
+Lyonne, who settled a pension on him, taught him Spanish, and bequeathed
+to him his library--consisting, among other works, of several Spanish
+manuscripts--at his death. His generous benefactor was the third son of
+Hugo, Marquis de Lyonne, one of the most accomplished and intelligent
+men in France. In 1656 he was set on a secret mission to Madrid; the
+object of this mission was soon discovered in the peace of the Pyrenees
+1650, and the marriage of Maria Theresa of Austria, eldest daughter of
+Philip IV., with Louis XIV. During his residence in Spain the Marquis de
+Lyonne lived in great intimacy with Louis de Haro, Duke of Montoro. The
+Marquis de Lyonne was passionately fond of Spanish literature; he not
+only purchased all the printed Spanish works he could procure, but a
+vast quantity of unprinted manuscripts in the same language, all which,
+together with the rest of his library, became at his death the property
+of his son, the Abbe de Lyonne--the friend, patron, and testator of Le
+Sage. To these facts must be added another very important circumstance,
+that Le Sage never entered Spain. Of this fact, fatal as it is to Le
+Sage's claims, Padre Isla was ignorant; but it is stated with an air of
+triumph by M. Neufchateau, is proved by Llorente, and must be considered
+incontestable. The case, then, as far as external evidence is concerned,
+stands thus. Le Sage, a master of his own language, but not an inventive
+writer, and who had never visited Spain, contracts a friendship which
+gives him at first the opportunity of perusing, and afterwards the
+absolute possession of, a number of Spanish manuscripts. Having
+published several elegant paraphrases and translations of printed
+Spanish works, he published _Gil Blas_ in several volumes, at long
+intervals, as an original work; after this, he published the _Bachelier
+de Salamanque_, which he calls himself a translation from a Spanish
+manuscript, of which he never produces the original. Did the matter rest
+here, much suspicion would be thrown upon Le Sage's claims to the
+authorship of _Gil Blas_; but we come now to the evidence arising, "ex
+visceribus causae," from the work itself, and the manner of its
+publication.
+
+The chief points of resemblance between Gil Blas and the Bachelier de
+Salamanque, are the following:--
+
+1. The Bachelier de Salamanque is remarkable for his logical
+subtilty--so is Gil Blas.
+
+2. The doctor of Salamanque, by whom the bachelor is supported after his
+father's death, is avaricious--so is Gil Blas's uncle, the canon of
+Oviedo, Gil Perez.
+
+3. The doctor recommends the bachelor of Salamanca to obtain a situation
+as tutor--the canon gives similar advice to Gil Blas.
+
+4. The bachelor is dissuaded from becoming a tutor--Fabricio dissuades
+Gil Blas from taking the same situation.
+
+5. A friar of Madrid makes it his business to find vacant places for
+tutors--a friar of Cordova, in Gil Blas, does the same.
+
+6. The bachelor is obliged to leave Madrid because he is the favoured
+lover of Donna Lucia de Padilla--Gil Blas is obliged to leave the
+Marquise de Chaves for the same reason.
+
+7. Bartolome, the comedian, encourages his wife's intrigues--Melchier
+Zapata does the same.
+
+8. The lover of Donna Francisca, in Granada, is a foreign nobleman kept
+there by important business--the situation of the Marquis de Marialva is
+the same.
+
+9. The comedian abandons an old and liberal lover, for Fonseca, who is
+young and poor--Laura prefers Louis de Alaga to his rival, for the same
+reason.
+
+10. Bartolome, to deceive Francisca, assumes the name of Don Pompeio de
+la Cueva--to deceive Laura, Gil Blas pretends to be Don Fernando de
+Ribera.
+
+11. _Le Bachelier_ contains repeated allusions to Dominican friars, and
+particularly to Cirilo Carambola--similar allusions abound in _Gil
+Blas_, where Louis de Aliaga, confessor of Philip III., is particularly
+mentioned.
+
+12. The character of Diego Cintillo, in the _Bachelier de Salamanque_,
+is identical with that of Manuel Ordonez in _Gil Blas_.
+
+13. An aunt of the Duke of Uzeda obtains for the bachelor the place of
+secretary in the minister's office--Gil Blas obtains the same post by
+means of an uncle of the Count of Olivarez.
+
+14. The bachelor, whilst secretary at Uzeda, assists in bringing about
+his patron's daughter's marriage--Gil Blas does the same whilst
+secretary of the Duke of Olivarez.
+
+15. Francisca, the actress, is shut up in a convent at Carthagena,
+because the corregidor's son falls in love with her--Laura, in _Gil
+Blas_, is shut up in a convent, because the corregidor's only son falls
+in love with her.
+
+16. The adventures of Francisca and Laura resemble each other.
+
+17. So do those of Toston and Scipio.
+
+18. Toston and Scipio both lose their wives; and both disbelieve in
+reality, though they think proper to accept, the excuses they make on
+their return.
+
+19. _Finally_, in _Gil Blas_ we find a vivid description of the habits
+and manners prevalent in the European dominions of Spain during the
+reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV. But in no part of _Gil Blas_ do we
+find any allusion to the habits and manners of the viceroy's canons,
+nuns, and monks of America; and yet Scipio is dispatched with a
+lucrative commission to New Spain. It may fairly be inferred, therefore,
+that so vast a portion of the Spanish monarchy did not escape the notice
+of the attentive critic who wrote _Gil Blas_; and the silence can only
+be accounted for by the fact, that the principal anecdotes relating to
+America, were reserved to make out the _Bachelier de Salamanque_, from
+the remainder of which _Gil Blas_ was taken.
+
+Now, the dates of _Gil Blas_ and the Bachelier de Salamanque were
+these:--the two first volumes of _Gil Blas_ were published in 1715, the
+third volume in 1724, which, it is clear, he intended to be the last.
+First, from the Latin verses with which it closes; and secondly, from
+the remark of the anachronism of Don Pompeyo de Castro, which he
+promises to correct if his work gets to a new edition. In 1735 he
+published a fourth volume of _Gil Blas_, and, in 1738, the two volumes
+of the _Bachelier de Salamanque_ as a translation. Will it be said that
+Le Sage's other works prove him to have been capable of inventing _Gil
+Blas_? It will be still without foundation. All his critics agree, that,
+though well qualified to embellish the ideas of others, and master of a
+flowing and agreeable style, he was not an inventive or original writer.
+Such is the language of Voltaire, M. de la Martiniere, and of Chardin,
+and even of M. Neufchateau himself; and yet, it is to a person of this
+description that the authorship of _Gil Blas_, second only to _Don
+Quixote_ in prose works of fiction, has been attributed.
+
+Among the topics insisted upon by the Comte de Neufchateau as most
+clearly establishing the French origin of _Gil Blas_, an intimate
+acquaintance with the court of Louis XIV., and frequent allusions to the
+most remarkable characters in it, are very conspicuous. But to him who
+really endeavours to discover the country of an anonymous writer, such
+an argument, unless reduced to very minute details, and contracted into
+a very narrow compass, will not appear satisfactory. He will recollect
+that the extremes of society are very uniform, that courts resemble each
+other as well as prisons; and that, as was once observed, if King
+Christophe's courtiers were examined, the great features of their
+character would be found to correspond with those of their whiter
+brethren in Europe. The abuses of government, the wrong distribution of
+patronage, the effects of clandestine influence, the solicitations and
+intrigues of male and female favourites, the treachery of confidants,
+the petty jealousies and insignificant struggles of place-hunters, are
+the same, or nearly so, in every country; and it requires no great
+acuteness to detect, or courage to expose, their consequences--the name
+of Choiseul, or Uzeda, or Buckingham, or Bruhl, or Kaunitz, may be
+applied to such descriptions with equal probability and equal justice.
+But when the Tiers Etat are portrayed, when the satirist enters into
+detail, when he enumerates circumstances, when local manners, national
+habits, and individual peculiarities fall under his notice; when he
+describes the specific disease engendered in the atmosphere by which his
+characters are surrounded; when, to borrow a lawyer's phrase, he
+condescends to particulars, then it is that close and intimate
+acquaintance with the scenes and persons he describes is requisite; and
+that a superficial critic falls, at every step into errors the most
+glaring and ridiculous. There are many passages of this description in
+_Gil Blas_ to which we shall presently allude; in the mean time let us
+follow the advice of Count Hamilton, and begin with the beginning--
+
+     "Me voila donc hors d'Oviedo, sur le chemin de Penaflor, au milieu
+     de la campagne, maitre de mes actions, d'une mauvaise mule, et de
+     quarante bons ducats, sans compter quelques reaux que j'avois voles
+     a mon tres-honore oncle.
+
+     "La premiere chose que je fis, fut de laisser ma mule aller a
+     discretion, c'est-a-dire au petit pas. Je lui mis la bride sur le
+     cou, et, tirant mes ducats de ma poche, je commencai a les compter
+     et recompter dans mon chapeau. Je n'etois pas maitre de ma joie; je
+     n'avois jamais vu tant d'argent; je ne pouvois me lasser de le
+     regarder et de le manier. Je la comptois peut-etre pour la
+     vingtieme fois, quand tout-a-coup ma mule, levant la tete et les
+     oreilles, s'arreta au milieu du grand chemin. Je jugeai que quelque
+     chose l'effrayoit; je regardai ce que ce pouvoit etre. J'apercus
+     sur la terre un chapeau renverse sur lequel il y avoit un rosaire a
+     gros grains, et en meme temps j'entendis une voix lamentable qui
+     prononca ces paroles: Seigneur passant, ayez pitie, de grace, d'un
+     pauvre soldat estropie: jetez, s'il vous plait, quelques pieces
+     d'argent dans ce chapeau; vous en serez recompense dans l'autre
+     monde. Je tournai aussitot les yeux du cote d'ou partoit la voix.
+     Je vis au pied d'un buisson, a vingt ou trente pas de moi, une
+     espece de soldat qui, sur deux batons croises, appuyoit le bout
+     d'une escopette, qui me parut plus longue qu'une pique, et avec
+     laquelle il me couchoit en joue. A cette vue, qui me fit trembler
+     pour le bien de l'eglise, je m'arretai tout court; je serrai
+     promptement mes ducats; je tirai quelques reaux, et, m'approchant
+     du chapeau, dispose a recevoir la charite des fideles effrayes, je
+     les jetai dedans l'un apres l'autre, pour montrer au soldat que
+     j'en usois noblement. Il fut satisfait de ma generosite, et me
+     donna autant de benedictions que je donnia de coups de pieds dans
+     les flancs de ma mule, pour m'eloigner promptement de lui; mais la
+     maudite bete, trompant mon impatience, n'en alla pas plus vite; la
+     longue habitude qu'elle avoit de marcher pas a pas sous mon oncle
+     lui avoit fait perdre l'usage du galop."
+
+In France, the custom of travelling on mules was unknown, so was the
+coin ducats, so was that of begging with a rosary, and of extorting
+money in the manner in which Gil Blas describes. In fact, the "useful
+magnificence," as Mr Burke terms it, of the spacious roads in France,
+and the traffic carried on upon them, would render such a manner of
+robbing impossible. How then could Le Sage, who had never set his foot
+in Spain, hit upon so accurate a description? Again, Rolando explains to
+Gil Blas the origin of the subterraneous passages, to which an allusion
+is also made by Raphael; now such are in France utterly unknown.
+
+Rolando, giving an account of his proceedings, says, that his
+grandfather, who could only "_dire son rosaire_," "_rezar su rosario_."
+This is as foreign to the habits of a "vieux militaire Francois," as any
+thing that can be imagined; and, on the other hand, exactly conformable
+to those of a Spanish veteran:--
+
+     "Nous demeurames dans le bois la plus grande partie de la journee,
+     sans apercevoir aucun voyageur qui put payer pour le religieux.
+     Enfin nous en sortimes pour retourner an souterrain, bornant nos
+     exploits a ce risible evenement, qui faisoit encore le sujet de
+     notre entretien, lorsque nous decouvrimes de loin un carrosse a
+     quatre mules. Il venoit a nous au grand trot, et il etoit
+     accompagne de trois hommes a cheval qui nous parurent bien armes."
+
+In this statement are many circumstances irreconcilable with French
+habits. 1st, A whole day passing without meeting a traveller on the
+high-road of Leon, an event common enough in Spain, but in France almost
+impossible; 2d, the escort of the coach, a common precaution of the
+Spanish ladies against violence--the fact that the coach is drawn by
+mules, not horses, of which national trait six other instances may be
+found in the same story:--
+
+     "Plusieurs personnes me voulurent voir par curiosite. Ils venoient
+     l'un apres l'autre se presenter a une petite fenetre par ou le jour
+     entroit dans ma prison; et lorsqu'ils m'avoient considere quelque
+     temps, ils s'en alloient. Je fus surpris de cette nouveaute: depuis
+     que j'etois prisonnier, je n'avois pas vu un seul homme se montrer
+     a cette fenetre, qui donnoit sur une cour ou regnoient le silence
+     et l'horreur. Je compris par la que je faisois du bruit dans la
+     ville, mais je ne savois si j'en devois concevoir un bon ou mauvais
+     presage." ... "La dessus le juge se retira, en disant qu'il alloit
+     ordonner au concierge de m'ouvrir les portes. En effet, un moment
+     apres, le geolier vint dans mon cachot avec un de ses guichetiers
+     qui portoit un paquet de toile. Ils m'oterent tous deux, d'un air
+     grave et sans me dire un seul mot, mon pourpoint et mon
+     haut-de-chausses, qui etoit d'un drap fin et presque neuf; puis,
+     m'ayant revetu d'une vieille souquenille, ils me mirent dehors par
+     les epaules."
+
+This is an exact description of the manner in which prisoners were
+treated in Spain, but bears not the slightest resemblance to any abuse
+that prevailed at that time in France:--
+
+     "Une fille de dix ans, que la gouvernante faisoit passer pour sa
+     niece, en depit de la medisance, vint ouvrir; et comme nous lui
+     demandions si l'on pouvoit parler au chanoine, la dame Jacinte
+     parut. C'etoit une personne deja parvenue a l'age de discretion,
+     mais belle encore; et j'admirai particulierement la fraicheur de
+     son teint. Elle portoit une longue robe d'un etoffe de laine la
+     plus commune, avec une large ceinture de cuir, d'ou pendoit d un
+     cote un trousseau de clefs, et de l'autre un chapelet a gros
+     grains"--"Rosario de cuentas gordas."--_Lib. II._ _c._ 1.
+
+This is an exact description of a class of women well known in Spain by
+the name Beata, but utterly unknown in France till the Soeurs de
+Charite were instituted:--
+
+     "Pendant qu'ils etoient ensemble j'entendis sonner midi. Comme je
+     savois que les secretaires et les commis quittoient a cette heure
+     la leurs bureaux, pour aller diner ou il leur plaisoit, je laissai
+     la mon chef-d'oeuvre, et sortis pour me rendre, non chez
+     Monteser, parcequ'il m'avoit paye mes appointemens, et que j'avois
+     pris conge de lui, mais chez le plus fameux traiteur du quartier de
+     la cour."-_Lib. III._
+
+During the reign of Philip III. and Philip IV., and even till the time
+of Charles IV., twelve was the common hour of dinner, and all the public
+offices were closed: this is very unlike the state of things in Paris
+during the reign of Louis XV., when this romance was published.
+
+In Spain, owing in part to the hospitality natural to unsettled times
+and a simple people, in part to the few strangers who visited the
+Peninsula, inns were for a long time almost unknown, and the occupation
+of an innkeeper, who sold what his countrymen were delighted to give,
+was considered degrading: so dishonourable indeed was it looked upon,
+that where an executioner could not be found to carry the sentence of
+the law into effect upon a criminal, the innkeeper was compelled to
+perform his functions: therefore the innkeepers, like usurers and other
+persons, who follow a pursuit hostile to public opinion, were profligate
+and rapacious. Don Quixote teems with instances to this effect; and
+there are other allusions to the same circumstance in _Gil Blas_. It
+must be observed that if M. Le Sage stumbled by accident upon so great a
+peculiarity, he was fortunate; and if it was suggested to him by his own
+enquiries, they were more profound in this than in most other instances.
+The Barber, describing his visit to his uncle's, (1, 2, 7,) mentions the
+narrow staircase by which he ascended to his relation's abode. Here,
+again, is a proof of an intimate acquaintance with the structure of the
+hotels of the Spanish grandees: in all of them are to be found a large
+and spacious staircase leading to the apartments of the master, and a
+small one leading to those of his dependents. So the hotel in which
+Fabricio lives, (3, 7, 13,) and that inhabited by Count Olivarez, are
+severally described as possessing this appurtenance. It is singular that
+Le Sage, who seems to have been almost as fond of Paris as Socrates was
+of Athens, should have picked up this intimate knowledge of the hotels
+of Madrid. The knowledge of music and habit of playing upon the guitar
+in the front of their houses, is another stroke of Spanish manners which
+no Frenchman is likely to have thought of adding to his work (1, 2, 7.)
+Marcelina puts on her mantle to go to mass. This custom prevailed in
+Spain till the sceptre passed to the Bourbons--in many towns till the
+time of Charles III., and in small villages till the reign of Charles
+IV. Gil Blas joins a muleteer, (1, 3, 1,) with four mules which had
+transported merchandise to Valladolid--this method of carrying goods is
+not known in France. The same observation applies to 3, 3, 7. Rolando
+informs Gil Blas, (1, 3, 2,) "Lorsqu'il eut parle de cette sorte, il
+nous fit enfermer dans un cachot, ou il ne laissa pas languir mes
+compagnons; ils en sortirent au bout de trois jours pour aller jouer un
+role tragique dans la grande place."
+
+This exactly corresponds with the Spanish custom, which was to allow
+prisoners, capitally convicted, three days to prepare for a Christian
+death. Rolando continues, "Oh! je regrette mon premier metier, j'avoue
+qu'il y a plus de surete dans le nouveau; mais il y a plus d'agrement
+dans l'autre, et j'aime la liberte. J'ai bien la mine de me defaire de
+ma charge, et de partir un beau matin pour aller gagner les montagnes
+qui sont aux sources du Tage. Je sais qu'il y a dans cet endroit une
+retraite habitee par une troupe nombreuse, et remplie de sujets
+Catalans: c'est faire son eloge en un mot. Si tu veux m'accompagner,
+nous irons grosser le nombre de ces grands hommes. Je serai dans leur
+compagnie capitaine en second; et pour t'y faire recevoir avec agrement,
+j'assurerai que je t'ai vu dix fois combattre a mes cotes."
+
+The chain of mountains of Cuenca Requena Aragon y Abaracin, in which the
+Tagus rises, does contain such excavations as Rolando employed for such
+purposes as Rolando mentions, (1, 3, 11.) The grace of Carlos Alfonso de
+la Ventolera in managing his cloak, was an Andalusian accomplishment,
+and an accomplishment which ceased to prevail when the Bourbons entered
+Spain. It could not have been applied to describe a Castilian, as it was
+confined to the inhabitants of Murcia, Andalusia, Valencia, and la
+Mancha. How could Le Sage have known this? When the Count Azumar dines
+with Don Gonzalo Pacheco, the conversation turns on bull-fights, (2, 4,
+7.)
+
+     "Leur conversation roula d'abord sur une course de taureaux qui
+     s'etoit faite depuis peu de jours. Ils parlerent des cavaliers qui
+     y avoient montre le plus d'adresse et de vigueur; et la-dessus le
+     vieux comte, tel que Nestor, a qui toutes les choses presentes
+     donnoient occasion de louer les choses passees, dit en
+     soupirant--Helas! je ne vois point aujourd'hui d'hommes comparables
+     a ceux que j'ai vus autrefois, ni les tournois ne se font pas avec
+     autant de magnificence qu'on les faisoit dans ma jeunesse."
+
+This alludes to the "Caballeros de Plaza," as they were called,
+gentlemen by birth animated by the love of glory, very different from
+the hired Picadors. This custom of the Spanish gentlemen, which many of
+our fox-hunting and pheasant-shooting squires will condemn for its
+cruelty, was very common during the reigns of Philip III. and IV., but
+gradually declined, and was at last only prevalent at the _Fiestas
+Reales_. The last example was known in 1789, to celebrate the _jura_ of
+the Prince of Asturia, afterwards the pious and exemplary Ferdinand VII.
+This must have been before his attempted parricide. Ambrosio de Lamela,
+in order to accomplish his designs on Simon, (2, 6, 1,) purchases
+articles at Chelva in Valencia, among others--
+
+     "Il nous fit voir un manteau et une robe noire fort longue, deux
+     pourpoints avec leurs hauts-de-chausses, une de ces ecritoires
+     composees de deux pieces liees par un cordon, et dont le cornet est
+     separe de l'etui ou l'on met les plumes; une main de beau papier
+     blanc un cadenas avec un gros cachet, et de la cire verte; et
+     lorsqu'il nous eut enfin exhibe toutes ses emplettes, Don Raphael
+     lui dit en plaisantant: Vive Dieu! Monsieur Ambroise, il faut
+     avouer que vous avez fait la un bon achat."
+
+Now this is a faithful portrait of the inkstand, called Tintero de
+Escribano, which the Spanish scriveners always carry about with them,
+and which it is most improbable that M. Le Sage should ever have seen in
+his life, or indeed have heard of but through the medium of a Spanish
+manuscript. The account proceeds; and the distinction, which the reader
+will find taken with so much accuracy, between the inquisitor and
+familiar of the holy office, is one which, however familiar to every
+Spaniard, it is not likely a Frenchman should be acquainted with. In
+France the inquisitor was confounded with the commissary, and all were
+supposed to be Dominican friars.
+
+     "La, mon garcon barbier etala ses vivres, qui consistoient das cinq
+     ou six oignons, avec quelques morceaux de pain et de fromage: mais
+     ce qu'il produisit comme la meilleure piece du sac, fut une petite
+     outre, remplie, disoit-il, d'un vin delicat et friand," (2, 6.)
+
+This custom of carrying wine in a leathern bag, is a peculiar trait of
+Spanish manners.
+
+Catalena, the chambermaid of Guevarra, nurse of Philip IV., obtains from
+her mistress, for Ignatio, the archdeaconry of Granada, which, as "pais
+de conquista," was subject to the crown's disposal:--
+
+     "Cette soubrette, qui est la meme dont je me suis servi depuis pour
+     tirer de la tour de Segovie le seigneur de Santillane, ayant envie
+     de rendre service a Don Ignacio, engagea sa maitresse a demander
+     pour lui un benefice an Duc de Lerme. Ce ministre le fit nommer a
+     l'archidiaconat de Granade, lequel etant en pays conquis; est a la
+     nomination du roi."
+
+Now, that Le Sage should have been acquainted with this fact, for fact
+it unquestionably is, does appear astonishing. Till the concordat of
+1753, the kings of Spain could only present to dignities in churches
+subject to the royal privilege, among which was this of Granada, by
+virtue of particular bulls issued at the time of its conquest. This is a
+fact, however, with which very few Spaniards were acquainted. Antonio de
+Pulgar, in his _Cronica de Los Reyes Catholicos_, c. 22, tells us that
+Isabella, "En el proueer de las yglesias que vacaron en su tiempo, ouo
+respecto tan recto, que pospuesta toda afficion siempre supplico al Papa
+por hombres generosos, y grandes letrados, y de vida honesta; lo que no
+se lee que con tanta diligencia ouiesse guardado ningun rey de los
+passados." Another remarkable passage, and to us almost conclusive, is
+the following--
+
+     "Je le menai au comte-duc, qui le recut tres poliment, et lui dit
+     qu'il s'etoit si bien conduit dans son gouvernement de la ville de
+     Valence, que le roi, le jugeant propre a remplir une plus grande
+     place, l'avoit nomme a la viceroyaute d'Aragon. D'ailleurs,
+     ajouta-t-il, cette dignite n'est point au-dessus de votre
+     naissance, et la noblesse Aragonoise ne sauroit murmurer contre le
+     choix de la cour."
+
+This alludes to a dispute between the Spanish government and the
+Aragonese, which had continued from the days of Charles V. The Aragonese
+claimed either that the king himself should reside among them, or be
+represented by some person of the royal blood. Charles V. appointed, as
+viceroy of Aragon, his uncle, the Archbishop of Zaragoza, and then Don
+Fernando de Aragon, his cousin. Philip II. appointed a Castilian to that
+dignity. This produced great disturbances in Aragon, and the dispute
+lasted till 1692, when the Aragonese settled the matter by putting the
+Castilian viceroy, Inigo de Mendoza, to death. His successor was an
+Aragonese, Don Miguel de Luna, Conde de Morata, and he was succeeded by
+Don John of Austria, his brother. It is most improbable that M. Le Sage,
+whose knowledge of Spanish literature was very superficial, and whose
+ignorance of Spanish history was complete, should have understood this
+allusion. This, therefore, leads to the conclusion that it must have
+been taken from a Spanish manuscript.
+
+In conformity with this we find Mariana saying, in the days of Ferdinand
+and Isabella--"Los Aragoneses no querian recebir por Virrey a D. Ramon
+Folch, Conde de Cardona, que el rey tenia senalado para este cargo;
+decian era contra sus fueros poner en el gobierno de su reyno hombre
+extrangero. Hobo demandas y respuestas, mas al fin el rey temporizo con
+ellos, y nombro por Virrey a su hijo D. Alonso de Aragon, Arzobispo de
+Zaragoza."
+
+Can any one doubt that the writer of the following passage had seen the
+spot he describes?
+
+     "Il me fit traverser une cour, et monter par un escalier fort
+     etroit a une petite chambre qui etoit tout an haut de la tour. Je
+     ne fus pas peu surpris, en entrant dans cette chambre, de voir sur
+     une table deux chandelles, qui bruloient dans des flambeaux de
+     cuivre, et deux couverts assez propres. Dans un moment, me dit
+     Tordesillas, on va nous apporter a manger: nous allons souper ici
+     tous deux. C'est ce reduit que je vous ai destine pour logement.
+     Vous y serez mieux que dans votre cachot; vous verrez de votre
+     fenetre les bords fleuris de l'Erema, et la vallee delicieuse qui,
+     du pied des montagnes qui separent les deux Castilles, s'etend
+     jusqu'a Coca. Je suis bien que vous serez d'abord peu sensible a
+     une si belle vue, mais quand le temps aura fait succeder une douce
+     melancolie a la vivacite de votre douleur, vous prendrez plaisir a
+     promener vos regards sur des objets si agreables."
+
+These notices of reference, taken at random, are all adapted to the
+places at which they are found--the narrative leads to them by regular
+approximation, or they are suggested by the subject and occasion which
+it draws forth. To introduce a given story into the body of a writing
+without abruptness, or marks of unnatural transition,
+
+        "Ut per laeve moventes,
+    Effundat junctura ungues."
+
+is, as Paley observes, one of the most difficult artifices of
+composition; and here are upwards of a hundred Spanish names,
+circumstances, and allusions, incorporated with the story written, as M.
+Neufchateau assures us, by a Frenchman concerning the court of Louis
+XIV. A line touching on truth in so many points, could never have been
+drawn accidentally; it is the pencil thrown luckily full upon the
+horse's mouth, and expressing the foam which the painter, with all his
+skill, could not represent without it. Let the reader observe how
+difficult Le Sage has found the task of connecting the anecdotes taken
+from Marcos de Obregon, and put into the mouth of Diego, with the main
+story. How awkward is this transition? "Le _seigneur_ Diego de La Fuente
+me raconta d'autres aventures encore, qui lui etoient arrivees depuis;
+mais elles me semblent si peu dignes d'etre rapportees, que je les
+passerai sous silence."
+
+The next branch of the argument which we are called upon to consider,
+relates to the Spanish words in _Gil Blas_, which imply the existence of
+a Spanish manuscript. The names Juan, Pedro, often occur in Le Sage's
+work, and Pierre, Jean, are sometimes used in their stead. The word
+_Don_ is prefixed by the Spaniards to the Christian, and never to the
+surname, as Don Juan, Don Antonio, not Don Mariana, Don Cervantes. In
+France, _Dom_, its synonyme, is, on the contrary, prefixed to the
+surname--as Dom Mabillon, Don Calmet. Le Sage always adheres to the
+Spanish custom. The robber who introduces Gil Blas to the cavern, says,
+"Tenez, Dame Leonarde, voici un jeune garcon," &c. Again, "On dressa
+dans le salon une grande table, et l'on me renvoya dans la cuisine, ou
+la _Dame_ Leonarde m'instruisit de ce que j'avais a faire.... Et comme
+depuis sa mort c'etoit la _Senora Leonarda_ qui avoit l'honneur de
+presenter le nectar a ces dieux infernaux," &c. This expression "Senora
+Leonarda," is much in favour of a Spanish original; why should not Le
+Sage have repeated the expression "Dame Leonarde," on which we have a
+few observations to offer, had it not been that he thought the word
+under his eyes at the moment would lend grace and vivacity to the
+narrative. A French writer would have said, "Tenez, Leonarde," or
+perhaps, "Tenez, Madame Leonarde;" but such a phrase as "Tenez, Dame
+Leonarde," in a French writer, can be accounted for only by the
+translation of "senora." So we have "la Senora Catalena," (7, 12)--"la
+Senora Sirena," (9, 7)--and "la Senora Mencia," (8, 10) of the French
+version, and instead of "une demoiselle," "une jeune dame," which is a
+translation of "senorita." In giving an account of his projected
+marriage with the daughter of Gabriel Salero, Gil Blas says, (9,
+1)--"C'etoit un bon bourgeois qui etoit comme nous disons poli hasta
+porfiar. Il me presenta la Senora Eugenia, sa femme, et la jeune
+Gabriela, sa fille." Here are three Spanish idioms--"hasta porfiar,"
+which Le Sage thinks it necessary to explain, "la Senora Eugenia,"
+"Gabriela." Diego de la Fuente tells his friend, "J'avois pour maitre de
+cet instrument un vieux 'senor escudero,' a qui je faisois la barbe. Il
+se nommoit Marcos Dobregon." A French author, instead of "senor
+escudero," would have said, "vieux ecuyer;" a Spanish transcriber would
+have written "Marcos de Obregon." We have (x. 3, 11) "Senor Caballero
+des plus lestes," "romances" instead of "romans," (1, 5,) "prado"
+instead of "pre," twice, (4, 10; 7, 13.)
+
+Laura says--"Un jour il nous vint en fantaisie a Dorothee et a moi
+d'aller voir joner les comediens de Seville. Ils avaient affiche qu'ils
+representaient _la famosa comedia_, et Embajador de si mismo, de Lope de
+Vega Carpio.... En fin le moment que j'attendais etant arrive,
+c'est-a-dire, la fin de _la famosa comedia_, nous nous en allames." We
+have "hidalgo" instead of "gentilhomme" three times; "contador mayor"
+twice, once used by Chinchillo, again by the innkeeper at Suescas,
+"oidor" instead of "juge" or "membre de la cour royale," "escribano"
+instead of "notaire," (8, 9.) "Hospital de ninos" instead of "hospice
+des enfans orphelins," "olla podrida" three times "marmalada de
+berengaria," (9, 4,) and "picaro" instead of "fripon," (4, 10, 12.)
+Scipio says, "un jour comme je passois aupres de l'eglise de los reyes."
+There is at Toledo a church named "San Juan de los Reyes." How could Le
+Sage, who never had been in Spain, know this fact? Gil Blas thus relates
+an event at Valencia--"Je m'en approchai pour apprendre pourquoi je
+voyois la un si grand concours d'hommes et de femmes, et bientot je fus
+au fait, en lisant ces paroles ecrites en lettres d'or sur une table de
+marbre noir, qu'il-y avait audessus de la porte, '_La posada de los
+representantes_,' et les comediens marquaient dans leur affiche qu'ils
+joueraient ce jour-la pour la premiere fois une tragedie nouvelle de Don
+Gabriel Triaguero." This passage is an attestation of the fact, that
+during the reign of Philip IV. the buildings of the Spanish provinces in
+which dramatic performances were represented were at the same time the
+residence, "posada," of the actors--a custom even now not altogether
+extinguished; but which Le Sage could only know through the medium of a
+Spanish manuscript. Gil Blas, imprisoned in the tower of Segovia, hears
+Don Gaston de Cavallos sing the following verses--
+
+    "Ayde nie un ano _felice_
+    Parece un soplo ligero
+    Pero sin duda un instante
+    Es un siglo de tormento."
+
+Where did Le Sage find these verses, sweet, gracious, and idiomatic as
+they are? The use of the word "felice" for "feliz" is a poetical
+license, and displays more than a stranger's knowledge of Spanish
+composition. It has been said that Smollett has left many French words
+in his translation of Gil Blas, and that too strong an inference ought
+not to be drawn from the employment of Spanish phrases by Le Sage. But
+what are the words? Are they words in the mouth of every one, and such
+as a superficial dilettante might easily pick up; or do they, either of
+themselves or from the conjunctures in which they are employed, exhibit
+a consummate acquaintance with the dialect and habits of the people to
+which they refer? Besides, it should be remembered that French is a
+language far more familiar to well-educated people in England, than
+Spanish ever was to the French, and that Smollett had lived much in
+France; whereas Le Sage knew from books alone the language which he has
+employed with so much colloquial elegance and facility. We now turn to
+the phrases and expressions in French which Le Sage has manifestly
+translated.
+
+The first word which occurs in dealing with this part of the subject is
+"seigneur" as a translation for "senor;" "seigneur" in France was not a
+substitute for "monsieur," which is the proper meaning of "senor." On
+the use of the word "dame" we have already commented. Instead of Dame
+Leonarde and Dame Lorenzo Sephora, a French writer would have put
+"Madame" or "la cuisiniere," or "la femme de chambre," as the case might
+be. So the exclamation of the highwayman, "Seigneur passant," &c., must
+be a translation of "Senor passagero." Describing the parasite at
+Penaflor, Gil Blas says, "le cavalier portait une longue rapiere, et il
+s'approcha de moi d'un air empresse, _Seigneur_ ecolier, me dit-il, je
+viens d'apprendre que vous etes le _seigneur_ Gil Blas de Santillane.
+Je lui dis, _seigneur_ cavalier, je ne croyois pas que mon nom fut connu
+a Penaflor." "Le cavalier" means a man on horseback, which is not a
+description applicable to the parasite; "chevalier" is the French word
+for the member of a military order. "Cet homme," or "ce monsieur," would
+have been the expression of Le Sage if "este caballero" had not been in
+the manuscript to be copied. "Carillo" for "Camillo," "betancos" for
+"betangos," "rodillas" for "revilla;" and yet M. Le Sage is not
+satisfied with making his hero walk towards the Prado of Madrid, but
+goes further, and describes it as the "pre de Saint Jerome"--Prado de
+Ste Geronimo, which is certainly more accurate. Again he speaks of "la
+Rue des Infantes" at Madrid, (8, 1)--"De los Infantos is the name of a
+street in that city--and in the same sentence names "une vieille dame
+Inesile Cantarille." Inesilla is the Spanish diminutive of Ines, and
+Cantarilla of Cantaro. The last word alludes to the expression "mozas de
+Cantaro," for women of inferior degree. Philip III. shuts up Sirena
+"dans la maison des repenties." This is also the name of a convent at
+Madrid, called "casa de las arrepentidas." But a still stronger argument
+in favour of the existence of a Spanish manuscript, is to be found in
+the passage which says that Lucretia, the repentant mistress of Philip
+IV., "quitte tout a coup le monde, et se ferme dans le monastere de la
+_Incarnacion_;" that having been founded by Philip III. in compliance
+with the will of Dona Margarita, his wife, it was reserved expressly for
+nuns connected in some way with the royal family of Spain; and that
+therefore Lucretia, having been the mistress of Philip IV., was entitled
+to become a member of it.
+
+"Nous apercumes _un religieux de l'ordre de Saint Domingue_, monte,
+_contre l'ordinaire de ces bons peres, sur une mauvaise mule_.{A} _Dieu
+soit loue_, s'ecria le capitaine." In this sentence all the passages in
+Italics are of Spanish origin. "_Seigneur cavalier_, vous etes bien
+heureux qu'on se soit adresse a moi plutot qu'a un autre: je ne veux
+point decrier mes confreres: a _Dieu ne plaise_ que je fasse le moindre
+tort a leur reputation: mais, entre nous, il n'y en a pas un qui ait de
+la conscience--_ils sont tous plus durs que des Juifs_. Je suis le seul
+fripier qui ait de la morale: je ne borne a un prix raisonable; je me
+contente de la livre pour sou--je veux dire du sou pour livre. _Graces
+au ciel_, j'exerce rondement ma profession." Here we find "Seigneur
+cavalier," "a Dieu ne plaise," which is the common Spanish phrase, "no
+permita Dios," "Graces an ciel," instead of "Dieu merci," from "Gracias
+a Dios." A little further we find the phrase "_Seigneur gentilhomme_,"
+which can only be accounted for as a translation of "Senor hidalgo;"
+"garcon de famille," (1, 17,) "benefice simple," (11, 17) are neither of
+them French expressions. "The virtuous Jacintha," says Fabricio, "merite
+d'etre la gouvernante du patriarche des Indes." Now, it is impossible
+that the existence of such a dignity as this should have been known at
+Paris. It was of recent creation, and had been the subject of much
+conversation at Madrid. "Garcon de bien et d'honneur," (1, 2, 1,) "un
+mozo, hombre de bien y de honor." "Je servis un potage qu'on auroit pu
+presenter _au plus fameux directeur de Madrid_, et deux entrees qui
+auroient eu de quoi piquer la sensualite _d'un viceroi_." It is
+impossible not to see that the first of the phrases in italics is a
+translation "del director mas famoso de Madrid;" first, because a
+Frenchman would have used "celebre," and secondly, because the word
+"director" in a different sense from that of confessor was unknown at
+Madrid. The allusion to the Viceroy, a functionary unknown to the French
+government, also deserves notice. The notaire, hastening to Cedillo,
+takes up hastily "son manteau et son chapeau." This infers a knowledge
+on the part of the writer that the Spanish scrivener never appeared,
+however urgent the occasion, without his "capa." We have the word
+"laboureurs" applied to substantial farmers, (1, 2, 7.) This is a
+translation of "labradores," to which the French word does not
+correspond, as it means properly, men dependent on daily labour for
+their daily bread. "J'ai fait elever," says the schoolmaster of Olmedo,
+"un theatre, sur lequel, Dieu aidant, je ferai representer par mes
+_disciples_ une piece que j'ai composee. Elle a pour titre les jeunes
+amours de Muley Bergentuf Roi de Moroi." "_Disciples_" is a translation
+of "discipulos." A French writer would have said "eleves." Again, the
+title of the Pedant's play is thoroughly Spanish. It was intended to
+ridicule the habit which prevailed in Spain, after the expulsion of the
+Moriscoes in 1610, of adapting for the stage Moorish habits and
+amusements, by making a stupid pedant in an obscure village, select them
+as the subject of his tragedy.
+
+Describing the insolence of the actors, Gil Blas says, "Bien loin de
+traiter d'excellence les seigneurs, elles ne leur donnoient pas meme _de
+la seigneurie_." This would hardly be applicable to the manners of the
+French. The principal of Lucinde's creditors, "se nommoit Bernard
+Astuto, qui meritoit bien son nom." The signification of the name is
+clear in Spanish; but in French the allusion is totally without meaning.
+This probably escaped Le Sage in the hurry of composition, or it would
+have been easy to have removed so clear a mark of translation. The
+following mark is still stronger. Speaking of Simon, the bourgeois of
+Chelva, he says--"Certain Juif, qui s'est fait Catholique, mais dans le
+fond de l'ame il est encore _Juif comme Pilate_." Now, the lower classes
+of Spain perpetually fall into this error of calling Pilate a Jew; and
+this is a trait which could hardly have occurred to a foreign writer,
+however well acquainted with Spain, much less to a writer who had never
+set his foot in that country. Here we cannot help observing, that the
+whole scene from which this passage is taken is eminently Spanish. In
+Spain only was such a proceeding possible as the scheme for deprecating
+Simon, executed by Lucinda and Raphael. The character of the victim, the
+nature of the fraud, the absence of all suspicion which such proceedings
+would necessarily provoke in any other country, are as conclusive proofs
+of Spanish origin as moral evidence can supply. Count Guliano is found
+playing with an ape, "pour dormir _la siesta_." Lucretia says to Gil
+Blas, "Je vous rends de tres humbles graces," "doy a usted muy umildes
+gracias." A French writer would have said, "Je vous remercie
+infiniment." Melendez is described as living "a la Porte du Soleil du
+coin de la Rue des Balustrees," "esquina de la Calle de Cofreros." There
+is such an alley as this, but it is unknown to ninety-nine Spaniards in
+a hundred. Beltran Moscada tells Gil Blas, "Je vous reconnois bien,
+moi--nous avons joue mille fois tous deux _a la Gallina ciega_." This Le
+Sage thinks it necessary to explain by a note, to inform his readers
+that it is the same as "Colin Maillard." From all these various phrases
+and expressions, scattered about in different passages of Gil Blas, and
+taken almost at random from different parts of the work, the conclusion
+that it was copied from a Spanish manuscript appears inevitable.
+
+Le Sage has named Sacedon, Buendia, Fuencarrat, Madrid, Campillo,
+Aragon, Penaflor, Castropot, Asturias; Salcedo, Alava; Villaflor,
+Cebreros, Avila; Tardajos, Kevilla, Puentedura, Burgos; Villar-de-saz;
+Almodovar, Cuenca; Almoharin, Monroy, Estremadura; Adria, Gavia, Vera,
+Granada; Mondejar, Gualalajara; Vierzo, Ponferrada, Cacabelos, Leon;
+Calatrava, Castilblanco, Mancha; Chinchilla, Lorque, Murcia; Duenas,
+Palencia; Colmenar, Coca, Segovia; Carmona, Mairena, Sevilla; Cobisa,
+Galvez, Illescas, Loeches, Maqueda, Kodillas, Villarejo, Villarrubia,
+Toledo; Bunol, Chelva, Chiva; Gerica, Liria Paterna, Valencia;
+Ataquines, Benavente, Mansilla, Mojados, Olmedo, Penafiel, Puente de
+Duero, Valdestillas, Valladolid.
+
+The story of _Gil Blas_ contains the names of no less than one hundred
+and three Spanish villages and towns of inferior importance, many of
+them are unknown out of Spain--such as Albarracin, Antequera, Betanzos,
+Ciudad Real, Coria, Lucena, Molina, Mondonedo, Monzon, Solsona,
+Trujillo, Ubeda.
+
+There are also cited the names of thirteen dukes--Alba, Almeida,
+Braganza, Frias (condestable de Castilia,) Lerma, Medina-celi, Medina de
+Rioseco, (almirante de Castilia,) Medina-Sidonia, Medina de las Tarres
+(Marques de Toral,) Mantua, Osuna, Sanlucar la Mayor y Uceda. Eleven
+marquises--De Almenara, Carpia, Chaves, Laguardia, Leganes, Priego,
+Santacruz, Toral, Velez, Villa-real y Zenete. Eight condes--De Azumar,
+Galiano, Lemos, Montanos, Niebla, Olivares, Pedrosa y Polan. Of these
+four only are fictitious. It is remarkable also, that one title cited in
+_Gil Blas_, that of Admirante de Castilia, did not exist when Le Sage
+published his romance--Felipe V. having abolished it, to punish the
+holder of that dignity for having embraced the cause of the house of
+Austria. Nor are there wanting the names of persons celebrated in their
+day among the inhabitants of the Peninsula. Such are Fray Luis Aliago,
+confessor of Philip III., Archimandrite of Sicily, and inquisitor-general,
+Don Rodrigo Calderon, secretary of the king, Calderon de la Barca,
+Antonio Carnero, secretary of the king, Philip IV., Cervantes, Geronimo
+de Florencia, Jesuit preacher of Philip IV., Fernando de Gamboa, one of
+the gentlemen of his bedchamber, Luis de Gongora, Ana de Guevarra, his
+nurse, Maria de Guzman, only daughter of Olivarez, Henry Philip de
+Guzman, his adopted son, Baltasar de Zuniga, uncle of Olivarez, Lope de
+Vega Carpio, Luis Velez de Guevarra, Juana de Velasco, making in all
+nineteen persons. There are the names of not only thirty-one families of
+the highest class in Spain, as Guzman, Herrera, Mendoza, Acuna, Avila,
+Silva, &c., but twenty-five names belonging to less illustrious, but
+still distinguished families; and twenty-nine names really Spanish, but
+applied to imaginary characters. This makes a list of eighty-five names,
+which it seems impossible for any writer acquainted only with the lighter
+parts of Spanish literature to have accumulated. Nor should it be
+forgotten that there are forty-five names, intended to explain the
+character of those to whom they are given, like Mrs Slipslop and Parson
+Trulliber, retained by Gil Blas, notwithstanding the loss of their
+original signification. Doctor Andros don Anibal de Chinchilla, Alcacer,
+Apuntador, Astuto, Azarini, Padre Alejos y Don Abel, Buenagarra,
+Brutandof, Campanario Chilindron, Chinchilla, Clarin, Colifichini, Cordel,
+Coscolina, Padre Crisostomo, Doctor Cuchillo, Descomulgado, Deslenguado,
+Escipion, Forero, Guyomar, Ligero, Majuelo, Mascarini, Melancia, Mogicon,
+Montalban, Muscada, Nisana, Doctor Oloroso, Doctor Oquetos, Penafiel,
+Pinares, Doctor Sangrado, Stheimbach, Samuel Simon, Salero, Talego, Touto,
+Toribio, Triaquero, Ventolera, Villaviciosa, are all names of this sort.
+Who but a Spaniard, then, was likely to invent them? Were there no other
+argument, the case for Spain might almost safely be rested on this issue.
+But this is not all, since the mistakes, orthographical and geographical,
+which abound in the French edition of _Gil Blas_, carry the argument
+still further, and place it beyond the reach of reasonable contradiction.
+The reader will observe, that much of the question depends upon the fact,
+admitted on all sides, that Le Sage did not transcribe his version from
+any printed work, but from a manuscript. Had Le Sage merely inserted
+stories here and there taken from Spanish romances, his claims as an
+original writer would hardly be much shaken by their discovery, supposing
+the plot, with which they were skilfully interwoven, and the main bulk
+and stamina of the story, to be his own. But where the errors are such as
+can only be accounted for by mistakes, not of the press, but of the
+copies of a manuscript, and are fully accounted for in that manner--where
+they are so thickly sown, as to show that they were not errors made by a
+person with a printed volume before his eyes, but by a person deciphering
+a manuscript written in a language of which he had only a superficial
+acquaintance, no candid enquirer will hesitate as to the inference to
+which such facts lead, and by which alone they can be reconciled with the
+profound and intimate knowledge of Spanish literature, habits, and
+manners, to which we have before adverted. The innkeeper of Penaflor is
+named _Corcuelo_ in the French version, an appellation utterly without
+meaning. The real word was _Corzuelo_, a diminutive from _corzo_, which
+carries a very pointed allusion to the character of the person. It was
+usual to write instead of the _z_--_c_ with a cedilla, and this was
+probably the origin of the mistake. The innkeeper of Burgos is called in
+the French text _Manjuelo_, which is not Spanish, and is equally
+unmeaning. The original undoubtedly was _Majuelo_, the diminutive of
+_Majo_, which is very significant of the class to which the person
+bearing the name belonged. The person to whom Gil Blas applies for a
+situation at Valladolid, is called in the French text _Londona_. The real
+word is Londono, the name of a village near Orduna, in Biscay. _Inesile_
+is the name given to the niece of Jacinta. This is instead of _Inesilla_,
+and corresponds with the French Agnes. Castel Blargo is used for Castel
+Blanco. Rodriguez says to his master, "Je ne touche pas un marave_dis_ de
+vos finances." The word in the manuscript was _marivedi_. Le Sage has
+used the plural for the singular. "Seguier," a proper name, is used for
+"Seguiar." "De la Ventileria" is the unmeaning name given to a frivolous
+coxcomb, instead of "De la Ventilera." Le Sage, speaking of the same
+person, sometimes calls her "Dona _K_imena de Guzman," and sometimes
+"Dona _Ch_imena," a manifest proof that "Dona _X_imena" was written in
+the work from which he transcribed; as the French substitute sometimes
+_k_ and sometimes _ch_, for the Spanish _x_.
+
+  Pedros is used for Pedroga, (the name of a noble family.)
+  Moyades for Miagades, (a village.)
+  Zendero for Zenzano, (do.)
+  Salceda for Salcedo, (do.)
+  Calderone for Calderon.
+  Oliguera for Lahiguera.
+  Niebles for Niebla.
+  Jutella for Antella.
+  Leiva for Chiva.
+
+After Gil Blas's promotion, he says that his haughty colleague treated
+him with more respect; and this is expressed in such a way as to show
+that Le Sage was ignorant of Spanish etiquette, and did not understand
+thoroughly the meaning of what he transcribed. "Il Don Rodrigo de
+Calderone ne m'appela plus que Seigneur de Santillane, lui qui
+jusqu'alors ne m'avoit traite que de _vous_, sans jamais se servir du
+terme de seigneurie," supposing the meaning equivalent--whereas, in
+fact, though Gil Blas might complain of not being addressed in the third
+person, which would draw with it the use of senor, and was a common form
+of civility--it would have been ridiculous to represent him as addressed
+by a name, senoria, to which none but people of high station and
+illustrious rank were entitled. But Le Sage supposed that every one
+addressed as senor, might also be spoken of by the term senoria; a
+mistake against which a very moderate knowledge of Spanish usages would
+have guarded him. We may illustrate this by a quotation from Navarete:--
+
+     "En este estado enviaron a decir a Magallanes.... Que si se queria
+     avenir a lo que cumpliese, al servicio de S. M. estarian a lo que
+     les mandase, y que si hasta entonces le dieron tratamiento de
+     merced, _en adelante se lo darian de senoria_, y le besarian pies y
+     manos."
+
+This was intended as a proof of the greatest reverence by the mutineers,
+whom, notwithstanding this submission, Magallanes took an early
+opportunity to destroy.
+
+Gil Blas relates the absurd resolution of the Conde Duque D'Olivarez, to
+adopt the son of a person with whom he, among others, had intrigued as
+his own. This anecdote was well known in Spain. The supposed father of
+this youth was an alcalde de corte, called Valcancel; and _he_ had been
+rivaled by an alguazil. The son was called in the early part of his life
+Julian Valcancel. When adopted by Olivarez, he took the name of Eurique
+Felipe de Guzman, which the people said ought to be exchanged for that
+of Del Alguazil del Alcalde de Corte. Olivarez divorced him from the
+woman to whom he was certainly married, and obliged him to marry the
+daughter of the Duca de Frias. He was called by the people of Madrid a
+man with two names, the son of three fathers, and the husband of two
+wives. Le Sage, by substituting the name of Valdeasar for that of
+Valcancel, proves that he was ignorant of the whole transaction. In the
+_auto da fe_ which Gil Blas sees at Toledo, and in which his old friends
+terminate their adventures in so tragical a manner--some of the guilty
+are represented as wearing _carochas_ on their heads. This is a word
+altogether without meaning; the real word was _corozas_, a cap worn by
+criminals as a badge of degradation.
+
+Another mistake deserves attention, as supplying the strongest proof of
+an inaccurate transcriber. "J'espere," says Maitre Joachim to his
+master, "que je vous servirai tantot un ragout digne d'un _can_tador
+mayor." The word was not "_can_tador," but "_con_tador mayor," the
+"ministro de hacienda," or chancellor of the exchequer; a situation
+under a despotic government of the highest dignity and opulence. So Don
+Annibal de Chinchilla exclaims--"Me croit-elle un contador mayor," when
+repelling a demand of a rapacious prostitute. But Le Sage mistook the
+_o_ of his manuscript for an _a_, and turned a phrase very intelligible
+into nonsense. We now come to the passage which M. Neufchateau quotes as
+decisive in favour of Le Sage's claims. It certainly was to be found in
+no Spanish manuscript.
+
+     "Don Louis nous mena chez un jeune gentilhomme de ses amis, qu'on
+     appeloit don Gabriel de Pedros. Nous y passames le reste de la
+     journee; nous y soupames meme, et nous n'en sortimes que sur les
+     deux heures apres minuit pour nous en retourner au logis. Nous
+     avions peut-etre fait la moitie du chemin, lorsque nous
+     rencontrames sous nos pieds dans la rue deux hommes etendus par
+     terre. Nous jugeames que c'etoient des malheureux qu'on venoit
+     d'assassiner, et nous nous arretames pour les secourir, s'il en
+     etoit encore temps. Comme nous cherchions a nous instruire, autant
+     que l'obscurite de la nuit nous le pouvoit permettre, de l'etat ou
+     ils se trouvoient, la patrouille arriva. Le commandant nous prit
+     d'abord pour des assassins, et nous fit environner par ses gens;
+     mais il eut meilleure opinion de nous lorsqu'il nous eut entendus
+     parler, et qu'a la faveur d'une lanterne sourde, il vit les traits
+     de Mendoce et de Pacheco. Ses archers, par son ordre, examinerent
+     les deux hommes que nous nous imaginions avoir ete tues; et il se
+     trouva que c'etoit un gros licencie avec son valet, tous deux pris
+     de vin, ou plutot ivres-morts. 'Messieurs,' s'ecria un des archers,
+     'je reconnois ce gros vivant. Eh! c'est le seigneur licencie
+     Guyomar, recteur de notre universite. Tel que vous le voyez, c'est
+     un grand personnage, un genie superieur. Il n'y a point de
+     philosophe qu'il ne terrasse dans une dispute; il a un flux de
+     bouche sans pareil. C'est dommage qu'il aime un peu trop de vin, le
+     proces, et la grisette. Il revient de souper de chez son Isabella,
+     ou, par malheur, son guide s'est enivre comme lui. Ils sont tombes
+     l'un et l'autre dans le ruisseau. Avant que le bon licencie fut
+     recteur, cela lui arrivoit assez souvent. Les honneurs, comme vous
+     voyez, ne changent pas toujours les moeurs.' Nous laissames ces
+     ivrognes entre les mains de la patrouille, qui eut soin de les
+     porter chez eux. Nous regagnames notre hotel, et chacun ne songea
+     qu'a se reposer."
+
+Now this story pierces to the heart the theory which M. Neufchateau
+cites it in order to establish. It is an anecdote incorporated by Le
+Sage with the rest of the work; and how well it tallies with a Spanish
+story, and the delineation of Spanish manners, let the reader judge. The
+rector of the university of Salamanca was required to unite a great
+variety of qualifications. In the first place, his birth must have been
+noble for several generations; not perhaps as many as a canon of
+Strasburg was required to trace, but more than it was possible for the
+great majority even of well born gentlemen to produce. The situation,
+indeed, was generally conferred upon the members of the second class of
+nobility, and very often upon those of the first. He was a judge, with
+royal and pontifical privileges, exempt from the authority of the bishop
+in ecclesiastical, and from the royal tribunals in secular, matters. His
+morals were sifted with the strictest scrutiny; and yet this dignified
+ecclesiastic is the person whom Le Sage represents as lying in the
+streets stupefied with intoxication, and this not from accident, but
+from habitual indulgence in a vice which, throughout Spain, is
+considered infamous, and which none but those who are below the
+influence of public opinion, and even those but in rare instances, are
+ever known to practise. To call a man a drunkard in Spain, is considered
+a worse insult than to call him a thief; and the effect of the story is
+the same as if a person, pretending to describe English manners, were to
+represent the Lord Chancellor as often in custody on a charge of
+shoplifting, and permitted, in consideration of his abilities, still to
+remain in office and exercise the duties of his station.
+
+The principal topographical errors are the following:--Dona Mencia names
+to Gil Blas two places on the road near Burgos--these she calls Gofal
+and Rodillas; the real names are Tardagal and Revilla, (1, 11;) Ponte de
+Mula is put for Puenta Duro, (1, 13;) Luceno for Luyego; Villardera for
+Villar del Sa, (5, 1;) Almerim for Almoharia, (5, 1;) Sliva for Chiva,
+(7, 1;) Obisa for Cobisa, (10, 10;) Sinas for Linas; Mililla for
+Melilla; Arragon for Aragon. Describing his journey from Madrid to
+Oviedo, Gil Blas says they slept the first night at Alcala of Henares,
+and the second at Segovia. Now Alcala is not on the road from Madrid to
+Segovia, nor is it possible to travel in one day from one of these
+cities to the other--probably Galapagar was the word mistaken. Penafiel
+is mentioned as lying on the road from Segovia to Valladolid, (10, 1;)
+this is for Portillo. Now, if Le Sage had invented the story, and
+clothed it with names of Spanish cities and villages, taken from
+_printed_ books, can any one suppose that he could have fallen into all
+these errors?
+
+A thread of Spanish history winds through the whole story of _Gil Blas_,
+and keeps every circumstance in its place; therefore the date of the
+hero's birth may be fixed with the greatest precision. He tells us he
+was fifty-eight at the death of the Count Duke of Olivarez, that is,
+1646; Gil Blas was therefore born 1588, and this corresponds altogether
+with different allusions, which show that when the romance was written
+the war between Spain and Portugal was present to the author's mind, and
+the subject of his constant animadversion. Portugal, as our readers may
+recollect, became subject to the Spanish yoke in 1580, the Duke of
+Braganza was raised to the throne of that kingdom in 1640; and the war
+to which that event gave rise was not terminated till 1668; when Charles
+II. acknowledged Alphonso VI. as the legitimate ruler of Portugal. That
+when the work was written the war between Spain and Portugal continued,
+may be inferred from the fact, that the mention of Portugal is
+perpetually accompanied with some allusion to hostilities which were
+then carried on between the two countries. The romance must therefore
+have been written between the disgrace of the Count Duke, 1646, and the
+recognition of Portuguese independence, 1668. But we may contract the
+date of the work within still narrower limits. It could not have been
+written before 1654, as the works of Don Augustini Moreto, none of which
+were published before 1654, are cited in it--it is not of later date,
+because there is no allusion in any part of the work to the death of
+Philip IV., to the peace of the Pyrenees, or to any other ministers but
+Lerma, Uzeda, and Olivarez. Don Louis de Haro, Marquis of Carpio, and
+Duke of Montora, is not mentioned moreover. Gil Blas, describing himself
+to Laura, says that he is the only son of Fernando de Ribera, who fell
+in a battle on the frontiers of Portugal fifteen years before. This is a
+prolepsis; for the battle was fought in 1640. But this manifest
+anachronism, which entirely escaped Le Sage, was intended by the author
+as an autograph, a sort of "chien de Bassano," to point out the real
+date of the work. Bearing in mind, then, that Gil Blas was born in 1588;
+that Portugal was annexed to Spain in 1580 without a struggle; and
+remained subject to its dominion till 1640; let us consider the
+anachronisms in which Le Sage has plunged himself, partly through his
+ignorance of Spanish history, partly from the attempt to interpolate
+other Spanish novels with the main body of the work he has translated.
+One of these is confessed by Le Sage himself, and occurs in the story of
+Don Pompeio de Castro, inserted in the first volume. Don Pompeio is
+supposed to relate this story at Madrid in 1607; in it a king of
+Portugal is spoken of at that time as being an independent sovereign.
+Now in the third volume of the seventh book, in the year 1608, Pedro
+Zamora tells Laura, with whom he has eloped, that they were in security
+in Portugal, a foreign kingdom, though actually subject to the crown of
+Spain. Now this is quite correct, and here Le Sage's attention was
+called to the anachronism above cited in his preceding volume, which he
+undertakes to correct in another edition--a promise which he fulfilled
+by the clumsy expedient of transferring the scene from Portugal to
+Poland. But how comes it to pass that Le Sage, who singles out with such
+painful anxiety the error to which we have adverted, suffers others of
+equal importance to pass altogether unnoticed? For instance, in the
+twelfth book, eighth chapter, Olivarez speaks of a journey of Philip IV.
+to Zaragoza; which took place indeed, but not until two years after the
+disgrace of Olivarez. Cogollos, speaking in 1616, alludes to a
+circumstance connected with the revolt of Portugal in 1640; Olivarez,
+sixteen months afterwards, mentions the same circumstance, saying to
+Cogollos--"Your patron, though related to the Duke of Braganza, had, I
+am well assured, no share in his revolt." In 1607, Gil Blas, being the
+servant of Don Bernardo de Castel Blanco, says, that some suppose his
+master to be a spy of the king of Portugal, a personage who at that time
+did not exist. Now, if Le Sage intended to leave to posterity a lasting
+and unequivocal proof of his plagiarism, how could he do so more
+effectually than by dwelling on one anachronism as an error which he
+intended to correct, in a work swarming in every part with others
+equally flagrant, of which he takes no notice? We have mentioned these
+mistakes, particularly as being mistakes into which the original author
+had fallen, and which, as his object was not to give an exact relation
+of facts, he probably disregarded altogether. And here again we must
+repeat our remark, that these perpetual allusions indicate a writer not
+afraid of exposing himself by irretrievable blunders, and certain of
+being understood by those whom he addressed. A Spaniard writing for
+Spaniards, would of course take it for granted that his countrymen were
+acquainted with those very facts and allusions which Le Sage sometimes
+formally endeavours to explain, and sometimes is unable to detect; while
+a writer conscious, as the French author was, of a very imperfect
+acquaintance with the language and usages of Spain, would never indulge
+in those little circumstantial touches which a Spaniard could not help
+inserting.
+
+We now come to errors of Le Sage himself. Dona Mencia speaks of her
+first husband dying in the service of the king of Portugal, five or six
+years after the beginning of the seventeenth century. Events are
+described as taking place in the time of Philip II., under the title of
+Le Mariage de Vengeance, which happened three hundred years before, at
+the time of the Sicilian Vespers, 1283. Gil Blas, after his release from
+the tower of Segovia, tells his patron, Alonzo de Leyva, that four
+months before he held an important office under the Spanish crown; while
+he tells Philip IV. that he was six months in prison at Segovia. But the
+following very remarkable error almost determines the question, as it
+discovers demonstrably the mistake of a transcriber. Scipio, returning
+to his master in April 1621, informs Gil Blas that Philip III. is dead;
+and proceeds to say that it is rumoured that the Cardinal Duke of Lerma
+has lost his office, is forbidden to appear at court, and that Gaspar de
+Guzman, Count of Olivarez, is prime minister. Now, the Cardinal Duke of
+Lerma had lost his office since the 4th October 1618, three years before
+the death of Philip III. How is this mistake explained? By the
+transcriber's omission of the words "Duke of Uzeda, son of," which
+should precede the cardinal duke, &c., and which makes the sentence
+historically correct; for the Duke of Uzeda was the son of the Cardinal
+Duke of Lerma, did succeed his father, and was turned out of office at
+the death of Philip III., when he was succeeded by Olivarez. If there
+was no other argument but this, it would serve materially to invalidate
+Le Sage's claims to originality; as the omission of these words makes
+nonsense of a sentence perfectly intelligible when corrected, and causes
+the writer, in the very act of alluding to a most notorious fact in
+Spanish history, with which, even in its least details, he appears in
+other places familiar, to display the most unaccountable ignorance of
+the very fact he makes the basis of his narrative. Surely if plagiarism
+can ever be said "digito monstrari et dicier hic est," it is here.
+
+If we consider the effect of all these accumulated circumstances--the
+travelling on mules, the mode of extorting money, the plunder of the
+prisoners by the jailer, the rosary with its large beads carried by the
+Spanish Tartuffe, instead of the "haire and the discipline" mentioned by
+Moliere, the description of the hotels of Madrid, the inferior condition
+of surgeons, the graceful bearing of the cloak, the notary's inkstand,
+the posada in which the actors slept as well as acted, the convent in
+which Philip's mistress is placed with such minute propriety, the
+Gallina Ciega, the lane in Madrid, the dinner hour of the clerks in the
+minister's office, the knowledge of the ecclesiastical rights of the
+crown over Granada, and of the Aragonese resistance to a foreign
+viceroy, the number of words left in the original Spanish, and of others
+which betray a Spanish origin, the names of cities, villages, and
+families, that rise spontaneously to the hand of the writer, and the
+perpetual mistakes which their enumeration occasions, among which we
+will only here specify that of C_a_ntador for C_o_ntador, and the
+omission of the words "Duc d'Uzeda," which can alone set right a
+flagrant anachronism--if we consider the effect of all these
+circumstances, we shall look in vain for any reason to doubt the result
+which such a complication of probabilities conspires to fortify.
+
+The objections stated by M. Neufchateau to this overwhelming mass of
+evidence, utterly destructive as it is to the hypothesis of which he was
+the advocate, are so feeble and captious, that they hardly deserve the
+examination which Llorente, in the anxiety of his patriotism, has
+condescended to bestow on then. M. Neufchateau objects to the minute
+references on which many of Llorente's arguments are built; but he
+should remember that, in an examination of this sort, it is "one thing
+to be minute, and another to be precarious;" one thing to be oblique,
+and another to be fantastical. On such occasions the more powerful the
+microscope is that the critic can employ, the better; not only because
+all suspicion of contrivance or design is thereby further removed, but
+because proofs, separately trifling, are, when united, irresistible; and
+the circumstantial evidence to which courts of justice are compelled, by
+the necessity of human affairs, to recur, in matters where the lives and
+fortunes of individuals are at stake, is not only legitimate, but
+indispensable, before tribunals which have not the same means of
+investigation at their command. In this, however, the evidence is as
+full, positive, and satisfactory as any evidence not appealing to the
+senses or mathematical demonstration for its truth, can possibly be; and
+any one in active life who was to forbear from acting upon it, would
+deserve to be treated as a lunatic. Let us, however, consider the
+admissions of M. Neufchateau. He admits, 1st, That Le Sage was never in
+Spain. 2dly, Le Sage, in 1735, acknowledged the chronological error into
+which he had fallen, from inserting the story of Don Pompeyo de Castro,
+and announced his intention to correct it. 3dly, He allows, in 1724,
+when the third volume of _Gil Blas_ was published, Le Sage annexed to it
+the Latin distich, implying that the work was at an end--
+
+    "Inveni portum, spes et fortuna, valete;
+    Sat me lusistis, ludite nunc alios."
+
+He allows, therefore, that the publication of the fourth volume, eleven
+years after the third volume of _Gil Blas_ was published, was as far
+from the original intention of the author as it was on the expectation
+of the public. 4thly, That, from the introduction of the Duke of Lerma
+on the stage at the close of the work, the history of Spain is adhered
+to with exact fidelity. 5thly, He allows that the description of Spanish
+inns, (10, 12,) is taken from the "Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon."
+6thly, He allows that the novel of "Le Mariage de Vengeance," related
+by Dona Elvira, is inconsistent with all the rest of the story of _Gil
+Blas_. The anachronisms in which Le Sage is entangled, by applying a
+story to the seventeenth century that relates to the thirteenth, prove
+his ignorance of Spanish history. On this M. Neufchateau remarks as
+usual, that no Spaniard would have fallen into such an error. True; but
+how does it happen that the person making it is so intimately acquainted
+with the topography and habits of Spain? and how can this contradiction
+be solved, but by supposing that Le Sage incorporated a Spanish story
+which caught his fancy with the manuscript before him? 7thly, He allows
+that the story of Dona Laura de Guzman is taken from a Spanish comedy
+entitled, "Todo es enredos amor y el diablo son las mugeres." 8thly, He
+allows that the expression, "et je promets de vous faire tirer pied ou
+aile du premier ministre,"{B} is not French; it is in fact the
+translation of a Spanish proverb, "Agarrar pata o alon." 9thly, He
+admits that the intimate acquaintance with the personal history of the
+Count Duke, displayed by Le Sage, is astonishing. 10thly, He admits that
+the stories of--
+
+Dona Mencia de Mosquera, contained in 1st book, 11th, 12th, 13th, and
+14th chapters,
+
+  Of the story of Diego de la Fuente, contained in the 2d book,
+                    7th chapter,
+     --           Don Bernardo de Castelblanco, contained in the 2d book,
+                    1st chapter,
+     --           Don Pompeyo de Castro, contained in the 2d book, 7th
+                    chapter,
+     --           Dona Aurora de Guzman, contained in the 4th book, 2d, 3d,
+                    5th, and 6th chapters,
+     --           Matrimonio por Venganza, contained in the 4th book, 4th
+                    chapter,
+     --           Dona Serafina de Polan and Don Alfonso de Leiva,
+                    contained in 10th book,
+     --           Rafael and Lucinda, contained in 5th book, 1st chapter,
+     --           Samuel Simon en Chelva, contained in 6th book, 1st
+                    chapter,
+     --           Laura, contained in 7th book, 7th chapter,
+     --           Don Anibal de Chinchilla, contained in 7th book, 12th
+                    chapter,
+     --           Valerio de Luna and Inesilla Cantarilla, contained in
+                    8th book, 1st chapter,
+     --           Andres de Tordesillas, Gaston de Cogollos, and Elena de
+                    Galisteo, contained in 9th book, 4th, 11th, and 13th
+                    chapters,
+     --           Scipio, contained in 10th book, 10th, 11th, and 12th
+                    chapters,
+     --           Laura and Lucrecia, contained in 12th book, 1st chapter,
+     --           And the Histories of Lerma and Olivarez, contained in
+                    11th book, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th, 13th; and
+                    2d book, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th,
+                    12th, and 13th chapters.
+
+Composing more than two-thirds of _Gil Blas_--are taken from the
+Spanish. Such are the admissions of Le Sage's advocates.
+
+Even after these important deductions, there remains enough to found a
+brilliant reputation. To this remainder, however, Le Sage is not
+entitled. It is, we trust, proved to every candid reader, that, with the
+exception of one anecdote, entertaining in itself, but betraying the
+greatest ignorance of Spanish manners, two or three allusions to the
+current scandal and topics of the day, and the insertion of several
+novels avowedly translated from other Spanish writers; all the merit of
+Le Sage consists in dividing a manuscript placed by his friend, the Abbe
+de Lyonne, in his possession, into two stories--one of which was _Gil
+Blas_, and the other, confessed by himself to be a translation and
+published long after the former, was the _Bachelier de Salamanque_. To
+the argument of chronological error, the sole answer which M.
+Neufchateau condescends to give is, that they are incomprehensible; and
+on his hypothesis he is right. As to the Spanish words and phrases
+employed in _Gil Blas_, the names of villages, towns, and families which
+occur in it, he observes that these are petty circumstances--so they
+are, and for that very reason the argument they imply is irresistible.
+The story of the examination of Gaspar, the servant of Simon, in the
+Inquisition scene, is gravely urged by M. Neufchateau as a proof that
+the writer was a Frenchman, as no Spaniard would dare to attack the
+Inquisition. This is strange confusion. Not a word is uttered against
+the Inquisition in the scene. Some impostors disguise themselves in the
+dress of inquisitors to perpetrate a fraud. If a French novel describe
+two or three swindlers, assuming the garb of members of the old
+Parliament of Paris in execution of their design, is this an attack on
+the Parliament of Paris? Is the "Beaux' Stratagem" an attack on our army
+and peerage? The argument, however, may be retorted; for had a Frenchman
+been the author of the story, it is more than probable that he would
+have introduced some attack upon the Inquisition, and quite certain that
+the characters brought forward would have deviated from the strict
+propriety they now preserve. Some confusion would have been made among
+them--an error which M. Neufchateau, in the few lines he has written
+upon the subject, has not been able to avoid. We may add that this whole
+scene was printed in Spanish, under the eye of the Inquisition, without
+any interference on the part of that venerable body, who, though
+tolerably quick-sighted in such matters, were not, it should seem, aware
+of the attack upon them which M. Neufchateau has been sagacious enough
+to discover. To the argument drawn from the geographical blunders, M.
+Neufchateau mutters that they are excusable in a writer who had never
+been in Spain. The question, how such a writer came wantonly to incur
+them, he leaves unanswered. M. Neufchateau asserts, that there is in
+Spanish no proverb that corresponds to the French saying, "A quelque
+chose le malheur est bon." But a comedy was written in the time of
+Philip IV., entitled, "No hay man que por bien no venga." He argues that
+_Gil Blas_ is not the work of a Spaniard, because it does not, like _Don
+Quixote_, abound with proverbs; by a parity of reasoning, he might infer
+_The Silent Lady_ was not written by an Englishman; as there is no
+allusion to Falstaff in it.
+
+But it may be said, if Le Sage was so unscrupulous as to appropriate to
+himself the works of another writer in _Gil Blas_, how came he to
+acknowledge the _Bachelier de Salamanque_ as a translation?
+
+This is a fair question, but the answer we can give is satisfactory. The
+originals of all his translations, except _Gil Blas_ and the _Bachelier
+de Salamanque_, were printed; and therefore any attempt at wholesale
+plagiarism must have been immediately detected. The _Bachelier de
+Salamanque_, it is true, was in manuscript; but it had been long in the
+possession of the Marquis de Lerma and his son, before it became the
+property of Le Sage; and although tolerably certain that it had never
+been diligently perused, Le Sage could not be sure that it had not
+attracted superficial notice, and that the name was not known to many
+people. Now, by eviscerating the _Bachelier de Salamanque_ of its most
+entertaining anecdotes, and giving them a different title, and then
+publishing the mutilated copy of a work, the name of which, with the
+outline of its story, was known to many people as an acknowledged
+translation, he took the most obvious means of disarming all suspicion
+of plagiarism, and setting, as it seems he did, on a wrong track the
+curiosity of enquirers. How came the original manuscript not to be
+printed by its author? Because it could not be printed with impunity
+within the jurisdiction of the Spanish monarchy: the allusions to the
+abuses of the court and the favourites of the day are so obvious--the
+satire upon the imbecility of the Spanish government so keen and
+biting--the personal descriptions of Philip III. and Philip IV. so
+exact--the corruption of its ministers of justice, and the abuses
+practised in its prisons, branded in terms so lively and vehement--the
+attacks upon the influence of the clergy, their hypocrisy, their
+ambition, and their avarice, so frequent and severe--that while Philip
+IV. and Don John of Austria, the fruit of his intrigue with the actress
+Marie Calderon, so carefully pointed out, were still alive, and before
+the generation to which it alludes had passed away, its publication, in
+Spain at least, was impossible. The _Bachelier de Salamanque_ was not
+published for the same reason; and for the same reason, even in a
+country with perhaps more pretensions to freedom than Spain possessed,
+no one has yet acknowledged himself the writer of _Junius_. But why do
+you not produce the Spanish manuscript, and set the question at rest?
+exclaims with much _naivete_ M. Neufchateau. Does such an argument
+deserve serious refutation? That is, why do not you Spaniards produce a
+manuscript given to one Frenchman by another at Paris, in the 18th
+century, which of course, if our theory be true, he had the strongest
+temptation to destroy? Rather may the Spaniards ask, why do not _you_
+produce the original manuscript of the _Bachelier de Salamanque_, which
+would overthrow at least one portion of our hypothesis?
+
+The object of _Gil Blas_ is to exhibit a vivid representation of the
+follies and vices of the successive administrations of Lerma, Uzeda, and
+Olivarez; to point out the actual state of the drama in Spain under the
+reign of Philip IV., who, indolent as he was, possessed the taste of a
+true Spaniard for dramatic representation; to criticise the absurd
+system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of
+justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders
+and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and
+inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the
+towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found
+shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages
+of their violence--in short, to hold up every species of national error,
+and every weakness of national folly, to public obloquy and derision. In
+dwelling upon such topics the writer will, of course, describe scenes
+and characters common to every state of civilized society. The broad and
+general features of the time-serving courtier, of the servile coxcomb,
+of the rapacious mistress, of the expecting legatee, the frivolous man
+of fashion, and the still more frivolous pedant, will be the same,
+whatever be the country in which the scene is laid, and by whatever
+names they happen to be distinguished. France had, no doubt, her
+Sangrados and Ochetos, her Matthias de Silva and Rodrigo, her Lauras and
+her Archbishops of Granada.
+
+    "Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,
+    Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;
+    Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
+    Some flying stroke, alone can hit 'em right."
+
+Where the touches are more exact and delicate, where the strokes are
+laid on with the painful labour of a Flemish pencil, where the business
+and the bosoms of men are addressed more directly, there it is we shall
+find proofs of the view and purpose of the author; such traits are the
+key with the leather strap that verified the judgment of Sancho's
+kinsmen. To what purpose should a Frenchman, writing in the time of
+Louis XIV., censure the rapacity of innkeepers, and the wretchedness of
+their extorted accommodation, when France, from the time of Chaucer to
+the present hour, has been famous for the civility of the one and the
+convenience of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were
+to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns
+unexplored by a negligent administration, in which bandits found a
+refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature
+of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and
+fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the
+severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is
+perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste
+began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious,
+inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to
+ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less
+ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point
+of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing
+could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be
+attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of
+genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When _Gil Blas_
+was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the
+fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste
+of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the
+master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the
+vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, Fenelon, and
+Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of
+European literature.
+
+Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national
+prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one
+were to affirm that the _Adelphi_ of Terence was not a translation from
+Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater
+authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for
+proselytes. Let us see what he might allege--he might urge that Terence
+had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on
+this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus
+as his original--he might insist that Syrus could only have been the
+slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our
+notions of a Roman pander, that AEschinus was the picture of a dissolute
+young patrician--in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian
+drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and
+society; nay more, he might insist on the marriage of Micio at the close
+of the drama, as Neufchateau does upon the drunkenness of Guyomar, as
+alluding to some anecdote of the day, and at any rate as the admitted
+invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of
+Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed;
+he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the
+Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the
+names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of
+Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the
+administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. All this
+such a reasoner might do, and all this M. Neufchateau has done. But
+would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man
+of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the
+whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent
+translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy, that his language
+in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not
+Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he
+would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a
+fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish
+servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome,
+at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of
+what value were such broad and general features common to a species,
+when the fidelity of an individual likeness was in question? He would
+say, that the incident quoted as a proof of originality, served only, by
+its repugnance to Grecian manners, and its inferiority to the work in
+which it was inserted, to prove that the rest was the production of
+another writer. He would quote the translations from fragments still
+extant, which the work, exquisite as it is, contains, as proofs of a
+still more beautiful original. Lastly, he would cite the "Dimidiate
+Menander" of Caesar, as a proof of the opinion entertained of his genius
+by the great writers of his own country; and when he had done this, he
+might enquire with confidence whether any one existed capable of forming
+a judgment upon style, or of distinguishing one author from another, who
+would dispute the position for which he contended.
+
+The sum and substance of all M. Neufchateau's argument is the slight
+assumption, that every allusion to a man eminent for wit and genius,
+must be intended for a Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that
+Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid
+declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not
+as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are
+shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to
+Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic
+writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such
+trifling difficulties are as dust when placed in the balance with the
+inveterate opinion to which we have already alluded.
+
+According to the principles adopted by M. Neufchateau, _Gil Blas_ might
+be adapted to any court, or age, or country. For instance, if Triaquero,
+meaning a charlatan, (which, by the way, it does not,) refers of
+necessity to Voltaire, might not any Englishman, if the work had been
+published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an
+Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who,
+having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without
+Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an
+historian without research?
+
+The difference between Dr Sangrado and our hydropathists is merely that
+between hot and cold water, by no means excluding an allusion to the
+latter, under the veil, as M. Neufchateau has it, of Spanish manners.
+Would it be quite impossible to find in St James's Street, or in certain
+buildings at no great distance from the Thames, the exact counterparts
+of Don Matthias de Silva and his companions? Gongora, indeed, in spite
+of his detestable taste, was a man of genius; and therefore to find his
+type among us would be difficult, if not impossible, unless an excess of
+the former quality, for which he was conspicuous, might counterbalance a
+deficiency in the latter. Are our _employes_ less pompous and empty than
+Gil Blas and his companions? our squires less absurd and ignorant than
+the hidalgoes of Valencia? Let any one read some of the pamphlets on
+Archbishop Whately's Logic, or attend an examination in the schools at
+Oxford, and then say if the race of those who plume themselves on the
+discovery, that Greek children cried when they were whipped is extinct?
+To be sure, as the purseproud insolence of a _nouveau riche_, and indeed
+of _parvenus_ generally, is quite unknown among us, nobody could rely on
+those points of resemblance. But with regard to the other topics, would
+it not be fair to say, in answer to such an argument--All this is mere
+commonplace generality; such are the characters of every country where
+European institutions exist, or European habits are to be found?
+Something more tangible and specific is requisite to support your claim.
+You are to prove that the picture is a portrait of a particular
+person--and you say it has eyes and a nose; so have all portraits. But
+where are the strokes that constitute identity, and determine the
+original?--There is no mention of Crockford's or of the Missionary
+Society, of the Old Bailey or the Foundling Hospital; and if Ordonez is
+named, who gets rich by managing the affairs of the poor, this can never
+be meant for a satire on the blundering pedantry of your Somerset-house
+commissioners.--Here is no hint that can be tortured into a glance at
+fox-hunters, or game-preservers, of the society for promoting rural
+deans, at your double system of contradictory law, at special pleading
+at quarter-sessions,{C} at the technical rigour of your institutions,
+at the delay, chicanery, and expense of your judicial proceedings, at
+the refinement, ease, wit, gayety, and disinterested respect for merit,
+which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing
+is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and
+mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by
+making a turn for tumid metaphor and the love of display necessary
+ingredients in the character of its votaries, extirpating from among
+them that simplicity which was so fatal an obstacle to the progress of
+Newton,--and turning the newly discovered joint of an antediluvian
+reptile into a theme of perennial and ambitious declamation; nothing is
+said about those discussions on baptismal fonts, those discoveries of
+trochees for iambics, or the invention of new potatoe boilers, which in
+the days of Hegel, Berryer, Schlosser, Savigny, and Cousin, are the
+glory and delight of England; in short, there is nothing to fix the
+allusions on which you rely on to distinguish them from those which
+might be applicable to Paris, Vienna, or Madrid.
+
+There are no people less disposed than ourselves to detract from the
+merit of eminent French writers; they are always clear, elegant, and
+judicious; often acute, eloquent, and profound. There is no department
+of prose literature in which they do not equal us; there are many in
+which they are unquestionably our superiors. Unlike our authors, who, on
+those subjects which address the heart and reason jointly, adopt the
+style of a treatise on the differential calculus; and when pure science
+is their topic, lead us to suppose (if it were not for their disgusting
+pomposity) they had chosen for their model the florid confusion of a
+tenth-rate novel;--the French write on scientific subjects with
+simplicity and precision, and on moral, aesthetic, and theoretical
+questions with spirit, earnestness, and sensibility. Having said so
+much, we must however add, that a liberal and ingenious acknowledgment
+of error is not among the shining qualities of our neighbours. When a
+question is at issue in which they imagine the literary reputation of
+their country to be at stake, it is the dexterity of the advocate,
+rather than the candour of the judge, that we must look for in their
+dissertations. He who has argued on the guilt of Mary with a Scotchman,
+or the authenticity of the three witnesses with a newly made archdeacon,
+and with a squire smarting under an increasing poor-rate or the
+corn-laws, may form a just conception of the task he will undertake in
+endeavouring to persuade a French critic that his countrymen are in the
+wrong. The patient, if he does not, as it has sometimes happened in the
+cases to which we have referred, become "pugil et medicum urget," is
+sure, as in those instances, to triumph over all the proofs which reason
+can suggest, or that the hellebore of nine Anticyras could furnish him
+with capacity to understand. Of this the work of M. Neufchateau is a
+striking proof. Truth is on one side, Le Sage's claim to originality on
+the other; and he supports the latter: we do not say that he is willing,
+rather than abandon his client, to assert a falsehood; but we are sure
+that, in order to defend him, he is ready to believe absurdities.
+
+The degree of moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we
+attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected
+with our subject, and upon which we enter with regret.
+
+Lessing accused Wieland of having destroyed a palace, that he might
+build a cottage with its materials. However highly we may think of the
+original, we can hardly suppose such an expression applicable to _Gil
+Blas_. Of the name of the author whose toil Le Sage thus appropriated,
+charity obliges us to suppose that he was ignorant; but we should not
+forget that the case of Le Sage is not precisely that of a person who
+publishes, as an original, a translation from a printed work, as Wieland
+did with his copy of Rowe's Lady Jane Grey, and Lord Byron with his copy
+of the most musical lines in Goethe. The offence of Le Sage more
+resembles that imputed (we sincerely believe without foundation) to
+Raphael; namely, that after the diligent study of some ancient frescoes,
+he suffered them to perish, in order to conceal his imitation. But we
+hasten to close these reflections, which tenderness to the friend and
+companion of our boyhood, and gratitude to him who has enlivened many an
+hour, and added so much to our stock of intellectual happiness, forbid
+us to prolong. Let those who feel that they could spurn the temptation,
+in comparison with which every other that besets our miserable nature is
+as dross--the praise yielded by a polished and fastidious nation to rare
+and acknowledged genius--denounce as they will the infirmity of Le Sage.
+But let them be quite sure, that instead of being above a motive to
+which none but minds of some refinement are accessible, they are not
+below it. Let them be sure that they do not take dulness for integrity,
+and that the virtue, proof to intellectual triumphs, and disdaining "the
+last infirmity of noble minds," would not sink if exposed to the ordeal
+of a service of plate, or admission in some frivolous coterie. For
+ourselves we will only say, "Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas."
+
+For these reasons, then, which depend on the nature of the thing, and
+which no testimony can alter--reasons which we cannot reject without
+abandoning all those principles which carry with them the most certain
+instruction, and are the surest guides of human life--we think the main
+fact contended for by M. Llorente, that is, the Spanish origin of _Gil
+Blas_, undeniable; and the subordinate and collateral points of his
+system invested with a high degree of probability; the falsehood of a
+conclusion fairly drawn from such premises as we have pointed out would
+be nearer akin to a metaphysical impossibility; and so long as the light
+of every other gem that glitters in a nation's diadem is faint and
+feeble when compared with the splendour of intellectual glory, Spain
+will owe a debt of gratitude to him among her sons who has placed upon
+her brow the jewel which France (as if aggression for more material
+objects could not fill up the measure of her injustice towards that
+unhappy land) has kept so long, and worn so ostentatiously.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} So in Don Quixote the friars are described "Estando en estas
+razones, aslomaron por el camino dos Frayles de la Orden de san Benito,
+Cavalleros _sobre dos Dromedarios, que no eran mas pequneas dos mulas en
+que venian_."
+
+{B} It occurs, however, in Madame de Sevigne's letters. But that most
+charming of letter-writers understood Spanish, which Anne of Austria had
+probably made a fashionable accomplishment at the court of France. The
+intrigue for which Vardes was exiled, shows, that to write in Spanish
+was an attainment common among the courtiers of Louis XIV.
+
+{C} We call ourselves a _practical_ people! A man incurred, a _few
+months_ ago, an expense of L70, for saying that he was "ready," instead
+of saying that he was "ready and _willing_" to do a certain act. The
+man's name was Granger. Another unfortunate creature incurred costs to
+the amount of L3000, by one of the most ordinary proceedings in our
+courts, called a motion, of course, and usually settled for a guinea. A
+clergyman libelled two of his parishioners in a Bishop's Court. The
+matter never came to be heard, and the expense of the _written_
+proceedings was upwards of L800! Can any system be more abominable than
+one which leads to such results?
+
+
+
+
+MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS.
+
+
+Few of the events of our life afford us greater pride than revisiting a
+well-known and celebrated city after many years' absence. The pleasure
+derived from the hope of enjoyment, the self-satisfaction flowing from
+the presumption of our profound knowledge of the place, and the feeling
+of mental superiority attached to our discernment in returning to the
+spot, which, at the moment, appears to us the particular region of the
+earth peculiarly worthy of a second visit--or a third, as the case may
+be--all combine to stuff the lining of the diligence, the packsaddle of
+the Turkish post-horse, or the encumbrance on the back of the camel
+which may happen to convey us, with something softer than swandown. Time
+soon brings the demon of discontent to our society. The city and its
+inhabitants appear changed--rarely for the better, always less to our
+taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh
+for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous
+odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece,
+and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of
+Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our youth every where.
+
+I enjoyed all the delights and regrets which mere local associations can
+call up, a few months ago, on revisiting Athens after many years'
+absence. On the 6th of May 1827, I had witnessed the complete defeat of
+the Greek army. I had beheld the delhis of Kutayia sabring the flying
+troops of Lord Cochrane and General Church, and seen 1500 men slain by
+the sword in less than half an hour, amidst the roll of an ill-sustained
+and scattered fire of musketry. The sight was heartbreaking, but grand.
+The Turkish cavalry came sweeping down to the beach, until arrested by
+the fire of the ships. Lord Cochrane and his aide-de-camp, Dr Goss,
+themselves had been compelled to plunge more than knee-deep in the AEgean
+ere they could gain their boat. On the hill of the Phalerum I had heard
+General Gueheneuc criticise the manoeuvres of the commander-in-chief,
+and General Heideck disparage the quality of his coffee. As the Austrian
+steamer which conveyed me entered the Piraeus, my mind reverted to the
+innumerable events which had been crowded into my life in Greece. A new
+town rose out of the water before my eyes as if by enchantment; but I
+felt indignant that the lines of Colonel Gordon, and the tambouria of
+Karaiskaki, should be effaced by modern houses and a dusty road. As soon
+as I landed, I resolved to climb the Phalerum, and brood over visions of
+the past. But I had not proceeded many steps from the quay, lost in my
+sentimental reverie, ere I found that reflection ought not to begin too
+soon at the Piraeus. I was suddenly surrounded by about a dozen
+individuals who seemed determined to prevent me from continuing my walk.
+On surveying them, they appeared dressed for a costume ball of
+ragamuffins. Europe, Asia, and Africa had furnished their wardrobe. The
+most prominent figure among them was a tall Arab, in the nizam of
+Mehemet Ali, terminated with a Maltese straw hat. His companions
+exhibited as singular a taste in dress as himself. Some wore sallow
+Albanian petticoats, carelessly tied over the wide and dusky nether
+garments of Hydriots, their upper man adorned by sailors' jackets and
+glazed hats; others were tightly buttoned up in European garments, with
+their heads lost in the enormous fez of Constantinople. This antiquarian
+society of garments, fit representatives to a stranger of the
+Bavaro-Hellenic kingdom of Otho the gleaner, and the three donative
+powers, informed me that it consisted of charioteers. Each member of the
+society speaking on his own account, and all at the same time--a
+circumstance I afterwards found not uncommon in other antiquarian and
+literary societies at Athens--asked me if I was going to Athens:
++eis Athenas+ was the phrase. The Arab and a couple of Maltese alone said
+"Ees teen Atheena." Entrapped into a reply by the classic sound, I
+unwittingly exclaimed "Malista--Verily I am."
+
+The shouts my new friends uttered on hearing me speak Greek cannot be
+described. Their volubility was suddenly increased a hundredfold; and
+had all the various owners of the multitudinous garments before me
+arisen to reclaim their respective habiliments, it could hardly have
+been greater. I could not have believed it possible that nine Greeks,
+aided by two Maltese and a single Arab, could have created such a din.
+The speakers soon perceived that it was utterly impossible for me to
+hear their eloquent addresses, as they could no longer distinguish the
+sounds of their own voices; so with one accord they disappeared, and ere
+I had proceeded many steps again surrounded me, rushing forward with
+their respective vehicles, into which they eagerly invited me to mount.
+If their habiliments consisted of costumes run mad, their chariots were
+not less varied, and afforded an historical study in locomotion. Distant
+capitals and a portion of the last century must have contributed their
+representatives to the motley assemblage. The tall Arab drove a superb
+fiacre of the days of hoops, a vehicle for six insides; phaetons,
+chariots, droschkies, and britskas, Strong's omnibus, and Rudhart's
+stuhlwagen, gigs, cars, tilburies, cabriolets, and dogcarts, were all
+there, and each pushing to get exactly before me. Lord Palmerston's
+kingdom is doubtless a Whig satire on monarchy; the scene before me
+appeared a Romaic satire on the Olympic games. I forgot my melancholy
+sentiment, and resolved to join the fun, by attempting to dodge my
+persecutors round the corners of the isolated houses and deep lime-pits
+which King Otho courteously terms streets. I forgot that barbarians were
+excluded from the Olympic games, not on account of the jealousy of the
+Greeks, but because no barbarian could display the requisite skill. The
+charioteers and their horses knew the ground so much better than I did,
+that they blockaded me at every turn; so, in order to gain the rocky
+ground, I started off towards the hill of the Phalerum pursued by the
+_pancosmium_ of vehicles. On the first precipitous elevation I turned to
+laugh at my pursuers, when, to my horror, I saw Strong's omnibus
+lumbering along in the distance, surrounded by a considerable crowd, and
+I distinguished the loud shouts of the mob:--+Pou einai ho trelos
+ho Anglos+; "Where is the mad Englishman?" So my melancholy was
+conducting me to madness.
+
+My alarm dispelled all my reminiscences of Lord Cochrane, and my visions
+of the Olympic games. I sprang into the droschky of a Greek sailor, who
+drove over the rocks as if he only expected his new profession to endure
+for a single day. We were soon on the Piraeus road, which I well knew
+runs along the foundations of one of the long walls; but I was too glad
+to escape, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, unscathed from the
+imbroglio I had created, to honour even Themistocles with a single
+thought. My charioteer was a far better specimen of the present, than
+foundations of long walls, ruined temples, and statues without noses,
+can possibly be of the past. He informed me he was a sailor: by so
+doing, he did not prove to me that he estimated my discernment very
+highly, for that fact required no announcement. He added, however, what
+was more instructive; _to wit_, that he had received the droschky with
+the horses, that morning, from a Russian captain, in payment of a bad
+debt. He had resolved to improviso the coachman, though he had never
+driven a horse before in his life--+eukolon einai+--"it is an
+easy matter;" and he drove like Jehu, shouted like Stentor, and laughed
+like the Afrite of Caliph Vathek. He ran over nobody, in spite of his
+vehemence. Perhaps his horses were wiser than himself: indeed I have
+remarked, that the populace of Greece is universally more sagacious than
+its rulers. In taking leave of this worthy tar at the Hotel de Londres,
+I asked him gravely if he thought that, in case Russia, England, or
+France should one day take Greece in payment of a bad debt, they would
+act wisely to drive her as hard as he drove his horses? He opened his
+eyes at me as if he was about to unskin his head, and began to reflect
+in silence; so, perceiving that he entertained a very high opinion of my
+wisdom, I availed myself of the opportunity to advise him to moderate
+his pace a little in future, if he wished his horses to survive the
+week.
+
+During my stay at Athens, King Otho was absent from his capital; so
+that, though I lost the pleasure of beholding the beautiful and graceful
+queen, I escaped the misfortune of being dishonoured by receiving the
+cross of an officer of the order of the Redeemer. His Hellenic majesty
+takes a peculiar satisfaction in hanging this decoration at the
+buttonholes of those who served Greece during the revolutionary war;
+while he suspends the cross of Commander round the necks, or ornaments
+with the star of the order the breasts, of all the Bavarians who have
+assisted him in relieving Greece of the Palmerstonian plethora of cash
+gleaned from the three powers. For my own part, I am not sure but that I
+should have made up my mind to return the cross, with a letter full of
+polite expressions of contempt for the supposed honour, and a few hints
+of pity for the donor; as a very able and distinguished friend of
+Greece, whose services authorized him so to act, did a few days before
+my arrival.
+
+On attempting to find my way through Bavarian Athens, I was as much at a
+loss as Lady Francis Egerton, and could not help exclaiming, "Voila des
+rues qui ont bien peu de logique!" After returning two or three times to
+the church Kamkarea, against whose walls half the leading streets of the
+new city appear to run bolt up, I was compelled to seek the assistance
+of a guide. At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my
+friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian
+blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the
+picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I
+enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to
+his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for
+information to the patriotic and enterprising Demarch, or mayor, who
+bears the same name.
+
+In the end my enquiries were successful, and their result seemed
+miraculous. To my utter astonishment I learned that Michael had become a
+monk, and dwelt in the monastery of Pentelicus; but I could obtain no
+explanation of the mystery. His relations referred me to the monk
+himself--strangers had never heard of his existence. How often does a
+revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is
+shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There
+remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution
+of the singular enigma from my friend's own mouth; so, joining a party
+of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus,
+and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such
+a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure sky of Attica.
+
+The scenery of our ride is now familiar to tourists. Parnes or Parnethus
+with its double top,{A} Brilessus or Pentelicus with its numerous rills
+and fountains, and Hymettus with its balmy odours, have been "hymned by
+loftier harps than mine." My companions proved gay and agreeable young
+men. They knew every body at Athens, and every thing, and willingly
+communicated their stores of knowledge. I cannot resist recounting some
+of the anecdotes I heard, as they do no discredit to the noble princes
+to whom they relate.
+
+When an English prince visited Athens, King Otho, who it seems is his
+own minister, and conducts business quite in a royal way, learned that
+he was no Whig, and instantly conceived the sublime idea of making use
+of his royal highness's services to obtain Lord Palmerston's dismissal
+from office. The monarch himself arranged the plan of his campaign. The
+prince was invited to a _fete champetre_ at Phyle, and when the party
+was distributed in the various carriages, he found himself planted in a
+large barouche opposite the king and queen. King Otho then opened his
+intrigue; he told the prince of the notes in favour of constitutional
+government and economical administration which Lord Palmerston had
+written, and Sir Edmund Lyons had presented; and he exclaimed, "I assure
+you, my dear prince, all this is done merely to vex me, because I would
+not keep that speculating charlatan Armansperg! Lord Palmerston cares no
+more about a constitution, nor about economy, than Queen Victoria, or
+you and I. When the Duc de Broglie, who has really more conscience than
+our friend the Viscount, proposed that Greece should be pestered with a
+constitution and such stuff, Palmerston answered very judiciously,
+'Greece--bah!--Greece is not fit for a constitution, nor indeed for any
+other government but that of my nabob!' Now, my dear prince, Queen
+Victoria can never mean to offend me, the sovereign of Greece, when the
+Ottoman empire is so evidently on the eve of dismemberment; and," quoth
+Otho the gleaner, "I am deeply offended, at which her British majesty
+must feel grievously distressed." The prince doubtless thought her
+majesty's distress was not inconsolable; but he only assured his
+Hellenic majesty that he could be of no possible use to him in his
+delicate intrigue at the court of St James's. He tried to get a view of
+the scenery, and to turn the conversation on the state of the country;
+but Otho was not so easily repulsed. He insisted that the prince should
+communicate his sentiments to Queen Victoria; and, in spite of all the
+assurances he received of the impossibility of meddling with diplomatic
+business in such a way, his Hellenic majesty, to this very day, feels
+satisfied that Lord Palmerston was sent to the right-about for offending
+him; and he is firmly persuaded that, unless Lord Aberdeen furnish him
+with as many millions as he demands to secure his opposition to Russia,
+the noble earl will not have a long tenor of office.
+
+A young Austrian of our party shouted, "Ah, it requires to be truly _bon
+garcon_, like the English prince, to submit to be so bored, even by a
+king! But," added he, "our gallant Fritz managed matters much better.
+The Archduke Frederick, who behaved so bravely at Acre, and so amiably
+lately in London, heard, it seems, of the treatment the prince had met
+with, and resolved to cure his majesty of using his guests in such
+style. Being invited to a party at Pentelicus, he was aware that he
+would be placed alone on the seat, with his back to the horses, and
+deprived of every chance of seeing the country, if it were only that the
+diplomatic intrigue at the court of Queen Victoria might remain
+concealed from the lynx-eyed suspicion of the _corps diplomatique_ of
+Athens; for King Otho fancies his intrigues always remain the
+profoundest secrets. When the archduke handed the lovely queen into the
+carriage, politeness compelled King Otho to make a cold offer to the
+young sailor to follow; the archduke bowed profoundly, sprang into the
+carriage, and seated himself beside her majesty. The successor of
+Agamemnon followed, looking more grim than Hercules Furens: he stood for
+a moment bolt upright in the carriage, hoping his guest would rise and
+vacate his seat; but the young man was already actively engaged in
+conversation. The Emperor of the East--in expectancy--was compelled to
+sit down with his back to the horses, and study the landscape in that
+engaging manner of viewing scenery. Never was a fete given by a sulkier
+host than King Otho that day proved to be. In returning, the archduke
+had a carriage to himself. When questioned on the subject of his ride,
+he only remarked that he always suffered dreadfully from sickness when
+he rode with his back to the horses. He was sure, therefore, that King
+Otho had placed him beside the queen to avoid that horrible
+inconvenience."
+
+Other anecdotes were recounted during our ride, and our opinion of his
+Hellenic majesty's tact and taste did not become more favourable, when
+it was discovered that his proceedings had utterly ruined the immense
+quarries of Pentelicus--
+
+    "Still in its beam Pentele's marbles glow,"
+
+can now only be said of the ruins, not of the quarries. In order to
+obtain the few thousand blocks required for the royal palace at Athens,
+millions of square feet of the purest statuary marble have been shivered
+to atoms by the random process of springing mines with gunpowder. If
+King Otho had done nothing worse in Greece than converting the marble
+quarries of Pentelicus into a chaos of rubbish, when he found them
+capable of supplying all Europe for ages with the most beautiful
+material for the sculptor, he would have merited the reputation he so
+justly bears, of caring as little about the real welfare of Greece as
+Lord Palmerston himself. My companions quitted me at the quarries,
+making pasquinades on the royal palace and its royal master; while I put
+up my horse and walked slowly on to the ancient monastery of Pentele,
+not Mendele, as Lord Byron has it.
+
+I was soon sitting alone in the cell of Michael, and shall now recount
+his history as I had it from his own mouth. Michael Kalliphournas was
+left an orphan the year the Greek revolution broke out. He was hardly
+fourteen years old, and yet he had to act as the guardian and protector
+of a sister four years younger than himself. The storm of war soon
+compelled him to fly to AEgina with the little Euphrosyne. The trinkets
+and gold which his relations had taught him to conceal, enabled him to
+place his sister in a Catholic monastery at Naxos, where she received
+the education of a European lady. Michael himself served under Colonel
+Gordon and General Fabvier with great distinction. In 1831, when the
+Turks were about to cede Attica to Greece, Michael and Euphrosyne
+returned to Athens, to take possession of their family property, which
+promised to become of very great value. At that time I had very often
+seen Phrossa, as she was generally called; indeed, from my intimacy with
+her brother, I was a constant visitor in the house. Her appearance is
+deeply impressed on my memory. I have rarely beheld greater beauty,
+never a more elegant figure, nor a more graceful and dignified manner.
+She was regarded as a fortune, and began to be sought in marriage by all
+the young aristocracy of Greece. It was at last conjectured that a young
+Athenian, named Nerio, the last descendant of the Frank dukes of Athens,
+had made some impression on her heart. He was a gay and spirited young
+man, who had behaved very bravely when shut up with the troops in the
+Acropolis during the last siege of Athens, and he was an intimate friend
+of her brother. I had left Athens about this time, and my travels in the
+East had prevented my hearing any thing of my friends in Greece for
+years.
+
+There is a good deal of society among the Greek families at Athens for a
+few weeks before the Carnival. They meet together in the evenings, and
+amuse themselves in a very agreeable way. At one of these parties the
+discourse fell on the existence of ghosts and spirits; Michael, who was
+present, declared that he had no faith in their existence. With what
+groans did he assure me his opinion was changed, and conjured me never
+to express a doubt on the subject. All the party present exclaimed
+against what they called his free-masonry; and even his sister, who was
+not given to superstition, begged him to be silent lest he should offend
+the _neraiidhes_, who might punish him when he least expected it. He
+laughed and ridiculed Phrossa, offering to do any thing to dare those
+redoubted spirits which the company could suggest. Nerio, a far greater
+sceptic than Michael, suddenly affected great respect for the invisible
+world, and by exciting Michael, gradually engaged him, amidst the
+laughing of his companions, to undertake to fry a dozen of eggs on the
+tomb of a Turkish _santon_, a short distance beyond the Patissia
+gate--to leave a pot of charcoal, to be seen next morning, as a proof of
+his valour, and return to the party with the dish of eggs.
+
+The expedition was arranged, in spite of the opposition of the ladies;
+four or five of the young men promised to follow at a little distance,
+unknown to Michael, to be ready lest any thing should happen. Michael
+himself, with a _zembil_ containing a pot of charcoal, a few eggs and a
+flask of oil in one hand, and a frying-pan and small lantern in the
+other, closely enveloped in his dusky capote, proceeded smiling to his
+task. The tomb of the Turk consisted of a marble cover taken from some
+ancient sarcophagus, and sustained at the corners by four small pillars
+of masonry--the top was not higher than an ordinary table, and below the
+marble slab there was an empty space between the columns. It has long
+since disappeared; but that is not wonderful, since King Otho and his
+subjects have contrived to destroy almost every picturesque monument of
+the past in the new kingdom. The thousands of Turkish tombs which not
+many years ago gave a historic character to the desert environs of
+Negrepont, and the splendid _serail_ of Zeitouni, with its magnificent
+marble fountains and baths, have almost disappeared--the storks have bid
+adieu to Greece--nightly bonfires, caused by absurd laws, destroy the
+few trees that remain; and in short, unless travellers make haste and
+visit Greece quickly, they will see nothing but the ruins which King
+Otho cannot destroy nor Pittaki deface, and the curiosities which Ross
+cannot give to Prince Pueckler, added to the pleasure they will derive
+from beholding King Otho's own face and the facade of his new palace.
+
+The night was extremely dark and cold, so that the friends of Michael,
+familiar as they were with their native city, found some difficulty in
+following him without a lantern through the mass of ruins Athens then
+presented. As they approached the tomb, they perceived that he had
+already lighted his charcoal, and was engaged in blowing it vigorously,
+as much to warm his hands as to prepare for his cooking operations.
+Creeping as near to him as possible without risking a discovery, they
+heard, to their amazement, a deep voice apparently proceeding from the
+tomb, which exclaimed, "Bou gedje kek sohuk der adamlera.--It must be a
+cold night for mankind." "To pisevo effendi," said Michael in a careless
+tone, but nervously proceeded to pour a whole bottle of oil into the
+frying-pan. As soon as the oil was boiling and bubbling, the voice from
+the tomb again exclaimed, "Gaiour ne apayorsun, mangama
+pisheriorsun--yuckle buradam--aiyer yiklemassun ben seni kibab
+ederem, tahamun yerine seni yerim," signifying pretty nearly,
+"Infidel, what are you doing here? You appear to be cooking; fly hence,
+or I will eat my supper of thy carrion." And at the instant a head
+covered by an enormous white turban protruded itself from under the
+tombstone with open mouth. Michael, either alarmed at the words and the
+apparition, or angry at the suspicion of a premeditated trick on the
+part of his companions, seized the panful of boiling oil, and poured the
+whole contents into the gaping mouth of the spectre, exclaiming, "An
+echeis toson orexin, na to ladhi, Scheitan oglou!--If you are so hungry,
+take the oil, son of Satan!" A shriek which might have awakened the dead
+proceeded from the figure, followed by a succession of hideous groans.
+The friends of Michael rushed forward, but the lamp had fallen to the
+ground and was extinguished in the confusion. Some time elapsed ere it
+was found and lighted. The unfortunate figure was dragged from the tomb,
+suffocated by the oil, and evidently in a dying state, if indeed life
+was not already extinct. Slowly the horrible truth became apparent.
+Nerio had separated himself from the rest of the party unperceived,
+disguised himself, and gained the tomb before the arrival of Michael,
+who thus became the murderer of his sister's lover. I shall not attempt
+to describe the feelings of Michael in recounting this dreadful scene.
+
+The affair never made much noise. The Turks did not consider themselves
+authorized to meddle in the affairs of the Greeks. Indeed, the infamous
+murder of the Greek _bakalbashi_, a short time before by Jussuf-bey,
+with his own hand, had so compromised their authority, that they were in
+fear of a revolution. The truth was slowly communicated to Euphrosyne by
+Michael himself--she bore it better than he had anticipated. She
+consoled her brother and herself by devoting her life to religious and
+charitable exercises; but she never entered a monastery nor publicly
+took the veil. She still lives at Athens, where her charity is
+experienced by many, though few ever see her. When I left Greece on a
+visit to Mount Athos, my friend Michael insisted on accompanying me;
+and, after our arrival on the holy mountain, he exacted from me a
+promise that I would never discover to any one the monastery into which
+he had retired, nor even should we by chance meet again, address him as
+an acquaintance, unless he should speak to me. His sister alone is
+entrusted with his secret.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} The _par_, which indicates the double or equal summit, is only found
+in Latin, though unquestionably AEolic; the other two derivations are
+classic Greek. Parnes, Parnettus, Parnassus. The name of the two
+mountains is precisely the same.
+
+
+
+
+AFRICA--SLAVE TRADE--TROPICAL COLONIES.
+
+
+The readers of this magazine will readily remember the part which it
+took, at an early period, in discussing and in delineating the
+geographical features of Africa. In the number for June 1826 there is an
+article, accompanied by a map, showing from undoubted authorities the
+course and termination of the great river Niger in the sea in the Bight
+of Benin, where, from similar authorities, it was placed by me in 1820
+and 1821, and where actual observation by Englishmen has lately clearly
+established the fact that it does terminate. In the upper and middle
+parts of its course the longitudes were erroneous, having adopted Major
+Rennell's delineation of Western Africa as a guide; but in 1839 the
+whole of that quarter of Africa was narrowly examined, and the courses
+of the western rivers reduced to their proper positions, as delineated
+in my large map of Africa constructed in that year, to which, with the
+"Geographical Survey of Africa," for which it was made, the reader is
+referred for further and particular information on all these subjects.
+
+With these observations, I proceed to bring before the reader
+geographical information concerning eastern and central Africa of the
+highest and most gratifying importance, and obtained by the researches
+of different voyagers and travellers within the last four years.
+Foremost amongst these ranks, the expedition sent by the present Viceroy
+of Egypt to explore the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White River, above its
+junction with the Blue River, from Khartoum upwards and southwards;
+after it, the interesting travels of Messrs Krapf and Isenberg, two
+missionaries from the Church Missionary Society, from Tajura to Ankobar,
+from Ankobar south-west to the neighbourhood of the sources of the
+Hawash; and after that, Mr Krapf's journey from Ankobar north by Lake
+Haik, through Lasta to Antalow, and thence to Massouah on the Red Sea.
+Next, the interesting accounts collected by M. Lefebvre and M.
+D'Abbadie, concerning the countries in some parts of the more eastern
+horn of Africa; and last, and the most specific and important of the
+whole, the accounts received of the country of Adel, and the countries
+and rivers in and south of Shoa, and those from the Blue Nile in Gojam
+and Damot to the sea at the mouth of the Jub, under the equator, by
+Major Harris, late British ambassador to the King of Shoa.
+
+As the present article is accompanied by a map, constructed after great
+labour, and engraved most carefully by Mr Arrowsmith, the general
+outline of the whole may here be deemed sufficient, without lengthened
+discussion and observation.
+
+The Egyptian expedition alluded to started from Khartoum (now become a
+fine town) at the close of the wet season in 1839. It consisted of four
+or five small sailing vessels, some passage boats, and four hundred men
+from the garrison of Senaar, the whole commanded by an able officer,
+CAPTAIN SELIM. They completed their undertaking, and returned to
+Khartoum at the end of 135 days, during which time, in obedience to the
+commands of their master, they explored the Bahr-el-Abiad to the
+distance southwards of 1300 miles, (turnings and windings included,) to
+three degrees thirty minutes north latitude, and thirty-one east
+longitude, from Greenwich, where it divided into two streams; the
+smaller, and it is very small, coming from the south-west, and the
+larger, still even at the close of the dry season a very considerable
+river, which came from the south-east, upwards from the east, and still
+more upwards from the north-east. A subsequent voyage in 1841 gained the
+information that the stream descended past Barry, and there can be no
+doubt that another, if not the chief branch, comes from the south-east,
+in the bearing which Ptolemy gave it, and, as he states, from amongst
+mountains covered with perpetual snow, of which Bruce also heard, and
+which we now learn from Major Harris really stand in that quarter of
+Africa.
+
+The longitude of the river at the bifurcation is exactly the same as
+Ptolemy has given it, which is very remarkable. The sources of the
+White River will therefore be found where Ptolemy and Bruce have placed
+them. The latter, in his notes, states expressly that the Bahr-el-Abiad
+rose to the south of Enarea, not far from the equator, and that it had
+no great western branch, nor was any necessary to give the river its
+magnitude. (Vol. vii. App. p. 92.)
+
+The expedition in question found no very large affluents from the west
+side; but they found two of very considerable magnitude on the east
+side--one the Blue River, and the other the Red River, or Bahr-Seboth,
+which latter they navigated upwards of 150 miles in a direct line, and
+left it a considerable stream, nearly as large as the eastern branch of
+the White River, where they had left it. The banks of the Bahr-Seboth
+were precipitous and high, whereas those of the Bahr-el-Abiad were low,
+and on both sides covered with lakes, the remains probably of the
+preceding inundation. Scarcely a hill or mountain was in sight from the
+river till approaching the bifurcation, when the country became
+mountainous, the climate more cool, and the vegetation and trees around
+those of the temperate zone. The country on both sides is a high
+table-land, the scenery every where very beautiful, well peopled by
+different tribes, copper-coloured, and some of them even fair. Every
+where the banks are covered and ornamented with beautiful trees, and
+cattle, sheep, goats, elephants, &c., are numerous and abundant. Amongst
+the Bhours, they found Indian goods brought from the shores of the
+Indian ocean. Day by day, the breadth, depth, and current of the river
+were observed and marked. For a considerable distance above Khartoum,
+the breadth was from one and a half to one and a quarter mile, the depth
+three or four fathoms, and the current about one and a half mile per
+hour. Above the parallel of nine degrees, the river takes a remarkable
+bend due west for about 90 miles, when it passes through a large lake,
+the waters of which emitted an offensive smell, which might proceed from
+marshy shores.{A} Above the lake, the breadth decreases to one-third or
+one-fourth of a mile, the depth to twelve or thirteen feet, with a
+current of one and a half mile per hour, the bottom every where sand,
+with numerous islands interspersed in the stream. The mountainous
+country around the upper part abounds with iron mines.
+
+Going eastward, we come to the elevated mountainous ranges which give
+birth to the Bahr-el-Abiad to the south, the Gochob, the Kibbee, and
+their numerous tributary streams to the east and south-east, and the
+Toumat, the Yabous, the Maleg, and other rivers which flow north into
+the Abay. This vast chain is very elevated, and in many places very
+cold, especially to the west of Enarea, and to the west and south of
+Kaffa. From the sources of the Kibbee and the Yabous, it stretches
+eastwards to Gurague, and thence, still eastward, by the Aroosi, Galla,
+and Hurrur or Harrar, to Cape Guardafui, approaching in some places to
+within sixty miles or less of the sea of Babel-Mandeb; the elevation to
+the east of Berbera decreases to about 5000 feet, and from which
+numerous streams flow both to the north and to the south. Eastward of
+the meridian of Gurague, a branch from the chain strikes off due north
+through Shoa, by Ankobar and Lake Haik, to the northward of which it
+separates, and runs one branch N.N.W. to Samen, and another by Angot,
+N.E. by east, to the Red Sea, at Assab, and the entrance of the straits
+of Babel-mandeb. The whole of this chain is very elevated; near Ankobar
+some peaks being 14,000 feet high, and constantly white with snow or
+hail; and round the sources of the Tacazze and the Bashilo, near the
+territory of the Edjow Galla, the mountains are covered with snow. Mr
+Krapf, in his journey more to the east, found the cold exceedingly keen,
+the elevation exceeding 10,000 feet; and still more eastward, near the
+little Assanghe lake, Pearce found hoar frost in the mornings in the
+month of October. From the ranges mentioned, numerous other ranges
+branch off in different directions, forming the divisions between tribes
+and rivers, the latter of which are very rapid, and their borders or
+banks very high and precipitous, and rugged.
+
+From the province of Bulga or Fattygar, this chain, running
+northwards, rises to a great height, springing like the walls of a
+fortification from the western bank of the Hawash, from whence numerous
+small streams descend to increase that river. All to the eastward of
+that river is comparatively low, (called Kolla, or the low hot country,)
+and to the sea-shore is one continued sheet of volcanic strata and
+extinct volcanoes, dry and poor, especially during the dry season, when
+travelling is difficult and dangerous owing to the want of water. It is
+inhabited chiefly by wild beasts and by fierce tribes of the wandering
+Dancali, and, more to the south-east, by the Mohammedan Somauli. In
+early times this country, however, was rich and powerful, from being the
+channel of commerce between Abyssinia when powerful, and the countries
+to the east, Arabia, Persia, and India. From Zeila and Erur southward,
+the country improves, and becomes fertile and well watered.
+
+Before turning our attention to the interesting countries round the
+sources of the Gochob and its tributary streams, and those through which
+it subsequently flows, so clearly brought to our knowledge by Major
+Harris, (he is certainly the first who has done so,) and the survey of
+the coast near its mouth by Lieutenant Christopher of the Indian navy,
+and by him given to the gallant major--it is necessary, for the better
+understanding of our subject, to turn our attention to the explanation
+of the names of some countries and places given so differently by
+different informants, and which, thus given and not sufficiently
+attended to, create great confusion and great errors in African
+geography.
+
+By the aid of Mr Bruce, Mr Krapf, Major Harris, and information
+collected from native travellers, (see _Geographical Bulletins of
+Paris_, Nos. 78 and 98,) we are enabled to rectify these points, and
+clear away heaps of inaccuracies and confusion.
+
+First, then, Enarea and Limmu are the same. The country is called Enarea
+by the Abyssinians, and Limmu by the Gallas, having been conquered by a
+Galla tribe of that name, which tribe came originally from the
+south-west. There is another Limmu, probably so named from another
+portion of the same tribe. It is near or the same as Sibou, which,
+according to Bruce, is ten days' journey from the capital of Enarea,
+and, according to the French Geographical Bulletin, (No. 114,) not far
+from Horro and Fazoglo. But the first Limmu is the Limmu of Jomard's
+Galla Oware, because he states distinctly that Sobitche was its capital;
+that, in marching northwards from it, he crossed the Wouelmae river; and
+that Gingiro, to which he had been, lay to the right, or east, of his
+early route; and further, that the river which passed near Sobitche ran
+to the south. Enarea is not very extensive, but a high table-land, on
+every side surrounded by high mountain ranges, and is situated (see
+_Geographical Bulletin_, 1839) at the confluence of two rivers, the Gibe
+and the Dibe.
+
+Kaffa, in its restricted sense, is a state on the upper Gochob; but, in
+its ancient and extended meaning, it is a large country, extending from
+north to south a journey of one month, and includes in it several states
+known by separate names, although the whole of these are often referred
+to in the name Kaffa by native travellers. It is known also by the names
+of Sidama and Susa, and the people of Dauro call it Gomara; but the
+Christians in Southern Abyssinia call it Kaffa, and Sidama or Susa,
+which latter, properly speaking, forms its southern parts.
+
+Dawro, Dauro, or Woreta, are the same; it is a large country, and
+divided into three states--namely, Metzo or Metcho, Kulloo, and Goba;
+and is a low and hot, but fertile country, situated to the east of
+Kaffa, and to the west of the Gochob.
+
+Major Harris is the only individual who has given us the bearings and
+distances connected with this portion of Africa, and without which the
+geographical features of the country could not have been fixed with any
+precision; but which, having been obtained, act as pivots from which the
+correct positions of other places are ascertained and fixed with
+considerable accuracy.
+
+Let us now attend to the sources and the courses of the principal
+rivers. The Kibbee, or Gibe, has three sources. The chief branch springs
+to the west of Ligamara, and southwards of that place it runs east,
+(_Geographical Bulletin_, No. 105, _and also_ No. 78,) when suddenly
+turning upon itself; as it were, it bends its course westward to Limmu,
+having below Leka received the Gwadab, coming from the west and passing
+to the south of Lofe. The Kibbee waters the small but elevated country
+of Nono, and passes very near Sakka. Westward of Sakka it is joined by
+two other branches coming from the north-west and west, one called
+Wouelmae, the Wouelmae of Oware, and the other Dibe. From thence it
+flows eastward, and bounds Gingiro on the north. The early Portuguese
+travellers expressly state, that six days' journey due east from Sakka,
+and at one day's journey from the capital of Gingiro, having first
+crossed a very high mountain, they crossed the Kibbee, a rapid rocky
+stream, and as large as the Blue River where they had crossed it in the
+country of the Gongas. On the third day after leaving the capital of
+Gingiro, pursuing their course due east to the capital of Cambat, they
+again crossed the Zebee, or Kibbee, _larger_ than it was to the westward
+of Gingiro, but less rapid and rocky; its waters resembling _melted
+butter_, (hence its name,) owing, no doubt, to the calcareous ridges
+through which it flowed. From thence it bends its course to the
+southward, and is soon after joined by the Gochob, which bounds the
+empire of Gingiro to the south. Bruce particularly and emphatically
+mentions the extraordinary angle which the Kibbee here makes.
+
+To the north of Gingiro the Kibbee is joined by the Dedhasa, (pronounced
+Nassal,) and which is considered to be the same as Daneza or Danesa,
+which, according to Lieutenant Christopher, is a Galla name for the Jub
+or Gochob. This river is passed (see _Geographical Bulletin of 1839_)
+before coming to Ligamara and Chelea, and one and a half day's journey
+from Gouma, in the route from Gooderoo to Enarea. In its lower course it
+abounds with crocodiles. Below the junction with the Dedhasa, the Kibbee
+receives the Gala river, coming from the north-east, and from the
+confines of Gurague and Kortshassie.
+
+The separation of the waters in these parts takes place to the north of
+Gonea and Djimma, or Gouma. The rivers that flow to the Blue Nile or
+Abay, with the exception of the Yabous, which is, according to Bruce, a
+considerable stream descending from the south and south-east, are all
+small streams. Shat, the province where the tea-plant is produced, is
+situated to the north of Enarea, and is watered by the river called
+Giba, the fish of which are said to be poisonous, (_Bruce_, vol. iii. p.
+254.) Bruce states most pointedly that the capital of Enarea is fifty
+leagues distant from the passage of the Abay at Mine, "due south, a
+little inclining to the west," (Vol. iii. page 324;) and which bearing
+and distance corresponds very correctly with several very clear and
+satisfactory itineraries lately obtained. Without any high peaks or
+mountains, the country round the sources of these rivers is very
+elevated, and from the grain and fruits which they produce, cannot be
+less than 7500 feet above the level of the sea.
+
+The Toumat is a small stream. Above Cassan, says the _Geographical
+Bulletin_, No. 110, it has water all the year, thus indicating that
+below that place the water fails in the dry season. It runs between two
+high chains of mountains; the east Bank, that chain being known as the
+country called Bertat. The rains, according to Bruce, (the _Geographical
+Bulletin_ agrees in this,) commence in April; but they do not fall heavy
+at that time, and but little affect the rivers. Beyond the chain, on the
+western bank of the Toumat, the country is level to Denka and the banks
+of the White River, which is stated to be eleven days' journey due west
+from Fazoglo. Iron is very abundant in the countries round the Toumat
+and the Yabous, and caravans of Arabian merchants regularly traverse the
+country from Ganjar near Kuara, and two days' journey south of
+Kas-el-Fael, by Fazoglo and Fadessi, to Kaffa and Bany; the road, as the
+latter places are approached, being described as hilly and very woody,
+with numerous small streams.
+
+The Gochob rises in Gamvou, a high, wild, and woody country, part of
+Limmu; and bending its course south-east, next east, and then
+south-east, it forms the lake Tchocha, and afterwards rolls over the
+great cataract Dumbaro, soon after which it joins the Kibbee, when the
+united stream tales the name of the Gochob, or Jub, by which it is known
+till it enters the sea. Where crossed in the road from Sakka to Bonga,
+it is described as larger than any other stream which flows to join it
+from the country more to the south; much larger, indeed, than either the
+Gitche or Omo, its subsequent tributaries. These are the principal
+rivers of Kaffa, which is described as a high, cold country, as cold as
+Samen, or Simien, as Major Harris writes it, in Abyssinia. Bonga, the
+capital of Kaffa, or Susa, is one of the largest cities in these parts,
+and coffee of superior quality is produced every where, both in Kaffa
+and Enarea, in the greatest abundance. So also is civet and ivory.
+
+The Omo, where crossed in the road to Tuftee, is passed by a bridge of
+wood sixty yards in length, which shows that it is not a very large
+river, nor can it be, this place being so near the district where its
+sources must lie. In the dry season it is described as a very small
+stream. The mountains in the south of Kaffa or Susa, are covered with
+snow, and to the south of this place they are said to rise to a
+stupendous height, "to reach the skies," and are clothed with eternal
+snow!
+
+Malo, or Malee, (as Major Harris spells it,) is westward from Koocha,
+and not far from Jajo, (certainly the Jedo of Salt,) and which is at a
+considerable distance from the sea, (_Geographical Bulletin_, No. 114.)
+Malee touches upon both Goba and Doko, and the latter again touches upon
+Kulloo. It is in Malee that the Omo, now a considerable stream, joins
+the Gochob, after having received from the mountains of Souro and
+valleys of Sasa the Toreesh or Gotze, a considerable stream. Doko and
+Malee, like Dauro or Woreta, are very hot low countries, abounding in
+cotton. In Doko, bamboo forests are frequent and extensive. The
+population are represented to be of a diminutive stature, exceedingly
+rude and ignorant, and are a prey to all their surrounding neighbours,
+who invade their country at pleasure, and carry off the wretched people
+into slavery. In this portion of Africa, or very near it, the early Arab
+writers and Portuguese navigators placed a nation of pigmies; and in
+this it would appear that they were correct. After the junction of the
+Omo, the Gochob pursues its way by Ganana to the sea at Juba, a few
+miles to the south of the equator. The western bank is inhabited by
+Galla tribes, and the eastern by Somauli. In this part of its course it
+is called Jub by the Arabians, Gowend or Govend by the Somauli, Yumbu by
+the Souahilis, and Danesa by the Gallas.
+
+The Gochob below Wolama is joined on the east side by a considerable
+stream called the Una, which rises to the south of Gurague; and in
+Koocha and on the same side by a still larger stream, which comes from
+the country of the Ara or Ala Galla to the east of Gurague, and near the
+western sources of the Wabbe or Webbe. Koocha is thirty days' navigation
+upwards and fifteen downwards from the sea, with which it has a
+considerable trade; white or fair people coming up the river to that
+place; but these are not allowed to proceed further inland. The
+inhabitants of Koocha carry on a great trade by means of the Gochob with
+Dauro in slaves, ivory, coffee, &c.; the Galla of Dauro bringing these
+down the Gochob in rafts with high gunwales, which indicates that the
+Gochob is a river of considerable magnitude, and may become of great
+importance in the future communications with Africa; the soil and
+climate around it being very fine, particularly in the lower parts near
+the sea, where the land is level, and the soil a fine deep red mould.
+
+After Bruce, Salt had delineated with considerable accuracy the source
+of the Webbe and the countries around it; but, except his map, we had no
+further particulars. These are, however, supplied by Major Harris and Mr
+Krapf in the countries south-east of Shoa, about Harrar and its sources;
+and further by accounts collected by D'Abbadie at Berbera from
+intelligent natives, travellers regarding the countries more to the
+south, and over the remainder of the north-eastern coast of Africa.
+
+The principal source of the Webbe is to the east of the Aroosi
+mountains, and in the country of the Ala Galla; whence, running
+eastward, it passes Imi and Karanle, (the Karain of Krapf;) it runs
+south-east and afterwards south in a winding course towards the Indian
+ocean. To the north of six degrees of latitude, it is joined by several
+streams from the neighbourhood of Harrar and places more to the east;
+and in about six degrees of latitude, by a large stream which rises near
+Lake Souaie, and runs through the country of Bergama or Bahr Gama. The
+various countries through which the Webbe and his tributaries flow, are
+distinctly marked on the map. The country around its sources is very
+hilly and cold, the mountains resembling in height and appearance the
+boldest in Abyssinia; and to the eastward of its middle course, the
+mountains in Howea are very high and cold. In these springs the river
+Doaro, which flows into the sea, a considerable river during the rains;
+but at other times its mouth is nearly blocked up with sand, which is
+the case with some streams more to the northward.
+
+North of Mount Anot the country is fine and well watered, and during the
+rains a very large river, according to Christopher, flows through it,
+descending from the range to the south-east of Berbera, and entering the
+sea in about eight degrees thirty minutes north latitude. Around Capes
+Halfoon and Guardafui the country is fine and well watered with small
+streams, and the climate delicious, as is the coast from Cape Guardafui
+westward to Berbera.
+
+Harrar stands in a beautiful, fertile, and well-watered valley,
+surrounded with hills, the soil rich, and producing fine coffee
+abundantly. It is strictly Mahommedan, and, comparatively speaking, a
+considerable place, though much shorn of its dominion and power from
+those days when it had become the capital of that portion of eastern
+Africa ruled by the Mahommedans; and when under Mahommed _Gragne_,
+(left-handed,) it overran and desolated the whole Abyssinian empire,
+then under that unfortunate sovereign King David. In the county south of
+Berbera there is abundance of fine wells of excellent water. Waggadeyn
+is a very beautiful country, and produces abundance of myrrh and
+frankincense, as in fact every portion of the eastern horn, from Enarea
+inclusive, also does. It is the great myrrh and frankincense country,
+from which Arabia, Egypt, Judea, Syria, and Tyre were supplied in early
+days of Scripture history. The Webbe is only six fathoms broad and five
+feet deep in the dry season in Waggadeyn; but in the rainy season the
+depth is increased to five fathoms. It is navigated by rafts lower down.
+Incense, gum, and coffee, are every where abundant around the Webbe and
+its tributary streams. Harrar contains about 14,000 inhabitants, and
+Berbera 10,000; Sakka about 12,000.
+
+All the early Arabian writers pointedly state, and so also do the
+Portuguese discoverers, that the Webbe entered the sea _near Mukdishu_
+or Magadoxo. This was no doubt the fact; but from what cause we know
+not, the river, after approaching within a short distance of Magadoxo to
+the north, turns south-west, and approaching in several places very near
+the sea, from which it is only separated by sandhills, it terminates in
+a lake about halfway between Brava and the Jub. This is Christopher's
+account; but my opinion is, that this lake communicates with the sea
+during the rainy season, and even in a small stream in the dry season
+also. Christopher pointedly states, that besides filtrating through the
+sandhills, it communicates with the sea in two places, between Merka and
+Brava; and that this is correct, is proved from the fact, that while the
+river near Merka is 175 feet broad, it is reduced to seventy-five feet
+near Brava; while the _Geographical Bull._, No. 98, p. 96, states, that
+a small river enters the sea to the south of Brava, a branch
+unquestionably from the Webbe.
+
+The country between Magadoxo and the Jub is called Ber-el-Banader, and
+north of Magadoxo, and situated between the Webbe and the Doaro, is the
+considerable province called Hamer. Christopher describes the Somauli
+inhabiting the lower Webbe as civil and obliging, the soil fine and
+fruitful, and the climate the most delicious he had ever visited. The
+inhabitants offered to conduct him in safety to Abyssinia, and into very
+remote districts in the interior. The name of England is beginning to be
+well known, respected, and feared in this fine portion of Africa; and it
+is not a little to be regretted and lamented that this has not been the
+case at a much earlier period.
+
+The early Arabian writers, such as Batouta, write Magadoxo, Mukdishu;
+Christopher states that it is now divided into two parts, in a state of
+hostilities with each other, and that the southern part is called
+Mukutshu, and the northern Mukkudeesha.
+
+According to the _Geographical Bulletin_, No. 98, p. 98, the word
+_ganana_ signifies _queue_, or tail, which explains at once the river
+which Christopher makes enter the Webbe near Galwen, coming from the
+north-westward, to be in reality a branch flowing off from the Jub at
+that place. It is a thing unknown to find a river rising in a low
+alluvial country.
+
+To the east of the Webbe the country is inhabited by Somauli tribes, who
+are Mahommedans and considerable traders. The country seems every where
+to have a considerable population; and instead of being a blank and a
+waste, as hitherto supposed and represented on maps, it is found to be
+one of the finest portions of Africa, or of the world. Grain of every
+kind known in the temperate zones, especially wheat of superior
+qualities, is most abundant, and so cheap that the value of a dollar can
+purchase as much as will maintain a man for a whole year!
+
+The sources of the Hawash approach within about thirty miles of the
+Abay. The lake Souaie in Gurague is about thirty miles in circumference,
+and contains numerous islands. In these are lodged some ancient and
+valuable Abyssinian records. It is fed by five small rivers, and empties
+itself into the Hawash, (see _Ludolf_.) Gurague is a Christian state,
+but reduced to great misery and poverty by the Galla tribes which
+surround it on every side. The elevation of Ankobar above the sea is
+8200 feet, and of Augollalla about 200 more; so that the climate is very
+moderate. The country is every where very mountainous; but at the same
+time is in many places well cultivated. The rivers run in deep valleys
+or dells, and are very rocky and rapid. The present kingdom of Shoa
+contains about 2,500,000 of inhabitants, chiefly Christians of the
+Alexandrian Church.
+
+In March 1842, Mr Krapf set out from Ankobar, to proceed to Egypt, by
+way of Gondar and Massuah; but, after traversing the mountainous parts
+of Northern Shoa, and the countries of the Woollo-Galla, and reaching a
+short distance beyond the Bashilo, (then only five days' journey from
+Gondar,) he was compelled, from hostilities prevailing among the chiefs
+in that quarter, to retrace his steps to Gatera. In the journey which he
+had so far accomplished, Mr Krapf traversed the country near the sources
+of the numerous rivers which flow to form the Jimma and the Bashilo. The
+mountains were high and cold, (especially in the province of Mans,) and
+exceedingly precipitous, ascending and descending 3000 feet in the
+course of a few hours. The soil in the valleys was good, and tolerably
+well cultivated. Sheep, with long black wool, were numerous; the
+population in general rude and ignorant. From Gatera he took his course
+to Lake Haik, and from thence, pursuing his route north-eastward, he
+crossed the numerous streams which rise in the mountainous range to the
+westward, and pursue their course to the country of Adel, north of
+Aussa. Crossing the very elevated range on the western frontier of
+modern Angot, he pursued his journey to Antalon, leaving at Lat the
+Tacazze four days' journey to the west, and crossing in his course the
+numerous streams, such as the Tarir, the Ghebia, Sumshato, and the
+Tyana, (this last a considerable river,) which flow northward from the
+mountains of Angot and Woggerat to form the Areequa, a large tributary
+to the Tacazze. Mr Krapf's route lay a little to the westward of Lake
+Assanghe, and considerably in this portion thereof to the west of the
+route of Alvaraez, who passed on the south side of Mount Ginnamora, from
+whence the streams descended to the south-east.
+
+Lake Haik is a fine sheet of water about forty-five miles in
+circumference, with an island near the north-west corner, and an outlet
+in the west, which runs to the Berkona. On the east and the south sides
+it is surrounded with high mountains. Mount Ambassel or Amba Israel, the
+celebrated mountain in Geshen where the younger branches of the royal
+family of Abyssinia were imprisoned in early times, is a little to the
+north of Lake Haik, and beyond the Mille. It runs north and south, in
+length about twelve or thirteen miles, and is exceedingly high and
+steep, the sides thereof being almost perpendicular. Mr Krapf, amongst
+the most considerable rivers which he passed in this quarter, mentions
+the Ala, which he states runs to, and is lost in, the deserts of the
+country of Adel. This is important, and this river is no doubt the Wali
+of Bruce, which he mentions (vol. iii. p. 248) as the scene of a
+remarkable engagement between the sovereigns of Abyssinia and Adel in
+1576, during the reign of the Abyssinian king Sertza Denghel. The
+Abyssinian army descended from Angot, and crossing the Wali, a
+considerable river, cut off the army of Adel from Aussa, drove a portion
+thereof into the stream, where they were drowned, while the remainder
+flying crossed the stream lower down, and thus effected their escape to
+Aussa. This confirms in a remarkable manner the position of this river,
+and would almost go to establish the fact that it cannot unite with Lake
+Aussa, the termination of the Hawash.
+
+At the Ala Mr Krapf states that he was then seven days' journey from
+Aussa. Aussa, according to Bruce, or rather the capital of Aussa, was in
+former times situated on a rock on the bank of the river Hawash. It is
+called Aussa Gurel in the old Portuguese maps, and is no doubt the Aussa
+Guraiel of Major Harris, laid down on the Arabic map which he obtained
+from a native of that place. When low, the termination of the Hawash may
+be said to form three lakes; but during the rainy season the land is
+flooded round to a great extent, the circumference of the lake then
+extending to 120 geographical miles. When the waters retire they leave,
+like the Nile in Egypt, a quantity of fine mud or slime, which,
+cultivated as it immediately is, produces abundant crops, and on this
+account the valley of Aussa is, and always has been, the granary of
+Adel. From the southern boundary of the lake to the place where the
+Hawash finally extricates itself from the mountainous ranges, the
+distance is about five days' journey, or from sixty to seventy miles.
+The length of the fine valley of Aussa is about one hundred miles.
+
+From the summit of the chain which separates the waters which flow
+south-east to Adel, and north-west to the Tacazze, Mr Krapf says, that
+looking over Lasta to the towering snow-clad peaks of Samen or Simien,
+the whole country had the appearance of the raging waves of the sea in a
+terrible tempest. The soil around the upper branches of the Tacazze is
+very good, especially in Wofila, Boora, and Enderta, adjoining the fine
+river Tyana; but it is only indifferently cultivated, owing to the
+perpetual wars and feuds amongst the chieftains and tribes in these
+parts, and the bad and unsettled governments which now exist in Tigre,
+and, in fact, in all Abyssinia. Travelling in these parts is difficult
+and insecure, owing to the plundering dispositions of the people, and
+the rapacity of the chiefs, who live beyond the control of any
+commanding or great sovereign power. At Gatera Mr Krapf was robbed of
+every thing that he had by the ferocious Woollo-Galla chief, _Adara
+Bille_, from whose clutches he escaped with some difficulty.
+
+But time and space forbids me going more at length into the interesting
+journeys of these late eastern travellers, amongst which those of Major
+Harris is certainly the most important. He has accurately determined,
+and been the first to determine, the longitude and latitude of Tajoura,
+Lake Assal or the Salt Lake, and Ankobar, &c., and thus given correct
+starting points from which to regulate the bearings and distances of the
+other very interesting places in the interior. The bay of Tajoura
+affords good anchorage; but the best point to start for the interior is
+Zeila, the route thence to Shoa running along the edges of the watered
+and more cultivated districts.
+
+Amongst the travellers who visited this quarter of Africa lately is Dr
+T. C. Beke. He, however, went over the same ground as the others in his
+journey from Tajoura to Ankobar, (Messrs Krapf and Isenberg had preceded
+him a considerable time;) therefore his letters and communications, so
+far as yet known, contain little that is new. The only portion connected
+with Shoa which the others had not visited, is about thirty-five miles
+of the lower course of the Jimma, near its junction with the Abay, where
+the latter stream is about 600 feet broad, and from three to five feet
+deep. His subsequent travels in this part of Africa were confined to
+Gojam, Damot, and part of Agow Medre, and to the source of the Nile; but
+except being more minute in minor details regarding these provinces and
+their numerous small streams and rivers, they add little to the
+information given by Bruce. Still his journey, when given to the world,
+may supply us with some interesting particulars regarding what he
+actually saw.
+
+Dr Beke travelled individually for information; but, in aid of his
+laudable enterprise, received some pecuniary assistance from the African
+Civilization Society and the Royal Geographical Society. Being a member
+of the former society, and while engaged in constructing the maps for
+the journals of the Church Missionary Society in the summer of last
+year--not for personal gain, but solely to benefit Africa--the
+communications and maps which from time to time came from Dr Beke to
+that society, were readily put into my hands to use, where they could be
+used, to advance the cause of Africa. Amongst the maps there was one of
+the countries to the south of the Abay, including Enarea, Kaffa, and
+Gingiro, constructed at and sent from Yaush in Gojam, September 6, 1842,
+together with some of the authorities on which it had been made. In that
+map the whole of the rivers, even to the south of Enarea and Kaffa, the
+Gojob, (as the Doctor writes it,) the Omo, the Kibbee or Gibe, the
+Dedhasa, and Baro, are all made, though rising beyond, that is, to the
+south of Gingiro and to the south and south-east of Kaffa and Woreta,
+(Woreta is placed to the south of Kaffa,) to run north-westward into the
+Abay. In fact, the Gojob is represented on that map to be the parent
+stream of the Bahr-el-Azreek or Blue River, and quite a distinct stream
+from the Abay, which it is made to join by the Toumat, having from the
+south-east received in its middle course the Geba, the Gibe, the
+Dedhasa, and the Baro, and from the south-west the Omo or Abo. The whole
+delineation, a copy of which I preserved, presented a mass so contrary
+to all other authorities, ancient and modern, that to rectify or reduce
+it to order was found impracticable, or where attempted only tended to
+lead into error.
+
+The error of bringing such an influx of water as the rivers mentioned,
+and so delineated, would bring to the Blue Nile, is evident from the
+fact, that this river at Senaar in the dry season is, according to
+Bruce, only about the size of the Thames at Richmond. His words are
+specific and emphatic, (Vol. vii. App. p. 89)--"The Nile at Babosch is
+like, or greater than the Thames at Richmond"--"has fine white sand on
+its banks"--"the water is clear, and in some places not more than two
+feet deep." Dumbaro (or Tzamburo, as the Doctor calls it in the map
+alluded to) is laid down between eight degrees and nine degrees north
+latitude, and west of Wallega; Tuftee is placed more to the north on the
+river designated the Blue River, and Gobo still further north upon it,
+in fact adjoining to its junction with the Abay. Doko is not noticed on
+the map.
+
+The intelligent native Abyssinian Gregorius, without referring to
+numerous other credible, early, and also modern authorities, determines
+this important point quite differently and accurately; for he assured
+Ludolf, (A. D. 1650, see _Ludolf_, p. 38,) that all those rivers that
+are upon the borders of Ethiopia, in the countries of "Cambat, Gurague,
+Enarea, Zandera, Wed, Waci, Gaci, and some others," do not flow into the
+Nile or any of his tributaries, but "enter the sea, every one in his
+distinct region," that is, the Indian ocean.
+
+Since his return to England Dr Beke has, I have reason to believe, found
+out his great error; and will alter the course of all these rivers in
+Enarea and Kaffa, and bend their courses to the south-east and south.{B}
+
+With these observations I proceed to a more important portion of my
+subject; namely, the position and capabilities of Africa, as these
+connect themselves with the present position and prospects of the
+British Tropical possessions, and the position and prospects of the
+Tropical possessions of other powers.
+
+The support of the power and the maintenance of the political
+preponderance of Great Britain in the scale of nations, depend upon
+colonial possessions. To render colonies most efficient, and most
+advantageous for her general interests, it is indispensably necessary
+that these should be planted in the Tropical world, the productions of
+which ever have been, are, and ever will be, eagerly sought after by the
+civilized nations of the temperate zones.
+
+One of the greatest modern French statesmen, Talleyrand, understood and
+recommended this fact to his master. In his celebrated memorial
+addressed to Bonaparte in 1801, speaking specially of England and her
+colonies, he says:--
+
+     "Her navy and her commerce are at present all her trust. France may
+     add Italy and Germany to her dominions with less detriment to Great
+     Britain then will follow the acquisition of a navy and the
+     extension of her trade. Whatever gives colonies to France supplies
+     her with ships, sailors, manufactures, and husbandmen. Victories by
+     land can only give her mutinous subjects, who, instead of
+     augmenting the national force by their riches or numbers,
+     contribute only to disperse and enfeeble that force; but the growth
+     of colonies supplies her with zealous citizens, and the increase of
+     real wealth; and increase of effective numbers is the certain
+     consequence."
+
+     "What could Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, combining their
+     strength, do against England? They might assemble in millions on
+     the shores of the Channel, but THERE would be the limits of their
+     enmity. Without ships to carry them over, and without experienced
+     mariners to navigate these ships, Britain would only deride the
+     pompous preparation. The moment we leave the shore her fleets are
+     ready to pounce upon us, to disperse and to destroy our ineffectual
+     armaments. There lies her security; in her insular situation and
+     her navy consists her impregnable defence. Her navy is in every
+     respect the offspring of her trade. To rob her of that, therefore,
+     is to BEAT DOWN her LAST WALL, AND TO FILL UP HER LAST
+     MOAT. To gain it to ourselves is to enable us to take advantage of
+     her deserted and defenceless borders, and to complete the
+     humiliation of our only remaining competitor."
+
+These are correct opinions, and merit the constant and most serious
+attention of every British statesman. The increased cultivation and
+prosperity of foreign Tropical possessions is become so great, and is
+advancing so rapidly the power and the resources of other nations, that
+these are embarrassing this country in all her commercial relations, in
+her pecuniary resources, and in all her political relations and
+negotiations.
+
+During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence
+as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the
+most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the
+command of the productions of the torrid zone, and the advantageous
+commerce which that afforded, gave to Great Britain the power and the
+resources which enabled her to meet, to combat, and to overcome, her
+numerous and reckless enemies in every battle-field, whether by sea or
+by land, throughout the world. In her the world saw realized the fabled
+giant of antiquity. With her hundred hands she grasped her foes in every
+region under heaven, and crushed them with resistless energy.
+
+Who, it may be asked, manned those fleets which bore the flag, and the
+fame, and the power, of England over every sea and into every land--who
+swept fleets from the sea, as at Aboukir, and navies from the ocean, as
+at Trafalgar?
+
+It may pointedly and safely be stated--the seamen supplied by the
+colonial trade, and chiefly by the West Indian colonial trade of Great
+Britain. About 2000 seamen, for example, were every year drawn into the
+West Indian trade of the Clyde from the herring fisheries on the west
+coast of Scotland, and just as regularly transferred from that colonial
+trade into British men-of-war, such men being the best seamen that they
+had, because they were men accustomed to every climate from the arctic
+circle to the equator.
+
+In the event of any future war, men of this description will more than
+ever be wanted; because the torrid regions are become more populous and
+more powerful, either in themselves or as connected with great nations
+in the temperate zones, and consequently the sphere of European
+conflicts will be more extended in them.
+
+The world, especially Europe and America, is vastly improved since 1815.
+Great Britain must look at and attend to this. She must march and act
+accordingly. The world will not wait for her if she chooses to stand
+still; on the contrary, other nations will "go ahead," and leave her
+behind to repent of her folly.
+
+"England," said her greatest warrior, "cannot have a little war;"
+neither can she exist as a little nation.
+
+The natives of the torrid zone can only labour in the cultivation of the
+soil of that zone. In no other zone can the special productions of the
+torrid zone be produced in perfection.
+
+There now remains no portion of the tropical world where _labour can be
+had on the spot_, and whereon Great Britain can so conveniently and
+safely plant her foot, in order to accomplish the desirable
+object--extensive Tropical cultivation--but Tropical Africa. Every other
+part is occupied by independent nations, or by people that may and will
+soon become independent.
+
+British capital and knowledge will abundantly furnish the means to
+cultivate her rich fields. This is the only rational and lasting way to
+instruct and to enlighten her people, and to keep them enlightened,
+civilized, and industrious. By adopting this course also, that British
+capital, both commercial and manufacturing, which in one way or other
+finds its way, and which will continue to find its way, especially while
+money is so cheap in this country, into foreign possessions to assist
+the slave trade and to support slavery--will be turned to support the
+cause of freedom in Africa, and at the same time to increase instead of
+tending to diminish the trade and the power of this country.
+
+The principle which Great Britain has adopted in her future agricultural
+relations with the Tropical world is, that colonial produce must be
+produced, and that it can be produced in that region cheaper by free
+African and East Indian labour than by slave labour. This great
+principle she cannot deviate from, nor attempt to revoke.
+
+If the foreign slave trade be not extinguished, and the cultivation of
+the Tropical territories of other powers opposed and checked by British
+Tropical cultivation, then the interests and the power of such states
+will rise into a preponderance over those of Great Britain; and the
+power and influence of the latter will cease to be felt, feared, and
+respected, amongst the civilized and powerful nations of this world.
+
+Civilization and peace can only be brought round in Africa by the
+extension of cultivation, accompanied by the introduction of true
+religion. Commerce will doubtless prove a powerful auxiliary; but to
+render it so, and to raise commerce to any permanent or beneficial
+extent, cultivation upon an extensive scale must precede commerce in
+Africa.
+
+It is, therefore, _within_ Africa, and by African hands and African
+exertions chiefly, that the slave trade can be destroyed. It is IN
+Africa, not OUT of Africa, that Africans, generally speaking, can and
+must be enlightened and civilized. Teach and show her rulers and her
+people, that they can obtain, and that white men will give them, more
+for the productions of their soil than for the hands which can produce
+these--and the work is done. All other steps are futile, can only be
+mischievous and delusive, and terminate in disappointment and defeat. To
+eradicate the slave trade will not eradicate the passions which gave it
+birth.
+
+In attempting to extinguish the African slave trade and to benefit
+Africa, Great Britain has, in one shape or other, expended during the
+last thirty-six years above L20,000,000; yet, instead of that traffic
+being destroyed, it has, as regards the possessions of foreign powers,
+been trebled, and is now as great as ever, while Africa has received no
+advantage whatever. Since 1808, about 3,500,000 slaves have been
+transported from Africa to the Brazils and Cuba. The productions of what
+is technically denominated colonial Tropical produce has, in
+consequence, been increased from L15,000,000 to L60,000,000 annually,
+augmented in part, it is true, from the natural increase of nearly one
+million slaves more in the United States of America.
+
+In abolishing slavery in the West Indies, Great Britain has besides
+expended above L20,000,000; still that measure has hitherto been so
+little successful, that L100,000,000 of fixed capital additional,
+invested in these colonies, stand on the brink of destruction; while, in
+addition to the former sums, the people of Great Britain have, from the
+enhanced price of produce, paid during the last six or seven years
+L10,000,00 more, and which has gone chiefly, if not wholly, into the
+pockets of the negro labourers in excessive high wages, the giant evil
+which afflicts the West Indies.
+
+When the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies was carried
+amidst feeling without judgment, the nation was so ready to pay
+L20,000,000, and the West Indians, especially those in England, so
+anxious to receive it, each considering that act all that was requisite
+to be done, that neither party ever thought for a moment of what foreign
+nations had done, were doing, and would do, in consequence. The warnings
+and advice of local knowledge were scouted in England, till these evils,
+which prudence might and ought to have prevented, now stare all parties
+in the face with a strength that puzzles the wisest and appals the
+boldest.
+
+Instead of supplying her own wants with Tropical produce, and next
+nearly all Europe, as she formerly did, it is the fact that, in some of
+the most important articles, she has barely sufficient to supply her own
+wants; while the whole of her colonial possessions, east, west, north,
+and south, are at this moment supplied with--and, as regards the article
+of sugar, are consuming--foreign slave produce, brought direct, or,
+refined in bond, exported and sold in the colonies at a rate as cheap,
+if not really cheaper, than British muscovado, the produce of these
+colonies.
+
+Such a state of things cannot continue, nor ought it any longer to be
+permitted to continue, without adopting an effectual remedy.
+
+The extent of the power and the interests which are arrayed against each
+other, in this serious conflict, must be minutely considered to be
+properly understood in a commercial and in a political point of view.
+Unless this is done the magnitude of the danger, and the assistance
+which is necessary to be given, and the exertions which are requisite in
+order to bring the contest to a successful issue, cannot be properly
+appreciated or correctly understood.
+
+The value of what is technically called colonial produce at present
+produced in the British colonial possessions, the East Indies included,
+is about L10,000,000 yearly, from a capital invested to the extent of
+L150,000,000. The trade thus created employs 800 ships, 300,000 tons,
+and 17,000 seamen yearly. This is the yearly value of the property and
+produce of the British Tropical agricultural trade, now dependent upon
+free labour.
+
+Against this we have opposed, in the western world alone, nearly
+L60,000,000 of agricultural produce, exportable and exported yearly,
+requiring a trade in returns equal to L56,000,000, and a proportionate
+number of ships' tonnage and seamen. In the trade with Cuba and Port
+Rico alone, the United States have 1600 vessels employed yearly,
+(230,000 tons of shipping,) making numerous and speedy voyages, and from
+which trade only, these states, in case of emergency, could man and
+maintain from twenty to thirty sail of the line.
+
+On the part of foreign nations there has, since 1808, been L800,000,000
+of fixed capital created in slaves, and in cultivation wholly dependent
+upon the labour of slaves. On the other hand, there stands on the part
+of Great Britain, altogether and only, about L130,000,000 (deducting the
+value paid for the slaves) vested in Tropical cultivation, and formerly
+dependent upon slave labour, and which has in part been swept away,
+while the remainder is in danger of being so.
+
+Let us have recourse to a few returns and figures, in order to show what
+is going on, especially by slave-labour in other countries, as compared
+with British possessions, in three articles of colonial produce, namely,
+sugar, (reducing the foreign clayed sugar into muscovado to make the
+comparison just,) coffee, and cotton; and as regards a few foreign
+countries only, nearly three-fourths of which produce, be it observed,
+has been created within the last thirty years.
+
+
+SUGAR--1842.
+
+    _British possessions._              _Foreign possessions._
+
+                          cwts.                          cwts.
+  West Indies,          2,508,552     Cuba,            5,800,000
+  East Indies,            940,452     Brazils,         2,400,000
+  Mauritius, (1841,)      544,767     Java,            1,105,757
+                        ---------     Louisiana,       1,400,000
+               Total,   3,993,771                     ----------
+                                             Total,   10,705,757
+
+
+COFFEE--1842.
+
+                           lbs.                            lbs.
+  West Indies,          9,186,555     Java,           134,842,715
+  East Indies,         18,206,448     Brazils,        135,000,800
+                       ----------     Cuba,            33,589,325
+               Total,  27,393,003     Venezuela,       34,000,000
+                                                      -----------
+                                             Total,   337,432,840
+
+
+COTTON--1840.
+
+                           lbs.                            lbs.
+  West Indies,            427,529     United States,  790,479,275
+  East Indies,         77,015,917     Java,           165,504,800
+  To China from do.,   60,000,000     Brazils,         25,222,828
+                      -----------                     -----------
+               Total, 137,443,446            Total,   981,206,903
+
+The above figures require only to be glanced at, to learn the increased
+wealth and productions of foreign nations, in comparison with the
+portion which England has in the trade and value of such articles, now
+become absolutely necessary for the manufactures, the luxuries, and the
+necessaries of life amongst the civilized nations of the world.
+
+In the enormous property and traffic thus created in foreign
+possessions, by the continuance and extension of the slave trade,
+British merchants and manufacturers are interested in the cause of their
+lawful trade to a great extent. The remainder is divided amongst the
+great civilized nations of the world, maintaining in each very
+extensive, very wealthy, very powerful, and, as opposed to Great
+Britain, very formidable commercial and political rival interests.
+
+Further, it is the very extensive and profitable markets which the
+above-mentioned yearly creation of property gives to the manufacturers
+of foreign countries, that have raised foreign manufactures to their
+present importance, and which enables these, in numerous instances, to
+oppose and to rival our own.
+
+The odds, therefore, in agricultural and commercial capital and
+interest, and consequently in political power and influence, arrayed
+against the British Tropical possessions are very fearful--SIX TO ONE.
+
+This is a most serious but correct state of things. Alarming as it is to
+contemplate, still it must be looked at, and looked at with firmness;
+for even yet it may be considered without terror or alarm.
+
+The struggle, both national and colonial, is clearly therefore most
+important, and the stake at issue incalculably great.
+
+It is by the assistance of African free labour, and by the judicious and
+just application thereof, both in Africa and in the West Indian
+colonies, that the victory of free labour over slave labour, freedom
+over slavery, can be achieved and maintained.
+
+The abundant population of Africa, properly directed, and a small
+portion gradually taken from judiciously selected districts of that
+continent, and under proper regulations, will be found sufficient to
+cultivate, not only her own fertile fields, but also to supply in
+adequate numbers free labourers to maintain the cultivation of the
+British West Indian colonies. It must always be borne in mind, that in
+the maintenance of cultivation, civilization, and industry, in those
+possessions, the cultivation, industry, and civilization of Africa
+depend. _The cause of both is henceforth the same, and cannot, and ought
+not, and must not be separated._ Whatever sources the West Indian
+colonies may and must look to for immediate relief, it is in civilized
+and enlightened Africa that they can only depend for a future and
+permanent support. Abandon this principle and this course, and the error
+committed will, at an early day, be fatal and final.
+
+Yet if the labour of Africa is continued to be abstracted to any
+considerable extent by Europeans, and from any points except from free
+European settlements in Africa, in order to cultivate other quarters of
+the world, all hope of improving the condition of Africa is at an end;
+because the abstraction of such labour can only be obtained by the
+continuation of internal slavery and a slave trade within Africa;
+because labour, if generally abstracted from Africa as heretofore,
+whether in freemen or slaves, will tend to enhance the cost of that
+which remains to such an extent, as will render it all but impossible
+for any industrious capitalist, whether European or native, to extend
+and maintain successfully cultivation in Africa.
+
+Had the 9,000,000 of slaves which, from first to last, have been torn
+from Africa to cultivate America, been employed in their native land,
+supported by European (British) capital, and guided by British
+intelligence, how much more beneficial and secure than it is, would
+every thing have been to Africa, to England, and to the world?
+
+Europe has been acting wrong: let her not continue in error; and, at the
+same time, let England meet and grapple with the question with enlarged
+and liberal views--views that look to future times and future
+circumstances--views such as England ought to entertain, and such as
+Great Britain only can yet see carried into effect.
+
+We first established cultivation in the West Indies by a population not
+natives of the soil, but which required to be imported from another and
+distant quarter of the globe. This, politically and commercially
+speaking, was a great error; but it has been committed, and it would be
+a greater error to leave those people, now free British subjects, and
+the large British capital there vested, to decay, misery, and general
+deterioration. They must be supported, and it is fortunate that they can
+be supported, through their present difficulties, without inflicting a
+grievous wrong on Africa, by taking her children from her by wholesale
+to cultivate distant and foreign lands.
+
+If European nations generally adopt the system of transporting labourers
+as freemen from Africa, then Africa would continue to be as much
+distressed, tortured, and oppressed, as ever she has been; while with
+the great strength of slave labour which those vast and fertile
+countries, Brazils, Cuba, &c., possess, they would, by the unlimited
+introduction of people called free from Africa, but which, once got
+into their power, they could coerce to labour for stated hire, overwhelm
+by increased production all the British colonies both in the west and in
+the east.
+
+Such abstraction of the African population from their country, would
+give a fearful impulse to an internal slave trade in Africa. The
+unfeeling chiefs on the coast, the most profligate, debased, and
+ferocious of mankind, would by fraud, force, or purchase, in the
+character of emigration agents, drag as many to the coast as they
+pleased and might be wanted; and while they did not actually sell, nor
+the European, technically speaking, buy, the people so brought from
+interior parts, these chiefs, by simply fixing high port charges and
+fiscal regulations for revenue purposes, would obtain from the transfer
+of the people--a transfer which these people could not resist or
+oppose--a much higher income than they before received from the _bona
+fide_ sale of slaves; and with which income they could, and they would,
+purchase European articles from European traders, to enable them to
+furnish additional and future supplies.
+
+In this way, millions after millions of Africans--for millions after
+millions would most unquestionably be demanded--would certainly be
+carried away. The poor creatures, unable to pay their own passage, would
+no more be their own masters from the moment they got on board the
+foreign ship, than if they were really slaves.
+
+Such a traffic as this on the part of foreign nations, Great Britain
+could neither denounce nor oppose while she herself resorted to a
+similar course. In one way only she could reasonably resist and oppose
+it; namely, by urging that she only took people from her own African
+settlements, which are free, to her West Indian settlements, which are
+free also; while foreign nations, such as Brazils, had no possessions of
+any kind on the coast of Africa, and at the same time retained slavery
+in their dominions. Great Britain could only urge this plea in
+opposition to such proceedings on the part of other powers; but would
+such reasoning, however proper and just, be admitted or listened to? I
+do not think that it would. The consequences of the adoption of such a
+course by the nation alluded to, or by any other European power which
+has Tropical colonies, (France, Spain, Denmark, and Holland have,) will
+prove fatal to the best interests of Great Britain.
+
+Already the people in the Brazils have begun to moot the question--that
+they ought in sincerity to put an end to the African slave trade, and in
+lieu thereof to bring labourers from Africa as free people. The supply
+of such that will be required, both to maintain the present numbers of
+the black population and to extend cultivation in that country, will
+certainly be great and lasting. The disparity of the sexes in Brazils is
+undoubtedly great. In Cuba it is in the proportion of 275,000 males to
+150,000 females, and, amongst the whole, the number of young persons is
+small. To keep up the population only in these countries will probably
+require 130,000 people from Africa yearly; while interest will lead the
+agricultural capitalist in those countries to bring only effective
+labourers, and these as a matter of course chiefly males; which will
+tend to perpetuate the evils arising from the inequality of the sexes,
+and thus continue, to a period the most remote, the demand from Africa,
+and consequently a continued expense, equal perhaps to L30 each, for
+every effective free labourer brought from that continent.
+
+It is thus obvious that African immigration in any shape, and to any
+nation, is a most serious matter. Unless the subject is considered in
+all its bearings, with reference not only to the present but to future
+times, and above all with reference to the steps which France, Portugal,
+or any other European power, may take in Africa, and also with reference
+to the steps which Great Britain may or may not take with regard to that
+great continent--most embarrassing results must follow; while, on the
+steps which may be taken by other nations, the British colonial
+interests henceforward depend.
+
+There remains but one certain and efficient way to prevent fatal evils
+and destructive results, and that is the simple, and ready, and rational
+course; namely, to oppose free labour _within_ Africa, and the West
+Indies and the East Indies, to African labour, whether free or bond,
+abstracted from her soil and carried by foreign nations to distant parts
+of the globe. In Africa, where the soil, the climate, the productions
+are equal and the same, _one-sixth_ part of the capital in labour would
+obtain labour equally efficient, nay more efficient, because removing
+Africans from their own country, either as slaves or freemen, even to
+other Tropical climates, must be attended with considerable risk and
+loss.
+
+Produce, supplied cheaper from Africa than it can be obtained from the
+places above alluded to, would speedily and completely terminate, not
+only the foreign African slave trade, but the slave trade and slavery in
+Africa itself. This is the only safe, secure, and certain way to
+accomplish the great object. It is safe because it is just; it is secure
+because it is profitable to all concerned, the giver as well as the
+receiver of the boon.
+
+It is neither prudent, patriotic, nor safe, to attempt to confine the
+productions of colonial commodities to the present British Tropical
+possessions; while the production of these in other countries and places
+will be increased by the capital and industry of other nations, and even
+by British capital and skill, more especially while capital cannot find
+room for profitable employment in England. During the war, Great Britain
+exported to the continent of Europe colonial produce to the extent of
+five millions yearly; and which in every case, but especially in bad
+seasons, when large supplies of continental grain were necessary for the
+food of her population, always secured a large balance of trade in her
+favour, and which would again be the case if she adopts the course here
+pointed out.
+
+Adopting the course recommended, Great Britain at an early day would be
+able to supply, not only her own extensive markets, both home and
+colonial, with sugar, coffee, cotton, and dye-stuffs, &c. &c., but, in
+every other market of the world, she would come in for a large share of
+the external traffic. Her ships and her seamen would carry, both to her
+own and to foreign markets, the productions raised by British subjects
+and British capital, instead of carrying from foreign port to foreign
+port, as her ships and her seamen do at this moment, the productions
+raised by foreign people, capital, and industry. Great additional wealth
+would thus be drawn to this country; Tropical produce of every
+description would be obtained at a reasonable, yet remunerating rate;
+now, extensive, and profitable markets would be opened up to our
+manufactures. They would become and remain prosperous; and all classes
+of the community would be benefited and relieved. Prosperity would
+increase the power of the people to consume; increased consumption would
+produce increased revenue; and the government would be relieved from
+unceasing applications for relief, which, under existing circumstances,
+they have it not in their power to give.
+
+The point under consideration also, important as it is, becomes still
+more important when the fact is considered, that if Great Britain does
+not set about the work to raise that produce in Africa, and command the
+trade proceeding from it, other nations most assuredly will; when she
+will lose, not only the advantages which that cultivation and trade
+would give her, but that trade also which she at present holds with her
+own colonies; for it is plain that the proceedings of foreign countries,
+such as have been adverted to, both in Africa, America, and other
+places, would cover the British colonies with poverty and ruin.
+
+The geographical position of Africa is peculiarly favourable for
+commerce with all other countries, and especially with Great Britain and
+her vast and varied possessions. Africa, or rather Tropical Africa, is
+equally distant from America, and Europe, and the most civilized parts
+of Asia, besides her proximity to Arabia, and, by means of the Red Sea,
+with Egypt and the Mediterranean. Africa, whether we look to the Cape of
+Good Hope or the Red Sea, is the impregnable halfway house to India--the
+quarter to make good the loss of an Indian empire. She has numerous good
+harbours, many navigable rivers, a most fruitful soil, valuable
+productions of every kind, known in every other quarter of the Tropical
+world, besides some peculiarly her own; and a climate and a country,
+take it all in all, equal, if not superior, to any other Tropical
+quarter of the world in point of salubrity. Her population are indeed
+ignorant and debased; but generally speaking, and especially over large
+portions of her surface, they are even more active, and intelligent, and
+industrious, than the Indians of America, or the people in some parts of
+Asia are, or than the population of Europe was, before the arms of Rome
+coerced and civilized them. Why, then, is Africa overlooked and
+neglected?
+
+Let us attend to the following facts. They are, both in a political and
+commercial point of view, of great importance, as showing the progress
+of the opinions and efforts of foreign nations as directed towards
+Africa.
+
+The great energies of France are, it is well known, at present strongly
+directed to the more important points of Tropical Africa, for the
+purpose of extending colonization, cultivation, and commerce therein, in
+order that she may thereby obtain supplies of colonial produce from the
+application of her own capital, and at the same time, and by this
+measure, to raise up a more extensive commercial marine, and
+consequently a more powerful and commanding navy.
+
+Under such circumstances, the real question to be solved is--Shall Great
+Britain secure and keep, as she may do, the superiority in Tropical
+cultivation, commerce, and influence? or, Shall foreign countries be
+suffered to acquire this supremacy, not only as regards themselves
+specifically, but even to the extent of supplying British markets with
+the produce of their fields, their labour, and their capital, to the
+abandonment and destruction of her own?
+
+This is the true state of the case; and the result is a vital question
+as regards the future power and resources of Great Britain.
+
+France is already securely placed at the mouth of the Senegal, and at
+Goree, extending her influence eastward and north-eastward from both
+places. She has a settlement at Albreda, on the Gambia, a short distance
+above St Mary's, and which commands that river. She has just formed a
+settlement close by Cape Palmas, and another at the mouth of the Gaboon,
+and a third by this time near the chief mouth of the Niger, in the Bight
+of Benin. She has fixed herself at Massuah and Buro, on the west shore
+of the Red Sea, commanding the inlets into Abyssinia. She is
+endeavouring to fix her flag at Brava and the mouth of the Jub; and she
+has just taken permanent possession of the important island of Johanna,
+situated in the centre of the northern outlet of the Mozambique channel,
+by which she acquires the command of that important channel. Her active
+agents are placed in Southern Abyssinia, and are traversing the borders
+of the Great Bahr-el-Abiad; while the northern shores of Africa will
+speedily be her own.
+
+Spain has planted herself in the island of Fernando Po, which commands
+all the outlets of the Niger, and the rivers from Cameroons to the
+equator; and from which she can readily obtain at any time any number of
+people from the adjacent coasts for her West Indian possessions, either
+as slaves or freemen.
+
+About six years ago, the government of Portugal appointed a commission
+to enquire into the state and condition of her once fine and still
+important colonies in Tropical Africa, and to report upon the best
+course to adopt to render them beneficial to the mother country. They
+have reported and wisely recommended, that Portuguese knowledge and
+capital should, as far as possible, be again sent to Africa, in order to
+instruct, enlighten, and cultivate these valuable possessions; and
+instead of allowing, as heretofore, labour in slaves to be abstracted
+from Africa, that native labourers should be retained and employed in
+Africa itself; and further, that it should to the utmost be aided and
+directed by European skill, capital, and labour. Thus, fourteen degrees
+of latitude on the east coast, and twenty degrees of latitude on the
+west coast, will, at an early day, be set free from the slave trade.
+From these points the Brazil markets were chiefly supplied with slaves;
+but Brazils being now separated from Portugal, the latter has and can
+have no interest in allowing the former to carry on the slave trade from
+her African dominions, but quite the reverse.
+
+The discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope changed the
+course of eastern commerce. The exertions of Portugal in the manner
+proposed, will now, and most certainly and severely, affect Tropical
+productions and commerce in every market. In this case, England ought to
+encourage and support Portugal, and, by following her footsteps in other
+eligible parts of Africa, share in the advantages which such a state of
+things, and the cultivation and improvement of Africa, is certain to
+produce.
+
+The Iman of Muscat, the sovereign of Zanzibar, has lately put an end to
+the slave trade in his dominions in Africa, extending northwards from
+the Portuguese boundary eight degrees of latitude on the eastern coast.
+His envoy, who was lately in England, was so delighted with the
+treatment which he received, and with all that he heard and saw here,
+that he has influenced his master to carry out sincerely the views and
+objects recommended by England. I have in my possession a most
+interesting account of the country, extending into the interior of
+Africa, from the coast opposite Zanzibar all the way to the great lake
+Maravi. The country is intersected with noble rivers, one especially
+which issues out of the lake; is generally healthy and well cultivated,
+especially as the lake is approached. The population are generally of
+Arabian descent, industrious, and clothed. A wide field, therefore, for
+commercial operations is open in this quarter.
+
+The powerful sovereign of Dahomey has agreed to abolish the slave trade.
+Independent of his considerable dominions, his fine country was one of
+the greatest high-roads for the slave caravans from the interior. He has
+received, welcomed, and encouraged the Wesleyan missionaries lately sent
+to that quarter. The missionaries from this society, and also one from
+the Church Missionary Society, have penetrated to Abekuta, a town
+containing 40,000 inhabitants, and about 106 miles north-east of Lagos,
+and north of Benin. The country, immediately after quitting the coast,
+becomes most fertile, pleasant, and healthy, as all that country to the
+north of the Formosa is well known to be. The population are eager for
+instruction; they are comparatively industrious and civilized; they
+manufacture all their necessary agricultural implements, bits for
+bridles, hoes, &c., from their own iron; they tan their own leather, and
+manufacture therefrom saddles, bridles, shoes, &c.
+
+The great sovereign of Ashantee has also received with royal honours,
+and welcomed, the ministers of the gospel, encouraged them, and listened
+to them in the most gratifying manner. The Almamy of Teembo--a state
+which commands the fine districts around the Niger in its early course,
+and the roads from populous interior parts on the east to the western
+coast--has lately evinced the strongest desire to extend cultivation and
+commerce in lieu of the slave trade, and to have a ready communication
+with Europeans, and especially with the English. In other portions of
+Africa important movements are also going on, most gratifying to the
+friends of humanity and religion.
+
+The United States of America, as a nation, is about to incorporate with
+her dominions the whole coast of Africa on Cape Palmas to the borders of
+the Gallinas--a fertile and healthy part of that continent, and wherein
+several settlements have of late years been made by the free people of
+colour from those states. This effected, there will hardly remain a spot
+of any consequence in Tropical Africa worth looking after for Great
+Britain to plant her foot, either for the purpose of obtaining labourers
+for her West Indian colonies, or to extend agriculture and commerce with
+Africa. The present British Tropical African possessions have been, and
+are, very badly selected for any one of the purposes alluded to, or for
+extending political power and influence in Africa. Still much more may
+be made of them than has ever hitherto been done.
+
+But there is a still higher and more important consideration as regards
+Africa alone--the eternal salvation of her people. This consideration is
+addressed to the rulers of a Christian nation. The appeal cannot fall on
+deaf ears. The debt which Great Britain owes to Africa, it is
+undeniable, is incalculably great. The sooner it is put in course of
+liquidation the better. To spread Christianity throughout Africa can
+only atone for the past. Our duty as Christians, and our interests as
+men, call on us to undertake the work. It is the cause, the safety, the
+improvement, and the salvation of a large portion of the human race; it
+is the cause of our country, the cause of our colonies, the cause of
+truth, the cause of justice, the cause of Christianity, the cause and
+the pleading of a Christian nation--and a cause like this cannot plead
+in vain.
+
+To secure these important objects no great or immediate expenditure is
+necessary; nay, if properly gone about, a saving in the present African
+expenditure may be effected.
+
+  JAMES MACQUEEN.
+  LONDON, _3d May 1844_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} This bend is represented in a map constructed in Paris, and said to
+be from information obtained in a second voyage; but no such bend is
+indicated in the journal of the original voyage by Captain Selim.
+
+{B} Under date Yaush, September 21, 1842, Dr Beke states the curious and
+important fact, that the people of Enarea and Kaffa communicate with the
+west coast of Africa, and that one of the articles of merchandise
+brought from that coast to these places was salt.
+
+
+
+
+NARRATION OF CERTAIN UNCOMMON THINGS THAT DID FORMERLY HAPPEN TO ME,
+HERBERT WILLIS, B.D.
+
+
+It had pleased Heaven in the year 1672, when I had finished my studies
+in Magdalen College, Oxford, whereof I was a Demy, and had taken my
+degree of bachelor of arts in the preceding term, to visit me with so
+severe an affliction of fever, which many took at first for the
+commencement of the small-pox, that I was recommended by the physicians,
+when the malady had abated, to return to my father's house and recover
+my strength by diet and exercise. This I was fain to do; and having
+hired a small horse of Master John Nayler in the corn market, to take me
+as far as to the mansion of a gentleman, an ancient friend of my
+father's, who had a house near unto Reading in Berkshire, and in those
+troubled times, when no man knew whereunto things might turn from day to
+day, did keep himself much retired. I bade adieu to the university with
+a light heart but a weakened habit of body, and turned my horse's head
+to the south. I performed the journey without accident in one day; but
+the exertion thereof had so exhausted my strength, that Mr Waller,
+(which was the name of my father's friend, and of kin to the famous poet
+Edmund Waller, Esquire, who hath been ever in such favour with our
+governors and kings,) perceiving I was nigh discomfited, did press me to
+go to my chamber without delay. He was otherwise very gracious in his
+reception of me, and professed great amity to me, as being the son of
+his fast friend and companion; but yet I marked, as it were, a cloud
+that lay obscure behind his external professions, as if he was uneasy in
+his mind, and was not altogether pleased with having a stranger within
+his gates. Howbeit I thanked him very heartily for his hospitality, and
+betook myself to the chamber that was assigned for my repose. It was a
+pretty, small room, whereof I greatly admired the fashion; and the
+furnishing thereof was extreme gay, for the bed hangings were of bright
+crimson silk, and on a table was placed a mirror of true Venetian glass.
+Also, there were chests of mahogany wood, and other luxurious devices,
+which my weariness did not hinder me from observing; but finally I was
+overcome by my weakness, and I threw myself on the bed without removing
+my apparel, and sustained as I believe, though I have no certain
+warranty thereof, an access of deliquium or fainting. When I did recover
+my senses after this interval of suspended faculty, (whether proceeding
+from sleep or the other cause above designated,) I lay for many minutes
+revolving various circumstances in my mind. I resolved, if by any means
+my bodily powers were thereunto sufficient, to depart on the morrow, and
+borrow one of Mr Waller's horses to convey me on my way, for I was
+uneasy to be thought an intruder; but when I had settled upon this in my
+mind, a new incident occurred which altered the current of my thoughts,
+for I perceived a slight noise at the door of my chamber as of one
+stealthily turning the handle, and I lay, without making any motion, to
+watch whereunto this proceeding would tend. The door was put gently
+open, and a figure did enter the room, so disguised with fantastical
+apparel, that I was much put to it to guess what the issue would be. It
+was of a woman, tall and majestical, with a red turbaund round her head,
+and over her shoulders a shawl much bedizened with needlework. Her gown
+was of green cloth, and I was made aware by the sound, as she passed
+along the floor, that the heels of her shoes were more than commonly
+high. With this apparition, of which I took only a very rapid
+observation through my half-closed eyelids, I was greatly astonished;
+for she was an exact resemblance to those bold Egyptian queans who were
+at first called Bohemians, but are nothing better than thieves and
+vagabonds, if indeed they be not the chosen people of the prince of
+darkness himself. She looked carefully all round the room, and after
+opening one of the drawers of mahogany wood, and taking something
+therefrom which I could not discern, she approached to the side of my
+bed, and looked earnestly upon me as I lay. I could not keep up the
+delusion any longer, and opened my eyes. She continued gazing
+steadfastly upon me without alteration of her countenance or uttering
+any word, whether of apology or explanation; and I was so held in by the
+lustre of her large eyes, and the fixed rigidity of her features, that
+for some time I was unable to give utterance to my thoughts.
+
+"Woman," I said at last, "what want you with me?"
+
+"Your help, if you will be gracious to poor mourners such as we."
+
+I interrogated her much and curiously as to what service she required at
+my hands; for I had a scrupulosity to promise any thing to one whose
+external made me think her a disciple of Mahomet, as those gipsies are
+said to be. After much hesitating, she could not conceal from me that
+she was in this disguise for some special and extraordinary purpose;
+nevertheless, she condescended on no particulars of her state or
+condition; but when I finally promised to satisfy her demand, if it
+might be done by a Christian gentleman, and a poor candidate for the
+holy ministry, she cautioned me not to be startled by whatever I should
+see, and beckoned me to follow her--the which I did in no easy frame of
+mind. Opening a little door which I had not seen when I took observation
+of the apartment, she disappeared down two or three steps, where I
+pursued the slight sound of her footfall; for there was great darkness,
+so that I could see nothing. We went, as I conjectured, through several
+passages of some length, till finally she paused; and knocked very
+gently three times at a door. The door was speedily opened; and in
+answer to a question of my guide, whether godly Mr Lees was yet arrived,
+a voice answered that he was there, and expecting us with impatience.
+When I passed through the door, I found myself in a small chamber, dimly
+lighted by one small lamp, which was placed upon a table by the side of
+a bed; and when I looked more fixedly I thought I perceived the figure
+of a person stretched on the bed, but lying so fixed and still, that I
+marvelled whether it was alive or dead. At the foot of the bed stood a
+venerable old man, in the dress of a clergyman of our holy church, with
+a book open in his hand, and my strange guide led me up to where he was
+standing, and whispered to him, but so that I could hear her words,
+"This gentleman hath promised to assist us in this matter."
+
+But hereupon I interposed with a few words to the same revered divine.
+"Sir," I said, "I would be informed wherefore I am summoned hither, and
+in what my assistance is needful?"
+
+"He hath not then been previously informed?" he said to the Egyptian;
+and receiving some sign of negation from her, he closed the book, and
+leading me apart into a corner of the apartment, discovered the matter
+in a very pious and edifying manner.
+
+"It is to be godfather in the holy rite of baptism, to one whom it is
+our duty, as Christian men, to rescue from the dangerous condition of
+worse than unregenerate heathenism."
+
+"The child of that Egyptian woman?" I asked; but he said, "No. She who
+is now disguised in that attire is no Egyptian, but a true Samaritan,
+who hath been the means of working much good in the evil times past, and
+is likely to be a useful instrument in the troubled times yet to come.
+If this dissolute court, and Popish heir-presumptive, do proceed in
+their attempts to overthrow our pure Reformed church, depend on it,
+young man, that that woman will not be found wanting in the hour of
+trial. But for the matter in hand, will you be godfather to the person
+now to be received into the ark?"
+
+I told him I could not burden my conscience with so great and important
+duties, without some assurance that I should be able to fulfil them.
+Whereto he replied, that such scrupulosities, however praiseworthy in
+calmer tines, ought now to yield to the paramount consideration of
+saving a soul alive.
+
+A faint voice, proceeding from the bed, was here heard mournfully asking
+if the ceremony was now to begin, for death was near at hand.
+
+I went up to the bed and saw the face of a pale dying woman, whose
+eyes, albeit they encountered mine, had no sense of sight in them, for
+the shadows of the Great King were already settled upon her countenance.
+"Begin then," I said to the clergyman; and on a motion from him, the
+woman who had conducted me went out, and shortly returned, leading by
+the hand a child of two, or haply three years of age, exceeding
+beautiful to look on, and dressed in the same style of outlandish
+apparel as her conductor. I had little time to look attentively at her,
+for her hand was put into mine, while the other was held by the
+Egyptian, (as I still call her, notwithstanding I knew she was a devout
+woman,) and another person, whom I guessed to be an attendant on the
+sick lady, stationed herself near; whereupon the clergyman commenced
+from our book of common prayer the form of baptism. The lady seemed to
+acquire strength at the sound of his low solemn voice, and half raised
+herself in the bed, and looked anxiously towards where we were; when the
+name was given, which was Lucy Hesseltine, she stretched herself back on
+her pillow with a faint smile. The ceremony was soon over, and the
+Egyptian took the new Christian to the side of the bed, and whispered in
+the lady's ear, "Jessica, the child is now one of the Christian flock;
+she prays your blessing." She waited for an answer, during which time
+the clergyman took me apart, and had again entered into discourse. But
+the Egyptian came to us. "Hush!" she said, "the ways of God are
+inscrutable; our friend is gone to her account." Hereupon she hurried me
+through the same passages by which we had come, and bidding me God-speed
+at the hidden door of my chamber, told me to keep what I had seen a
+secret from all men, yea, if possible, to forget it myself, as there
+might be danger in having it spread abroad.
+
+Tormented with many thoughts, and uneasy at the great risk I ran of
+bringing guilt on my own soul by having made sponsorial promises which I
+could not execute, I rested but indifferently that night. The next day I
+pursued my journey home in the manner I had proposed, and was glad to
+avoid the chance of being interrogated by Mr Waller as to what had
+occurred. In a short time my good constitution and home restored me to
+my former strength, and the memory of that strange incident grew more
+faint as other things came to pass which made deeper impressions on my
+heart and mind. Among these is not to be forgotten the death of my
+father, which happened on the 14th of June in the following year,
+_videlicet_ 1673; and the goodness of the lord bishop of Oxford in
+giving me priests' orders on my college Demyship, whereby I was enabled
+to present myself to this living, and hold it, having at that time
+attained the canonical age. My courtship also and marriage, which befell
+in the year 1674, had great effect in obliterating past transactions. I
+was married on Thursday, the 24th day of June.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Here several pages are omitted as irrelevant, containing family
+incidents for some years.)
+
+Howbeit things did not prosper with us so much as we did expect; for the
+payers of tithes were a stiff-necked generation, as were the Jews of
+old, and withheld their offerings from the priest at the very time when
+Providence sent a plentiful supply of mouths to which the offerings
+would have been of use. Charles was our only son, and was now in his
+third year--the two girls, Henrietta and Sophia, were six and seven--my
+eldest girl was nine years past, and I had named her, in commemoration
+of my father's ancient friend, by the prenomen of Waller. It hath been
+remarked by many wise men of old, and also by our present good bishop,
+that industry and honesty are the two Herculeses that will push the
+heaviest waggon through the mire; and more particularly so, if the
+waggoner aids also by putting his shoulder to the wheel. And easy was it
+to see, that the wheel of the domestic plaustrum--wherein, after the
+manner of that ancient Parthians, I included all my family, from the
+full beauty of my excellent wife to the sun-lighted hair of my prattling
+little Charles, (the which reminds me of those beautiful lines which are
+contained in a translation of the _Iliad_ of Homer by Mr Hobbes,
+descriptive of the young Astyanax in his mother Andromache's arm--
+
+    "And like a star upon her bosom lay
+      His beautiful and shining golden head")--
+
+It was easy, I say, to see, that with such an additional number of
+passengers, the domestic plaustrum would sink deeper and deeper in the
+miry ways of the world. And consultations many and long did my excellent
+wife and I hold over the darkening prospect of our future life. At last
+she bethought her of going to take counsel of her near friend and most
+kind godfather, Mr William Snowton of Wilts, which was a managing man
+for many of the nobility, and much renowned for probity and skilful
+discernment. He was steward on many great estates, and gave plentiful
+satisfaction to his employers, without neglecting his own interest,
+which is a thing that does always go with the other, namely, a care for
+your master's affairs; for how shall a man pretend to devote his time
+and services to another man's estate, and take no heed for himself? The
+thing is contra the nature of man, and the assertion thereof is fit only
+for false patriots and other evil men. It was with much weariness of
+heart and anxious tribulation that I parted from that excellent woman,
+even for so short a period of time; but Master George Sprowles of this
+parish having it in mind to travel into the village where the said Mr
+William Snowton kept his abode, I availed myself of his friendly offer
+to conduct my wife thither upon a pillion; and thereupon having sent
+forward her luggage two days before by a heavy waggon which journeyeth
+through Sarum, I took leave of the excellent woman, commending her
+heartily unto the care of Providence and Master George, which
+(Providence I mean) will not let a sparrow fall to the ground, much less
+the mother of a family, which moreover was riding on a strong
+sure-footed horse, which also was bred in our parish, and did sometimes
+pasture on the glebe. It was the first time we had been separated since
+our wedding-day. I took little Charles into my room that night, and did
+carefully survey the other children before I went to rest. They did all
+sleep soundly, and some indeed did wear a smile upon their innocent
+faces as I looked upon them, and I thought it was, perhaps, the
+reflection of the prayers which their mother, I well knew, was pouring
+out for them at that hour. That was on a Tuesday, and as the distance
+was nearly sixty miles, I could not hear of her safe arrival till the
+return of Master George, which could not be till the following Monday;
+not being minded, (for he was a devout man, and had imbibed his father's
+likings in his youth, which was a champion for the late Man,) and would
+rather have done a murder on a Thursday than have travelled on the
+Sabbath-day. "Better break heads," he was used to say, "than break the
+Sabbath." I did always find him, the father I mean, a sour hand at a
+bargain; and when he was used to drive me hard upon his tithes and
+agistments, I could fancy he took me for one of the Amalekites, or one
+of the Egyptians, whom he thought it a meritorious Christian deed to
+spoil. The Monday came at last, and Master George Sprowles, before he
+rode to his own home, trotted his horse up our church avenue, and
+delivered into my hands a packet of writing carefully sealed with a
+seal, whereof the device was a true-love knot. Great was my delight and
+great my anxiety to read what was written therein, and all that evening
+I pored over the manuscript, on which she had bestowed great pains, and
+crossed all the t's without missing one. But it is never an easy task to
+decipher a woman's meaning, particularly when not addicted to
+penmanship; and although my excellent wife had attended a penman's
+instructions, and had acquired the reputation, in her native place, of
+being an accomplished clerk, still, since her marriage, she had applied
+her genius to the making of tarts and other confections, rather than to
+the parts of scholarship, and it was difficult for me to make out the
+significance of her epistle in its whole extent. Howbeit, it was a
+wonderful effort of calligraphy, considering she had only had two days
+wherein to compose and write it, and she had been so little used to this
+manner of communication, and it consisted of three whole sides of a
+large sheet of paper. She said therein that Mr Snowton was a father unto
+her in his affection and urbanity, and that he highly approved the
+motion for us to make provision of the meat that perishes, seeing it is
+indispensable for young children and also for adults; and that he had
+already bethought him of a way wherein he might be serviceable to
+us--viz. in procuring for me certain youth of the upper kinds, to be by
+me instructed in the learned tongues, and such other branches as I had
+proficiency in; and, in addition thereto, he said, that peradventure he
+might obtain a similar charge for my excellent wife in superintending
+the perfectionment of certain young ladies of his acquaintance in
+samplers, and millinery, and cookery, and such other of the fine and
+useful arts as she was known to excel in; and he subjoined thereto, that
+the charges for each pupil would be so large, being only those of
+consideration which he recommended unto me, that a few years would be
+sufficient wherein to consolidate portions for all my children. Such,
+with some misgivings touching my own interpretation, did I make out to
+be the substance of my excellent wife's letter; and I rejoiced greatly
+that such an opening was made for me, by the which I might attain to
+such eminence of estate that I might place my Charles in the first ranks
+of the law, yea, might live to see him raised to the fulness of temporal
+grandeur, and sitting, as Lord High Keeper, among the peers and princes
+of the land, with a crown of pure gold upon his head. But there was no
+crown but a heavenly one, that fadeth not nor groweth dim, that could
+have added a fresh beauty to the fair head of my Charles. But the
+sweetest part of her missive was contained in the _post scriptum_.
+Therein she said, and in this I could not be wrong, that Mr Snowton had
+undertaken to forward her in his light wheeled cart, by reason of the
+conveniency it would be of to her in the transportation of herself and
+luggage, and also of Miss Alice Snowton, of Mr Snowton's kindred, a
+young lady which he had adopted, (being the only child of his only
+brother, Mr Richard Snowton, deceased,) and advised my wife to accept
+the care of her as a beginning, and for the charges of the same he would
+be answerable for fifty golden Caroluses at Ladyday and Michaelmas. A
+hundred Caroluses each year! My heart bounded with joy. Great were my
+preparations for the reception of my new inmate, and busy were we all
+from my busy Waller down to Charles. He with much riotousness did
+superintend all, and rejoiced greatly at the noise caused by the
+hammering, and taking down and putting up of bed-hangings, and did in no
+slight measure add thereto by strange outbreaks of riotous mirth, such
+as whooping and screaming; causing confusion, at the same time, by
+various demonstrations of his enjoyments, such as throwing nails against
+the windows, beating on the floor with the poker, and occasionally
+interrupting our operations by tumbling down stairs, and causing us for
+a moment to believe him killed outright, or at least maimed for life.
+But there is a special providence over happy children; and save that he
+fell on one occasion into the bucket of soap and water, wherewith a
+domestic was scowering the chintz room floor, and suffered some
+inconvenience from the hotness thereof, he escaped in a manner truly
+miraculous from any accident affecting life or limb. When the time drew
+near in the which I expected the return of my excellent wife, I took all
+the children to the upper part of the church field which faces the
+high-road, upon which the large stones have recently been laid down, in
+the manner of a causeway, but which, at that period, was left to the
+natural hardness, or rather softness, of the soil, and was, in
+consequence thereof, dangerous to travel on by reason of the ruts and
+hollows; to that portion, I say, of the church field I conveyed all my
+little ones, to give the gratulations necessary on such an occasion to
+their excellent mother. The spot whereon we were stationed commanded a
+view of the hill which superimpends our village, and we were therefore
+gratified to think that we should have an early view of the expected
+travellers; and many quarrels and soft reconcilements did take place
+between my younger ones, upon the point of who would be the first to
+see their approach. In the midst of these sweet contentions, whilst I
+was in the undignified and scarcely clerical act of carrying little
+Charles upon my shoulder, having decorated his head with my
+broad-brimmed hat, in order to enable him--vain imagination, which
+pleased the boy's heart--to see over and beyond the hill, there did
+pass, in all her wonted state and dignity, with two outriders in the
+Mallerden livery, two palfreniers at her side, and four mounted
+serving-men behind, the ancient Lady Mallerden, which was so famous an
+upholder of our venerated church in the evil days through which it so
+happily passed; and with no little perturbation of mind, and great
+confusion of face, did I see the look of astonishment, not to say
+disdain, with which she regarded my position; more particularly as
+little Charles, elevated, as I have said, upon my shoulders, with his
+legs on each side of my neck, did lift up the professional hat, which
+did entirely absorb his countenance, with great courtesy, and made a
+most grave and ceremonious obeisance unto the lofty lady. She pursued
+her path, returning the salutation with a kind of smile, and at the same
+easy ambling pace as was her wont, proceeded up the hill. Just as she
+reached the summit thereof our eyes were gladdened with the sight, so
+long desired, of the light equipage on two wheels of the kind Mr
+Snowton, containing my excellent wife and her young charge, and also
+various boxes of uncommon size, in which were laid great store of bodily
+adornment for both the ladies; as was more fully seen thereafter, on the
+opening of the boxes, by reason of Mr Snowton having privily conveyed
+into them various changes of apparel for the use of my excellent wife,
+as also for each of the three girls. To Charles he also sent the image
+of an ass, which, by touching a certain string, did open its mouth and
+wave its ears in a manner most curious to behold, wherewith the infant
+was infinitely delighted, as was I, without enquiring at that time into
+the exquisite mechanism whereby the extraordinary demonstrations were
+produced. But in the course of little more than a month he was led, by
+his enquiring turn of mind, to pry into the mystery; and in the pursuit
+of knowledge--laudable surely in a person of his years, and
+demonstrative of astonishing sagacity and research--he did take the
+animal entirely to pieces, and saw the inward parts thereof. The great
+lady, with all the retinue, stopped short as she encountered with my
+excellent wife at the top of the hill, and did most courteously make
+tender enquiries of her state of health, and also of her plans--whereof
+she seemed some little instructed--and expressed her satisfaction
+therein, and did make many sweet speeches to her, and also to the pupil,
+and trusted that she would be good and dutiful, and an earnest and
+affectionate daughter of the Church of England. To all which my
+excellent wife replied in fitting terms, and Alice Snowton--so was she
+named--made promise so to do, God being her helper and I her teacher;
+and thereupon the great lady bended her head with smiles, and rode on.
+When they got down to where we stood in the church field, the flush of
+modesty, and perhaps of pride, at being spoken to in such friendly guise
+by the haughty Lady Mallerden, had not yet left the cheek of my
+excellent wife, upon which I impressed a kiss of true love, and held up
+little Charles as high as I could, to enable him to do likewise, which
+he did, with a pretty set speech which I had taught him, in gratulation
+of her return. Alice Snowton also did blush, and held out her cheek,
+whereon I pressed my lip, with fervent prayers for her advance in
+holiness and virtue, and also in useful learning, under my excellent
+wife's instructions. She was a short girl, not much taller than my
+Waller, though she seemed to be three or even four years more advanced
+in age. She was a sweet engaging child of thirteen, and I loved her as
+one of my flock from the moment I saw her, as in duty bound. My children
+were divided between joy at seeing their excellent mother, and wonder at
+the stranger. But a short period wore off both these sentiments of the
+human mind, or rather the outward manifestation of them; and I will
+venture to assert that the quietude of night, and the clearness of the
+starry heavens, fell on no happier household on that evening than the
+parsonage of Welding. And next day it was the same; and next, and next,
+and a great succession of happy, useful days. Alice was a dear girl, and
+we loved her as our own; and she loved Charles above all, and was his
+friend, his nurse, his playfellow. Their gambols were beautiful to
+behold; and, to complete the good work which was so well begun, good Mr
+Snowton did send to my care, at the same remuneration, two young
+gentlemen of tender years, Master Walter Mannering and Master John
+Carey--the elder of them being eight and the other seven; and, as if
+fortune never tired of raining down on us her golden favours, the great
+Lady Mallerden herself did use her interest on my behalf, and obtained
+for me the charge of a relative of her noble house--the honourable
+Master Fitzoswald, of illustrious lineage in the north, of the age of
+nine years. But doubtless, as the philosopher has remarked, there is no
+sweet without its bitter, or, as the poet has said, "no rose without its
+thorn," or, better perhaps, as another great poet of antiquity has
+clothed the sentiment--
+
+    ----"Medio de fonte leporum
+    Surgit amari aliquid;"
+
+for it was made an express stipulation of the latter office--namely, the
+charge of the honourable young gentleman, being the second son of the
+noble Earl Fitzoswald, in Yorkshire--that the great Lady Mallerden
+should have joint superintendence of his studies with me, and the
+direction of his conduct, and also his religious education. And this was
+a sore drawback to the pleasure I experienced, for I knew her to be
+proud and haughty beyond most women, or even men; and also that she was
+of so active and inquisitive a turn of mind, that she would endeavour to
+obtain all power and authority unto herself, whereto I determined by no
+means to submit. Two hundred golden guineas was the _honorarium_ per
+annum for his education; and my excellent wife, who was addicted, like
+the most of her sex, to dreams and omens, did very often have a vision
+in the night, of the Right Hon. the Earl Fitzoswald presenting me to a
+great office in the church--yea, even a seat among the right reverend
+the lord bishops of the Upper House of Parliament. Nor were portents and
+auguries wanting, such as this--which made an uncommon impression on my
+excellent wife's mind--_videlicet_, it chanced that Alice Snowton did
+make a hat of paper, to be placed on Charles's head when he was more
+than usually naughty, to be called the fool's-cap out of derision; but
+this same paper hat, which was of a fantastic shape, being conical and
+high, the boy with scissors did dexterously mutilate and nearly destroy,
+and, coming quietly behind me when I was meditating the future with my
+excellent wife, he placed it on my head; and, to all our eyes, there was
+no mistaking the shape into which, fortuitously, and with no view or
+knowledge of such emblems, he had cut the paper-cap. It was evidently a
+mitre, and nothing else! But this, and various other concurring
+incidents, I pass over, having frequently rebuked my excellent wife for
+thinking more highly of such matters than she ought to think.
+
+The course pursued in our studies was the following, which I
+particularly write down, having had great experience in that sort, and
+considering it may be useful, if perchance this account should fall into
+the hands of any who follow the honourable and noble calling of
+educating the rising generation. The _Colloquies_ of Corderius, as also
+the _Fables_ of AEsopus, with those also of Phaedrus his Roman
+continuator....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(Many pages are here omitted as irrelevant.)
+
+... And my excellent wife, after much entreaty, consented thereto.
+Accordingly, on the very next Sunday, the great Lady Mallerden attended
+at my house after church, and did closely question, not only the young
+gentlemen on the principles of their faith, but also Alice Snowton, and
+did, above all, clearly and emphatically point out to them the
+iniquities of the great Popish delusion; and exhorted them, whatever
+might be their future fate or condition, to hold fast by the pure
+Reformed church. And so much did my eldest daughter, who was now a great
+tall girl of twelve years of age, win upon the heart of the great lady,
+that she invited her to come up for several days and reside with her at
+Mallerden Court, which was a great honour to my daughter, invitations
+not being extended to any to enter that noble mansion under the degree
+of nobility. Nor did her beneficence end here; for she did ask Alice
+Snowton, who was now a fine young woman of fifteen or thereby, to be her
+guest at the same time. Alice was not so stout in proportion to her
+years as my Waller; but there was a certain gracefulness about her when
+she moved, and a sweet smile when she spoke, which was very gainful on
+the affections, as Charles could testify; for he loved her, and made no
+secret thereof, better than any of his sisters, and also, I really and
+unfeignedly believe, better than that excellent woman his mother. And so
+great was the impression made on the great lady by my Waller's
+cleverness and excellent manner of conducting herself, that, on her
+return at the end of three days, a letter, in the noble lady's own land,
+bore testimony to her satisfaction, and a request, or rather a command,
+was laid on me, to send her, under charge as she expressed it, of Alice
+Snowton, to the Court for a longer period the following week. And such
+was the mutual happiness of the noble lady, and of that young girl, (my
+Waller, I mean,) who could now write a beautiful flowing hand, and spell
+with uncommon accuracy and expedition, that erelong it was an arranged
+thing, that three days in each week were spent by the two children at
+Mallerden Court; and a horse at last, on every Wednesday, was in waiting
+to convey them, on a double pillion, to the stately mansion.
+
+I have not alluded to the state of public affairs, of which I was far
+from cognizant, saving that the writhings and strugglings which this
+tortured realm did make, shook also the little parsonage of Welding. We
+heard, at remote intervals of time, rumours of dangers and difficulties
+hanging over this church and nation; but were little alarmed thereat,
+putting faith in the bill of exclusion, and the honour of our most
+gracious and religious lord the king. Nor did I anticipate great harm
+even if the Duke of York, in the absence of lawful posterity of his
+brother, should get upon the throne, trusting in the truth of his royal
+word, and the manifold declarations of favour and amicableness to the
+church, which he from time to time put forth. But AEsopus hath it, when
+bulls fight in a marsh the frogs are crushed to death. It was on the
+tenth day of February, in the year of our Lord 1685, I was busy with my
+dear friends, the youths under my charge, in the Campus Martius, (which
+was a level space of ground in one of the glebe fields by the side of
+the river, whereon we performed our exercises of running, jumping,
+wrestling, and other athletic exercitations,) when we were startled by
+the hearing the sound of many horses galloping up the hill above the
+village; and looking over the hedge on to the road, we saw a cavalier
+going very fast on a fine black horse, which had fire in its eyes and
+nostrils, as the poet says, followed by a goodly train of serving-men,
+all well mounted, and proceeding at the same rate. We went on with our
+games for an hour or two, when all at once I was peremptorily sent for
+to go to my house without delay; and accordingly I hurried homewards,
+much marvelling what the summons could portend. I went into my study,
+and sitting in my arm-chair I saw the great Lady Mallerden; but she was
+so deep in thought, that for some minutes she kept me standing, and
+waiting her commands. At last she started to herself, and ordered me to
+be seated, and in her rapid glancing manner began to speak--
+
+"I have been visited by my son, who rode post haste from London to tell
+me the king was dead. He has been dead four days."
+
+I was astonished and much saddened at the news.
+
+"Sorry--yes--but there is no time for sorrow," said the noble lady; "we
+must be up and doing. We are betrayed."
+
+"Did your son, the noble Viscount Mallerden, tell you this?"
+
+"He is one of the betrayers--know you not what manner of man he
+is?--Then I will tell you." And here a strange light flashed from her
+eyes, and her lips became compressed till all the colour
+disappeared--"He is a viper that stung me once--and would sting me
+again if I took him to my bosom, and laid it open for his poisonous
+tooth. I tell you the Lord Mallerden is a godless, hopeless, faithless,
+man--bound hand and foot to the footstool of the despotic, cruel
+monster--the Jesuit who has now his foot upon the English throne. He is
+a Papist, fiercer, bitterer, crueller, because he has no belief neither
+in priest nor pope--but he is ambitious, reckless, base, a courtier. He
+prideth himself in his shame, and says he has openly professed. It is to
+please the hypocritical master he serves. And he boasts that our late
+king--defender of the faith--was shrived on his deathbed by a Popish
+friar."
+
+"I cannot believe it, my lady."
+
+"You are a good man--a good simple man, Master Willis," she said; and
+although the words of her designation were above my deserts, seeing that
+simplicity and goodness are the great ornaments of the Christian
+character, still the tone in which she spoke did not pertake of the
+nature of a compliment, and I bowed, but made no observation in reply.
+
+"But it needs men of other minds in these awful times which I see
+approaching--men of firmness, men of boldness--yea, who can shed blood
+and shudder not; for great things are at stake."
+
+"I trust not, my lady--albeit the shedding of blood"----
+
+"I know, is generally condemned; yet be there texts which make it
+imperative, and I think I foresee that the occasion for giving them
+forth is at hand. All means in their power they will try; yes, though
+James of York has been but four days a king, he had already made
+perquisition for such as may be useful to him, not in settling the crown
+upon his head, but in carrying off this people and kingdom, a bound
+sacrifice to the blind idol which he worshippeth at Rome. You know not
+the history of that man; no, nor of my son. Alas! that a mother's lips
+should utter such words about her own flesh and blood! The one of them I
+tell you is a bigot, a pursuer, a persecutor--the other a sensualist, a
+Gallio, a tool. For many years he has never beheld his mother's face; he
+married in his youth; he injured, deserted, yea, he killed his wife--not
+with his own hand or with the dagger, but by the surer weapons of
+hatred, neglect, unkindness. And she died. He has but one child; that
+child was left in charge of my honoured and loving daughter, the Lady
+Pevensey of Notts, and hath been brought up in a Christian manner; but
+now, he--this man of Belial--wishes to get this infant in his own hands;
+nay, he boldly has made a demand of her custody both on me and Pevensey,
+my daughter. We will not surrender her; he is now great and powerful.
+The king will back his efforts with all the weight of the crown; and we
+have considered, if we could confide the persecuted dove to the hands of
+some assured friend--some true son of our holy church--some steady,
+firm-hearted, strong-nerved man, who in such cause would set lord and
+king at defiance"----
+
+Here she paused, and looked upon me with her eyes dilated, and her
+nostrils panting with some great thought which was within her; and I
+availed myself of the pause to say--
+
+"Oh, my lady! if you did mean me for such charge, I confess my
+deficiency for such a lofty office; for I do feel in me no stirrings of
+an ambitious spirit. Sufficient is it for me to take care of the
+innocent flock committed to my care, in the performance of which charge
+I have the approbation of my own heart, and also, I make bold to hope
+it, of your ladyship, seeing that I have instructed them in the true
+principles both of faith and practice; and although there are
+shortcomings in them all, by reason the answers in the Catechism are not
+adapted to the capacities of the younger ones, especially of Charles,
+(who, notwithstanding, has abilities and apprehensions above his years,)
+yet are they all embued with faithful doctrine, from Alice Snowton,
+which is the most advanced in stature, to the honourable Master
+Fitzoswald, which is somewhat deficient in growth, being only three
+inches taller than my little Charles."
+
+The great lady looked at me while I spoke, and made no answer for long
+time. At last she said with a sort of smile, which at the same time was
+not hilarious or jocular in its nature--
+
+"Perhaps 'tis better as it is. There is a providence in all things, and
+our plans and proposals are all overruled for the best--for which may
+God be praised! Therefore I will press you no more on the subject of the
+guardianship of my grandchild. But Mallerden will move heaven and earth
+to get her into his power--yes, though he has neglected her so long,
+never caring to see her since her childhood; yet now, when he sees
+'twill gain him the treasurership of the royal household to sell the
+greatest heiress and noblest blood in England to the Papists, he will
+make traffic of his own child, and marry her to some prayer-mumbler to a
+wooden doll. Let us save her, good sir--but I forgot. No--I will save
+her myself. I, that have steered her through so many quicksands, will
+not let her make shipwreck at last. I will guard her like the apple of
+my eye, and possess my soul in patience until this tyranny be overpast."
+And so ended the interview, during which my heart was tossed to and fro
+with the utmost agitation, and my whole frame so troubled that I various
+times lost all mastery of myself, and only saw before me a great black
+gulf of ruin, into which some invisible power was pushing me and all my
+little ones. Great, therefore, was my delight, and sweet the relief to
+my soul, when the great lady left me unconnected with her quarrels. For,
+in the crash of such contending powers, there was no chance of escape
+for such a weak instrument as I was; and fervent were my hopes, and deep
+my prayers, that the perils and evils prognosticated by the religious
+fears of my great protectress might be turned aside, and all good
+subject and sincere churchmen left each under his own vine and his own
+fig-tree, with nobody to make them afraid. But vain are the hopes of
+men. We read in no long time in all men's looks the fate we were
+condemned to; for it seemed as if a great cloud, filled with God's
+wrath, was spread out over this realm of England, and the faces of all
+men grew dark. We heard the name of Jeffreys whispered in corners, and
+trembled as if it had been a witch's spell to make our blood into water.
+The great lady kept herself much in solitude in the ancient Court, and
+saw not even her favourite companion, my daughter Waller, for many
+months; but did ever write affectionate letters to her, and sent
+presents of rich fruits, and other delectations in which the young take
+pleasure. There was much riding to and fro of couriers, but whither, or
+whence, she did never tell, and it was not my province to enquire; but
+at last an order came for me to send up my Waller and her friend to the
+mansion. And at evening they were conveyed on horseback as before; but
+on this occasion their escort was not Master Wilkinson the under butler,
+but no less a person than my lady's kinsman, the senior brother of my
+honourable pupil, the honourable Master Fitzoswald of Yorkshire, a
+stately young cavalier as could be seen, strong and tall, and his style
+and title was the Lord Viscount Lessingholm--being the eldest son and
+heir to that ancient earldom. He was an amiable and pleasant gentleman,
+full of courtesies and kindness, and particularly pleased with the
+newfangled fashion of a handsome cap which formed the headpiece of my
+excellent wife. He said also many handsome things about the brightness
+of my Waller's eyes, and assured my excellent wife that he saw so
+promising an outsprout of talent in my Charles, that he doubted not to
+see him one of the judges of the realm, if so be he applied his
+intellectuals to the bar. He was also extreme civil to Alice Snowton,
+which answered his civilities in like manner; and seldom in so short a
+space as half an hour has any person made so favourable an impression as
+he did, particularly on his brother, by reason of his bestowing on him a
+large Spanish doubloon, and promising him a delicate coloured maneged
+horse immediately on his return to Yorkshire. It is a pleasant sight to
+see (and reflected some credit on my ministration of the moralities in
+this particular instance) the disinterested love of brethren, one
+towards another, and I failed not to ascertain that the Lord Lessingholm
+had been boarded in the house of an exemplary divine, to wit, Mr Savage
+of Corpus Christi College, Oxford--a fact which I think it proper to
+mention to the honour of that eloquent member of our church--inasmuch
+as any man might be proud of having had the training up in the way he
+should go, of so excellent and praiseworthy a youth.
+
+It was many days before my young ones came back, (I would be understood
+to include in this Alice Snowton, whom I looked upon with the tenderness
+of a father and the pride of a teacher all in one;) and when they
+returned to me, I thought I perceived that they were both more sorrowful
+than of wont. Alice (and my Waller also) looked oppressed with some
+secret that weight upon their hearts, and I was fearful the great lady
+had made them partakers of her cares in the matter of her son and her
+grandchild. Yet did I not think such a thing possible as that either of
+them should have been taken into her confidence on so high and momentous
+a concernment, by reason of my Waller being so young, though thoughtful
+and considerate, and also fuller grown than persons much more advanced
+in life; and Alice Snowton was of so playful and gentle a disposition,
+that she seemed unfitted for the depository of any secret, unless those
+more strictly appertaining to her youth and sex, and moreover was a
+stranger to this part of the country, being of a respectable family, as
+I have observed, in Wilts--namely, a brother of Mr Snowton, my kind
+patron and friend. I called them into my study, after my labours were
+over with the other pupils, and I said to them--
+
+"Dear children, ill would it become me to pry into the secrets of my
+honoured lady, the Lady Mallerden; yet may there arise occasions wherein
+it is needful for one in my situation, (parent to the one of you, and
+_in loco parentis_ to the other,) to make perquisition into matters of
+weight and importance to your well-being, even at the risk of appearing
+inquisitive into other peoples' affairs. Answer me, therefore, Alice, my
+dear child, has the Lady Mallerden instructed you in any portion of her
+family story?"
+
+"She has in some degree, Sir," said Alice Snowton, "but not deeply."
+
+"You know of her disagreement on certain weighty points with her son,
+the Lord Viscount, and how that he is a wicked man, seeking to break
+into the pasture of the Lord, and tear down the hedges and destroy the
+boundaries thereof; and that in this view he is minded to get his
+daughter into his power, to use her as an instrument towards his
+temporal elevation?"
+
+"Something of all this we have heard, but not much," said Alice Snowton.
+
+"And furthermore, I must tell you that overtures were made to me to aid
+and assist in the resistance to be offered to this man of sin, and I
+did, for deep and wholesome reasons, refuse my assent thereto, and in
+this refusal I meant you, my children, to be included; therefore,
+whatever propositions may be made to you, to hear, or know, or receive,
+or in any manner aid, in the concealment of the Lord Viscount's
+daughter--which is at present in charge of an honourable lady in the
+north--I charge you, refuse them; they may bring ruin on an unambitious
+and humble household, and in no case can do good. We must fear God ever,
+and honour the king while he is entrusted with the sword of power; and
+family arrangements we must leave to the strong hands and able head of
+the great Lady Mallerden herself. In this caution I know I fulfil the
+intentions of my honoured friend, your esteemed uncle, Mr William
+Snowton, which is concerned with too many noble families to desire to
+get into enmity with any--and therefore be grateful for all the kindness
+you experience from my honoured lady; but if perchance she brings her
+grandchild to the Court, and wishes to make you of her intimates, inform
+me thereof; and greatly as it would be to be regretted, I would break
+off the custom of your visits to the noble house, for even that honour
+may be too dearly purchased by the enmity of powerful and unscrupulous
+men--if with sceptres in their hands, so much the more to be held in
+awe." And I ended with AEsopus his fable of the frogs and bulls. This
+discourse (whereof I had prepared the heads in the course of the
+morning) I delivered with the full force of my elocution, and afterwards
+I dismissed them, leaving to my excellent wife the duty of enlarging on
+the same topic, and also of giving such advice to Alice, which was now
+a full grown young woman, and very fair to look on, in respect of the
+young cavaliers she might see at the great house, particularly the noble
+lord, the Lord Lessingholm. Such advice I considered useless in regard
+to my Waller, she being only about fourteen years of age, but in other
+respects a fair and womanly creature to see; for her waist was nearly
+twice as large as Alice Snowton's, and her shoulders also, and in weight
+she would have been greatly an overmatch; and certes, putting aside all
+parental fondness, which we know to be such a beautifier of one's own
+kindred as to make the crow a more lovely animal than the dove, (in the
+eyes of the parent crow,) I will confess that in my estimation, and also
+in that of my excellent wife, there was no comparison between the two
+fair maidens, either in respect of fulness of growth or redness of
+complexion, the advantage being, in both these respects, on the side of
+the junior. Some sentiment of this sort I saw at the time must have
+possessed the honourable breast of the Viscount Lessingholm; for
+although he made much profession of visiting at the parsonage for the
+sake of seeing his juvenile brother, still there were certain looks and
+tokens whereby I was clearly persuaded that the magnet was of a
+different kind; and whereas it would have been vain and ambitious in me
+to lift my eyes so high, in view of matrimonial proposals, as to nearly
+the topmost branch in the peerage of England, (the Earls Fitzoswald
+being known to have been barons of renown at the period of the Norman
+Conquest;) still it would ill have become me to prevent my daughter from
+gathering golden apples if they fell at her feet, because they had grown
+on such a lofty bough of the tree; and I will therefore confess, that it
+was with no little gratification I saw the unfoldings of a pure and
+virtuous disposition in the honourable young nobleman. And I will
+further state, that it seemed as if his presence when he came, (and that
+was often, nay, sometimes twice in one day,) did make holiday in the
+whole house; and Charles was by no means backward in his
+friendship--receiving the fishing-rods presented unto him by the right
+honourable with so winning an eagerness, and pressing Alice (his
+constant friend) to go with him and the noble donor with so much zeal to
+the brook, therein to try the virtues of the gift, that I found it
+impossible to refuse permission; and therefore did those three often
+consume valuable hours, (yet also I hope not altogether
+wasted)--_videlicet_, Alice and Charles, and the honourable Viscount--in
+endeavouring to catch the finny tribe, yet seldom with much success. But
+whatever was the result of their industry--yea, though it was but a
+minnow--it was brought and presented to my Waller by the honourable
+hands of the young man, with so loving an air, that it was easy to
+behold how gladly he would have consented, if she had been the companion
+of their sports, if by any means Charles could have been persuaded to
+have exchanged Alice Snowton for her. But the very mention of such an
+idea did throw the child into such wrathful indignation, that the right
+honourable was fain to bestow on him whole handfuls of sugar-plums, and
+promise that Alice should not be left behind. So fared the time away;
+and at last I began to hope that the fears of the great lady were
+unfounded, and that nothing would occur to trouble her repose. The
+manner of living had been resumed again, with the difference that, on
+the days the young maidens did not visit the noble mansion, the
+honourable viscount was, as it were, domiciled in the parsonage; and I
+perceived that, by this arrangement, the great lady was highly pleased;
+perhaps because the presence of a kinsman, a courageous gentleman, gave
+her some security against the rudenesses she seemed to be afraid of on
+the part of her own son--a grievous state of human affairs when the
+fifth commandment is not held in honour, and reducing us below the level
+of puppy-dogs and kittens, to whom that commandment, along with the rest
+of the decalogue, is totally unknown. Sundry times I did observe
+symptoms of alarm; and care did write a sad story of mental suffering on
+the brow of the great lady, which was a person of the magnanimity of an
+ancient matron, and bore up in a manner surprising to behold in one who
+stood, as it were, with one hand upon her coffin, while her other
+stretched backward through the shadow of fourscore years to touch her
+cradle. And ever, from time to time, couriers came to the noble mansion,
+while others flew in various directions on swift horses at utmost speed;
+and looking up into that lofty atmosphere, we saw clouds and ominous
+signs of coming storms, before we could hear the voice of the thunder.
+And once a royal messenger (called a pursuivant-at-arms) came down in
+person, and carried the great lady to London, and there she stayed many
+days, and was threatened with many things and great punishments, yea,
+even to be tried by the Lord Jeffreys for high treason, in resisting the
+king's order to deliver up her grandchild to its natural guardian--which
+was its father, the Viscount Mallerden, now created by royal favour
+Marquis of Danfield. But even this last danger she scorned; and after
+months of confinement near the royal court, her enemies gave up
+persecuting her for that season, and at last she came back to Mallerden
+Court. In the meanwhile, we went on in a quiet and comfortable manner in
+the parsonage--the Viscount Lessingholm frequently with us, (almost as
+if he were a pupil of the house;) and on one or two occasions we had a
+visit for an evening from my honoured friend, Mr William Snowton of
+Wilts. He was pleased to use great commendations, both of my excellent
+wife and me, for the mode in which we attended to the mind and manners
+of his niece, the culinary and other accomplishments, and the rational
+education wherein he saw her advanced. He never stayed later than
+day-dawn on the following morning, and kept himself reserved, as one
+used to the intimacy of the great, and not liking to make his news
+patent to humble people such as we; and he would on no account open his
+mouth on the quarrels of our great lady and her son, the new Marquis of
+Danfield, but kept the conversation in equable channels of everyday
+matters, and expounded how my glebe lands might be made to yield a
+greater store of provision by newer modes of cultivation--the which I
+considered, however, a tampering with Providence, which gives to every
+field its increase, and no more. But by this time my glebe was not the
+only land on which I could plant my foot and say, Lo, thou art mine! for
+I had so prospered in the five years during which I had held a ladder
+for my pupils to the tree of knowledge, that much golden fruit had
+fallen to my share, (being kicked down, as it were, by their climbing
+among the branches;) so that I had purchased the fee simple of the
+estate of my friend, Master George Sprowles, who had taken some alarm at
+the state of public affairs, and gone away over the seas to the
+plantation called, I think, Massachusets, in the great American
+continent.
+
+It was in the beginning of October 1688, that another call was made on
+the great lady to make her appearance within a month from that time in
+the city of London, to give a final answer for her contumacy in refusing
+obedience to the King and the lord high Treasurer. I felt in hopes the
+object of their search (namely, the young maiden his daughter, for it
+was bruited they rummaged to find her out in all directions) was safe
+with some foreign friends which the great lady possessed in the republic
+of Holland, where the Prince of Orange was then the chief magistrate;
+but of this I had no certain assurance. For some days no preparations
+were made at the noble mansion for so momentous a journey; but at length
+there were great signs of something being in prospect. First of all, the
+Viscount Lessingholm rode up from Yorkshire, whither he had been gone
+three weeks, attended by near a score of fine dressed serving-men, and
+took up his abode at Mallerden Court; then came sundry others of the
+great lady's kinsfolk, attended also by their servants in stately
+liveries; and we did expect that the proud imperial-minded lady was to
+go up with such great escort as should impress the king with a just
+estimate of her power and dignity. With this expectation we kept to
+ourselves ready to see the noble procession when it should start on its
+way; but far other things were in store for me, and an instrument called
+a pea-spitter, wherewith Charles had provided himself for the purpose
+of saluting various of the serving-men as they passed, was rendered
+useless. It was on the first day of November that the Lord Viscount
+Lessingholm, (who had conveyed the young maidens, _videlicet_ Alice
+Snowton and my Waller, to the Court on the previous day,) did ride post
+haste up to my door, making his large grey horse jump over the gate at
+the end of the walk, as if he had been Perseus flying on his winged
+steed to the rescue of Andromede, (as the same is so elegantly described
+in the ancient poet,) and did summon me to go that moment to the noble
+mansion on matter of the highest import. Much marvelling, and greatly
+out of breath, I followed the noble gentleman's motions as rapidly as
+was beseeming one of my responsible situation, in regard to the
+spiritual ministrations in the parish, while in sight of any of my
+flock; for nothing detracts more from the dignity of the apostolical
+character than rapid motions--such as running, or jumping, or an
+unordered style of apparel, without hatband or cassock. When out of the
+village street, I put (as the vulgar phrase expresses it) my best foot
+foremost, and enacted the part of a running serving-man in the track of
+my noble conductor; and finally I arrived, in such state as may be
+conceived, at the entrance-hall of the noble mansion. In the court-yard
+were numerous serving-men mounted in silent gravity, and ranged around
+the wall. Each man was wrapped up in a dark-coloured cloak; and
+underneath it I saw, depending from each, the clear polished extremity
+of a steel sword-sheath. They did bear their reins tightened, and their
+heels ornamented with spurs, as if ready to spring forth at a word, and
+great tribulation came over my soul. Howbeit I mounted the grand
+staircase, and, following the western corridor, I opened the door of the
+green-damask withdrawing-room, and found myself in the middle of a large
+and silent company. There were, perhaps, a dozen persons there
+assembled--motionless in their chairs; and at the further end of the
+apartment sat the great lady in whispered conversation with a tall dark
+gentleman of mature years, say fifty or thereabouts, and with a wave of
+her hand, having instructed me to be seated, she pursued her colloquies
+in the same under tones as before. When I had placed myself in a chair,
+and was in somewhat recovering my breath, which much hurrying and the
+surprising scene I saw had greatly impaired, a hand was laid upon my
+shoulder, and I turned round, and, sitting in the next chair to me, I
+beheld my honoured friend Mr William Snowton of Wilts.
+
+"Good Master Willis," he said, "you little expected to see me here, I do
+well believe; but it was but lately I was summoned."
+
+"And know you wherefore we are here assembled?" I enquired.
+
+"Somewhat I know, but not all. The persons here be men of great power,
+some of them being those by whom I am employed in managing their worldly
+affairs, and shortly we shall hear what is determined on."
+
+"On what subject do they mean to consult us? I shall be ready," said I,
+"to give what advice may be needed, if peradventure it suits with my
+sacred calling."
+
+"I fear they will hardly consult a person of your holy profession," said
+Mr Snowton with a sober kind of smile. "It is of life or death we are
+now to take our choice."
+
+A great fear fell upon me, as a great shadow falls upon the earth before
+a thunder storm. "What mean ye?" I whispered. "There is no shedding of
+blood."
+
+"There will be _much_ shedding of blood, good Master Willis; yea, the
+rivers in England will run red with the same, unless some higher power
+interferes to deliver us."
+
+"And wherefore am I summoned to such fearful conference? I am no man of
+blood. I meddle not with lofty matters. I"----
+
+But here I was interrupted by Mr Snowton in a low grave tone. "Then you
+have not heard that the wicked man of sin, the false Papist, the Marquis
+of Danfield, hath discovered his child?"
+
+"No, I have not been informed thereof. And hath he gained possession of
+her?"
+
+"No, nor shall not!" and hereupon he frowned a great frown, and let his
+sword-sheath strike heavily upon the floor. All the company looked
+sharply round; but seeing it was by hazard, they took no notice of what
+occurred.
+
+"And where, then, is the maiden bestowed?" I demanded.
+
+"In this house; you shall see her soon."
+
+"And what have I to do with these matters? They are above my
+concernment!" I exclaimed, in great anguish of mind.
+
+"You have to unite her in the holy bands of wedlock."
+
+"Nay, that is clearly impossible! Where, I pray thee, is the license?"
+
+"All that has been cared for by means of a true bishop of our church.
+There can be no scruple on canonical grounds; and if there be hesitation
+in obeying the Lady Mallerden's orders, (provided she finally takes up
+her mind to deliver the same,) I would not answer for the recusant's
+life, no, not for an hour."
+
+"But wherefore in such secrecy, with such haste?" I said, in dreadful
+sort.
+
+"Because we know that the father slept at Oxford last night with store
+of troops, and that he will be here this night with a royal warrant to
+enforce his right to the bestowal of his child; and he hath already
+promised her to the leader of the malignant Papists."
+
+"And are we here to resist the king's soldiers and the mandate of the
+king?"
+
+"Yea, to the death!" he said, and sank into gloomy thoughts and said no
+more.
+
+I looked around among the assembly, and recognized no other faces that I
+knew, and in a short space the great lady, having finished her colloquy
+with her next neighbour, rose up and said--"My lords, I believe ye be
+all of kin to this house, and the other gentlemen be its friends--a
+falling house, as represented by a feeble woman of fourscore years and
+five. Yet in the greatness of the cause, may we securely expect a gift
+of strength even to so frail an instrument as I am. I have consulted
+with you all, and finally have taken counsel with my kind cousin and
+sweet friend, the Earl of Fitzoswald, now at my side, and he hath agreed
+to what I have proposed. It now, then, but remains to carry our project
+into effect; and for that purpose I have summoned hither a good man and
+excellent divine, Master Willis of this neighbourhood, to be efficacious
+in that behalf."
+
+I started up, and said in great agitation--"Oh, my lady!"--but had not
+proceeded further when I was broken in upon by a voice of thunder--
+
+"Silence, I say! What, is it for the frailness of a reed like you that
+such noble enterprise must perish? Make no remonstrance, sir, but do
+what is needed, or"----
+
+Although the great lady did not finish her words, I felt an assurance
+steal like ice over my soul that my hours were numbered if I hesitated,
+and I bowed low, while Mr William Snowton did privily pull me down into
+my seat by the hinder parts of my cassock.
+
+"You--you, Master Willis, of all men, should least oppose this godly
+step. For the noise thereof will sound unto the ends of the earth, and
+make the old Antichrist on his seven hills quake and tremble, and shake
+the pitiful spirit of the apostate of Whitehall. Say I not well, my
+lords?"
+
+"You say well," ran round the room in a murmur of consent.
+
+"And you--you, Master Willis," she went on, "least of all, should object
+to keep a lamb within the true fold--yea, a lamb which you did see with
+your own eyes introduced into the same. Remember you nought of godly
+Master Waller's in Berkshire, or of the scene you saw in a certain
+chamber, where the baptismal waters were poured forth, and murmured like
+a pleasant fountain in the dying ears of a devout Christian woman?"
+
+I was so held back with awe that I said not a word, and she went on--
+
+"Oh, if good Master Lees had yet been spared, we should not have asked
+for the ministry of trembling and unwilling hands like yours! And now,
+my lords--and you, kind gentlemen, my plan as arranged with good Lord
+Fitzoswald is this:--I give my grandchild's hand where her heart has
+long been bestowed; I then go with her through lanes and byways; under
+good escort, to the city of Exeter, where erelong we shall cast in our
+lot with certain friends. The bridegroom shall see nought of his bride
+till happier days arrive, except at this altar; and you shall go
+directly to your respective stations, and be ready at the first blowing
+of the horns before which the walls of this Jericho are to fall. In the
+next chamber I have made preparation for the ceremony, and in a few
+minutes, when I have arranged me for the journey, I will summon you."
+
+Something of this I heard--the sense namely forced its way into my
+brain; but I was confused and panic-stricken. The whole sad scene
+enacted so many years before, at the house of good Master Waller, on my
+way home from Oxford, came back upon my heart, and I marvelled at the
+method whereby the great lady had acquired a knowledge of the secret. I
+was deep sunk in these cogitations when the door of the inner library
+was at last thrown open, and such light flashed upon us from the
+multitude of candles, which were illuminated in all parts of the
+chamber, that my eyes were for some time dazzled. When I came to myself
+I looked, and at a table under the eastern window, on which was spread
+out a golden-clasped prayer-book, opened at the form of solemnization of
+matrimony, I saw, along with two young men of about his own age, (all
+girt with swords, and booted and spurred,) the right honourable the
+Viscount Lessingholm, which I at once concluded was acting as
+bridegroom's man to one of the other youths. The company, which had been
+assembled in the withdrawing-room, placed themselves gravely, as if some
+solemn matter was in hand, at the side of the table; and I took my place
+by a motion from the Earl Fitzoswald, and laid my hand upon the
+prayer-book, as ready to begin. The door at the other end of the room,
+which leadeth to the outer staircase, was opened, and there came
+noiselessly in a tall woman, dressed in the same fantastical apparel,
+like the apparel of the Bohemians or gipsies, which I remembered so well
+on the fatal night of the christening; and, when she cast her eyes on
+me, I could not have thought an hour had passed since that time, and I
+recognised in her, with awe and wonderment, the features of the great
+lady, the Lady Mallerden herself. In each hand she led a young person,
+in her left my daughter Waller, and I will not deny that at the sight my
+heart leapt up with strange but not unpleasing emotion, as, remembering
+the habitudes of the noble Viscount Lessingholm, I thought there was a
+possibility of a double wedding; and in her other hand, dressed as for a
+journey, with close fitting riding-coat, and a round hat with sable
+feathers upon her head, she conducted Alice Snowton, the which looked
+uncommon lovely, though by no means so healthy or stout-looking as her
+other companion--_videlicet_, my Waller. They walked up to the place
+whereat we stood, and the Lord Viscount springing forward, did give his
+hand to Alice Snowton, and did not let it go for some time; but looked
+upon her with such soft endearing looks that she held down her head, and
+a red blush appeared upon her cheek, as if thereupon there had been
+reflected the shadow of a rose. For it was not of the deep tinge which
+formed the ornament of the complexion of my Waller.
+
+"This is no time for useless dalliance," said the great lady; "let us to
+work. By no other means can we root out for ever the hopes of our
+enemies."
+
+"Where then, madam," I said, "is the bride?--and who, I pray you, is the
+bridegroom?"
+
+"The bridegroom is the Viscount Lessingholm. This maiden is the bride."
+
+"But Alice Snowton, my lady. I did think it was your honourable
+grandchild who was to be united to this noble gentleman."
+
+"And so it is--and so it is! She is Alice Snowton no longer. Our good
+friend, Master Snowton, the steward on my daughter Pevensey's Wiltshire
+manor, was good enough to adopt her as his niece; and for her better
+concealment we placed her in the charge of a person whose character for
+meekness and simplicity was too notorious to raise suspicion of his
+being concerned in such a plot. Even to herself, till lately, her
+parentage was unknown, as Master Snowton kept well the secret."
+
+"And one other question," I said; "the child to whom I became bound as
+godfather?"
+
+"'Tis the same. This is the poor Lucy Hesseltine, whose orphanship you
+witnessed in that lone and yet comfortable death."
+
+The lady Lucy Hesseltine, or rather Alice Snowton, for by that name I
+loved her best, did throw her arms about my neck, and kissed my cheek,
+and said I had been a kind godfather to her, yea, had been a father to
+her, and my excellent wife a mother. At this my heart was much moved,
+and I saw tears come to the eyes of several of the bystanders, but no
+tear came to the eyes of the great lady herself.
+
+"Let this be enough," she said. "Let us finish what we have yet to do."
+
+And thereupon, all being ready and in their due places, I began; but
+when I came to the question--"Lucy Hesseltine, wilt thou have this man
+to be thy lawful husband?"--a sudden noise in the court-yard under the
+window made me pause; but the great lady commanded me with a frown to go
+on, and I concluded the question, and received in reply a sweet but
+audible "yes." But the noise was again repeated, and the assistants
+sprang to their feet, for it was the sound of the sharp shooting off of
+pistols.
+
+"Stir not for your lives till the ceremony is over!" cried the great
+lady; and I hurried with trembling lips over the remainder of the
+service. A loud voice in the yard was heard amid the trampling of much
+horse. "In the king's name, surrender!" the voice said. "We have a
+warrant here, and soldiers!"
+
+"For as much as Frederick and Lucy Hesseltine," (I said as calmly as I
+could, though with my heart quaking within me) "have consented together
+in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this
+company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other,
+and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by
+joining of hands--I pronounce that they be man and wife together!"
+
+"Now then, my lords and gentlemen," cried the great lady, springing to
+her feet, "to the defence! We are witnesses of this marriage, and
+clashing swords must play the wedding peel. If need be, fear not in such
+quarrel to do your best; yea, to the shedding of blood! Though the blood
+were my son's, it were well shed in such a holy cause. Now then, Lucy,
+come! Guard the front entrance but an hour, and we shall be beyond
+pursuit."
+
+And so saying she glided rapidly, with the nearly fainting bride,
+towards the hidden stairs, while Viscount Lessingholm rushed rapidly
+with drawn sword down the grand flight, and sprang on his grey horse. In
+the confusion my Waller had disappeared, and in great agonies of fear I
+slipped into the court-yard. Oh, what a sight met my eyes! There were
+several men lying dead, which had been shot or otherwise killed, and
+their horses were galloping hither and thither with loose reins and
+stirrups flapping; other men were groaning, and writhing in great pains,
+tearing the ground with bleeding hands, and dragging themselves, if such
+were possible, away from the _melee_. Meanwhile, horsemen drawn up on
+either side were doing battle with sword and pistol; and the trampling
+and noise of the shouting, the groans and deep execrations, all
+resounding at once in that atmosphere of smoke and approaching night,
+were fearful to listen to, and I bethought me of some way of escape. I
+slipped within the piazza of the servants' court, and made my way
+towards the gate; but here the battle raged the fiercest, the noble
+Viscount Lessingholm being determined to keep it closed, and the furious
+Marquis resolute to force it open, whereby an accession of men might
+come to him which were shut out on the other side--the warder of the
+door having only admitted the marquis himself, and about fifty of the
+king's dragoons. The retainers which I had seen on my entrance amounted
+to seventy or more; and seeing they had most of them been soldiers, yea,
+some which had grizzled locks, having been among the shouters at Dunbar,
+and on many fields besides, under the cruel eye of the ferocious Oliver
+himself, they did cry "Ha, ha! at the spear of the rider, and smelt the
+battle afar off." The Marquis of Danfield did spur his black war-horse,
+with his sword poised high in air towards the noble Viscount of
+Lessingholm, and with fierce cries the noble viscount raised also his
+sword, and was in act to strike the undefended head of his assailant.
+"Stop, Frederick!" cried a voice, which proceeded from the Earl
+Fitzoswald; "it is Danfield himself!" whereupon the young gentleman did
+ward off the blow aimed at him by the marquis, and passed on. All this I
+saw ere I gave up hopes of getting out by the gate; but seeing this was
+hopeless, I pursued my way back again, with intent to get out by one of
+the postern windows, and hurry homeward across the fields; and having
+opened a window near unto the buttery, I hung by my hands, and then
+shutting my eyes and commending my soul to Heaven, I let go, and dropt
+safely down upon the greensward. But ere I could recover myself
+sufficiently, I was set upon as if I had been an armed enemy, by a large
+number of mounted men, which were of the company of the marquis, whereby
+I saw that the house was surrounded, and feared the great lady and Alice
+(I would say the Viscountess Lessingholm) were intercepted in their
+retreat. Howbeit, I gave myself up prisoner, by reason of various blows
+with the flats of sabres, and sundry monitions to surrender or die. I
+was led in great fear to the front of the court, and brought before a
+proud, fierce-browed commander, which interrogated me "of all that was
+going on, and whether the Lady Lucy Mallerden was in the Court?" Whereto
+I answered, that I was so overcome with terror that I knew little of
+what I had seen, and, with regard to the noble lady, I was persuaded she
+was not within the walls. "If you answer me," he said, "truly, and tell
+me what road she has taken, I will send you away in safety, and secure
+you his majesty's pardon for any thing you may have done against his
+crown and dignity; but if you refuse, I will assuredly hang you on the
+court-yard gate the moment we gain possession thereof. Now, say which
+way went they?" I was sore put to it, for it was like betraying innocent
+blood to tell these savage men the course my godchild pursued in her
+escape; and yet to tell an untruth was repugnant to my nature, and I
+said to the captain, "It is a hard matter for me to point out where my
+friends are fleeing unto."
+
+"Then you'll be hung as high as Haman at daybreak; so you can take your
+choice," said he.
+
+"If I direct you unto the place whereunto she is gone," I said, "it will
+be a hard matter to find her."
+
+"That's our business, not yours. Tell us where it is."
+
+"For, suppose she were in hiding in a city, a large busy place like
+Bristol, and waited for a conveyance to a foreign land"----
+
+"In Bristol! Oho, say no more! Ensign Morley, take ten of the best
+mounted of the troop and scour the northern roads towards Bristol. You
+will overtake them ere they are far advanced."
+
+"I pray you, captain," I said, "to observe--I have not told you she is
+gone towards Bristol."
+
+"I know you haven't," he said smiling, "I will bear witness you have
+kept her secret well; but here we are about to enter the Court, for the
+firing is finished. The rebels will be on gibbets within twenty-four
+hours, every one."
+
+But there was no sign of the gate being opened. Contrariwise there did
+appear, in the dimness of the evening-sky, certain dark caps above the
+outside wall, which I did recognize as being worn by the serving-men of
+the great lady's friends; and while we were yet talking a flight of
+bullets passed close over our heads, and three or four of the troopers
+fell off dead men, leaving their saddles empty and their horses
+masterless.
+
+"Draw close my men," cried the captain, "right wheel;" and setting his
+men an example, he did gallop with what speed he might from the
+propinquity of the wall. As for myself, I was in some sort relieved by
+the knowledge that the noble mansion still continued in possession of
+the Viscount Lessingholm; and comforting myself with the assurance that
+no evil could befall my daughter Waller while under his protection, I
+did contrive to seize by the bridle one of the dragoons' horses, (a
+stout black horse, which, being never claimed, did do my farming work
+for fifteen years,) and, climbing up into the saddle, betook me home to
+inform my excellent wife of all these dreadful events. All next day, and
+all the next--yea, for three whole days--I stayed in my quiet home,
+receiving information quietly by means of a note brought to me by my
+servants, that the mansion still held out, that Waller was quite safe,
+and that, provided no artillery was brought to bear against them, that
+they could hold out _till the time came_. What was the meaning of the
+latter phraseology, I did not know; but considering it desirable at that
+period to cut down certain trees on my recently purchased estate, I
+proceeded with Thomas Hodge the carpenter, and various other artificers
+of my parishioners, (all being friends and dependents of the great
+lady,) and with saws and other instruments did level the whole row of
+very large oaks and elm trees which bordered the only high-road from
+Oxford; and, by some strange accident, all the trees did fall exactly
+across the same, and made it utterly impossible to move thereupon with
+cart or waggon; so that it was much to be suspected that the guns, which
+we heard were ordered to come up from Wallingford, could by no means get
+over the obstruction. It is also to be observed that Master George
+Railsworth, the mason, who had contracted to repair the strong bridge
+over our stream, did take this opportunity of taking down two of the
+arches of the same, and could find no sufficient assistance to enable
+him to restore them, which made the road impassable for horse or man. On
+the following day, namely, the fifth day of November, we heard that all
+the king's soldiers were suddenly ordered from all parts up to London,
+and that the Marquis of Danfield had been left to his imprisonment in
+Mallerden Court. Whereupon I bethought me it would be safe to venture up
+once more, and bring my daughter Waller to the securer custody of my
+excellent wife. Next morning, at early dawn, I accordingly did go up,
+and was admitted, after a short parley, by the gate-keeper, which had a
+helmet on his head and a sword in his hand. Speedily I was in the arms
+of my daughter Waller, who looked as happy as if none of these scenes
+had been transacted before her eyes; and moreover did refuse, in very
+positive terms, to leave the Court till her dear friend Alice--I would
+say the Lady Lucy--returned. I reasoned with her, and reprimanded her,
+and showed her in what a fearful state of danger we all were, by reason
+of the rebellion we had been guilty of against his majesty the king.
+Whereupon the child did only laugh, and told me, "Here she would abide
+until the time came." And with this enigmatical expression I was fain to
+be content; for she would vouchsafe me no other. And, corroborative of
+all which, she said, she relied on the assurances made unto her to that
+effect by Sir Walter Ouseley, one of the young gentlemen which had acted
+as bridegroom's man to the noble Viscount Lessingholm, and was now in
+the Court as his lieutenant in the defence of the same. A goodly young
+gentleman he was, and fair to look upon, and extraordinary kind to me,
+soothing my fears, and encouraging me to hope for better things than
+those my terrors made me anticipate. I enquired of the behavings of the
+Marquis of Danfield, and learned to my surprise that it was expected
+that before this day was over, if he did receive a courier, as was
+thought, from the Lord Churchill, one of the king's favourite officers,
+he would withdraw all his objections to the marriage, and rather be an
+encourager and advocate of the same. In these discourses the time passed
+away, and about three of the clock, after we had dined in the great
+hall, we were looking out from the battlements and saw a dust on the
+western road.
+
+"It is Churchill's letter," said the noble Viscount Lessingholm, "and he
+has kept his promise for once."
+
+"There is too much dust for only one courier's heels--there be twenty in
+company at least," replied Sir Walter Ouseley, which had the arm of my
+Waller closely locked in his.
+
+"There may be a surprise intended," cried the noble viscount. "Hoist the
+flag, man the walls, treble the watchers, and sound for the men into the
+yard."
+
+We of the peaceful professions--_videlicet_, my daughter Waller and
+I--did descend from the bartizan, and betook ourselves to the great
+withdrawing room, to wait for the result of the approach. We had not
+waited long when the door opened, and no other than the great lady
+herself, and my loved and lovely godchild, the Viscountess Lessingholm,
+came into the apartment. The great lady was now appareled as became her
+rank, having discarded those Bohemian habiliments which were her
+disguise in times of danger. Oh! it was a great sight to behold, the
+meeting between the Lady Lucy and my daughter Waller; but when hurried
+steps sounded on the stairs, and the door opened, and the noble viscount
+rushed into her arms, it was impossible to keep from tears. My feeble
+pen can venture on no such lofty flights of description, and therefore I
+will not attempt it. Meanwhile, in the outer court, great shouting was
+heard. Sir Walter Ouseley came up to us, and announced that the Marquis
+of Danfield "presented his respects to his noble mother, and
+congratulated her on the glorious news."
+
+"I knew how it would be," she said, "with base natures such as his and
+Churchill's. We accept their assistance, but despise the instrument. He
+will now be fierce against his benefactor, (who, though a bad king, was
+tender to his friends,) and bitterer against his faith than if he had
+never been either a courtier or a bigot. I receive his congratulations,
+Sir Walter Ouseley, but I decline an interview for some time to come."
+
+"He desired me also, my lady," said Sir Walter, "to convey his blessing
+to the bride, and his tender love to his new son, the Viscount
+Lessingholm."
+
+"Well, let them not reject it. The blessing even of such a father has
+its value. But we must now make preparation, for the celebration of the
+happy nuptials, in a style fitting the rank of the parties. The prince
+is pleased with what we have done"----
+
+The young man, Sir Walter Ouseley, who had been whispering in my ear,
+here broke in on the great lady's speech.
+
+"If it would please you, madam, at the same time, to permit two others
+to be happy, I have obtained Master Willis's consent thereto, and also
+the consent of this fair maiden."
+
+The viscountess took Waller in her arms, and kissed her cheek, and the
+great lady smiled.
+
+"I knew not, Sir Walter Ouseley, that you were so perfect a soldier as
+to sustain an attack and lay siege at the same time; but since in both
+you have been successful, I give you my hearty good wishes. And so, dear
+friends and true supporters, let us be thankful for the great
+deliverance wrought for this land and nation, as well as for ourselves.
+Our defender, the noble William, landed three days ago at Torbay, and is
+now in Hampton Court. The king has taken flight, never to be restored.
+Therefore, God save the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the props
+and ornaments of a true Protestant throne!"
+
+
+
+
+BEAU BRUMMELL.{A}
+
+
+All things change; ours is the age of masses and classes, the last was
+the age of individuals. Half a dozen remarkable men then represented the
+London world, in politics, poetry, bon-mots, dining out, and gaming.
+Pitt and Fox, the Dukes of Queensberry and Norfolk, Sheridan and General
+Scott, were the substitutes for mankind in the great metropolis. George
+Brummell was the last of the beaus. The flame of beauism was expiring;
+but it flamed in its socket brighter than ever, and Beau Brummell made a
+more conspicuous figure in the supreme _bon-ton_ of elegant absurdity,
+than any or all his predecessors. The only permanent beau on earth is
+the American savage. The Indians, who have been lately exhibiting their
+back-wood deformities in our island at shilling a-head, were prodigious
+dressers; Greek taste might probably have dissented from their
+principles of costume, but there could be no doubt of the study of their
+decoration. Their _coiffeur_ might not altogether supersede either the
+Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been
+twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron
+Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious
+tailoring, as the most _recherche_ suit that ever turned a "middling
+man" into a figure for Bond Street.
+
+But the charm which is the very soul of European fashion, is scorned by
+the Indian. Change--the "Cynthia of the minute," the morning thought and
+midnight dream of the dilettanti in human drapery--has no captivation
+for the red man. He may like variety in his scalps or his squaws; but
+not a feather, not a stripe of yellow on one cheek, or of green on
+another, exhibits a sign of the common mutabilities of man. He struts in
+the plumes which his fathers wore, is attired in the same nether
+garments, exhibits the same head-gear, and decorates his physiognomy
+with the sane proportion of white-wash, red-lead, bear's-grease, and
+Prussian blue.
+
+Beauism, in England, scarcely goes farther back than the days of Charles
+II. It may be said that Elizabeth had her beaux; but the true beau being
+an existence of which no man living can discover the use, and which is,
+in fact, wholly useless except to his tailor and the caricaturists, the
+chevaliers of the time of Queen Bess are not entitled to the honour of
+the name. Raleigh, no doubt, was a good dresser; but then he could write
+and fight, and was good for something. Leicester is recorded as a superb
+dresser; but then he dabbled in statesmanship, war, and love-making, and
+of course had not much time on his hands. The Sedleys, Rochesters, and
+their compeers, had too much actual occupation, good and bad, to be
+fairly ranked among those gossamery ornaments of mankind; they were idle
+enough in their hearts for the purpose, but their lives were _not_
+shadows, their sole object was _not_ self. They were more nice about
+swords than snuff-boxes and, if they were spendthrifts, their profusion
+was not limited to a diamond ring or a Perigord pie. They loved, hated,
+read, wrote, frolicked and fought; they could frown as well as smile,
+and see the eccentricity of their own follies as well as enjoy them. But
+the true beau is a _beau-ideal_, an abstraction substantialized only by
+the scissors, a concentrated essence of frivolity, infinitely sensitive
+to his own indulgence, chill as the poles to the indulgence of all
+others; prodigal to his own appetites, never suffering a shilling to
+escape for the behoof of others; magnanimously mean, ridiculously wise,
+and contemptibly clever; selfishness is the secret, the spring, and the
+principle of, _par excellence_, the beau.
+
+In the brief introduction prefixed to the "Life," some of those
+individuals who approached closest to perfection of old times are
+mentioned. One of those was Sir George Hewitt, on whom Etheridge, the
+comic writer, sketched his Sir Fopling Flutter. This beau found a place
+in poetry as well as in prose,
+
+    "Had it not better been than thus to roam,
+    To stay, and tie the cravat-string at home?
+    To strut, look big, strike pantaloon, and swear
+    With Hewitt--D----me, There's no action here?"
+
+Wilson followed. He was a personage who first established the fashion of
+living by one's wits. Returning from the army in Flanders with forty
+shillings in his pocket, he suddenly started into high life in the most
+dashing style, eclipsed every body by his equipage, stud, table, and
+dress. As he was not known at the gaming-table, conjecture was busy on
+the subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have
+commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds.
+Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the
+latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier
+through his body.
+
+The next on the list is Beau Fielding. He was intended for the bar, but
+intending himself for nothing, his pursuit was fashion. He set up a
+showy equipage, went to court, and led the life of "a man about town."
+He was remarkably handsome, attracted the notice of Charles II., and
+reigned as the monarch of beauism. He was rapidly ruined, but repaired
+his fortune by marrying an heiress. She died; and the beau was duped by
+an Englishwoman, whom he married under the idea that she was a Madame
+Delaune, a widow of great wealth. Finding out the deception, he cast her
+off, and married the Duchess of Cleveland, though in her sixty-first
+year. For this marriage he was prosecuted, and found guilty of bigamy.
+He then became reconciled to his former wife, and died, in 1712, at the
+age of sixty-one. He was the Orlando of the _Tatler_.
+
+Beau Edgeworth lives only in the record of Steele, in the 246th number
+of the _Tatler_, as a "very handsome youth who frequented the
+coffeehouses about Charing-Cross, and wore a very pretty ribbon with a
+cross of jewels on his breast." Beau Nash completes the list of the
+ancient heroes, dying in 1761, at the age of eighty-eight--a man of
+singular success in his frivolous style; made for a master of the
+ceremonies, the model of all sovereigns of water-drinking places; absurd
+and ingenious, silly and shrewd, avaricious and extravagant. He
+_created_ Bath; he taught decency to "bucks," civility to card-players,
+care to prodigals, and caution to Irishmen! Bath has never seen his like
+again. In English high life, birth is every thing or nothing. Men of the
+lowest extraction generally start up, and range the streets arm-in-arm
+with the highest. Middle life alone is prohibited to make its approach;
+the line of demarcation there is like the gulf of Curtius, not to be
+filled up, and is growing wider and wider every day. The line of George
+Brummell is like that of the Gothic kings--without a pedigree; like that
+of the Indian rajahs--is lost in the clouds of antiquity; and like that
+of Romulus--puzzles the sagacious with rumours of original irregularity
+of descent. But the most probable existing conjecture is, that his
+grandfather was a confectioner in Bury Street, St James's. We care not a
+straw about the matter, though the biographer is evidently uneasy on the
+subject, doubts the trade, and seems to think that he has thrown a shade
+of suspicion, a sort of exculpatory veil over this fatal rumour, by
+proving that this grandfather and his wife were both buried, as is shown
+by a stone, still to be seen by the curious, in St James's church-yard.
+We were not before aware that Christian burial was forbidden to
+confectioners. The biographer further adds the convincing evidence of
+gentility, that this grandfather was buried within a few feet of the
+well-known ribald, Tom Durfey. Scepticism must now hang down its head,
+and fly the field.
+
+We come to a less misty and remote period. In the house of this
+ancestor, who (_proh dedecus!_) let lodgings, lived Charles Jenkinson,
+then holding some nondescript office under government. We still want a
+history of that singularly dexterous, shy, silent, and successful man;
+who, like Jupiter in Homer, did more by a nod than others by a
+harangue--made more as a scene-shifter than any actor on the stage of
+Westminster--continually crept on, while whole generations of highfliers
+dropped and died; and at length, like a worm at the bottom of a pool,
+started up to the surface, put on wings, and fluttered in the sunshine,
+Earl of Liverpool! The loss of such a biography is a positive injury to
+all students of the art of rising. Jenkinson was struck by the neatness
+of the autograph in which "Apartments to be Let" was displayed on the
+door; and probably, conscious that the "art of letting" was the true
+test of talents, made the young writer his amanuensis, and finally
+obtained for him a clerkship in the treasury. He was next in connexion
+with Lord North for the twelve years of that witty and blundering
+nobleman's unhappy administration, and enjoyed no less than _three
+offices_, by which he netted L.2500 a-year. He was abused a good deal by
+the party-ink of his time; but the salary enabled him to bear spattering
+to any amount, and probably only increased Lord North's sympathy for his
+fellow-sufferer, until that noble lord was suffocated in the public
+mire.
+
+But after the crush of the minister, the man felt that his day was done;
+and he retired to "domestic virtue" as it is termed, took a good house
+in the country, enjoyed himself, and in 1794 died, leaving two sons and
+a daughter, and L.65,000 among them.
+
+George Bryan Brummell, the second son, was born in June 1778. The
+biographer observes characteristically, that the beau avoided the topic
+of his genealogical tree with a sacred mystery. It appears that he
+avoided with equal caution all mention of the startling fact, that one
+of his Christian names was _Bryan_. It never escaped his lips; it never
+slipped into his signature; it was never suffered to "come between the
+wind and his nobility." If it had by any unhappy chance transpired, he
+must have fainted on the spot, have fled from society, and hid his
+discomfiture in
+
+    "Deserts where no men abide."
+
+Brummell was a dandy by instinct, a good dresser by the force of
+original genius; a first-rate tyer of cravats on the _in_voluntary
+principle. When a boy at Eton, in 1790, he acquired his first
+distinction not by "longs and shorts," but by the singular nicety of his
+stock with a gold buckle, the smart cut of his coat, and his finished
+study of manners. Others might see glory only through hexameters and
+pentameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket;
+with him the colour of his coat and the cut of his waistcoat were the
+materials of fame. Fellows and provosts of Eton might seem to others the
+"magnificoes" of mankind--the colossal figures which overtopped the age
+by their elevation, or eclipsed it by their splendour--the "dii majorum
+gentium," who sat on the pinnacle of the modern Olympus; but Brummell
+saw nothing great but his tailor--nothing worthy of respect among the
+human arts but the art of cutting out a coat--and nothing fit to ensure
+human fame with posterity but the power to create and to bequeath a new
+fashion.
+
+But the name of dandy was of later date; the age had not attained
+sufficient elegance for so polished a title; it was still buck or
+macaroni; the latter having been the legacy of the semi-barbarian age
+which preceded the eighteenth century. Brummell was called Buck Brummell
+when an urchin at Eton--a preliminary evidence of the honours which
+awaited him in a generation fitter to reward his skill and acknowledge
+his superiority. Dandy was a thing yet to come, but which, in his
+instance, was sure to come.
+
+    "The force of title could no further go--
+    The 'dandy was the heirloom of the beau.'"
+
+Yet even in boyhood the sly and subtle style, the Brummellism of his
+after years, began to exhibit itself. A party of the boys having
+quarreled with the boatmen of the Thames, had fallen on one who had
+rendered himself obnoxious, and were about to throw him into the river.
+Brummell, who never took part in those affrays, but happened to pass by
+at the time, said, "My good fellows, don't throw him into the river;
+for, as the man is in a high state of perspiration, it amounts to a
+certainty that he will catch cold." The boys burst into laughter, and
+let their enemy run for his life.
+
+At Eton, however, he was a general favourite for his pleasantry, the
+gentleness of his manner, and the smartness of his repartee. He had
+attained tolerable scholarship, was in the fifth form in 1793, the year
+in which he left Eton, and wrote good Latin verses, an accomplishment
+which he partially retained to his last days. From Eton he went to
+Oriel, and there commenced that cutting system of which he so soon
+became the acknowledged master. He cut an old Eton acquaintance simply
+because he had entered at an inferior college, and discontinued visiting
+another because he had invited him to meet two students of a hall which
+he was pleased to consider obnoxious. In his studies he affected to
+despise college distinctions, but yet wrote for the Newdigate prize, and
+produced the second best poem. But his violation of college rules was
+systematic and contemptuous. He always ordered his horse at hall time,
+was the author of half the squibs, turned a tame jack-daw with a band on
+into the quadrangle to burlesque the master, and treated all proctors'
+and other penalties with contempt. Such, at least, is the character
+given him by Mr Lister in Granby.
+
+But he was now to commence a new career. In 1794 he was gazetted to a
+cornetcy in the Tenth Hussars, the gift of its colonel the Prince of
+Wales. Brummell's own account of this origin of his court connexions is,
+that when a boy at Eton he had been presented to the Prince, and that
+his subsequent intimacy grew out of the Prince's notice on that
+occasion. But a friend of his told the biographer that the Prince,
+hearing of the young Etonian as a second Selwyn, had asked him to his
+table, and given him the commission to attach him to his service. This
+was a remarkable distinction, and in any other hands would have been a
+card of fortune. He was then but sixteen; he was introduced at once into
+the highest society of fashion; and he was the favourite companion of a
+prince who required to be amused, delighted in originality, and was fond
+of having the handsomest and pleasantest men of the age in his regiment.
+
+Brummell, though an elegant appendage to the corps, was too much about
+the person of the Prince to be a diligent officer. The result was, that
+he was often late on parade, and did not always know his own troop.
+However, he evaded the latter difficulty in general, by a contrivance
+peculiarly his own. One of his men had a large blue-tinged nose.
+Whenever Brummell arrived late, he galloped between the squadrons till
+he saw the blue nose. There he reined up, and felt secure. Once,
+however, it happened unfortunately that during his absence there was
+some change made in the squadrons, and the place of the blue nose was
+shifted. Brummel, on coming up late as usual, galloped in search of his
+beacon, and having found his old friend he reined up. "Mr Brummell,"
+cried the colonel, "you are with the wrong troop." "No, no," said
+Brummell, confirming himself by the sight of the blue nose, and adding
+in a lower tone--"I know better than that; a pretty thing, indeed, if I
+did not know my own troop!"
+
+His promotion was rapid; for he obtained a troop within three years,
+being captain in 1796. Yet within two years he threw up his commission.
+The ground of this singular absurdity is scarcely worth enquiring into.
+He was evidently too idle for any thing which required any degree of
+regularity. The command of a troop requires some degree of attention
+from the idlest. He had the prospect of competence from his father's
+wealth; and his absolute abhorrence of all exertion was probably his
+chief prompter in throwing away the remarkable advantages of his
+position--a position from which the exertion of a moderate degree of
+intellectual vigour, or even of physical activity, might have raised him
+to high rank in either the state or the army.
+
+Of course, various readings of his resignation have been given; some
+referred it to his being obliged to wear hair-powder, which was then
+ceasing to be fashionable; others, more probably, to an original love
+for doing nothing. The reason which he himself assigned, was comic and
+characteristic. It was his disgust at the idea of being quartered, for
+however short a time, in a manufacturing town. An order arrived one
+evening for the hussars to move to Manchester. Next morning early he
+waited on the Prince, who, expressing surprise at a visit at such an
+hour from him, was answered--"The fact is, your royal highness, I have
+heard that we are ordered to Manchester. Now, you must be aware how
+disagreeable this would be to _me_; I really could not go. _Think!
+Manchester!_ Besides, you would not be there. I have therefore, with
+your permission, determined to sell out."--"Oh, by all means, Brummell!"
+said the Prince; "do as you please." And thus he stripped himself of the
+highest opportunity in the most showy of all professions before he was
+twenty-one.
+
+He now commenced what is called the bachelor life of England; he took a
+house in Chesterfield Street, May Fair; gave small but exquisite
+dinners; invited men of rank, and even the Prince, to his table; and
+avoiding extravagance--for he seldom played, and kept only a pair of
+horses--established himself as a refined voluptuary.
+
+Yet for this condition his means, though considerable, if aided by a
+profession, were obviously inadequate. His fortune amounted only to
+L.30,000, though to this something must be added for the sale of his
+troop. His only resources thenceforth must be play, or an opulent
+marriage.
+
+Nature and art had been favourable to him; his exterior, though not
+distinguished, was graceful, and his countenance, though not handsome,
+was intelligent. He possessed in a certain degree the general
+accomplishments, and exactly in the degree, which produce a flattering
+reception in society. He was a tolerable musician, he used his pencil
+with tolerable skill, and he wrote tolerable verses; more would have
+been worse than useless. He dressed admirably, and, as his _cheval de
+battaile_, he talked with a keenness of observation and a dexterity of
+language, scarcely less rare than wit, and still more exciting among the
+exhausted minds, and in the vapid phraseology, of fashion.
+
+His person was well formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study.
+But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to
+suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting
+display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly
+strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing
+himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter;
+while to the more knowing in the affairs of costume, it betrays
+instantly the secret that the exhibitor is simply a walking placard for
+a tailor struggling for employment, and supplying the performer on the
+occasion with a wardrobe for the purpose. Brummell's dress was finished
+with perfect skill, but without the slightest attempt at exaggeration.
+Plain Hessian boots and pantaloons, or top boots and buckskins, which
+were then more the fashion than they are now; a blue coat, and a buff
+coloured waistcoat--for he somewhat leaned to Foxite politics for
+form's-sake, however he despised all politics as unworthy of a man born
+to give the tone to fashion--was his morning dress. In the evening, he
+appeared in a blue coat and white waistcoat, black pantaloons closely
+fitting, and buttoning tight to the ankle, striped silk stockings, and
+opera hat. We may thus observe how much Brummell went _before_ his age;
+for while he thus originated a dress which no modern refinement has yet
+exceeded, and which contained all that is _de bon ton_ in modern
+equipment, he was living in the midst of a generation almost studiously
+barbarian--the Foxite imitators of the French republicans--where every
+man's principle was measured by the closeness of his approach to
+savagery; and nothing but the War interposed to prevent the
+_sans-culottism_ alike of the body and the mind.
+
+Brummell, though not possessing the patronage of a secretary of state,
+had the power of making men's fortunes. His principal tailors were
+Schweitzer and Davidson of Cork street, Weston, and Meyer of Conduit
+street. Those names have since disappeared, but their memory is dear to
+dandyism; and many a superannuated man of elegance will give "the
+passing tribute of a sigh" to the incomparable neatness of their "fit,"
+and the unrivaled taste of their scissors. Schweitzer and Meyer worked
+for the Prince, and the latter was in some degree a royal favourite, and
+one of the household. He was a man of genius at his needle; an inventor,
+who even occasionally disputed the palm of originality with Brummell
+himself. The point is not yet settled to whom was due the happy
+conception of the trouser opening at the ankle and closed by buttons.
+Brummell laid his claim openly, at least to its improvement; while
+Meyer, admitting the elegance given to it by the tact of Brummell,
+persisted in asserting his right to the invention. Yet if, as was said
+of gunpowder and printing, the true inventor is the man who first brings
+the discovery into renown, the honour is here Brummell's, for he was the
+first who _established_ the trouser in the Bond street world.
+
+The Prince, at this period, cultivated dress with an ardour which
+threatened to dethrone Brummell himself, and his wardrobe was calculated
+to have cost L.100,000. But his royal highness had one obstacle to
+encounter which ultimately drove him from the field, and restricted all
+his future chances of distinction to wigs; he began to grow corpulent. A
+scarcely less formidable evil arose in his quarreling with Brummell. In
+the course of hostilities, the Prince pronounced the beau a tailor's
+block, fit for nothing but to hang clothes on; while the retaliation
+came in the shape of a caricature, in which a pair of leather breeches
+is exhibited lashed up between the bed-posts, and an enormously fat man,
+lifted up to them, is making a desperate struggle to get his limbs
+properly seated in their capacity: another operation of a still more
+difficult nature, the making the waistband meet, still threatening to
+defy all exertion.
+
+Brummell's style was in fact simplicity, but simplicity of the most
+studied kind. Lord Byron defined it, "a certain exquisite propriety of
+dress." "_No_ perfumes," the Beau used to say, "but fine linen, plenty
+of it, and _country_ washing." His opinion on this subject, however,
+changed considerably in after time; for he used perfumes, and attributed
+a characteristic importance to their use. Meeting a gentleman at a ball
+with whom he conversed for a while, some of the party enquired the
+stranger's name. "Can't possibly tell," was the Beau's answer. "But he
+is evidently a gentleman--his perfumes are good." He objected to country
+gentlemen being introduced into Watier's, on the ground "that their
+boots always smelt of horse-dung and bad blacking."
+
+His taste in matters of _virtu_ was one of the sources of his profusion;
+but it always had a reference to himself. He evidently preferred a
+snuff-box which he could display in his hand, to a Raphael which he
+could exhibit only on his wall. His snuff-boxes were numerous and
+costly. But even in taking snuff he had his style: he always opened the
+box with _one_ hand, the left. The Prince imitated him in this _tour de
+grace_.
+
+A fashion always becomes more fashionable as it becomes more ridiculous.
+People cling to it as they pet a monkey, for its deformity. The high
+head-dresses of France, which must have been a burden, made the tour of
+Europe, and endured through a century. The high heels, which almost
+wholly precluded safe walking, lasted their century. The use of powder
+was universal until it was driven out of France by republicanism, and
+out of England by famine. The flour used by the British army alone for
+whitening their heads was calculated to amount to the annual provision
+for 50,000 people. Snuff had been universally in use from the middle of
+the seventeenth century; and the sums spent on this filthy and foolish
+indulgence, the time wasted on it, and the injury done to health, if
+they could all have been thrown into the common form of money, would
+have paid the national debt of England. The common people have their
+full share in this general absurdity. The gin drunk in England and Wales
+annually amounts to nearly twenty millions of pounds sterling; a sum
+which would pay all the poor rates three times over, and, turned to any
+public purpose, might cover the land with great institutions--the
+principal result of this enormous expenditure now being to fill the
+population with vice, misery, and madness.
+
+In the matter of coats Brummell had but one rival, the Prince, whose
+rank of course gave him a general advantage, yet whose taste was clearly
+held as inferior by the royal _artistes_ themselves. A baronet, who went
+to Schweitzer's to get himself equipped in the first style, asked him
+what cloth he recommended. "Why, sir," was the answer, "the Prince wears
+superfine, and Mr Brummell the Bath coating. Suppose, sir, we say Bath
+coating; I think Mr Brummell has a trifle the preference." Brummell's
+connexion with the Prince, his former rank in the hussars, and his own
+agreeable manners, introduced him to the intercourse of the principal
+nobility. In the intervals of his visits to the Prince at Brighton, he
+visited Belvoir, Chatsworth, Woburn, &c. But he was absolutely _once_ in
+town in the month of November, as is proved by the following note from
+Woburn:--
+
+     MY DEAR BRUMMELL,--By some accident, which I am unable to account
+     for, your letter of Wednesday did not reach me till Wednesday. I
+     make it a rule never to lend my box; but you have the _entree
+     libre_ whenever you wish to go there, as I informed the boxkeeper
+     last year. I hope Beauvais and you will do great execution at
+     Up-Park. I shall probably be there shortly after you.--Ever yours
+     sincerely,
+
+       "BEDFORD."
+
+At Belvoir he was _l'ami de la famille_, and at Cheveley, another seat
+of the Duke of Rutland's, his rooms were as sacred as the Duke of
+York's, who was a frequent visitor there. On the Duke of Rutland's
+coming of age, in 1799, great rejoicings took place at Belvoir, and
+Brummell was one of the distinguished party there, among whom were the
+Prince of Wales, the late Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Lorn, and the
+other chief fashionable people of the day. This _fete_ was memorable,
+for it was said to have cost L.60,000. Brummell was not altogether
+effeminate; he could both shoot and ride, but he liked neither: he was
+never a Melton man. He said that he could not bear to have his tops and
+leathers splashed by the greasy galloping farmers. The Duke of Rutland
+raised a corps of volunteers on the renewal of the war in 1803; and as
+Brummell had been a soldier the duke gave him a majority. In the course
+of the general inspections of the volunteer corps, an officer was sent
+from the Horse Guards to review the duke's regiment, the major being in
+command. On the day of the inspection every one was on parade except the
+major-commandant. Where is Major Brummell, was the indignant enquiry? He
+was not to be found. The inspection went on. When it was near its close,
+Brummell was soon coming full gallop across the country in the uniform
+of the Belvoir Hunt, terribly splashed. He apologized for himself by
+saying, that having left Belvoir quite early, he had expected to be on
+the parade in time, the meet being close at hand. However, his favourite
+hunter had landed him in a ditch, where, having been dreadfully shaken
+by the fall, he had been lying for an hour. But the general was
+inexorable, and Brummell used to give the worthy officer's speech in the
+following style--"Sir, this conduct is wholly inexcusable. If I remember
+right, sir, you once had the honour of holding a captain's commission
+under his royal highness the Prince of Wales, the heir-apparent himself,
+sir! Now, sir, I tell you; I tell you sir, that I should be wanting in a
+proper zeal for the honour of the service; I should be wanting, sir, if
+I did not this very evening report this disgraceful neglect of orders to
+the commander-in-chief, as well as the state in which you present
+yourself in front of your regiment; and this shall be done, sir. You may
+retire, sir."
+
+All this was very solemn and astounding; but Brummell's presence of mind
+was not often astounded. He had scarcely walked his horse a few paces
+from the spot, when he returned, and said in a subdued tone--"Excuse me,
+general; but, in my anxiety to explain this most unfortunate business, I
+forgot to deliver a message from the Duke of Rutland. It was to request
+the honour of your company at dinner." The culprit and the
+disciplinarian grinned together; the general coughed, and cleared his
+throat sufficiently to express his thanks in these words--"Ah! why,
+really I feel and am very much obliged to his grace. Pray, Major
+Brummell, tell the duke I shall be most happy;" and melodiously raising
+his voice, (for the Beau had turned his horse once more towards
+Belvoir,) "Major Brummell, as to this little affair, I am sure no man
+can regret it more than you do. Assure his grace that I shall have great
+pleasure in accepting his very kind invitation;" and they parted amid a
+shower of smiles. But Brummell had yet but half completed his
+performance; for the invitation was extempore, and he must gallop to
+Belvoir to acquaint the duke of the guest he was to receive on that day.
+
+Brummell always appeared at the cover side, admirably dressed in a white
+cravat and white tops, which latter either he, or Robinson his valet,
+introduced, and which eventually superseded the brown ones. The subtlety
+of Brummell's sneers, which made him so highly amusing to the first rank
+of society, made him an object of alarm if not of respect to others. "Do
+you see that gentleman near the door?" said a woman of rank to her
+daughter, who had been brought for the first time to Almack's. "Yes! Who
+is he?" replied the young lady. "A person, my dear, who will probably
+come and speak to us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to
+give him a favourable impression of you, for he is the celebrated Mr
+Brummell." The _debutante_ was the daughter of a duke. It has been said
+that Madame de Stael considered herself as having failed to attract his
+approval, and that she spoke of it as the greatest _malheur_ which had
+occurred to her during her stay in London, the next in point of calamity
+being that the Prince had not called on her in person. The Beau
+perfectly knew his own value. In reply to a nobleman who charged him
+with involving his son in a gaming transaction, he said--"Really I did
+my best for the young man; I gave him my arm all the way from White's to
+Watier's." However, there can be no doubt that he was very often
+intolerably impudent; and, as impudence is always vulgar, he was guilty
+of vulgarity. Dining at a gentleman's house in Hampshire, where the
+champagne did not happen to suit his taste, he refused his glass when
+the servant came to help him a second time, with--"No, thank you, I
+don't drink cider!" The following anecdote is rather better known.
+"Where were you yesterday, Brummell?" said one of his club friends. "I
+think," said he, "I dined in the city." "What! you dined in the city?"
+said his friend. "Yes, the man wished me to bring him into notice, and I
+desired him to give a dinner, to which I invited Alvanley, Mills,
+Pierrepoint, and some others." "All went off well, of course?" said the
+friend. "Oh yes! perfectly, except one _mal-a-apropos_: the fellow who
+gave the dinner had actually the assurance to seat himself at the
+table."
+
+Dining at a large party at the house of an opulent but young member of
+London society, he asked the loan of his carriage to take him to Lady
+Jersey's that evening. "I am going there," said his entertainer, "and
+will be happy to take you." "Still, there is a difficulty," said
+Brummell in his most delicate tone. "You do not mean to get up behind,
+that would not be quite right in your own carriage; and yet, how would
+it do for me to be seen in the same carriage with you?" Brummell's
+manner probably laughed off impertinences of this order; for, given
+without their colouring from nature, they would have justified an angry
+reply. But he seems never to have involved himself in personal quarrel.
+He was intact and intangible. Yet he, too, had his mortifications. One
+night, in going to Lady Dungannon's, he was actually obliged to make use
+of a hackney coach. He got out of it at an unobserved distance from the
+door, and made his way up her ladyship's crowded staircase, conceiving
+that he had escaped all evidence of his humiliation; however, this was
+not to be. As he was entering the drawing-room a servant touched his
+arm, and to his amazement and horror whispered--"Beg pardon, sir,
+perhaps you are not aware of it, that there is a straw sticking to your
+shoe." His style found imitations in the public prints, and one
+sufficiently characteristic thus set forth the merits of a new patent
+carriage step:--"There is an art in every thing; and whatever is worthy
+of being learned, cannot be unworthy of a teacher." Such was the logical
+argument of the professor of the art of stepping in and out of a
+carriage, who represented himself as much patronised by the sublime
+Beau Brummell, whose deprecation of those horrid coach steps he would
+repeat with great delight:--
+
+     "Mr Brummell," he used to say, "considered the sedan was the only
+     vehicle for a gentleman, it having no steps; and he invariably had
+     his own chair, which was lined with white satin quilted, had down
+     squabs, and a white sheepskin rug at the bottom, brought to the
+     door of his dressing-room, on that account always on the
+     ground-floor, from whence it was transferred with its owner to the
+     foot of the staircase of the house that he condescended to visit.
+     Mr Brummell has told me," continued the professor, "that to enter a
+     coach was torture to him. 'Conceive,' said he, 'the horror of
+     sitting in a carriage with an iron apparatus, afflicted with the
+     dreadful thought, the cruel apprehension, of having one's leg
+     crushed by the machinery. Why are not the steps made to fold
+     _outside_? The only detraction from the luxury of a _vis a vis_, is
+     the double distress! for _both_ legs--excruciating idea!'"
+
+Brummell's first reform was the neckcloth. Even his reform has passed
+away; such is the transitory nature of all human achievements. But the
+art of neckcloths was once more than a dubious title to renown in the
+world of Bond Street. The politics of the time were disorderly; and the
+dress of politicians had become as disorderly as their principles. The
+fortunes of Whiggism, too, had run low; and the velvet coat and
+embroidered waistcoat, the costly buckles and gold buttons of better
+days, were heavier drains on the decreasing revenues of the party than
+could be long sustained with impunity. Fox had already assumed the
+sloven--the whole faction followed; and the ghosts of the old
+oppositionists, in their tie wigs and silver-laced coats, would have
+been horrified by the sight of the shock-headed, leather-breeched, and
+booted generation who howled and harangued on the left side of the
+Speaker's chair from 1789 to 1806. All was _canaille_. Fox could
+scarcely have been more shabby, had he been the representative of a
+population of bankrupts. The remainder of the party might have been
+supposed, without any remarkable stretch of imagination, to have emerged
+from the workhouse. All was sincere squalidness, patriotic
+pauperism--the _un_washing principle. One of the cleverest caricatures
+of that cleverest of caricaturists, the Scotchman Gilray, was his sketch
+of the Whigs preparing for their first levee after the Foxite accession
+on the death of Pitt. The title was, "_Making decent!_" The whole of the
+new ministry were exhibited in all the confusion of throwing off their
+rags, and putting on their new clothing. There stood Sheridan,
+half-smothered in the novel attempt to put on a clean shirt. In another
+corner Fox, Grey, and Lord Moira, straining to peep into the same
+shaving-glass, were all three making awkward efforts to use the
+long-forgotten razor. Others were gazing at themselves in a sort of
+savage wonder at the strangeness of new washed faces. Some _sans
+culottes_ were struggling to get into breeches; and others, whose feet
+were accustomed to the ventilation of shoes which let their toes
+through, were pondering over the embarrassment of shoes impervious to
+the air. The minor apparatus of court costume scattered round on the
+chairs, the bags and swords, the buckles and gloves, were stared at by
+the groups with the wonder and perplexity of an American Indian.
+
+Into this irregular state of things Brummell made his first stride in
+the spirit of a renovator. The prevailing cravat of the time was
+certainly deplorable. Let us give it in the words of history:--"It was
+without stiffening of any kind, and bagged out in front, _rucking_ up to
+the front in a roll." (We do not precisely comprehend this expression,
+whose _precision_, however, we by no means venture to doubt.) Brummell
+boldly met this calamity, by slightly starching the too flexible
+material--a change in which, as his biographer with due seriousness and
+truth observes--"a reasoning mind must acknowledge there is not much
+objectionable."
+
+Imitators, of course, always exceed their model, and the cravat adopted
+by the dandies soon became _excessively_ starched; the test being that
+of raising three parts of their length by one corner without bending.
+Yet Brummell, though he adhered to the happy medium, and was moderate in
+his starch, was rigorous in his tie. If his cravat did not correspond to
+his wishes in its first arrangement, it was instantly cast aside. His
+valet was seen one morning leaving his chamber with an armful of tumbled
+cravats, and on being asked the cause, solemnly replied, "These are our
+_failures_."
+
+Perfection is slow in all instances; but talent and diligence are sure
+to advance. Brummell's "tie" became speedily the admiration of the _beau
+monde_. The manner in which this dexterous operation was accomplished
+was perfectly his own, and deserves to be recorded for the benefit of
+posterity.
+
+The collar, which was always fixed to his shirt, was so large, that,
+before being folded down, it completely hid his head and face, and the
+neckcloth was at least a foot in height. The first _coup d'archet_ was
+made with the shirt-collar, which he folded down to its proper size; but
+the delicate part of the performance was still to come. Brummell
+"standing before the glass, with his chin raised towards the ceiling,
+now, by the gentle and gradual declension of his lower jaw, creased the
+cravat to reasonable dimensions; the form of each succeeding crease
+being perfected with the shirt which he had just discarded." We were not
+aware of the nicety which was demanded to complete the folds of this
+superior swathing; but, after this development, who shall pronounce a
+dandy idle?
+
+Brummell was as critical on the dress of others as he was _recherche_ in
+his own, and this care he extended to all ranks. He was once walking up
+St James's Street, arm-in-arm with a young nobleman whom he condescended
+to patronize. The Beau suddenly asked him, "what he called _those
+things_ on his feet."--"Why, shoes."--"Shoes are they?" said Brummell
+doubtfully, and stooping to look at them; "I thought they were
+slippers?"
+
+The late Duke of Bedford asked him his opinion of a new coat. "Turn
+round," said Mr Beau. When the examination was concluded in front and
+rear, the Beau, feeling the lapel delicately with his finger and thumb,
+asked in a most pathetic manner, "Bedford, do you call this _thing_ a
+coat?"
+
+Somebody told him, among a knot of loungers at White's, "Brummell, your
+brother William is in town. Is he not coming here?"--"Yes," was the
+reply, "in a day or two; but I have recommended him to walk the _back
+streets_ till his new clothes come home."
+
+Practical jokes are essentially vulgar, and apt to be hazardous besides;
+two reasons which should have prevented their performance by an
+individual whose object was to be the standard of elegance, and whose
+object at no time was to expose himself to the rougher remonstrances of
+mankind; but the following piece of sportiveness was at least amusing.
+
+Meeting an old _emigre_ marquis at the seat of some noble friend, and
+probably finding the Frenchman a bore, he revenged himself by mixing
+some finely powdered sugar in his hair-powder. On the old Frenchman's
+coming into the breakfast-room next morning, highly powdered as usual,
+the flies, attracted by the scent of the sugar, instantly gathered round
+him. He had scarcely begun his breakfast, when every fly in the room was
+busy on his head. The unfortunate marquis was forced to lay down his
+knife and fork, and take out his pocket-handkerchief to repel these
+troublesome assailants, but they came thicker and thicker. The victim
+now rose from his seat and changed his position; but all was in
+vain--the flies followed in fresh clusters. In despair he hurried to the
+window; but every fly lingering there was instantly buzzing and
+tickling. The marquis, feverish with vexation and surprise, threw up the
+window. This unlucky measure produced only a general invasion by all the
+host of flies sunning themselves on the lawn. The astonishment and
+amusement of the guests were excessive. Brummell alone never smiled. At
+last M. le Marquis gave way in agony, and, clapping his hands on his
+head, and followed by a cloud of flies, rushed out of the room. The
+secret was then divulged, and all was laughter.
+
+"Poodle B--g," so well known in the world of fashion, owed his
+_soubriquet_ to Brummell. B--g was fond of letting his hair, which was
+light-coloured, curl round his forehead. He was one day driving in his
+curricle, with a poodle by his side. The Beau hailed him with--"Ah,
+B--g, how do you do?--A _family_ vehicle, I see."
+
+Some of those oddities of expression are almost too well known now for
+effect; but they must have sparkled prodigiously among the exhausted
+circles of his West-end day.
+
+"You seem to have caught cold, Brummell," said a lounging visitor on
+hearing him cough. "Yes--I got out of my carriage yesterday, coming from
+the Pavilion, and the wretch of an innkeeper put me into the coffee-room
+with a damp stranger."
+
+In a stormy August--"Brummell, did any one ever see such a summer
+day?"--"Yes, _I_ did, last winter."
+
+On returning from a country mansion, of which he happened to disapprove,
+he defined it "An exceedingly good house for stopping a _single_ night
+in."
+
+On the whole, the biographer has given a tolerable selection of
+Brummell's _hits_, some of which, however, were so intolerably
+impertinent, that he must have either thoroughly "known his man," or he
+must have smoothed down their severity by some remarkable tone of voice
+or pleasantry of visage. Without those palliations, it is not easy to
+comprehend his occasional rudeness even to friends. One day, standing
+and speaking at the carriage-door of a lady, she expressed her surprise
+at his throwing away his time on so quiet and unfashionable a
+person.--"My dear friend, don't mention it: there is _no one to see
+us_."
+
+But his admiration for the sex must have often brought him close on the
+edge of serious inconvenience. Once, at the house of a nobleman, he
+requested a moment's interview in the library, and then and there
+communicated the formidable intelligence, "that he must immediately
+leave the house--on that day."
+
+"Why, you intended to stay a month," said his hospitable entertainer.
+
+"True--but I must be gone--I feel I am in love with your countess."
+
+"Well, my dear sir, I can't help that. I was in love with her myself
+twenty years ago," said the good-humoured husband. "But is she in love
+with you?"
+
+The Beau cast down his eyes, and, in all the modesty of impudence, said
+faintly, "I believe she is."
+
+"Oh! that alters the case. I shall send for your post-horses. Good
+morning."
+
+His life was flirtation, a matter which could not be indulged in
+matrimony, and he therefore never married. Yet once he went so far as to
+elope with a young person of rank from a ball: the pair were, however,
+immediately overtaken. The affair was, of course, the talk of the clubs.
+But Brummell had his own way of wearing the willow. "On the whole," said
+he, "I consider I have reason to congratulate myself. I lately heard
+from her favourite maid that her ladyship had been seen--_to drink
+beer_!"
+
+Some of the Beau's letters at this period are given; but they are not
+fortunate specimens of his taste: even in writing to women they are
+quaint, affected, and approaching to that unpardonable crime, dulness.
+His letters written in his wane of life, and under the realities of
+suffering, are much more striking, contain some pathetic and even some
+powerful language, and show that fashion and his own follies had
+obscured a mind of natural talent, if not of original tenderness.
+
+The following letter we look upon as quite sufficient to have excluded
+him from the recollections of any Lady Jane on earth, if she happened to
+know the difference between coxcombry and common feeling:--
+
+     "MY DEAR LADY JANE,--With the miniature, it seems, I am not to be
+     trusted even for two _pitiful_ hours. My own memory must be then my
+     only _disconsolate_ expedient to obtain a resemblance.
+
+     "As I am unwilling to merit the imputation of committing myself by
+     too flagrant a liberty in retaining your glove, which you
+     charitably sent at my head yesterday, as you would have extended an
+     _eleemosynary sixpence_ to the _supplicating hat_ of a mendicant, I
+     restore it to you. And, allow me to assure you, that I have too
+     much regard and respect for you, and too little practical vanity
+     myself, (whatever appearances may be against me,) to have
+     entertained, for one _treacherous_ instant, the impertinent
+     intention to defraud you of it. You are angry, perhaps irreparably
+     incensed against me for this _petty larceny_. I have no defence to
+     offer in mitigation but that of _frenzy_. But you know that you are
+     an _angel_ visiting these sublunary spheres, and therefore your
+     first quality should be that of mercy. Yet you are sometimes
+     wayward and volatile in your _seraphic_ disposition. Though you
+     have no wings yet you have weapons, and those are resentment and
+     estrangement from me.--With sentiments of the deepest
+     _compunction_, I am always your _miserable slave_,
+
+       "GEORGE BRUMMELL."
+
+We have not a doubt that he perused this toilsome performance a dozen
+times before he folded it up, advanced to his mirror to see how so
+brilliant a correspondent must look after so astonishing a production,
+moved round the room in a minuet step; and, when he sent it away at
+last, followed it with a sigh at the burial of so much renown in a
+woman's escritoire, and a regret that it could not be stereotyped to
+make its progress round the world. And yet, as it appeared that the lady
+had thrown the glove at him, and even lent him her miniature, it would
+be difficult to discover any ground for her wrath or his compunction.
+Both were evidently equally imaginary.
+
+The Beau always regarded the city as a _terra incognita_. A merchant
+once asked him to dine there. Brummell gave him a look of intense
+enquiry. The merchant pressed him. "Well," said the Beau, (who probably
+had excellent reasons for non-resistance to the man of money;) "well, if
+it _must_ be--but you must first promise faithfully _never_ to say a
+word on the subject."
+
+A visitor, full of the importance of a tour in the north of England,
+asked him which of the lakes he preferred. "I can't possibly remember,"
+was the reply; "they are a great way from St James's Street, and I don't
+think they are spoken of in the clubs." The visitor urged the question.
+"Robinson," said the Beau, turning in obvious distress to his valet,
+"Robinson, pray tell this gentleman which of the lakes I
+preferred."--"Windermere, sir, I think it was," said the valet. "Well,"
+added Brummell, "probably you are in the right, Robinson. It may have
+been. Pray, sir, will Windermere do?"
+
+"I wonder, Brummell, you take the trouble of driving to the barracks of
+the 10th with four horses. It certainly looks rather superb," said one
+of the officers. "Why, I dare say it does; but that is not _the_ point.
+What could I do, when my French valet, the best dresser of hair in the
+universe, gave me warning that he must leave me to myself, unless I gave
+up the vulgarity of posting with _two_?"
+
+We come, in the course of this goodly history, to the second great event
+of the Beau's life--the first being his introduction to Carlton House.
+The second was his being turned out of it. Brummell always denied, and
+with some indignation, the story of "Wales, ring the bell!"--a version
+which he justly declared to be "positively vulgar," and therefore, with
+due respect for his own sense of elegance, absolutely impossible for
+_him_. He gave the more rational explanation, that he had taken the part
+of lady who was presumed to be the rival of Mrs Fitzherbert, and had
+been rash enough even to make some remarks on Mrs Fitzherbert's _en bon
+point_, a matter of course never to be forgiven by a belle. This
+extended to a "declining love" between him and the Prince, whose foible
+was a horror of growing corpulent, and whom Brummell therefore
+denominated "Big Ben," the nickname of a gigantic porter at Carlton
+House; adding the sting of calling Mrs Fitzherbert Benina. Moore, in one
+of his satires on the Prince's letter of February the 13th, 1812, to the
+Duke of York, in which he _cut_ the Whigs, thus parodies that celebrated
+"sentence of banishment:"--
+
+    "Neither have I resentments, nor wish there should come ill
+    To mortal, except, now I think on't, Beau Brummell,
+    Who threaten'd, last year, in a super-fine passion,
+    To cut _me_, and bring the old king into fashion."
+
+Brummell now, since the sword was drawn, resolved to throw away the
+sheath, and his hits were keen and "damaging," as those things are now
+termed. In this style he said to little Colonel M'Mahon, the Prince's
+secretary--"I made him, and I shall unmake him."
+
+The "fat friend" hit was more pungent in reality than in its usual form.
+The Prince, walking down St James's Street with Lord Moira, and seeing
+Brummell approaching arm-in-arm with a man of rank, determined to show
+the openness of the quarrel, stopped and spoke to the noble lord with an
+apparent unconsciousness of ever having seen the Beau before. The
+moment he was turning away, Brummell asked, in his most distinct voice,
+"Pray, _who_ is your _fat_ friend?" Nothing could be more dexterously
+impudent; for it repaid the Prince's pretended want of recognition
+precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where
+he was known to be most thin-skinned.
+
+It is sufficiently remarkable, that the alienation of the Prince from
+Brummell scarcely affected his popularity with the patrician world, or
+his reception by the Duke and Duchess of York. He was a frequent guest
+at Oatlands, and seems to have amused the duke by his pleasantry, and
+cultivated the taste of the duchess by writing her epigrams, and making
+her presents of little dogs. The Duke of York, though not much gifted
+with the faculty of making jests, greatly enjoyed them in others. He was
+a good-humoured, easy-mannered man, wholly without affectation of any
+kind; well-intentioned, with some sagacity--mingled, however, with a
+good deal of that abruptness which belonged to all the Brunswicks; and
+though unfortunate in his domestic conduct, a matter on which it would
+do no service to the reader to enlarge, yet a brave soldier, and a
+zealous and most useful commander-in-chief at the Horse Guards. He, too,
+could say good things now and then. One day at Oatlands, as he was
+mounting his horse to ride to town, seeing a poor woman driven from the
+door, he asked the servant what she was. "A beggar, your royal highness:
+nothing but a soldier's wife."--"Nothing but a soldier's wife! And pray,
+sir, what is your mistress?" Of course, the poor woman was called back
+and relieved.
+
+Still Brummell continued in high life, and was one of the four who gave
+the memorable _fete_ at the Argyll Rooms in July 1813, in consequence of
+having won a considerable sum at hazard. The other three were, Sir Henry
+Mildmay, Pierrepoint, and Lord Alvanley. The difficulty was, whether or
+not to invite the Prince, who had quarrelled with Mildmay as well as
+with Brummell. In this solemn affair Pierrepoint sounded the Prince, and
+ascertained that he would accept the invitation if it were proposed to
+him. When the Prince arrived, and was of course received by the four
+givers of the _fete_, he shook hands with Alvanley and Pierrepoint, but
+took no notice whatever of the others. Brummell was indignant, and, at
+the close of the night, would not attend the Prince to his carriage.
+This was observed, and the Prince's remark on it next day was--"Had
+Brummell taken the cut I gave him last night good-humouredly, I should
+have renewed my intimacy with him." How that was to be done, however,
+without lying down to be kicked, it would be difficult to discover.
+Brummell however, on this occasion, was undoubtedly as much in the right
+as the Prince was in the wrong.
+
+Brummell, in conformity to the habits of the time, and the proprieties
+of his caste, was of course a gambler, and of course was rapidly ruined;
+but we have no knowledge that he went through the whole career, and
+turned swindler. One night he was playing with Combe, who united the
+three characters of a lover of play, a brewer, and an alderman. It was
+at Brookes's, and in the year of his mayoralty. "Come, Mash Tub, what do
+you set?" said the Beau. "Twenty-five guineas," was the answer. The Beau
+won, and won the same sum twelve times running. Then, putting the cash
+in his pocket, said with a low bow, "Thank you, alderman; for this, I'll
+always patronize your porter."--"Very well, sir," said Combe dryly, "I
+only wish every other blackguard in London would do the same."
+
+At this time play ran high at the clubs. A baronet now living was said
+to have lost at Watier's L.10,000 at one sitting, at _ecarte_. In 1814,
+Brummell lost not only all his winnings, but "an unfortunate L.10,000,"
+as he expressed it, the last that he had at his bankers. Brummell was
+now ruined; and, to prevent the possibility of his recovery at any
+future period, he raised money at ruinous interest, and finally made his
+escape to Calais. Still, when every thing else forsook him, his odd way
+of telling his own story remained. "He said," observed one of his
+friends at Caen, when talking about his altered circumstances, "that, up
+to a particular period of his life, every thing prospered with him, and
+that he attributed this good luck to the possession of a silver sixpence
+with a hole in it, which somebody had given him some years before, with
+an injunction to take good care of it, as every thing would go well with
+him so long as he kept it, and everything the contrary if he happened to
+lose it." And so it turned out; for having at length, in an evil hour,
+given it by mistake to a hackney coachman, a complete reverse of his
+affairs took place, and one misfortune followed another until he was
+obliged to fly. On his being asked why he did not advertise a reward for
+it, he answered--"I did; and twenty people came with sixpences with
+holes in them for the reward, but not _my_ sixpence." "And you never
+heard any more of it?" "No," he replied; "no doubt that rascal
+Rothschild, or some of that set, have got hold of it." But the Beau's
+retreat from London was still to be characteristic. As it had become
+expedient that he must make his escape without _eclat_, on the day of
+his intended retreat he dined coolly at his club, and finished his
+London performances by sending from the table a note to his friend
+Scrope Davies, couched in the following prompt and expressive form:--
+
+     "MY DEAR SCROPE,--Lend me two hundred pounds: the banks are shut,
+     and all my money is in the 3 per cents. It shall be repaid
+     to-morrow morning.--Yours, GEORGE BRUMMELL."
+
+The answer was equally prompt and expressive--
+
+     "MY DEAR GEORGE,--It is very unfortunate, but all _my_ money is in
+     the 3 per cents.--Yours, S. DAVIES."
+
+Such is the story;
+
+    "I cannot tell how the truth may be,
+    I tell the tale as 'twas told to me."
+
+Nothing daunted, the Beau went to the opera, allowed himself to be seen
+about the house, then quickly retiring, stepped into a friend's chaise
+and met his own carriage, which waited for him a short distance from
+town. Travelling all night with four horses, he reached Dover by
+morning, hired a vessel to carry him over, and soon left England and his
+creditors behind. He was instantly pursued; but the chase stopped on
+reaching the sea. Debtors could not then be followed to France, and
+Brummell was secure.
+
+The little, rude, and thoroughly comfortless town of Calais was now to
+be the place of residence, for nearly the rest of his life, to a man
+accustomed to the highest luxuries of London life, trained to the
+keenest sensibility of London enjoyment, and utterly absorbed in London
+objects of every kind. Ovid's banishment among the Thracians could
+scarcely be a more formidable change of position. Yet Brummell's
+pleasantry did not desert him even in Calais. On some passing friend's
+remark on the annoyance of living in such a place--"Pray," said the
+Beau, "is it not a general opinion that a gentleman might manage to
+spend his time pleasantly enough _between_ London and Paris?"
+
+At Calais he took apartments at the house of one Leleux, an old
+bookseller, which he fitted up to his own taste; and on which, as if
+adversity had no power to teach him common prudence, he expended the
+greater part of the 25,000 francs which, by some still problematical
+means, he had contrived to carry away with him. This was little short of
+madness; but it was a madness which he had been practising for the last
+dozen years, and habit had now rendered ruin familiar to him. At length
+a little gleam of hope shone across his fortunes. George IV. arrived at
+Calais on his way to Hanover. The Duke d'Angouleme came from Paris to
+receive his Majesty, and Calais was all in a tumult of loyalty. The
+reports of Brummell's conduct on this important arrival, of the King's
+notice of him, and of the royal liberality in consequence, were of every
+shape and shade of invention. But all of them, except the mere
+circumstance of the King's pronouncing his name, seem to have been
+utterly false. Brummell, mingling in the crowd which cheered his Majesty
+in his progress, was observed by the King, who audibly said, "Good
+heavens, Brummell!" But the recognition proceeded no further. The Beau
+sent his valet, who was a renowned maker of punch, to exhibit his talent
+in that art at the royal entertainment, and also sent a present of some
+excellent maraschino. But no result followed. The King was said to have
+transmitted to him a hundred pound note; but even this is unluckily
+apocryphal. Leleux, his landlord, thus gives the version. The English
+consul at Calais came to Mr Brummell late one evening, and intimated
+that the King was out of snuff, saying, as he took up one of the boxes
+lying on his table, "Give me one of yours."--"With all my heart," was
+the reply; "but not that box, for if the King saw it I should never have
+it again"--implying that there was some story attached to it. On
+reaching the theatre the consul presented the snuff, and the King
+turning, said, "Why, sir, where did you get your snuff? There is only
+one person that I know that can mix snuff in this way!"--"It is some of
+Mr Brummell's, your Majesty," replied the consul. The next day the King
+left Calais; and, as he seated himself in the carriage, he said to Sir
+Arthur Paget, who commanded the yacht that brought him over, "I leave
+Calais, and have not seen Brummell." From this his biographer infers
+that he had received neither money nor message, and his landlord is of
+the same opinion. But slight as those circumstances are, it seems
+obvious that George IV. had a forgiving heart towards the Beau
+notwithstanding all his impertinences, that he would have been glad to
+forgive him, and that he would, in all probability, have made some
+provision for his old favourite if Brummell had exhibited any signs of
+repentance. On the other hand, Brummell was a man of spirit, and no man
+ought to put himself in the way of being treated contemptuously even by
+royalty; but it seems strange that, with all his adroitness, he should
+not have hit upon a middle way. There could have been no great
+difficulty in ascertaining whether the King would receive him, in
+sending a respectful message, in offering his loyal congratulations on
+the King's arrival, or even in expressing his regret at his long
+alienation from a Prince to whom he had been once indebted for so many
+favours, and who certainly never harboured resentment against man.
+Brummell evidently repented his tardiness on this occasion; for he made
+up his mind to make a more direct experiment when the King should visit
+the town-hall on his return. But opportunities once thrown away are
+seldom regained. The king on his return did not visit the town-hall, but
+hurried on board, and the last chance of reconciliation was gone.
+
+Yet during his long residence in Calais, the liberality of his own
+connexions in England enabled him to show a good face to poverty. He
+paid his bills punctually whenever the remittance came, and was
+charitable to the mendicants who, probably for the last thousand years,
+have made Calais their headquarters. The general name for him was the
+_Roi de Calais_. An anecdote of his pleasantry in almsgiving reached the
+public ear. A French beggar asked him for a two-sous piece. "I don't
+know the coin," said Brummell, "never having had one; but I suppose you
+mean a franc. There, take it." His former celebrity had also spread far
+and wide among the population. A couple of English workmen in one of the
+factories of the town, one day followed a gentleman who had a
+considerable resemblance to Brummell. He heard one of them say to the
+other, "Now, I'll bet you a pot that's him." Shortly after, one of them
+strolled up to him, with, "Beg pardon, sir--hope no offence, but we two
+have got a bet--now, a'n't you George Ring the Bell?" Brummell's habits
+of flirtation did not desert him in France; and in one instance he paid
+such marked attention to a young English lady, that a friend was deputed
+to enquire his purposes. Here Brummell's knowledge of every body did him
+good service. The deputy on this occasion having once figured as the
+head of a veterinary hospital, or some such thing, but being then in the
+commissariat,--"Why, Vulcan!" exclaimed Brummell, "what a humbug you
+must be to come and lecture me on such a subject! You, who were for two
+years at hide-and-seek to save yourself from being shot by Sir T. S. for
+running off with one of his daughters." "Dear me," said the astonished
+friend, "you have touched a painful chord; I will have no more to do
+with this business." The business died a natural death.
+
+His dressing-table was _recherche_. Its _batterie de toilette_ was
+curious, complete, and of silver; one part of it being a spitting-dish,
+he always declaring that "it was impossible to _spit in clay_." His
+"making up" every morning occupied two hours. When he first arrived in
+Caen he carried a cane, but often exchanged it for a brown silk
+umbrella, which was always protected by a silk case of remarkable
+accuracy of fit--the handle surmounted by an ivory head of George the
+Fourth, in well-curled wig and gracious smile. In the street he _never_
+took off his hat to any one, not even to a lady; for it would have been
+difficult to replace it in the same position, it having been put on with
+peculiar care. We finish by stating, that he always had the _soles_ of
+his boots blackened as well as the upper leathers; his reason for this
+being, that, in the usual negligence of human nature, he never could be
+sure that the polish on the _edge_ of the sole would be accurately
+produced, unless the whole underwent the operation. He occasionally
+polished a single boot himself, to show how perfection on this point was
+to be obtained. Clogs, so indispensable in the dirt of an unpaved French
+street, he always abhorred; yet, under cover of night, he _could_, now
+and then, condescend to wear them. "Theft," as the biographer observes,
+"in Sparta was a crime--but only when it was _discovered_."
+
+But after this life of fantasy and frivolity, on which so much
+cleverness was thrown away, the unfortunate Beau finished his career
+miserably. On his application to the Foreign Office, representing his
+wish to be removed to any other consulate where he might serve more
+effectually, and of course with a better income; the former part of his
+letter was made the ground of abolishing the consulate, while the latter
+received no answer. We say nothing of this measure, any further than
+that it had the effect of utter ruin on poor Brummell. The total loss of
+his intellect followed; he was reduced to absolute beggary, and finally
+spent his last miserable hours in an hospital for lunatic mendicants.
+Surely it could not have been difficult, in the enormous patronage of
+office, to have found some relief for the necessities of a man whose
+official character was unimpeached; who had been expressly put into
+government employ by ministers for the sake of preserving him from
+penury; who had been the companion, the _friend_ of princes and nobles;
+and whose faults were not an atom more flagrant than those of every man
+of fashion in his time. But he was now utterly ruined and wretched. Some
+strong applications were made to his former friends by a Mr Armstrong, a
+merchant of Caen, who seems to have constantly acted a most humane part
+to him, and occasional donations were sent. A couple of hundred pounds
+were even remitted from the Foreign Office; and, by the exertions of
+Lord Alvanley and the present Duke of Beaufort, who never deserted him,
+and this is much to the honour of both, a kind of small annuity was paid
+to him. But he was already overwhelmed with debt, for his income from
+the consulate netted him but L.80 a-year, the other L.320 being in the
+hands of the banker, his creditor; and it seems probable that his
+destitution deprived him of his senses after a period of wretchedness
+and even of rags. Broken-hearted and in despair, concluding with
+hopeless imbecility, this man of taste and talent, for he possessed both
+in no common degree, was left to die in the hands of strangers--no
+slight reproach to the cruel insensibility of those who, wallowing in
+wealth, and fluttering from year to year through the round of fashion,
+suffered their former associate, nay their envied example, to perish in
+his living charnel. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Caen,
+under a stone with this inscription:--
+
+            In
+        Memory of
+    GEORGE BRUMMELL, ESQ.,
+   who departed this life
+  On the 29th of March 1840.
+      Aged 62 years.
+
+Mr Jesse deserves credit for his two volumes. There is a good deal in
+them which has no direct reference to Brummell; but he has collected
+probably all that could be known. The books are _very_ readable, the
+anecdotes pleasantly told, the style is lively, and frequently shows
+that the biographer could adopt the thought as well as the language of
+his hero. At all events he has given us the detail of a character of
+whom every body had heard something, and every body wished to hear more.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} _The Life of George Brummell, Esq._ By Captain Jesse. 2 volumes.
+
+
+
+
+THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE GREEK STATE.
+
+                                     "Say why
+    That ancient story of Prometheus chain'd?
+    The vulture--the inexhaustible repast
+    Drawn from his vitals? Say what meant the woes
+    By Tantalus entail'd upon his race,
+    And the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes?
+    Fictions in form, but in their substance truths--
+    Tremendous truths!--familiar to the men
+    Of long past times; nor obsolete in ours."--_Excursion._
+
+
+In an article on the bankruptcy of the Greek kingdom, (No. CCCXXXV.,
+September 1843,) we gave an account of the financial condition of the
+new state; and we ventured to suggest that a revolution was unavoidable.
+That revolution occurred even sooner than we expected; for our number
+had hardly reached Athens ere King Otho was compelled to summon a
+national assembly to aid him in framing the long promised constitution.
+
+As our former number explained the immediate causes of the discontent in
+Greece, we shall now furnish our readers with a description of the
+revolution, of its results, and of the great difficulties which still
+oppose serious barriers to the formation of an independent _kingdom_ in
+Greece. The late revolution was distinguished by an open rebellion of
+the army; and as a rebellion, in which the troops have been covered with
+decorations, and have received a gratification of some months' pay, is
+not the era from which we should wish to date the civil liberty and
+national prosperity of a monarchy founded by Great Britain, France, and
+Russia, we shall use great delicacy in describing the movement, and
+record no fact which we cannot substantiate by legal or documentary
+evidence.
+
+It is not to be supposed when we in Edinburgh were informed of the
+approaching storm in Greece, that the people of the country were without
+anxiety. The _Morning Post_, (23d September 1843,) which has generally
+contained very accurate information from Athens, published a letter
+written from that city on the 5th September. This Athenian correspondent
+declared "that the Greeks have so fully made up their minds to put an
+end to the Bavarian dynasty, as to be resolved not even to accept a
+constitution at the hands of the king. They declare that they will
+abstain from all outrage and personal violence; and that they only
+desire the embarkation of King Otho and his German followers, who shall
+be free to leave the country without the slightest injury."
+
+We solicit the attention of her majesty's ministers to these memorable
+words, written before the revolution.
+
+The danger, in short, was visible to every body but King Otho, his
+German camarilla, and his renegade Greek ministers. At this time Kalergy
+was inspector of the cavalry. He had always expressed his
+dissatisfaction with the system of Bavarian favouritism in the army; and
+his gallant and disinterested conduct during the war against the Turks,
+rendered him universally popular. Infinitely more of a gentleman and a
+man of the world than any of the court faction, it is said that he was
+viewed with feelings of personal as well as political aversion. It
+happened that, about a week before the revolution, the king reviewed the
+garrison of Athens, and in the order of the day which followed this
+review, General Kalergy was noticed in such a way that he felt himself
+deeply insulted. A Bavarian, Captain Hess, then marshal of the palace,
+was supposed to be the author of this document. As the attack on Kalergy
+was evidently caused by his political conduct, the whole Greek army took
+his part, and the cry was raised that the Bavarians must be driven out
+of Greece.
+
+The prominent part which General Kalergy has taken in the late
+revolution, and the romantic incidents of his life, induce us to offer
+our readers a short sketch of his earlier career. We have known him in
+circumstances when intercourse ensures intimacy; for we have sat
+together round the same watch-fires, on the mountains of Argolis and
+Attica. To parody the words of Anastasius, we saw him achieve his first
+deed of prowess, and we were present when he heard his first praises.
+Hastings's lips have long been silenced by death, but the music of his
+applause still rings in our ears.
+
+Demetrius Kalergy is descended from a Cretan family, whose name is
+famous in the annals of Candia. He was born in Russia, and was studying
+in Germany when the Greeks took up arms against the Turks. His elder
+brothers, Nicolas and Manolis, having resolved to join the cause of
+their countrymen, repaired to Marseilles, where, with the assistance of
+their uncle, a man of great wealth in Russia, they freighted a vessel,
+and purchased a small train of artillery, consisting of sixteen guns,
+and a considerable supply of muskets and ammunition. Demetrius, though
+then only fifteen years of age, could not be restrained from joining
+them, and the three brothers arrived in Greece together. The young
+Kalergy soon gave proofs of courage and military talents. His second
+brother, Manolis, was killed during the siege of Athens; but the eldest,
+Nicolas, a man who unites the accomplishments of a court to the
+sincerest feelings of patriotism, still resides in Greece, universally
+respected. During the Bavarian sway he took no part in political
+affairs; but he was elected a member of the national assembly, which has
+just terminated its labours in preparing the constitution.
+
+Demetrius Kalergy was first entrusted with an independent command in
+1824, when the Peloponnesian chiefs and primates, Kolokotroni, Londos,
+Notaras, Deliyani, Zaimi, and Sessini, endeavoured to divide the Morea
+into a number of small principalities, of which they expected to secure
+the revenues for themselves. In spite of Kalergy's youth, he was ordered
+to take the field against the first corps of the rebels that had acted
+in open hostility to the existing government. With his usual promptitude
+and decision, he attacked Panos Kolokotroni, the son of the old Klepht,
+and Staikos, a Moreote captain of some reputation, in the plain of
+Tripolitza, where they were posted for the despicable purpose of
+intercepting the trains of mules laden with merchandise for the supply
+of the shops of Tripolitza, then the great market of all the central
+parts of the Morea.
+
+The affair was really brilliant. The rebels were encamped on a low hill,
+and, not expecting that Kalergy would depart from the usual practice of
+carrying on a long series of skirmishes, they had paid no attention to
+their position. The attack opened in the usual way by a fierce fire at a
+very long distance; but Kalergy, on perceiving the careless arrangements
+of his enemy, soon induced his troops to creep up pretty close to the
+Moreotes, when he suddenly jumped up, and shouted to his followers, "The
+shortest way is the best. Follow me!" and rushed forward. His whole band
+was within the hostile lines in an instant. The manoeuvre was so
+unexpected, that few of the rebels fired; many were loading their
+muskets, and none had time to draw their swords or yatagans. About 170
+were slain, and, if report may be trusted, one of the rebel chiefs was
+struck down by Kalergy, and the other taken prisoner after receiving a
+wound in personal combat with the young hero. The faction of the Moreote
+barons, as these greedy plunderers of the Greek shopkeepers would fain
+have been called, was dissolved by this unexpected victory. Many laid
+down their arms, and made peace with the government.
+
+General Kalergy was afterwards present in the town of Navarin when it
+was besieged by Ibrahim Pasha, and marched out with his band when the
+place capitulated. This defeat, though he had only held a subordinate
+command, afflicted him greatly, and he looked round for some means of
+avenging his country's loss on the Turks. He resolved at last to
+endeavour to make a diversion by recommencing the war in Crete; but
+without a strong fortress to secure the ammunition and supplies
+necessary for prosecuting a series of irregular attacks, it was evident
+that nothing important could be effected. In this difficulty, Kalergy
+determined to attack the impregnable island-fortress of Grabusa, as it
+was known that the strength of the place had induced the Turks to leave
+it with a very small garrison. Kalergy having learned that the greater
+part of this garrison was absent during the day, disguised a few of his
+men in Turkish dresses, and appeared on the beach at the point from
+which the soldiers of the garrison crossed to this island Gibraltar. The
+commander of Grabusa ordered the boat to transport them over as usual,
+and the Greeks entered the fort before the mistake was discovered. The
+place was in vain attacked by all the forces of Mohammed Ali; the Greeks
+kept possession of it to the end of the war. The sagacity and courage
+displayed by Kalergy in this affair placed him in the rank of the ablest
+of the Greek chiefs.
+
+When General Gordon (whose excellent history of the Greek revolution we
+recommend to our readers{A}) attempted to relieve Athens, then besieged
+by Kutayhi, (Reschid Pasha,) Kalergy and Makriyani commanded divisions
+of the troops which occupied the Piraeus. Subsequently, when Lord
+Cochrane and General Church endeavoured to force the Turkish lines,
+Kalergy was one of the officers who commanded the advanced division. In
+the engagement which ensued, his adventures afford an illustration of
+the singular vicissitudes of Eastern warfare. The Greek troops landed at
+Cape Kolias during the night, and pushed forward to within a mile and a
+half of the Turkish lines, where they formed a slight intrenchment on
+some undulating hills. They threw up some ill-constructed tambouria, (as
+the redoubts used in Turkish warfare are termed,) and of these some
+remains are still visible. A ravine descending from the lower slopes of
+Hymettus ran in front of this position, deep enough to shelter the
+Turkish cavalry, and enable them to approach without exposing themselves
+to the Greek artillery. This movement of the Turks was distinctly seen
+from the Greek camp at the Piraeus, and the approaching attack on the
+advanced posts of the army was waited for in breathless anxiety. The map
+of the plain of Athens is sufficiently familiar to most of our readers
+to enable then to picture to themselves the scene which ensued with
+perfect accuracy.
+
+The Greek troops destined for the relief of Athens amounted to about
+3000 men, and of these about 600 were posted far in advance of their
+companions, in three small redoubts. The main body drawn up in a long
+line remained inactive with the artillery, and a smaller corps as a
+rear-guard seemed destined to communicate with the fleet of Lord
+Cochrane at Cape Kolias. At the Piraeus, about 700 men were scattered
+about in all the disorder of an Eastern encampment, without making the
+slightest attempt to distract the attention of the Turkish troops. The
+French General Gueheneuc and the Bavarian General Heideck, both
+witnessed the battle.
+
+The Turkish cavalry, to the number of about 700, having formed in the
+ravine, rode slowly up towards the brow of the hill on which the
+tambouria of the Cretans, the Suliots, and the regular regiment were
+placed. As soon as their appearance on the crest of the ridge exposed
+them to the fire of the Greeks, they galloped forward. The fire of the
+Greeks, however, seemed almost without effect, yet the Turks turned and
+galloped down the hill into the shelter of the ravine. In a short time
+they repeated their attack with a determination, which showed that the
+preceding attempt had been only a feint to enable them to examine the
+ground. As they approached this time very near the intrenchments, the
+fire of the Greeks proved more effectual than on the former occasion,
+and several of the Delhis, horse and man, rolled on the ground. Again
+the Turks fled to conceal themselves in the ravine, and prepared for
+another attack by dividing their force into three divisions, one of
+which ascended and another descended the ravine, while the third
+prepared to renew the assault in the old direction. The vizier Kutayhi
+himself moved forward to encourage his troops, and it became evident
+that a desperate struggle would now be made to carry the Greek
+position, where the few troops who held it were left unsupported.
+
+The Turkish cavalry soon rushed on the Greeks, assailing their position
+in front and flanks; and, in spite of their fire, forced the horses over
+the low intrenchments into the midst of the enemy.{B} For the space of
+hardly three minutes pistol shots and sabre cuts fell so thick, that
+friends and foes were in equal danger. Of the Greeks engaged not one had
+turned to flee, and but few were taken alive. The loss of the Turks was,
+however, but trifling--about a dozen men and from fifteen to twenty
+horses.
+
+The centre of the Greek army, on beholding the destruction of the
+advanced guard, showed little determination; it wavered for a minute,
+and then turned and fled towards the shore in utter confusion,
+abandoning all its artillery to the Turks. The Delhis soon overtook
+their flying enemies, and riding amongst them, coolly shot down and
+sabred those whose splendid arms and dresses excited their cupidity. The
+artillery itself was turned on the fugitives, who had left the
+ammunition undestroyed as well as the guns unspiked. But our concern
+with the battle of the 6th May 1827, is at present confined to following
+the fortunes of Kalergy. He was one of the prisoners. His leg had been
+broken by a rifle-ball as the Turks entered the tambouri of the Cretans,
+and as he received an additional sabre cut on the arm, he lay helpless
+on the ground, where his youthful appearance and splendid arms caught
+the eye of an Albanian bey, who ordered him to be secured and taken care
+of as his own prisoner.
+
+On the morning after the battle, the prisoners were all brought out
+before the tent of Kutayhi, who was encamped at Patissia, very near the
+site of the house subsequently built by Sir Pulteney Malcolm. George
+Drakos, a Suliot chief, had killed himself during the night; and the
+Pasha, in consequence, ordered all the survivors to be beheaded,
+wishing, probably, to afford Europe a specimen of Ottoman economy and
+humanity, by thus saving the lives of these Greeks from themselves. Two
+hundred and fifty were executed, when Kalergy, unable to walk, was
+carried into the circle of Turkish officers witnessing the execution, on
+the back of a sturdy Albanian baker. Kutayhi calmly ordered his instant
+execution; but the prisoner having informed his captor that he would pay
+100,000 piastres for his ransom; the Albanian bey stepped forward and
+maintained his right to his prisoner so stoutly, that the Pasha, whose
+army was in arrears, and whose military chest was empty, found himself
+compelled to yield. As a memento of their meeting, however, he ordered
+one of Kalergy's ears to be cut off. The ransom was quickly paid, and
+Kalergy returned to Poros, where it was some time before he recovered
+from his wounds.
+
+Capodistrias on his arrival in Greece named Kalergy his aide-de-camp,
+and as he was much attached to the president, he was entrusted with the
+command of the cavalry sent against Poros and Nisi, when those places
+took up arms against the arbitrary and tyrannical conduct of
+Capodistrias. We are not inclined to apologize for the disorders which
+the Greek cavalry then committed; they were unpardonable even during the
+excitement of a civil war.
+
+The marriage of Kalergy was as romantic as the rest of his career. Two
+chiefs, both of the family of Notaras, (one of the few Greek families
+which can boast of territorial influence dating from the times of the
+Byzantine empire,) had involved the province of Corinth in civil war, in
+order to secure the hand of a young heiress. The lady, however, having
+escaped from the scene of action, conferred her hand on Kalergy, whose
+fame as a soldier far eclipsed that of the two rivals.
+
+As soon as the Bavarians arrived in Greece, they commenced persecuting
+Kalergy. An unfounded charge of treason was brought against him; but he
+was honourably acquitted by a court-martial, of which our country-man,
+General Gordon of Cairness, was the president; and from that period
+down to the publication of the order of the day, last September, he has
+been constantly an object of Bavarian hatred.
+
+About twenty-four hours before the revolution of the 15th of September
+broke out, the court of Greece received some information concerning the
+extent and nature of the plot, and orders were given by King Otho to
+hold a council of his trusted advisers. The Bavarians Hess and Graff,
+and the Greeks Rizos, Privilegios, Dzinos, and John the son of Philip,
+(for one of the courtly councillors of the house of Wittelspach rejoices
+in this primitive cognomen,) met, and decided on the establishment of a
+court-martial to try and shoot every man taken in arms. Orders were
+immediately prepared for the arrest of upwards of forty persons.
+
+A good deal has been said about the revolution as having been a mere
+military movement. This, however, is not a correct view of the matter,
+either with reference to the state of parties, or to the intensity of
+the national feeling at the time. Sir Robert Inglis most justly observed
+in Parliament--"That revolution in Greece had been prepared during years
+of intolerable despotism, and the soldiery merely shared in, and did not
+by any means lead, the proceedings of the great body of the nation." The
+fact is, that a plot for seizing the king and sending him to Trieste,
+had been formed by the Philorthodox or Russian party, in the early part
+of 1843; but the party, from some distrust of its own strength, and from
+the increasing unpopularity of King Otho, was induced to admit a few of
+the most determined of the constitutionalists into the plot, without
+intending to entrust them with the whole of the plan. The rising was at
+last fixed for the month of September. This occurred in consequence of
+the universal outcry raised by the Greeks, on finding that the
+representations of Great Britain in favour of the long-promised
+constitution, and the warnings which Sir Robert Peel threw out on the
+discussion of Greek affairs on Mr Cochrane's motion, were utterly
+neglected by King Otho. This indignation was reduced to despair when it
+was known that Mr Tricoupis, on his recall from London, had assured the
+king that the English cabinet was so determined to maintain the _statu
+quo_, that the constitutional party would meet with no countenance from
+England. Every party in Greece then prepared for action, and entered
+into negotiations, in which the opinions of the constitutionalists
+prevailed, because they were actively supported by the great body of the
+people.
+
+In order to prevent the country from becoming a scene of anarchy, in
+case a civil war proved unavoidable, it was necessary to employ all the
+regular authorities who could be induced to join the national cause, in
+their actual functions, without any reference to party feelings. This
+was done; and the fact that it was so, proves the intenseness of the
+public feeling. The constitutional party decided that the recognition of
+Greece as a constitutional state, and the immediate convocation of a
+national assembly, were to be the demands made on King Otho. The Russian
+party allowed these two questions to be first mooted in the firm
+persuasion that the king would be induced by his own pride, his despotic
+principles, and the mistaken views of several of the foreign ministers
+at Athens, to refuse these demands; and, in that case, the throne would
+infallibly have been declared vacant.
+
+About midnight, on the 14th of September, the _gendarmes_ were ordered
+to surround the house of General Makriyani, an officer of irregulars on
+half-pay, and to arrest him on a charge of treason. On approaching the
+house they were warned off; but pressing forward they were fired on, and
+one _gendarme_ was killed and one or two wounded. In consequence of the
+alarm given by the minister of war, for the purpose of supporting the
+arrests to be made, the garrison was all in readiness. In the mean time
+the greater part of the officers had been admitted into the secret, that
+a general movement of all Greece was to be made that night, and that
+their duty would be to maintain the strictest order and enforce the
+severest discipline.
+
+Kalergy, therefore, as soon as he was informed that the movement had
+been made to arrest Makriyani, assembled all the officers, and, in a few
+words, declared to them that the moment for saving their country from
+the Bavarian yoke had arrived; and that they must now, if they wished to
+be free, call on the king to adopt a constitutional system of
+government. The importance of this step, which Kalergy adopted with his
+usual decision, can only be understood when it is recollected, that
+there existed a strong party determined to avail itself of every
+opportunity of driving King Otho from the throne. Had Kalergy,
+therefore, delayed pledging the officers and the army to the
+constitution, or allowed them to march out of their barracks before
+making the constitution the rallying word of the revolution, there can
+be no doubt that the agents of the Russian and Philorthodox parties
+would have raised the cry of "Death to the Bavarians! down with the
+tyrant!" Kalergy, however, put the garrison in motion amidst shouts of
+_Long live the constitution_; and as the cavalry moved from their
+barracks, these shouts were echoed enthusiastically by the citizens who
+were waiting anxiously without.
+
+As soon as Kalergy had taken the command he marched all the troops to
+the square before the palace. Two squadrons of cavalry, two battalions
+of infantry, a company of Greek irregulars, and a number of half-pay
+officers and pensioners, were soon drawn up under King Otho's windows.
+His monstrous palace had begun to produce its effects. Strong patrols
+were detached to preserve order in the town, and to compel the
+_gendarmes_ to retire to their quarters. Makriyani, on being relieved
+from his blockade, repaired to the square, collecting on the way as
+large a body of armed citizens as he was able.
+
+The king had been waiting at one of the windows of the palace in great
+anxiety to witness the arrest of Makriyani; and on seeing the shots
+fired from the house, and the suspension of the attack by the
+_gendarmes_, he had dispatched a Bavarian aide-de-camp, named
+Steinsdorff, to order the artillery to the palace. The young and
+inexperienced Bavarian returned without the guns; but assured his
+Majesty that they would soon arrive. In the mean time, the whole
+garrison appeared in the square, and was ranged opposite the palace: the
+king, however, expected that the arrival of the artillery would change
+their disposition. In a short time, the guns came galloping up; but to
+the utter dismay of King Otho, they were ranged in battery against the
+palace, while the artillerymen, as soon as the manoeuvre was executed,
+gave a loud shout of "long live the constitution."
+
+His Majesty, after a long period of profound silence, appeared at a
+window of the lower story of the palace, attended by the Bavarian
+captain, Hess--the most unpopular man in Greece, unless Dzinos, the
+agent in the celebrated cases of judicial torture, could dispute with
+him that "bad eminence." One of the servants of the court called for
+General Kalergy in a loud voice; and when he approached the window the
+king asked--"What is the meaning of this disturbance? What am I to
+understand by this parade of the garrison?" To this Kalergy replied, in
+a loud and clear voice, "The people of Greece and the army desire that
+your Majesty will redeem the promise that the country should be governed
+constitutionally." King Otho then said, "Retire to your quarters; I
+shall consult with my ministers, with the council of state, and the
+ambassadors of the three protecting powers, and inform you of my
+determination." This appeared to the audience to be acting the absolute
+sovereign rather too strongly under the circumstances, and a slight
+movement of the officers, who overheard the king's words, was conveyed
+like lightning to the troops, so that the king received a distinct reply
+from the whole army in a sudden clang of sabres and noise of arms.
+Kalergy, however, immediately replied in the same distinct tone in which
+he had before spoken--"Sire, neither the garrison of Athens, nor the
+people will quit this spot, until your Majesty's decisions on the
+proposals of the council of state, which will be immediately laid before
+you, is known." At this moment Captain Hess put himself forward beside
+the king, and said--"Colonel Kalergy; that is not the way in which it
+becomes you to speak to his Majesty." But to this ill-timed lesson in
+politeness Kalergy replied sharply--"Draw your head back, sir: you and
+such as you have brought the king and the country into their present
+unfortunate circumstances. You ought to be ashamed of your conduct." The
+Bavarian hero at these words disappeared; and this was the last occasion
+in which this champion of Bavarianism appeared in a public character.
+
+At this time, Count Metaxas, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Church, and
+Major-General Londos, members of the council of state, who had been in
+the square with the troops, were engaged preparing the council for its
+share in the revolution. At the meeting which took place, Spiro Milios,
+the commandant of the military school, and an active member of the
+Russian party, was present as a representative of the army. It was
+evident that the council of state comprised three parties. One was
+willing to support King Otho and the actual system. This party included
+Kondouriotis, the president; Tricoupis, the late minister in London; and
+a German Greek named Theocharis. Another party was eager to drive King
+Otho from the throne, in order to proceed to the nomination of a regency
+preparatory to the choice of an orthodox prince. We are not sure that
+any individual is now anxious to identify his name with this party. The
+third party made the demand for a constitution their primary object; and
+as this party was led by Metaxas, Londos, Church, Palamidhis, and
+Mansolas, it was soon joined by the majority.
+
+The meeting was long, and it is said that the conduct of the members was
+much more disorderly than that of the people and the troops in the
+square; but at last, a proclamation and an oath were drawn up, by which
+the council of state, the army, and the people, all pledged themselves
+to support the constitution. A committee consisting of Metaxas, Londos,
+and Palamidhis, was also charged to prepare an address to the king,
+recommending his majesty to convoke a national assembly, in order to
+prepare a constitution for the state; at the same time they invited his
+majesty to appoint new ministers, and in the list presented they of
+course took care to insert their own names. As soon as this business was
+terminated, the council dispatched a deputation to wait on his majesty,
+consisting of the president and five members, who were to obtain the
+king's consent.
+
+The conduct of King Otho on receiving this deputation was neither wise
+nor firm. He delayed returning any answer for two hours, and attempted
+to open a negotiation with the council of state, by means of one of the
+members of the camarilla. The delay excited some distrust even among the
+best disposed in the square, and the report was spread that the king was
+endeavouring to communicate with the _corps diplomatique_, in order to
+create a diversion. At this very time a train of carriages suddenly
+appeared at the gates of the palace, and the ministers of the three
+protecting powers--Sir Edmund Lyons, Mr Katakazy, and Mr Piscatory,
+accompanied by General Prokesch d'Osten, and Mr Brassier de St Simon,
+the representatives of Austria and Prussia--requested to be admitted to
+see the king. General Kalergy, however, declared that he had orders to
+refuse all entry to the palace, until his majesty had terminated his
+conference with the deputation of the council of state; and repeated, in
+the presence of the ministers of Austria and Prussia, the assurance he
+had given at an early hour of the morning to Sir Edmund Lyons, Mr
+Katakazy, and Mr Piscatory, that the greatest respect would be shown to
+the person of his majesty. Mr Katakazy, the _doyen_ of the _corps
+diplomatique_, satisfied that any parade of foreign interference could
+only increase the difficulties of the king's position, accepted the
+answer of Kalergy and began to withdraw. The representatives of the
+powers which had never protected Greece, deemed the moment favourable
+for a display of a little independent diplomacy, and accordingly the
+Prussian minister asked Kalergy in a tone, neither mild nor low, if he
+durst refuse to admit him to see his majesty. To this Kalergy, who was
+extremely anxious to avoid any dispute with the foreign ministers at
+such a moment, politely replied that he was compelled to refuse even
+the minister of Prussia. Mr Brassier, however, returned to the charge
+aided by his Austrian colleague; but as the Greeks place all Germans in
+the category of Bavarians, they gave some manifestations of their
+dislike to any German interference, which could not be otherwise than
+displeasing to the Prussian, who addressed Kalergy in a very rough tone.
+His words were lost to the spectators, but they were supported by
+General Prokesch d'Osten with a good deal of gesticulation. The patience
+of Kalergy gave way under these repeated attacks, and he turned to Mr
+Brassier, saying--"Monsieur le ministre, you are generally unlucky in
+your advice, and I am afraid his majesty has heard too much of it
+lately."
+
+The thrust was a home one, and the Prussian minister, rather
+discomposed, addressed himself to Sir Edmund Lyons, who, while waiting
+till his carriage drew up, had been quietly contemplating the scene, and
+said--"Colonel Kalergy is insolent; but he only repeats what he has
+heard in the drawing-rooms of Athens." Sir Edmund Lyons replied--"I do
+not see, Mr Brassier, how that makes your case better," and withdrew to
+his carriage, leaving Austria and Prussia to battle out their dispute
+with Greece in the presence of the mob. The spectators considered the
+scene a very amusing one, for they laughed heartily as the _corps
+diplomatique_ retired; but, if all the reports current in diplomatic
+circles be true, Mr Katakazy, the _doyen_ of the Athenian diplomatists,
+was made to suffer severely for his prudent conduct; for it is said that
+his recall took place because he did not support with energy the foolish
+attempt of his enterprising colleagues. It is certain that any very
+violent support given to any feeling, in direct hostility to the
+national cause at the time, could hardly have failed to vacate the
+throne, or at least to push the people on to commit some disorders, of
+which the Russian court, and the friends of despotism at Vienna and
+Berlin, might have taken advantage.
+
+The king, finding at last that there was no hope of his deriving any
+assistance from without, signed the ordinances appointing a new
+ministery, and convoking a national assembly. The troops, after having
+remained more than thirteen hours under arms, were marched back to their
+barracks, as if from a review; and every thing at Athens followed its
+usual course. Thus was a revolution effected in the form of government
+in Greece without any interruption in the civil government--without the
+tribunals' ceasing to administer justice for a single day--without the
+shops' remaining closed beyond the usual hours, or the mercantile
+affairs of the country undergoing the slightest suspension. Such a
+people must surely be fit for a constitution.
+
+The national assembly has now met, and terminated its labours; and
+Greece is in possession of a constitution made by Greeks. In three
+months the first representative chamber will meet. It will consist of
+about 120 members. The senate, which is to consist of members named by
+the king for life, cannot exceed one-half the number of the
+representatives elected by the people. Faults may be found with some of
+the details of the constitution; but, on the whole, it must be regarded
+as a very favourable specimen of the political knowledge of the Greeks;
+and the manner in which the different articles were discussed, and the
+care with which every proposal and amendment were examined, gave all
+those who witnessed the debates a very high opinion of the legislative
+capacity of the people.
+
+The form of the Greek government, as a constitutional monarchy, may now
+be considered as settled. We shall therefore proceed to examine the
+difficulties, of a social and political nature, which still obstruct the
+advancement of the nation, and render its prosperity problematical. Some
+of our statements may appear almost paradoxical to travellers, whose
+hasty glance at distant countries enables them to come to rather more
+positive conclusions than those who devote years to study the same
+subject. We shall, however, strive to expose our facts in such a way as
+to show that we state the plain truth, nothing but the truth, and, as
+far as our subject carries us, the whole truth.
+
+That Greece has not hitherto improved, either in her wealth, population,
+or civilization, as fast as the energy of her people led her friends to
+expect would be the case after she was freed from the Turks, is
+universally admitted. The great bar to improvement exists in an evil
+rooted in the present frame of social life, but fortunately one which
+good and just government would gradually remove. In Greece there is no
+clear and definite idea of the sacred right of property in land. The god
+Terminus is held in no respect. No Greek, from the highest to the
+lowest, understands the meaning of that absolute right of property
+"which," as Blackstone says, "consists in the free use, enjoyment, and
+disposal by every Englishman of all his acquisitions, without control or
+diminution, save only by the laws of the land."
+
+The appropriation of Mr Finlay's land by King Otho, without measurement,
+valuation, or payment, to make a garden for his palace--the formation of
+a great road leading to the French minister's house, by the municipality
+of Athens, without indemnifying the owners of the land, though a road
+sufficiently good already existed--and the confiscation of half the
+estates purchased by foreigners from the Turks by Maurocordatos, when
+Minister of Finance under the Bavarian Regency, in a ministerial
+circular deciding on rights of property, are mere trifling examples of
+the universal spirit. When Maurocordatos wrote his memorable
+declaration, "that every spot where wild herbs, fit for the pasturage of
+cattle, grow, is national property, and that the Greek government
+recognises no individual property in the soil except the exclusive right
+of cultivation," he only, in deference to the Bavarian policy of the
+time, which wished to copy Mohammed Ali's administration in Egypt,
+caricatured a misconception of the right of property equally strong in
+every Greek, whether he be the oppressor or the oppressed. Even the late
+National Assembly has not thought it necessary to correct any of the
+invasions of private property by the preceding despotism. Individuals,
+almost ruined by the plunder of their land, have not even received the
+offer of an indemnity, though the justice of their claims is not
+denied.{C}
+
+The origin of this national obtuseness of mind on a question of
+interest, is to be found in the system of taxing the land. A Greek
+really views land somewhat as English labourers view game. The owner of
+the soil is absolute proprietor only during those months in which he is
+engaged in the labours of preparing the land and sowing the seed. As
+soon as the harvest time arrives, he ceases to be master of his estate,
+and sinks into the condition of a serf of the revenue officer, or of the
+farmer of the land revenue. It is true, that the government tax only
+amounts to a tenth of the gross produce of the soil; but, in virtue of
+this right to a tenth, government assumes the entire direction of all
+the agricultural operations relating to the crops, and the cultivator's
+nine-tenths (for it is really a misnomer to call him proprietor) become
+a mere adjunct of the government tenth.
+
+Many of our readers, who are unacquainted with Eastern life, may suppose
+that we colour our picture too strongly. In order, therefore, to divest
+our statement of all ornament, we shall describe the whole of the events
+of an agricultural year. Our classic readers will then comprehend
+practically how the vulture could feast on the perpetually growing heart
+of Prometheus--why Tantalus tempted the gods by murdering Pelops--and
+they will see that the calamities of the Theban race are an allegorical
+representation of the inevitable fate which awaits a people groaning
+under the system of taxation now in force in Greece.
+
+The tenths in Greece are usually farmed to speculators, and, as the
+collection is a matter of difficulty, extraordinary powers are conferred
+on the farmers; hence it happens, that the social position of the
+cultivators and the farmers is one of constant hostility. If the
+cultivator has it in his power, he cheats the farmer of the revenue,
+and if the farmer is able to do so he cheats the cultivator. The result
+is, that probably not one individual in the Greek kingdom really pays
+the exact tenth of the produce of his land. A few of the most active
+rogues contrive to cheat the farmers of the revenue; but these
+gentlemen, in virtue of the great powers with which the law invests
+them, contrive to cheat the greater part of the proprietors. As soon as
+the grain is ripe, the cultivator is compelled to address himself to the
+tax-farmer for permission to cut his crop; but as the farmer must keep a
+very sharp look-out after his interest, he only grants such permissions
+as accord with the arrangements he may have established for watching the
+cultivators at the smallest possible expense to himself, making the
+over-ripeness of the crop of the majority a very secondary
+consideration. It happens, consequently, that in Greece two-thirds of
+the grain are not gathered until it is over-ripe, and the loss is
+consequently very great.
+
+When the grain is cut, it must be carried to a certain number of
+authorized threshing-floors collected together, in order that the tax
+farmer may take every possible care to secure his tenth. To these
+threshing-floors the whole grain of a district must be transported from
+the fields in the straw, though the straw may be wanted as fodder for
+cattle at the very spot from which it is taken, and will require to be
+carried back a very great distance. An immense loss of grain and labour
+is sustained by this regulation; but it is a glorious season for the
+donkeys;--long trains of these animals, lively under their heavy loads
+of sheaves, may be seen galloping one after the other, each endeavouring
+to seize a mouthful from his neighbour. The roads are strewed with grain
+and the broken-hearted cultivators follow, cursing man and beast.
+
+The grain is at last collected in immense stacks round the
+threshing-floors--a cultivator perched on the top of each stack,
+defending it from the attacks of man and beast; and a tax-gatherer,
+seated with his pipe cross-legged in the middle of the circle, is
+watching the manoeuvres of the cultivators. No person who has not
+examined the subject with attention can imagine the scenes of fraud and
+violence which a Greek harvest produces. The grain is usually kept piled
+round the threshing-floors under various pretexts, for at least two
+months, unless the cultivator pay the farmer an additional sum, to
+facilitate the housing of his crops. Even in the vicinity of Athens, the
+operations of the wheat and barley harvest generally occupy the
+exclusive attention of the agricultural population for three months. The
+grain is trodden out by cattle; and a Greek who bought a winnowing
+machine at Athens, was not allowed to make use of it, as the farmers of
+the revenue contended that the introduction of such instruments would
+facilitate frauds.
+
+The farmers of the tenths likewise increase the evils of this ruinous
+system, by throwing every difficulty in the way of the cultivators, in
+order to compel them to consent to pay for each facility they may
+require. We have known regular contracts entered into with the
+peasantry, by which they agreed to pay from 3 to 5 per cent more than
+the legal tenth. We believe no honest man ever paid less than from 12 to
+13 per cent on his crop, even in the neighbourhood of the capital. It
+may be supposed that some redress can be obtained, in cases of gross
+oppression, by applying to the courts of law; but this is not the case.
+A special tribunal, consisting of administrative officers of the Crown,
+and municipal authorities, and from which lawyers have been always
+carefully excluded, is appointed to judge summarily all cases relating
+to the tenths. The infamous conduct of these administrative tribunals
+excited general discontent, and an article has been inserted in the
+constitution abolishing them, and sending all the pending cases to the
+ordinary courts of law. Government, however, defended them to the last,
+and even pressed for decisions down to the very hour in which King Otho
+took his oath to the constitution. There is here, however, some ground
+for consolation; for it is clear that the Greek ministers fear the
+ordinary administration of justice as being above their control.
+
+It is needless to say, that under such laws the improvement of
+agriculture in Greece is impossible. No green crops can be grown with
+profit at any distance from a large town. The tenth of garden produce
+and green crops being generally valued and paid for in money, the
+disputes concerning the valuation, and the impossibility of obtaining
+any redress, in case of injustice, have induced the cultivators to give
+up such cultivation. We have known proprietors pay half the value of a
+crop of potatoes as the value of the tenth; and in one case, on our
+asking the farmer of the tenths, who after all was not a bad fellow at
+heart, though he wished to make his farming of the revenues turn out a
+good speculation in his hands, what he would recommend a proprietor to
+do in order not to lose money by cultivating potatoes; he looked grave,
+and after a few moments' thought, candidly replied--"Never to plant them
+as long as the present law remains in force!" Vineyards which have been
+planted with care, and cultivated for eight years, have been lately
+abandoned, as the high valuation of their produce renders them
+unprofitable. The only agriculture which can be pursued in Greece
+without loss, is that in which only the simplest and rudest methods of
+cultivation are followed. The land only yields a rent when it is in the
+immediate vicinity of a large market, or when it is of the richest
+quality; the employment of capital in improvements only opens new
+channels for the extortions of the farmers of the revenue. No money can
+be safely invested on mortgage in such a country, and no loans by the
+Three Allied powers to the Government, no national bank, no manufactory
+of beet-root sugar, no model farms, and no schools of agriculture can
+introduce prosperity into a country taxed in such a manner.
+
+We do not intend to discuss any plan for ameliorating the condition of
+the Greeks; but we can easily point out what it is necessary for them to
+do before they can, by any possibility, better their condition. The
+system of selling the tenths must be abolished; for a government so
+inefficient as to be unable to collect them by its own officers, is
+incompetent to perform the functions for which it was created, and ought
+to be destroyed. The owners of the land must be rendered the real
+masters of their property. They must be allowed to reap their crops when
+they are ripe, and to thresh their grain when and where they please.
+Until this is the case, we can assure the Three Protecting Powers, they
+count without the people if they suppose that they have established a
+permanent monarchy in Greece. We do not hesitate to say that the royal
+dignity, even with the support of England and France, is not worth ten
+years' purchase until this is accomplished.
+
+Every traveller who visits Greece declaims against the number of
+coffee-houses throughout the country, and the hosts of idle people with
+which they are filled. But nothing else can be expected in a country
+where the system of agriculture keeps the cultivators idle for three
+months annually, and deprives the proprietor of all profit from his
+land. Under such circumstances the demand for labour becomes extremely
+irregular. Many of the lower classes turn brigands and plunder their
+neighbours; the educated and higher classes turn government _employes_
+and plunder the country. This evil has arrived at an alarming pitch; the
+Greek army contains almost as many officers as privates; the navy has
+officers enough to man a fleet twice as large as that which Greece
+possesses, for she has three admirals, a hundred and fifty captains, and
+two hundred and seventy commanders. It has been in vain pressed on every
+successive administration, that a list of the army, navy, and civil
+_employes_ ought to be published, in order to put an end to the shameful
+system of jobbing which has always existed. No minister would, however,
+adopt a principle which would so effectually have put an end to his own
+arbitrary power of quartering his friends and relations on the public.
+The loans of the three powers might be doubled to-morrow, and it is
+evident that, unless all the population of Greece were made pensioners,
+no surplus would be found to employ for any public improvement.
+
+Indeed the national revenues of the Greek kingdom, as of old those of
+Athens and Rome, seem to be considered the property of that body of
+citizens who pursue no useful occupation, and possess no taxable
+property; while the unlucky proprietors are viewed as a species of
+serfs, existing to supply a revenue to the state. This political
+principle has been exemplified in a decree of the late national
+assembly, excluding every Greek or foreigner from public employment who
+happens not to be a born subject of the new kingdom, or who did not take
+part in the war against the Turks before the end of 1827, and perhaps
+even more strongly in a very unconstitutional private vote of a
+committee of the whole house, giving 800 drachmas to each member--this
+vote being in direct violation of one of the articles of the
+constitution, which requires that all grants of money should originate
+from the crown. We do not deny the necessity of allowing the deputies
+this small grant; many of them were poor, and their conduct had been
+disinterested; but we are bound to complain of the slightest infraction
+of constitutional principles by those who frame a constitution.
+
+The length of this article compels us to leave a few observations we
+desire to make on the municipal government of the Greeks, and on the
+state of education, and of their judicial and ecclesiastical affairs, to
+another opportunity. The late debates in the House of Commons, and the
+able statement which Sir Robert Peel gave of the principles of our
+policy with regard to Greece, render it unnecessary for us to say one
+word on that subject. We can assure our readers that the policy of our
+present ministers has been applauded by every party in Greece, except
+the Philorthodox; and they, as they could find no fault, remained
+silent. We believe that no two governments ever acted more
+disinterestedly to a third than Great Britain end France have lately
+done to Greece, and that no ministers ever acted more fairly, in any
+international question, than Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot have done on
+the subject of the Greek revolution; but for this very reason we feel
+inclined to warn our countrymen against the leaven of old principles,
+which still exists in the palace at Athens. Let us judge of the new
+government of Greece by its acts, and let Great Britain and France
+remember that they are not looked on without some suspicion.
+
+    +Enesti gar pos touto te tyrannidi
+    Nosema, tois philoisi me pepoithenai+.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+{A} 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1832.
+
+{B} The tambouria are always constructed with the ditch in the inside,
+in order that they may afford a better cover from artillery.
+
+{C} One English sufferer has for several years vainly attacked the king
+for justice, even with the assistance of the English Minister in Greece
+and the Foreign Office at home.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX TO VOL. LV.
+
+
+Aborigines of New Holland, the, 193.
+
+Achilles Tatius, account of his romance of Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Actual condition of the Greek state, the, 785.
+
+Aden, the British position of, 272.
+
+Adventures in Texas.--No. III. the Struggle, 18.
+
+Adventures of Clitophon and Leucippe, the, 33.
+
+Africa, ignorance of the interior of, 269.
+
+Africa--the Slave Trade--and Tropical Colonies, 730
+  various expeditions to explore, 731
+  its principal rivers, and countries watered by them, 734.
+
+Agriculture, causes of the decline of, in the Roman empire, 391.
+
+Ameer Ali, a Thug, account of, 326.
+
+Ameers of Scinde, case of the, 580.
+
+Anti-corn-law League, measures of the, 121.
+
+Ancient Greek romances--Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Arabs of Cordova, sketch of the history of the, 431.
+
+Australia, statistics of the various colonies of, 184.
+
+
+Banking in Australia, on, 186.
+
+Banking-House, the, a history in three part. Part III. Chap. I., Symptoms
+    of rottenness, 50
+  Chap. II., A meeting, 56
+  Chap. III., A chapter of loans, 61
+  Chap. IV., A dissolution of partnership, 65
+  Chap. V., The crisis, 69
+  Chap. VI., The crash, 75
+  Chap. VII., The vicarage, 79.
+
+Beau Brummell, Jesse's memoirs of, reviewed, 769.
+
+Beauclerk, Topham, 182.
+
+Beke, Dr. T. C., his travels in Africa, 740.
+
+Belfront castle, a retrospective review, 334.
+
+Benton, Mr, on the treaty of Washington, 112.
+
+Bewailment from Bath, a, or Poor Old Maids, 199.
+
+Bristol, the Earl of, 180.
+
+British fleet, the, 462.
+
+Brummell, Jesse's memoirs of, reviewed, 769.
+
+Bumbo Khan, sketch of, 223.
+
+Bundelcund, Colonel Davidson's travels in, 325.
+
+
+Canadian insurgents, trials of the, 3.
+
+Catholicism, effects of in Ireland, 520.
+
+Chartists, state trials of the, in 1842, 5.
+
+Cheap labour and cheap bread, connection of, 125.
+
+Chudleigh, Miss, career of, 180.
+
+Church of Scotland, the secession from the, 221.
+
+Churkaree, town of, 327.
+
+Circulating libraries, on, 556.
+
+Circulating medium of Great Britain, amount of the, 388.
+
+Clitophon and Leucippe, account of the romance of, 33.
+
+Cobden, Mr, on the effects of corn-law repeal, 125.
+
+Colonies, importance of, to England, 740.
+
+Columbus, a poem, by B. Simmons, 687.
+
+Conservatism, advance of, since the passing of the reform bill, 103
+  as exhibited by the general elections, 104.
+
+Cordova, history of the Moorish kingdom of, 431.
+
+Corn-law, the new, and its effects, 116.
+
+Corn-laws, on the, 385
+  viewed in connexion with the manufacturing distress, 105
+  effects of their repeal on wages, &c., 125.
+
+Corn question, letter from Lemuel Gulliver on the, 98
+  Sir Robert Peel on the, 106.
+
+Crime, the increase of, 533
+  table of it since 1805, 534
+  not attributable to its surer detection by a more efficient police, 535
+  nor to defects in the law, 540
+  nor to deficiency in education, 541
+  its diminution in India and France, 538.
+
+Cry from Ireland, review of the, 638.
+
+Customs revenue, improvement of the, since the new tariff, 114.
+
+
+Davidson's travels in India, review of, 321.
+
+Delta, lines by, on the snow, 617.
+
+Dhacca, account of the city of, 331.
+
+Difficulties of the present government on its accession, the, 108.
+
+Diligence, the, a leaf on a journal, 692.
+
+Disruption of the Scottish church, the, 221.
+
+Dublin state trials, the, 1.
+
+Duelling in Germany, 555.
+
+Dumas, Alexander; thrush-hunting, a tale by, 150
+  extracts from his work on Italy, 347
+  and from his Rhine and Rhinelanders, 546.
+
+
+Education, statistics of, with reference to crime, 541.
+
+Elections, results of the, since 1832, 104.
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, his Indian policy, 113.
+
+Emigration to Australia, letter on, 184
+  from Africa, on, 745.
+
+England, efforts made by, in favour of free trade, 261.
+
+Ethiopia, Harris's Highlands of, reviewed, 269.
+
+Europe, diminution of, British exports to, 263.
+
+Eusebius, letter to, on sitting for a portrait, 243.
+
+Exports, diminution of, to Europe, 263.
+
+
+Fairies' Sabbath, the, a tradition of Upper Lusatia, 665.
+
+Fireman's Song, the, 101.
+
+Foreign policy of the government, the, 111.
+
+France, increased commercial restrictions of, 261
+  statistics of crime in, 538.
+
+Freethinker, the, a tale, 593.
+
+Free trade and protection, on, 259
+  efforts made by England to introduce free trade, 261
+  protective system pursued by France, Germany, &c., _ib._
+  true principles of, 268. No. II.
+  The corn-laws, 385
+  failure of the reciprocity system, _ib._
+  comparison of a young and old state as to manufacturing and agricultural
+    productiveness, 386
+  effects of free trade on the Roman empire, 391
+  impracticability of that system, 396
+  and its inexpediency, 397.
+
+Frost and others, the trials of, 4.
+
+
+Gama, circumnavigation of Africa, by, 271.
+
+General elections, results of the, since 1832, 104.
+
+Germany Customs League, the, 262.
+
+Germany, Dumas in, 546.
+
+Gil Blas, on the authorship of, 698.
+
+Glum, Tabitha, letter from, 199.
+
+Goethe, lines to, 380.
+
+Gopal, a Hindu robber, account of, 326.
+
+Government, position and prospects of the, 103.
+
+Greece, the actual condition of, 785.
+
+Greek romances, the ancient: Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Gulliver, letter from, on the corn question, 98.
+
+Gunnings, career of the, 176.
+
+Gwalior, history and present state of, 579.
+
+
+Hackman, murder of Miss Ray, by, 178.
+
+Harris's Highlands of Ethiopia, review of, 269
+  notices of it, 730.
+
+Hawash river, the, 277.
+
+Henley, orator, notices of, 171.
+
+Heretic, the, a novel translated from the Russian of Lajetchnikoff, review
+    of, 133.
+
+Hervey, Captain, 180.
+
+High life in the last century, 164.
+
+Hill's Fifty days on board a Slave vessel, review of, 425.
+
+Home policy of the government, the, 110.
+
+Hurdwar, account of the fair of, 324.
+
+Huskisson, Mr, first attempts to introduce the free trade system, 262.
+
+Hydrabad, battle at, 580.
+
+Hymn of a hermit, the, 382.
+
+
+Imprisonment and transportation--No. I.; the increase of crime, 533.
+
+Increase of crime, the, since 1808, 534
+  not attributable to greater number of detections, 535
+  nor to defect in the law, 540
+  nor to deficiency of education, 541.
+
+India, Colonel Davidson's travels in, review of, 321
+  diminution of crime in, 538.
+
+Indian affairs, Gwalior, 579.
+
+Ireland, its present position, and effects of the government measures
+    on, 127
+  its present state, and policy of ministers, 518
+  objections brought against the ministerial measures, 519
+  defence of them, 524
+  the landlord and tenant question, 638.
+
+Irish state trials, the, 1.
+
+
+J. S., poems by; the Olympic Jupiter, 378
+  a Roman idyl, 379
+  Goethe, 380
+  hymn of a hermit, 382
+  the luckless lover, 383.
+
+Jervis, Sir John, career of, 465.
+
+Jesse's Memoirs and Correspondence of George Selwyn, review of, 164
+  of George Brummell, 769.
+
+
+Kalergy, General, sketch of the life of, 785.
+
+Kieff, a poem, translated from the Russian of Ivan Kozloff, by T. B.
+    Shaw, 80.
+
+Kingston, the Duchess of, 180.
+
+Krapf, Mr, notices of his mission to Africa, 730.
+
+
+Labour, gradual reduction in the cost of, in Great Britain, 125.
+
+Lahore, revolution at, 581.
+
+Lajetchnikoff, the Heretic by, reviewed, 133.
+
+Lanarkshire, statistics of crime in, and its police, 537, 539.
+
+Land of slaves, the, a poem, 257.
+
+Landlord and tenant question in Ireland, the, 638.
+
+Larresse on Portrait Painting, extracts from, 246.
+
+Law, administration of the, in India, 333.
+
+Lazzaroni of Naples, anecdotes of the, 354.
+
+League, measures of the, 121.
+
+Lemuel Gulliver, letter from, to the editor, 98.
+
+Le Sage not the author of Gil Blas, 698.
+
+Letter from an exiled contributor, 184.
+
+Literature, the monster misery of, 556.
+
+Llorente, M. on the authorship of Gil Blas, 698.
+
+Lorgnon; a word or two of the opera-tive classes by, 292.
+
+Love in the wilderness. Chap. I., 621
+  Chap. II., 624
+  Chap. III., 627
+  Chap. IV., 631
+  Chap. V., 635.
+
+Luckless lover, the, a poem, 383.
+
+Lusatia, traditions and tales of; No. I., the Fairies' Sabbath, 665.
+
+
+Mahratta war, origin, &c., of the, 584.
+
+Manufacturing distress, Sir Robert Peel on the causes of the, 105.
+
+Marston, or, Memoirs of a Statesman. Part VII., 81
+  Part VIII., 202
+  Part IX., 362
+  Part X., 483
+  Part XI., 561.
+
+Meeanee, battle of, 580.
+
+Melbourne in Australia, letter from, with account of the colony, &c., 184.
+
+Memoirs of a Statesman--_see_ Marston.
+
+Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, review of, 462.
+
+Mexico, two nights in, 449.
+
+Michael Kalliphournas, a tale, 725.
+
+Monster misery of literature, the, 556.
+
+Monmouthshire rioters, trial of the, 4.
+
+Moslem histories of Spain; the Arabs of Cordova, 431.
+
+My friend; a poem, 256.
+
+
+Naples, account of, by Dumas, 347.
+
+Narration of certain uncommon things that did formerly happen to me,
+    Herbert Willis, B. D., 749.
+
+Nelson, notices of the early services of, 477.
+
+New art of printing, by a designing devil, 45.
+
+News from an exiled contributor, a letter from New Holland, 184.
+
+Non-intrusionists, secession of the, from church of Scotland, 221.
+
+
+O'Connell and others, trial of, 1
+  his trial in 1831, 3
+  his present trial and demeanour during it, 7
+  his probable policy in agitating for Repeal, 128.
+
+O'Connor, Fergus, state prosecutions of, 6.
+
+Olympic Jupiter, the, a poem, 378.
+
+Opera-tive classes, a word or two of the, 292.
+
+Oude, a sporting excursion to, 329.
+
+Oxford, trial of, 5.
+
+
+Peel, Sir Robert, on the progress of Conservatism, 103, 104
+  on the causes of the manufacturing distress, 105
+  defence of his conduct on the corn-law question, 107.
+
+Phenicians, circumnavigation of Africa by the, 271.
+
+Pirates of Segna, the, a tale of Venice and the Adriatic. Part I. Chap. I.,
+    The Studio, 299
+  Chap. II., The Cavern, 303
+  Chap. III., The Jewels, 310
+  Chap. IV., The Ball, 316.
+  Part II. Chap. I., The Battle of the Bridge, 401
+  Chap. II., The Picture, 409
+  Chap. III., The Pirates, 415
+  Chap. IV., The Recognition, 421.
+
+Poetry:--Kieff, from the Russian of Kozloff, 80
+  The Proclamation, 100
+  the Fireman's Song, 101
+  The Prophecy of the Twelve Tribes, 196
+  My Friend, 256
+  The Land of Slaves, 257
+  the Priest's Burial, _ib._
+  Prudence, 258
+  The Olympic Jupiter, 378
+  A Roman Idyl, 379
+  Goethe, 380
+  Hymn of a Hermit, 382
+  The Luckless Lover, 383
+  The Snow, by Delta, 617
+  Columbus, by B. Simmons, 687
+  To Swallows on the eve of departure, by the same, 690.
+
+Police, repugnance to assessment for, 536.
+
+Poor old maids, a bewailment from Bath, 199.
+
+Porter, Mr, on the decrease of our European exports, 263.
+
+Portrait painting, in a letter to Eusebius, 213.
+
+Portugal, restrictive commercial system adopted by, 262.
+
+Portuguese, circumnavigation of Africa by the, 271.
+
+Position and Prospects of the government, on the: its position on the
+    secession of the Whigs, 103
+  advance of Conservatism since the passing of the Reform Bill, _ib._
+  the manufacturing distress, 105
+  the sugar and corn question, 106
+  difficulties with which it had to contend, 108
+  its home policy, and what it has done, 110
+  its foreign policy, 111
+  the new tariff and corn-law, 113
+  results of its measures in the revival of trade, tranquillity, &c., 120
+  its measures with reference to Ireland, 127.
+
+Priest's burial, the, a poem, 257.
+
+Printing, the new art of, by a designing devil, 45.
+
+Proclamation, the, 100.
+
+Prophecy of the twelve tribes, the, poem, 196.
+
+Prosecution, the State, 1.
+
+Prudence, a poem, 258.
+
+
+Rampore, city of, 322.
+
+Ray, Miss, murder of, by Hackman, 178,
+
+Rebeccaites, trials of the, 6.
+
+Reciprocity system, effect of, in diminishing the exports to Europe, 263
+  failure of the, 385.
+
+Repeal agitation, the, 128.
+
+Revenue, improvement of the, 114.
+
+Reviews: the Heretic, 133
+  George Selwyn and his contemporaries, 164
+  Harris's Highlands of Ethiopia, 269
+  Davidson's Travels in India, 321
+  Hill's Fifty days on board a Slave Ship, 425
+  Tucker's Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, 462
+  Cry from Ireland, 638
+  Jesse's memoirs of Beau Brummell, 769.
+
+Rhine, the, and Rhinelanders, 546.
+
+Rigby, Richard, notices of, 172.
+
+Roman empire, effects of free trade on the, 391.
+
+Roman Idyl, a, 379.
+
+
+Sahela Selassee, King of Abyssinia, British mission to, 282.
+
+St Vincent, Earl, Tucker's Memoirs of, reviewed, 462.
+
+Sandwich, Lord, notices of, 177.
+
+Scinde, subjugation of, by the British, 580.
+
+Segna, Pirates of--_see_ Pirates.
+
+Selim, Captain, expedition under, to explore Central Africa, 731.
+
+Selwyn and his contemporaries, review of, 164.
+
+Shaw, T. B., translation of Kieff, a poem, from the Russian by, 80
+  review of his translation of the Heretic, 133.
+
+Shoa, mission to the kingdom of, 275.
+
+Simmons, B., poems by:--Columbus, 687
+  To swallows on the eve of departure, 690.
+
+Sindiah, history of the house of, 582.
+
+Sitting for a portrait, on, in a letter to Eusebius, 243.
+
+Slave trade, the, 425, 730, 741.
+
+Sliding scale, effects of the, 119.
+
+Snow, the, a poem by Delta, 617.
+
+Song of the Fireman, the, 101.
+
+Southern Mexico, two nights in, 449.
+
+Spain, condition of, under the Arabs of Cordova, 431.
+
+Speculation in grain, diminution of, under the new corn law, 118.
+
+State prosecutions, comparison of, in ancient and modern times, 1
+  that of O'Connell in 1831, 3
+  those of the Canadian insurgents, _ib._
+  of the Monmouthshire rioters, 4
+  of Oxford, 5
+  of the Chartists in 1842, _ib._
+  of the Welsh rioters, 6
+  the present, of O'Connell and others, for conspiracy, 7.
+
+Statesman, memoirs of a--_see_ Marston.
+
+Struggle in Texas, the, 18.
+
+Sugar question, Sir Robert Peel on the, 106.
+
+Swallows on the eve of departure, address to, by B. Simmons, 690.
+
+
+Tariff, the new, and its results, 113.
+
+Tatius, Achilles, account of his romance, Clitophon and Leucippe, 33.
+
+Texas, adventures in. No. III.; the struggle, 18.
+
+Thrush-hunting, a tale; by Alexander Dumas, 150.
+
+Traditions and tales of Upper Lusatia. No. I., The Fairies' Sabbath, 665.
+
+Tropical colonies, on, 730, 741.
+
+Tucker's Memoirs of Earl St Vincent, review of, 462.
+
+Twelve tribes, prophecy of the, a poem, 196.
+
+Two nights in Southern Mexico, a fragment from the journal of an American
+    traveller, 449.
+
+Two patrons, the, a tale. Chapter I., 500
+  Chap. II., 503
+  Chap. III., 505
+  Chap. IV., 509
+  Chap. V., 511
+  Chap. VI., 514
+  Chap. VII., 515.
+
+
+Vardarelli, account of the, 358.
+
+
+Wages, gradual reduction of, in Great Britain, 125.
+
+Washington, the treaty of, 112.
+
+Welsh rioters, trial of the, 6.
+
+Who wrote Gil Blas? 698.
+
+Wiggins' Cry from Ireland, review of, 638
+
+William, John, letter from, to the editor, 184.
+
+Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 174
+  Gilly, 175.
+
+Willis, Herbert, B. D., narration of, 749.
+
+Word or two of the opera-tive classes, a, 292.
+
+
+END OF VOL. LV.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine -
+Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844, by Various
+
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